Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision

What’s your vision for Glen Eira?

Have you ever stopped to think what Glen Eira will look like in the future? 

Thinking back it wasn’t all that many years ago, that the City of Glen Eira was formed (1994).  Around that time, there were approximately 51,000 households and we had a population of around 112,000 (Census, 1996).  The World Wide Web was beginning to take off and phones were mobile, however they were just phones with buttons — not touch screens.

Fast forward to today, and we have almost 60,000 households and a population of around 154,000 (ABS, 2018) that is rich with diversity of culture, interests and needs — who can imagine what the next 10, 20 or 30 years might bring.

We believe it is time to imagine; to actively look to the future and imagine what we want Glen Eira to look and feel like. We seek to develop a vision with the community for the community to provide a clear direction for strategically creating a future Glen Eira.

Using a comprehensive engagement process, we want to understand the aspirations and priorities that create and achieve our Community Vision. This will be based on evidence of current and future community needs and will be used to guide our strategic actions into the future.

What would you like to see in the future Glen Eira?

Over the next five months, we will be actively seeking to hear all voices of our community and we want to hear from you. 

We want to hear your views on what the future of Glen Eira could and should look like — to understand:

• what you love about Glen Eira and what you think needs to change
• where you see yourself living, working, spending your social time
• how you would like the environment you spend your time in to look and feel.

What’s happened so far…

The Community Vision commences with a co-design process. All 25 community leaders came together over two sessions to determine the following;

1. the scope of the community vision engagement
2. key themes to guide discussion
3. strategies for reaching groups that rarely take part in engagement processes, and;
4. suggestions for engagement activities.

From September to December we commenced many engagement activities, including;

• launch of the Community Vision,
• a survey with our Community Voice members
• eight pop-up engagement activities at various community events and places across Glen Eira
• online engagement on ‘Have Your Say’
• a hard copy feedback form sent to every household
• a youth survey, and;
• hundreds of sheets for children to draw their future vision.

From this, we had more than 3000 people telling us about their aspirations for the future of Glen Eira.

This information provides 12 key action areas for the Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision.

These action areas include (in no particular order):

1. Green, sustainable and environmentally conscious
2. Well designed, with a mix of quality housing and local neighbourhood character
3. A place for active, leisure and sporting activities
4. Connected and easy to move around using any mode of transport
5. Diverse, inclusive and healthy
6. Thriving, with vibrant shopping strips and businesses
7. Safe, clean and tidy
8. A place to connect, create and learn
9. Supportive of residents in need
10. Informed and involved
11. Effectively and efficiently supported by Council’s organisation
12. Home to arts and culture that celebrate our identity and heritage

The second stage of community engagement will gain an understanding of how our community feels about these areas. This includes gaining specific information, and to see if anything was missing. This stage of engagement consists of;

• a series of four pop ups
• five community workshops
• several kitchen table conversations, and;
• an online / hard copy survey.

This stage of engagement presents participants with descriptions of the 12 action areas. We also ask the following questions:

1. Please tell us your top three to five most important action areas for the Glen Eira community (in no order), and why?
2. Are there any action areas missing from the list?
3. What advice would you give if you had two minutes with the panel members of the Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision?

This stage of engagement receives feedback from over 850 people. This information provides the Deliberative Citizens' Panel with insights into creating the Community Vision.

The Deliberative Citizens’ Panel

The Deliberative Community Panel scheduled for 29 March has been postponed until further notice — online communications and discussion will continue.

In early March, 40 community members are selected at random. They are there to be part of the panel for developing the Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision.

The registration of more than 300 people allows an independent consultant to choose a sample of people representative of our community;

• different ages
• a balance of gender
• people from a range of Glen Eira suburbs
• people from different socio economic, educational and occupational backgrounds, and;
• people with different cultures and other diversity features.

Their job is to review background information collected over five months. This provides a collective response to the following question:

“What is our vision for the future of Glen Eira and how can we reflect the aspirations of our diverse and growing community”

The panel will be facilitated by MosaicLab - an organisation with expertise in facilitating the  deliberative processes. The draft Community Vision will be made available for comment prior to a final meeting to refine the Vision.

Frequently asked questions