Net Zero Precincts Stage 2: Agenda-setting

Net Zero Precincts is a four-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project that brings together two key areas of research for the first time — transition management and design anthropology — to develop a new interdisciplinary approach to transitioning urban environments to net zero. The project uses the Monash University Clayton Campus and Monash Technology Precinct as an action-oriented Living Lab to experiment, test and learn in a real-world setting.

The project aims to develop and validate a new and transferrable approach for net-zero transitions informed by the real-life experiences of the precinct community and its businesses, government, knowledge sector and civil society actors. As such, it will provide significant benefits to organisations and individuals seeking to engage with and learn from everyday people about community needs and aspirations in accelerating urban transitions.

This report shares details of the interdisciplinary methods developed for Stage 2 of the Net Zero Precincts ARC Linkage project to answer the following question: How can the precinct community envision pathways to net zero precinct futures together in a way that balances net zero emissions with the everyday social, political and experiential realities of the community?

This report presents an overview of the envisioning process through five workshops with over 50 participants connected to Monash University Clayton Campus and the Monash Technology Precinct from July 2023 to March 2024. The workshops were designed to enable research participants to reflect on the ethnographic insights from Stage 1, experience transitions-in-the-making through embodied learning, understand transition dynamics and co-create diverse and inclusive future visions and pathways.

This report takes the essential step in establishing how to explore and understand the concepts and practices of design anthropology which both complicates and creates new possibilities for transition management and the creation of net zero futures.