There are over four hundred lanes in the central city and even more across the City of Melbourne’s neighbourhood precincts. The opportunities for laneway greening are immense. We’ve been trialling and testing laneway greening for several years, enabling community members to implement greenery in the places where they live, work and play.
Green Your Laneway program
In an Australian first, we established the Green Your Laneway program to transform city laneways into leafy, green and welcoming places for Melbourne’s community to enjoy. This pilot program tested if greening could improve amenity, cool the city, attract visitors, and support community health, wellbeing and social cohesion.
As part of the program we developed a world-first interactive mapOpens in new tab to demonstrate laneways that were suited for greening, based on the amount of sunlight they receive, exposure to wind and physical characteristics.
Using our interactive map data and through a community voting process, we delivered four green laneways at:
- Katherine Place
- Meyers Place
- Guildford Lane
- Coromandel Place.
These green laneway projects were completed in 2017 and were evaluated in 2023.
Evaluation and models for future laneway greening
Five years after greening the laneways, we evaluated the pilot projects to understand the factors that contribute to successful, enduring laneway greening. The evaluation was endorsed by Council at its meeting on 25 July 2023.
Based on our findings, we’ve developed three models to promote future laneway greening across the entire city centre, in ways that meet community expectations, and create sustainable, lasting and socially inclusive greening. These models are:
- Community-led greening that empowers community members to implement small-scale, temporary greening in pots and plants on Council-owned laneway footpaths through the Greening Melbourne permit process. In this model, we provide guidance and permission that enables community members to appropriately green local spaces.
- Community and business led greening that is supported with matched co-funding, through the introduction of a laneway greening stream to the Urban Forest Fund grants. This model supports private greening on building facades and walls that interface with laneway environments.
- Council driven projects will continue to be identified and implemented by the City of Melbourne where there are opportunities to do so.
We’re sharing our evaluation to provide publicly-accessible information to other local governments and cities who are interested to learn about our approaches to laneway greening.
The Green Your Laneway projects combined initiatives led by City of Melbourne, residents, landlords and businesses to create a whole range of laneway greening, using a variety of different watering systems, including green facades, green living wall systems, drain gardens and planters.
Here are the key findings from the pilot projects:
- There’s more than one way to create lasting laneway greening
- Laneway greening can bring communities together
- Melbourne’s community want more green laneways
- Community champions are vital to the long-term success of laneway greening
- Low-cost, community-driven greening can be just as effective as more costly approaches
- Co-funding partnerships with businesses and building owners had good outcomes
- Laneway greening provides economic, health and wellbeing benefits
Greening the city’s laneways can deliver many benefits – providing attractive new green spaces, reducing flooding and offering leafy new places to shelter from hot days.
Environmental benefits include:
- diverting storm water run-off from laneways into the soil
- filtering dust and pollution from the air
- improving biodiversity levels in the central city
- providing habitat for wildlife
- reducing noise levels in the city
- insulating buildings from heat and cold, reducing energy expenditure and carbon emissions
- reducing the urban heat island effect through shading and cooling.
Social benefits include:
- strengthening laneway communities through combined greening efforts and shared caring for nature.
- reinvigorating laneways from waste areas to welcoming public spaces
- more pleasant walkways and thoroughfares, encouraging people to walk and spend time outdoors
- reducing vandalism and antisocial behaviour
- bringing nature into the city, which has positive effects in reducing depression and illness.
Economic benefits include:
- reducing heating and cooling costs (due to improved building insulation)
- extending the life expectancy of impervious surfaces
- increasing property values
- increased visitor and foot traffic resulting in greater opportunities for trade
- increasing the useable green outdoor space
- creating green destinations for city visitors.
If you wish to green your laneway (or do any other work) on public land in the City of Melbourne, you must contact us.
However, there are some greening activities you can carry out yourself, such as on your building's rooftops, walls and facades, balconies, window sills and steps. You may need a planning or building permit, permission from the property owner or Owners Corporation.
Some of the city’s laneways are privately owned. If you own a private lane, you can carry out a range of greening activities in the laneway.
We have compiled tips on finding plants for pots and planter boxes so your plants will thrive in your location.
We also encourage you to use the Growing Green Guide for a step by step guide
(Music)
[Text on screen: We're greening our city one laneway at a time.]
[Narrator] There are more than 200 lanes in the central city. As we keep growing, we must continue to keep innovating.
Our lanes provide the ideal environment for urban renewal. Melbourne was the first city to ever map the potential for greening in laneways.
And with local support, we've just finished converting four of our iconic lanes into green spaces for our growing population.
Melbourne has been recognized as the world's most livable city seven years in a row.
[Text on screen: Councillor Cathy Oke. City of Melbourne]
[Cr Cathy Oke] And whilst we're famous for many things, our laneways are definitely the pulse of the city.
[Narrator] These are the places for exploring, for working, for culture and for commerce - but they can be more.
By transforming these laneways, by adding plants, vertical greening and trees, we not only create new spaces for people to enjoy, we also help to cool the city, improve
air quality, clean and our stormwater and provide habitat for some of our other important residents. Where we couldn't get greening into a wall, we went back to our roots and invited our world-class street artists to complement our new green spaces with murals chosen by the community.
[Cr Cathy Oke] So get out and explore our city's laneways they're bursting with more life than you know.
[Text on screen: www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/greenlaneways]
[City of Melbourne logo on screen: City of Sustainability]
Completed laneways
Canopy Green Roof Forum
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Any questions?
Contact us at greeningmelbourne@melbourne.vic.gov.au.
