Earlier this month, Melbourne’s City North district came alive as part of the RMIT City North Shared Futures Festival.

Cardigan Street, at the heart of RMIT’s City North Social Innovation Precinct, was free from traffic and full of possibility. The festival turned the precinct into a living lab where collaboration and curiosity came together, showing how inclusive innovation, regenerative practices, and advanced technology come together through community engagement to the city we want to live and work in.

Over two days, the precinct buzzed with energy and ideas. The Frugal Food Canteen demonstrated resourcefulness, transforming rescued produce into meals that were both experimental and nourishing, The Seeds of the Future Bank invited visitors to exchange skills and time, imagining alternative economies of care and fostering trust, reciprocity, and collaboration across generations. Troy Innocent, from RMIT’s Future Play Lab, led a Live Action Role Play (LARP) that invited participants to step into 2050—joining factions, tackling challenges, and exploring Indigenous-led urban design—transforming the precinct into a stage for immersive, collaborative storytelling about climate, community, and the future of cities. Giant puppets roamed the street, workshops and pop-ups invited hands-on experimentation, and music from Rainbow Chan, DJ PGZ, and Andrew 88 created spaces for joy, connection, and shared experience.

AR headsets and mixed reality installations allowed visitors to experience the past, and imagine the future of City North, revealing how design, ecology, and community intersect across time and place. Robots like Haku and AI-driven installations encouraged curiosity, interaction, and co-creation, while digital photobooths and immersive storytelling platforms and live experiences  enabled participants to step into different perspectives—exploring future communities, imagining urban regeneration, and fostering empathy and shared responsibility for the environment.

Through gaming, speculative design, and participatory public art, advanced technologies became tools to make ideas tangible and actionable, demonstrating how imagination, collaboration, and inclusive innovation are embedded in the precinct itself.

Indigenous Responsible Practice and truth-telling were woven into every aspect of the festival through First Nations knowledge, history, and culture, and collaboration. The Welcome to Country and Indigenous Celebration led by Jaeden Williams acknowledged the meeting places of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung peoples and the eastern Kulin Nation, reminding everyone that the city’s future is inseparable from Country, culture, and community. This understanding is embedded in the design of the social innovation precinct and all research, teaching, and community engagement.

The festival also showcased projects from the RMIT City North Activation Challenge, highlighting student, staff, and partner co-designs to make the precinct more liveable, connected, and regenerative. These projects reflected the precinct’s long-term ambitions: integrating community, technology, social care, and inclusive innovation to create urban spaces that support people and planet.

City North is a living ecosystem of people, ideas, and practice. RMIT, the City of Melbourne, Regen Melbourne, Aurecon, the University of Melbourne, and a network of education, industry, and community partners are building a platform for inclusive, regenerative innovation. Each conversation, workshop, and activation strengthens this ecosystem, showing how imagination, technology, and social responsibility can combine to shape the city itself.

The Shared Futures Festival was another chance to celebrate the precinct and the impact of the City North district working together.

You can be part of this story through a range of current opportunities, including the RMIT Responsible Practice Showcase on 27 October, the City North Activation Challenge Circular Cities Showcase on 5 November, the National Health and Innovation Precincts Summit in early December, and much more.

These events provide a chance to explore, experiment, and collaborate alongside students, researchers, industry partners, and the wider community. If you would like to learn more or get involved in any of these events, please reach out at city.north@rmit.edu.au.

Discussions are also underway for City North potentially to host the IASP World Conference in 2028, showcasing Melbourne’s leadership in inclusive, socially responsible, and technologically advanced urban innovation.

What’s next for the City North Social Innovation Precinct
RMIT is now partnering with the Victorian Government and our City North neighbours to shape a detailed development plan for the next phase of the City North Precinct renewal. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to get involved and help shape what comes next as the project moves forward.

City North invites everyone to join in, explore, and imagine. Here, ideas become practice, technology meets creativity, and community shapes what comes next. Together, we are learning how to create places that nurture people, planet, and possibility — and you can be part of it.

 

From its core campus in Melbourne RMIT has incrementally expanded its operations to create a network of locations: first across Melbourne, and then internationally, commencing in 2000 through our initial investment in Vietnam and the more recent establishment of RMIT Europe from our hub in Barcelona in 2013 (see Figure 4). This expansion has served to reframe RMIT as a multi-campus university.

Unlike our counterparts with a regional or interstate presence, we have forged a model that serves to connect our core campus and civic base in Melbourne to our metro Melbourne and international locations. As a consequence, over the last three decades a unique network of locations has emerged, drawing on the strengths, diversity and specialisms of our Melbourne sites, and enabling a network of international links to evolve. Today, RMIT operates in nine sites, with a further five places under consideration for the potential they offer to further advance our institutional strategy and impact.

Table 2: Locations assessment framework

The following assessment framework (Table 2) can be used:

• When exploring the potential of a site.
• As a guide when deciding to invest in a new location or to scale up or down investment in existing locations.
• During planning and design.

Prior location opportunities explored these domains on a case-by-case basis– in future these questions should be considered for any significant location being investigated.

The strategic considerations reflect the intent of the locations principles outlined in Section 3, and allow the identification of any site issues which would make the site incompatible with RMIT’s core commitments to place-making. The operational considerations should also be addressed in decision-making.

Evolving our identities in place. RMIT’s places are layered with meaning: where a pre-settlement past is celebrated and local communities are involved and engaged in their futures. Our efforts to deliberately draw on local qualities and strengths continues to shape our evolving place identity. Today, RMIT operates in a diverse set of locations across the world. Rather than impose an institutional identity on our places of operation, our approach to place-based development has allowed a distinctive form and character to emerge, simultaneously distinguishing each campus while ensuring they are recognisable as an ‘RMIT place’.

Just as RMIT’s offer has expanded, its physical footprint has evolved: incrementally and organically, shaped by the combined forces of economic growth and industry demand for new skills. As a result, the RMIT campus experience is decidedly urban. Many of our core campus’ buildings are city icons, reflecting the culture and identity of Melbourne – designed by notable local architects and contributing to our city’s architectural heritage. But our buildings, while iconic, are not fortress like. Likewise, our campuses are not comprised of historic halls, gardens or towers, fenced in and secluded from the city at large. Instead, the RMIT campus begins at street level, where it is experienced by moving through our places and spaces, where Melbourne’s lanes and passages connect with our public spaces. Our activities spill out into the street and invite participation.

Once borne out of necessity, over time our informal, evolutionary approach to place-shaping has come to define our identity. Where traditional universities may seek to preserve their standing and status through finely manicured grounds and carefully conserved buildings, RMIT aims to do the opposite – inhabiting the city, working flexibly to adapt and restore urban fabric and reintroduce nature and create urban habitats – leaving our mark through the way we work to energise, renew and activate our places.

Across our network of locations, it is imperative that our contribution to place and community is delivered consistently and equitably. Our institutional commitment to create and oversee vibrant, inclusive innovation ecosystems is nonnegotiable. However, managing RMIT’s diversity of places and spaces brings challenges. Despite good intentions it can be difficult to ensure that institutional strategy is translated across multiple sites. Taking a principles based approach will allow RMIT to evolve each of our locations in line with a common set of approaches while acknowledging key differences as described in Table 1.

Table 1: Applying the principles to locations

Principle 6 focuses on Connectivity. RMIT places will connect with each other through purposeful exchange of staff, learners, experiences, communities, and digital networks.

Principle 5 focuses on Sustainability. RMIT places will embody the institutional commitment to exceed best practice sustainability: from planning and design through to ongoing operations and activation.