New Urban Territories: Spatial assemblies for the 20-minute city

Metropolitan planning frameworks in Australia have shifted from autonomous land-use and infrastructure planning to integrative development approaches that incorporate the social, spatial and environmental imperatives for resilient and liveable places. While the notion of 'place' is not new, its expression in our urban development strategies has evolved. Place-making has typically resided at the scale of a site or bounded activity precinct. We are now beginning to see 'place' emerge as a metropolitan concern, the scale and form of which is much more fluid. One such example is the notion of a '20-minute city' proposed as a key component for Victoria's pending metropolitan plan. Through a design-led investigation, this paper explores the types of spatial assemblies and development approaches that could potentially achieve the 20-minute city in metropolitan Melbourne. It draws on a larger research investigation for the Australian Research Council called Intensifying Places: Transit-Oriented Urban Design for Resilient Cities and identifies new urban territories within metropolitan Melbourne for potential intensification. The proposed scale of each territory lies between 'metropolitan' and 'local' which enables a range of transit, built form and land-use strategies to be considered as part of a co-functioning urban system. Through these speculative urban landscapes, this paper will discuss the benefits and challenges associated with the 20-minute city concept.