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The aim of Future Melbourne 2026 is to ensure Melbourne’s legacy as a liveable and competitive city over the coming decade.

If we think about our city today, we can see that it is being impacted in many ways and these impacts represent both challenges and opportunities.

Urban growth and density

More than 122,000 people call the municipality home today and a further 732,000 people visit the central city every day for work and play. Our population is diverse: 38 per cent of our residents speak a language other than English at home.

As more people seek out the cultural, business, education, work and lifestyle opportunities the city offers, the population is expected to continue growing rapidly, with a forecast 38.3 per cent increase in the daily population by the year 2030.

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Digital city


The changing digital landscape brings many challenges and opportunities for our city. New technologies and the impact of digital disruption have been felt across the globe. The impact on our daily lives is profound, affecting the way we work, how we learn and interact with each other. The changing digital landscape also provides incredible opportunities for innovation in our city.

Future Melbourne 2026 will look at Melbourne’s digital future and how we can best harness new technology to improve our city for the whole community. Along with many other cities around the world Melbourne is now passing across new digital frontiers into the realm of the Internet of Things, the Internet of Services and widening deployment of Artificial Intelligence.

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Climate change

Melbourne’s C02 emissions are currently trending up. If these trends continue, greenhouse gas emissions will grow to around 7.7 million tonnes by 2020 – a 60 per cent increase on 2010 emissions. The largest share of greenhouse gas emissions comes from urban areas — about 70 per cent globally. The World Bank estimates that globally, US$80-100 billion per year of climate adaptation costs will occur in urban areas.

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Future economies

The City of Melbourne makes a major contribution to the Victorian and Australian economies. It accounts for 27 per cent of Victoria's Gross State Product and 6 per cent of Australian Gross Domestic Product. There are 438,972 jobs in the municipality.

The biggest industry is the professional, scientific and technical services sector with 70,090 jobs. We know that digital disruption will change the way we work and render some jobs obsolete but we also know that the internet creates 2.6 jobs for each job lost to technology related efficiencies – this is a huge growth opportunity for our city.

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Citizens and government

The role of local government is changing. Digital disruption is transforming the relationship between local government and the community. Future Melbourne 2026 will reconsider the possibilities of civic governance, to build a dynamic relationship between the public sector, business and the community.

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What trends will change our lives in the future? Share your ideas now.