Melbourne Emergence Monthly Meetup: Transport Systems and Governance

(Please note last minute venue change to RMIT Room 56.03.81)

The focus of this Meetup will be a follow-up to the previous month's theme of urban planning and design, but this time applied to transport systems in particular. How can ideas from complex systems and looking at multiple scales inform the governance and decision-making around transport systems and infrastructure?

We believe this is a timely theme given the current debate around several possible major transport infrastructure investments in Melbourne that may shape our region for decades to come.

Dr Russell Thompson will join us to give a talk on "Investigating Sustainable Transport in Melbourne using information portals." This will provide illustrations of how we can discover how sustainable our local areas are using publicly available databases and analysis tools such as the VISTA portal, ABS Census and VicRoads CrashStats.

Tony Smith's presentation will be focused on the western tunnel portal of the proposed East-West motorway, and consequent disruption of showcase areas of Royal Park West, significant Parkville West housing assets and 'black comedic duplication of the lower Moonee Ponds Creek disaster zone'.

After any presentations and discussion we expect to head to a nearby cafe/restaurant for those interested in a meal and further conversation.

If you aren't sure what we mean by emergence, the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) is a good starting point.