Moonee Ponds Creek Strategic Opportunities Plan

As an integrated water design and management plan, the MPC SOP seeks to change our relationship and perception of water.

Understanding that the creek is prone to flooding, and these impacts will only increase as climate changes and we experience more intense and extreme rain and sea surge events, the plan looks at how we accept, embrace and work with the flooding to transform the creek into a more resilient, sustainable corridor through means such as alternative land use, catchment-wide collaborative governance and dynamic landscapes.

Since the finalisation of the MPC SOP document significant traction has been gained.

A draft summary CoM branded document was developed, and the City of Melbourne Council unanimously approved it to be released for community consultation. Further consultation with stakeholders and the community is currently being undertaken to ensure everyone is taken on the journey to re-imagining Moonee Ponds.

Working closely with Wave Consulting and the CoM, the strategic opportunities plan seeks to create vison that is bold and transformational, yet achievable.

The Moonee Ponds Creek Strategic Opportunities plan (MPC SOP) is an advocacy document that builds on the plethora of projects and investigations previously undertaken by various councils, authorities, stakeholders, community groups and authorities, to create a consolidated document that digests and reflects these, but goes a step further to create a vision for the creek within the CoM that fully supports aspirations and key strategies of the City of Melbourne.

It represents both the culmination and continuation of efforts to see the Moonee Ponds Creek re-imagined as a creek imbued with life and vitality.

Guided by the vision of Moonee Ponds Creek as “thriving creek corridor that supports the liveability and resilience of the city”, the strategic opportunities are a manifestation of the six key goals:

• Water Management: A resilient creek adapted to current and future extreme weather events
• Open Space: A diverse network of open spaces to support the growing needs of the city
• Biodiversity: A healthy waterway and thriving ecosystem
• Movement: A highly accessible and connected creek corridor
• History & Culture: A celebrated past and shared vision for the future
• Collaborative Governance: Advocate for transformational change

While the City of Melbourne (CoM) has planning influence over much of the creek catchment areas at the base of the creek, the City does not currently have much influence on the corridor itself.

The plan is the first step to enabling the City of Melbourne to advocate to state government, authorities, developers and the community to gain traction and present a unified vision that can be deployed over the years.

The MPC SOP is a document that seeks to provide a balanced vision, in an effort to understand Moonee Ponds Creek from a social, environmental and economic perspective.