‘Because we, as women, are underrepresented in too many aspects of society. You cannot be what you cannot see. I want my daughter and my future grandchildren to be proud of the contributions that women have made to the history of the city of Melbourne.’
The conversation
City of Melbourne is responsible for creating and changing the names of places and roads in our municipality.
Council has drafted a Place and Road Naming Policy and Guidelines for community feedback.
The purpose of introducing the proposed Policy and Guidelines is to:
- enable community-led (rather than developer-led) naming
- clearly affirm Council’s preference for Aboriginal language and the names of women in history, and what the prioritisation of these naming themes means in practice (e.g. names outside these themes can still be considered if approved at a Council meeting unless consistent with a precinct specific naming framework).
Gathering insights
Through an online survey on Participate Melbourne, we sought community feedback on the Draft Place and Road Naming Policy and Guidelines to inform:
- the final Policy and Guidelines, including the prioritised naming themes of the policy and the focus of Council’s naming approach
- how Council enables community consultation in the naming process.
The survey was open from 15 November to the 20 December 2023.
Who we reached
2833
Participate Melbourne page views
205
survey participants
97
participants participating in a City of Melbourne consultation for the first time
We received feedback from a range of community members including:
- 37 participants identified as LGBTIQ+.
- 34 participants were born overseas.
- 32 participants speak a language other than English at home.
- 23 participants identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.
What we heard
Council's naming priorities
The survey asked participants to indicate whether they support the prioritisation of Aboriginal language and women in history in order to help address the current imbalances in our place and road names:
- 61.31 per cent do not support the proposed priorities
- 33.17 per cent support the proposed priorities
- 5.53 per cent were unsure.
From participants who do not support the priorities, we heard:
- No particular gender, culture, demographic, group etc. should be prioritised.
- Strength of connection to local area, contribution to the local community or other positive historical impacts should be the main criteria for prioritising potential names.
- Council should prioritise the representation of our multicultural history and diverse community.
- Existing road and place names should not be renamed based on the proposed priorities.
- Concerns that some Aboriginal language names may be difficult to pronounce, spell or remember.
Participants who support the priorities told us:
- The proposed priorities are an appropriate way to balance/address the historical deprioritisation of Aboriginal language and women in history.
- Naming is an appropriate way to acknowledge Traditional Owners and Aboriginal culture.
- Naming is an appropriate way to preserve and educate about Aboriginal language and heritage.
- Naming is an appropriate way to highlight and honour the success of women.
- The proposed naming priorities should not result in the exclusion of names outside these categories where appropriate.
Enabling a community-led approach to naming
We also asked the community about what specific information and support would facilitate and encourage community participation in naming.
- 70.34 per cent would like more information about how the community can suggest new names.
- 66.10 per cent would like to know more about the community can make a submission on proposed names.
- 73.33 per cent indicated that clear information about why a particular name has been proposed is important to support their participation in considering and making a submission in response to a proposed name.
- 70.41 per cent would like a mechanism (e.g. website) that the community can use to suggest names at any time.
- 70.53 per cent would like to suggest names via Participate Melbourne (54.74 per cent would like to suggest names via email).
- 74 per cent would participate in a poll for a proposed name anywhere within City of Melbourne.
Other comments and feedback
The final survey question invited participants to share additional comments and feedback. Through these responses, we heard reinforcement of responses to earlier survey questions:
- The importance diverse representation of all cultures, genders, demographics, groups etc.
- Existing place and road names should not be changed.
- Names should have connections to the local area or community (i.e. place-based names).
- Names should be based on contribution and merit.
- Names should be easy to spell and pronounce to enable navigation, wayfinding, providing direction, writing mailing addresses etc.
We also heard additional suggestions for involving the community in the naming process and other aspects of the Draft Policy such as:
- Actively involving younger people.
- Advertising through a range of channels, particularly channels that do require subscriptions to access.
Examples of what we heard
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‘The Aboriginal community and women play an important role in our city and should be celebrated along side significant men who have contributed’
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‘I support it and think that the best place name should be chosen based on a wide range of factors and ‘with community consultation. It's important that we recognise our Aboriginal history and women in history along with others who have made contributions to the community and the city.’
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‘We need to support all cultures – to support our multicultural community. Prioritising one is exclusionary to all the other many diverse cultures in Melbourne’
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‘Names of migrants to this country, who have contributed to the making of it, should be considered more, be they men or women or whatever.’
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‘I would like to see younger people - late school age and beyond engaged in this process. These young people are amazingly inventive and their input could set the tone for the future. They (and younger) are the group who have to live with the results the longest.’
Impact
The findings of this engagement will inform the final Place and Road Naming Policy and Guidelines.
Next steps
The community consultation report was presented to Future Melbourne Committee (FMC) on 6 February 2024. Council is now considering and incorporating community feedback in the updated Draft Place and Road Naming Policy. The updated Draft Policy will be presented to FMC for consideration mid-2024.
