Melbourne Innovation Districts, Australia
"City North Social Innovation Precinct Activation Initiative"
The City North Social Innovation Precinct—at the heart of the Melbourne Innovation District—brings communities and innovators together to co-create solutions for real-world challenges. Through place-based experimentation, it transforms bold ideas into scalable impact, shaping an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient future—grounded in everyday life and driving positive change.
Purpose of the solution
RMIT's Strategy to 2031, Knowledge with Action, reflects our commitment to fostering growth and civic partnership through key RMIT locations. At the forefront of this vision is the transformation of the City North area, where the Social Innovation Precinct will be central to the Parkville National Innovation and Employment Cluster within the Melbourne Innovation District. The City North Activation initiative is cultivating a vibrant social innovation ecosystem, creating the connections and conditions to bring together academia, industry, government, and community. By co-creating solutions to shared economic, social, and environmental challenges, we aim to generate impactful, scalable change that is deeply embedded in place-based collaboration.
Impact
The City North Activation Initiative is a bold and timely response to the urgent need for new forms of civic partnership—partnerships that not only connect institutions with communities, but that actively reshape how we work together to solve the challenges of our time. Anchored in RMIT's research expertise, facilities, and global reach, the Initiative brings ideas to life in ways that are visible, measurable, and deeply embedded in place.
At its heart, this is about doing things differently—working across boundaries to develop practical solutions with lasting impact. To date, the Initiative has enabled more than 20 collaborative projects, each one an experiment in applied innovation. These projects are not just prototypes or pilots; they are real-time responses to complex issues, generating data, learning, and outcomes that inform broader systems change.
The Initiative focuses on key areas where demonstrable impact is both essential and achievable:
Social Care & Wellbeing – New models of public health and mental wellbeing are being developed and tested with communities, addressing inequality and designing supports that meet people where they are.
Future Engineering & Technology – Emerging technologies are being applied in urban systems—whether through digital infrastructure, sustainable mobility, or intelligent design—to shape more inclusive, responsive cities.
Indigenous Recognition & Celebration – This Initiative is a platform for truth-telling, co-design, and the elevation of Indigenous knowledge systems within the built environment, creating more just and culturally rich public spaces.
Clean Economy – Climate adaptation and the transition to a circular economy are being accelerated through place-based innovation, delivering practical demonstrations of what low-carbon futures can look like.
International Collaboration – Drawing on RMIT's global footprint, the Initiative fosters knowledge exchange and partnerships that extend Melbourne's innovation capacity into an international civic dialogue.
The City North Activation Initiative is more than a set of projects—it's a growing platform for public value creation. It demonstrates how a university can lead as a civic partner: convening expertise, co-producing knowledge, shaping policy, and strengthening capability for long-term, systemic change. Through this work, RMIT is helping to build a city that is more inclusive, resilient, and future-ready—translating shared knowledge into shared action. By aligning purpose with measurable impact, we are not only responding to today's challenges, but actively shaping a more sustainable and globally connected future.
What is innovative about it?
The challenges facing modern cities—climate change, technological disruption, public health crises, and social inequities—demand new, bold approaches to collaboration and innovation. The City North Activation Initiative rises to this challenge with a uniquely transformative approach that redefines how we work together to create change.
What sets this initiative apart is how it:
Mobilised diverse partnerships across universities, industry, NGOs, community organisations, and government, co-designing solutions that tackle the shared economic, social, and environmental challenges of our time.
Transformed the City North Precinct into a dynamic ‘living lab,' inviting projects to test, prototype, and refine practical solutions in real-time, using the urban landscape as both a platform and a proving ground.
Fostered a broad spectrum of social innovation, including:
Active, hands-on learning, professional development, and training that puts theory into practice.
Piloting and prototyping new services, programs, business ideas, and technologies with the potential to scale. Inclusive and creative placemaking—from vibrant events and experiences to tactical urbanism that brought City North spaces, streets, and public realms to life.
Knowledge leadership and exchange, engaging and benefiting local communities, businesses, and organisations through shared learning and collective growth.
Through this initiative, we're not just responding to urban challenges—we're reimagining how cities can be built, lived in, and experienced, with collaboration at the heart of every solution.
Who are the main users?
The City North Activation Initiative is designed to make a lasting, inclusive impact, benefiting individuals from all backgrounds, both within the district and beyond. At its core, the initiative brings together RMIT's academic community, institutional partners, industry, government, local businesses, and community organisations—uniting diverse sectors to create solutions that are relevant, accessible, and transformative for everyone.
The projects within the initiative are built to support those at the heart of the precinct—the RMIT academic community, our institutional partners, and local industry and government stakeholders—while also ensuring the benefits extend to local businesses and community organisations.
By co-designing and implementing practical solutions, the initiative empowers these key groups to tackle urban challenges directly, while fostering collaboration that transcends boundaries and reaches broader communities, locally and globally. Through this integrated approach, the City North Activation Initiative is helping to reshape how we think about civic partnership, community engagement, and the role of universities in driving social and economic progress.
Who runs it?
RMIT University is leading this initiative.