Melbourne’s 2050 Summit walks a fine line between vision and volume

It was a scene straight out of a political strategist’s dream.

More than 700 minds gathered at Melbourne Town Hall on May 9 to envisage what the city could become by mid-century, brought together by a council with bold ambitions and a Lord Mayor determined to stir civic imagination.

It was, by all accounts, a day of immense energy, ideas, and good intentions. But with so many voices in the room, some were left wondering – can a vision of the future survive the weight of the present?

The City of Melbourne’s 2050 Summit, the brainchild of Lord Mayor Nick Reece, marked an ambitious step into long-term thinking for a council juggling short-term realities. He proclaimed the day was about “aspiration” and that “everything was on the table”.

With its format and fanfare, the event bore more than a passing resemblance to Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit held in 2008 – an event that clearly left an impression on Cr Reece, himself a former staffer under Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Rudd’s successor.

Credit where it’s due: it’s rare for a local government to cast its gaze so far ahead.

Council staff pulled off an impressive feat in delivering such a large and complex event at short notice, and the Lord Mayor’s opening address set the tone, celebrating Melbourne’s global contributions, from the cochlear ear implant and Vegemite, to Kylie Minogue and the world’s first feature film about the Ned Kelly Gang … “you’re welcome, Hollywood,” the Lord Mayor quipped.

And while the morning’s program was heavy on speeches, it brought some big names. Among the presenters were Governor of Victoria Margaret Gardner, Premier Jacinta Allan, Opposition Leader Brad Battin, and NGV director Tony Ellwood, who used the opportunity to promote the state’s largest ever cultural infrastructure project, NGV Contemporary. Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood floated a congestion levy, while the University of Melbourne’s Ahelee Rahman spoke to the role of academia in shaping future cities, , and the need for active inclusion and interculturalism.

But it was after morning tea that the real test began. Participants split into themed workshops covering everything from “Liveability and Wellbeing” to “Democracy and Leadership”. Guided by facilitators, attendees condensed their discussions into ideas scribbled on butcher’s paper and ranked them via interactive polls.

In practice, what emerged in many rooms wasn’t so much a crystal ball as a community noticeboard – familiar concerns about housing, equity, mobility and safety re-aired in the hope that collective wisdom might reframe them into something new. It was less about 2050, and more about 2025, just spoken in a slightly more hopeful tense.

In the “Liveability and Wellbeing” group, ideas around affordable housing and inclusive city design dominated. Under “Climate and Environment”, there were calls for a “regenerative future” and for Melbourne to see itself as a “Country-first city” prioritising First Nations principles. The “Movement and Infrastructure” group dreamt of Melbourne as the “micromobility capital of the world”, while “Democracy and Leadership” sought more trust, more cohesion, and a more participatory city.

Whether any of this will translate into a coherent long-term vision remains to be seen.

It’s easy to be sceptical about mass workshops of this scale. Compressing big city questions into a single day, with hundreds of contributors and no clear roadmap for how their voices will be synthesised, is no small challenge. For those already uncertain about the purpose of the exercise, the summit may have reinforced doubts. But for others, the chance to speak into Melbourne’s future – however loosely defined – offered something more intangible; a feeling of being heard.

Nowhere was this more powerfully captured than in a short video and presentation from the Youth Roundtable, held in the lead-up to the summit. It was one of the day’s most inspiring moments, reminding attendees why they were there in the first place: to plan not just for today’s challenges, but for the generations who will inherit the city. The youth participants called for a future shaped more by hope than fear, driven by opportunity for all, and committed to addressing the climate emergency.

In the final hour, those remaining were asked to vote via QR code on their preferred ideas. It was a neat moment of deliberative democracy. But will it be remembered as more than that?

That task now rests with the City of Melbourne. The summit was a powerful gesture – but the gesture must be followed with substance. Council must now analyse, distil, and embed the contributions of the day into a strategy that is more than just a crowd-sourced wishlist or a “great reset”. It must be strategic, layered, and clever.

Ironically, all of this happened in the lead-up to the council’s annual budget release on May 13 – a stark reminder that lofty visions still land in the reality of spreadsheets and trade-offs.

Within Town Hall itself, the summit – one of Lord Mayor’s big picture election pitches – exposed a lack of shared clarity about the exact purpose of the day. That uncertainty, more than any particular idea or outcome, could ultimately determine how effective the summit proves to be.

Still, the fact that Melbourne held such a summit at all is cause for cautious optimism. In a moment when civic discourse often feels reactive, the 2050 Summit was at least an attempt to look ahead.

Whether it proves to be a footnote or a turning point will depend not just on the follow-through – but on whether the city, and those listening at state and federal government, truly commit to building the future it asked its people to imagine. •