Join Our Neighbourhood Character Conversations!

To support the new Housing Strategy, we're preparing a new Neighbourhood Character Study. The Study will help us consider the preferred future neighbourhood character of residential areas. This is to make sure that when we plan for changes in housing, we consider not only the kind of buildings and landscapes we prefer, but also our community's future housing needs, and the future climate we will be living in.

Focus Area

The study focuses on residential areas that are not already protected by planning controls such as Heritage Overlays, Design and Development Overlays or Neighbourhood Character Overlays. The focus area is a small proportion of properties within the municipality as most are already covered by other overlays within the planning scheme.

You can find out whether your property is in the focus area by typing your address into map tool below.

How to have Your Say

Join us at one of our Neighbourhood Character Conversation workshops to talk about:

  • what neighbourhood character is, and why it’s important
  • the existing neighbourhood character
  • what our neighbourhoods could look like in 2039 and how we will get there

Workshops registrations are now full for the workshops on Thursday July 13 and Saturday July 15. Those that have registered will receive more information about the workshops shortly, including links to the workshops.

If you missed out on the first two workshops, please register your interest for:

  • Online workshop on Thursday 20 July 6-8pm (this will go ahead if there are enough interested participants)
  • Or request a 1:1 meeting with council officers (these meetings will take place during the week of 17 July - 21 July 2023. Please email housingstrategy@portphillip.vic.gov.au or call 03 9209 9777 (ASSIST) to arrange a meeting time)

The first phase of community engagement took place in September 2022. This phase helped us understand what the community values about housing and areas of concern. We used what we heard during this phase to develop the Discussion Paper, which set the strategic context for how we plan for the changing housing needs in Port Phillip and identified the key issues and opportunities to be considered in the Housing Strategy.

We recently completed the second phase of engagement which sought feedback from the community on the Discussion Paper. It took place over a 5-week period in April / May 2023 and included 3 pop-ups in the neighbourhoods of South Melbourne, Port Melbourne, and St Kilda: workshops and an online survey. We’re currently reviewing the feedback we received and will share a summary of the findings in the coming months.

What you told us about Neighbourhood Character

As part of these engagements, we asked the community to identify the elements they valued most about their neighbourhoods. In response, we heard that trees, landscaping, vegetation, and the design and style of houses were valued the most.

To explore this topic further, we asked some more detailed questions during phase 2 engagement. We will use the feedback we received from this phase of engagement and feedback from the Neighbourhood Character Conversations to help us develop the draft Neighbourhood Character Study and the draft Housing Strategy.

We will collate and consider all responses and the feedback will inform the development of the draft Housing Strategy.

A third and final phase of engagement on the draft Housing Strategy will take place in the first half of 2024.