The East Lake area is located within inner urban Canberra, close to central employment nodes, major transport routes, and the ecologically significant Jerrabomberra Wetlands. It is anticipated that approximately 9,000 people could eventually live in the area.

CSIRO and the ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA) have agreed to work together to create a national showcase demonstrating innovation in sustainable urban redevelopment by embracing social, economic, and environmental sustainability principles, technologies and practices in redeveloping East Lake.

The project will be part of CSIRO’s Sustainable Communities Initiative, which brings together participants from across the public, private and civil society sectors to work in partnership with communities to develop and deliver innovative solutions to sustainability challenges and opportunities.

In announcing the project the ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, said “This project will embrace social, economic and environmental sustainability principles, technologies, and practices. It is a whole-of-system approach where community challenges and opportunities are addressed through identifying and understanding the drivers and levers for change within the community and developing appropriate pathways and investments in response.”

The project will be a participatory action research project with the aim of developing systems-based knowledge for delivering urban sustainability at East Lake. All project partners and stakeholders will learn together about the constraints and opportunities associated with the urban renewal of East Lake and about the capacity to push urban sustainability frontiers.

Focusing primarily on the planning phase of the development, the project will develop and test a range of processes, tools, and knowledge that will assist ACTPLA to understand and evaluate the diverse and often competing forces that are likely to influence urban sustainability outcomes.

The project will focus not only on improving sustainable development outcomes at the local level, but also generating increased urban sustainability knowledge and understanding that can be applied across Australia.

The East Lake redevelopment will be an archetype of sustainable urban development, guided by principles of adaptive learning, practical use of new technologies and techniques, and a robust systems-based understanding of how planning processes can integrate natural and built environments.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Geoff Garrett said he was pleased with the involvement of CSIRO in such a project and hoped there would be more in the future - “It is important to the organisation that we work with local communities to ensure we provide information based on good science so informed decisions can be made by government, communities and individuals."

For further information please contact:

Sean Rooney
Director – CSIRO Sustainable Communities Initiative
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or visit the website Sustainable Communities Initiative website: www.csiro.au/science/SCI