Transcript: Net Zero Precincts: Insights from the Monash Living Lab (Regenerative Streets Podcast S1E4)

Transcript of conversation between host (Laura Aston) and guest (Darren Sharp)

First aired: 12 January 2026.

S1E4 - Net Zero Precincts: Insights from the Monash Living Lab, Regenerative Streets Podcast © 2026 by Laura Aston is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

GUEST [DARREN]: We're not gonna get to sustainability transitions or net zero, or realise our objectives for better futures by just top down solutions alone, by just rolling out more technology and infrastructure. It's about these different stakeholders coming together across those different sectors, working collaboratively, innovating together, asking that hard questions, trying to overcome challenges, navigating, working through solutions together that's gonna help us through this next period that we're facing.

HOST [LAURA]:  You are listening to the Regenerative Streets podcast. This is a show about how the streets outside our doors can feel more alive, more neighbourly, and more life-giving for people and nature. In each episode, you'll hear stories from people who are testing new ways of getting around, caring for places and building local community from campuses and councils to main streets and small businesses.

I'm your host, Laura Aston. In my work, I help turn  these ideas into clear stories and simple next steps so that more streets and communities can share what works. Today's conversation is one of those stories.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Darren Sharp, a senior research fellow at Monash Business School, formerly Monash Sustainable Development Institute. Darren works with students, staff, and local communities to test practical ways of cutting carbon and making campuses, neighbourhoods, and precincts feel better to live, work, and study in.

In this episode, we explore Monash University's net zero precinct strategy as a real world example of how small groups of people can share ideas for change and start experiments that bring their places to life. We do refer to Monash Sustainable Development Institute throughout this show, but this work now lives within Monash Business School.

Welcome, Darren.

GUEST [DARREN]: Good to be with you.

HOST [LAURA]: Let's start perhaps by setting the scene with the Net Zero Precincts project.

Could you tell us a bit about its aims and the context for the project?

GUEST [DARREN]: Yeah, sure. So the origins of our project really start with Monash University's net zero initiative. Which launched in 2017. So Monash is the first Australian University to set a net zero target by 2030. The project itself is inspired by the Net Zero initiative at the university, and we're taking the Clayton campus in particular as a bit of a test bed, because it's actually situated in the heart of what's known as the Monash Technology Precinct, which is the second largest employer outside of the Melbourne CBD. So it's a major area where there's a lot of corporate headquarters, a lot of, medical, scientific health research. We've got not only Monash University, but we've got the Australian Synchrotron close by. We've got Monash Health in the precinct as well. We've got a lot of corporate headquarters, including companies like Pfizer, A BB, and others that are involved. And then we're surrounded by local residents going about their daily lives as well. And we have obviously a huge campus population of staff, students, visitors that are coming and going to the Clayton campus all the time.

So we saw the university as a really good opportunity given it's going through net zero transitions. We developed this project to test and learn from engaging with staff, students, partners to understand how transitions could respond to the needs of everyday people.

So in terms of the, uh, aims and objectives and the methods that we're using, we're actually using an approach called transition management, where we try and develop like an analysis of the precinct itself in terms of understanding its, um, parameters and what's involved, what's going on on the ground. Then we try to envision the future together collaboratively, through an envisioning process, and go through a development of pathways, transition pathways to understand what are the possible route to those preferred futures.

Then we run experiments, which we've done through our living lab, which is really, a collaborative space for us to come together with our partners to run a portfolio of experiments. So we've had 10 experiments in our living lab and then we've gone through a process of monitoring and evaluation to understand and learn from what changes are happening on the ground through that work.

And then we're in the final phase of the project now, where we're developing a urban transitions framework that we hope can bring together all of our thinking and provide somewhat of a toolkit and a guide for other universities, other neighbourhoods, precincts, to go down a similar path in terms of net zero transition in a very place-based, very collaborative very situated kind of context that brings together on the one hand transition management, but also everyday experience through our engagement with what's called design anthropology. So there's a lot of ethnographic work that we do, understanding people's routines and how they get around the campus and what their everyday needs are.

HOST [LAURA]: So it sounds like Monash University in this instance has quite a specialized role and opportunity given the nature of the innovation organizations co-located with the university as well as the sort of daytime visitors. The fact that it brings people on campus. And thirdly. I'm thinking about the fact that it is a place of research and learning. And so it's uniquely positioned to forge new pathways. But then there are universities everywhere and there are precincts everywhere that have these kinds of characteristics so, specializedThough it may be, it actually applies to so many other precincts all over the world. So great to hear of this kind of leadership or this stewardship that Monash has played.

GUEST [DARREN]: Yeah, and, and on that point, I mean, we're trying to really leverage the university's net zero leadership and the fact that the Clayton campus itself is, is like a mini city, so it's about one square kilometer. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. So we can, um, go through a process of like testing and demonstrating and experimenting on the ground in Clayton and then come up with ideas for how that could be scaled to the broader precinct and also be relevant to other precincts around Australia, but elsewhere obviously as well, who are going through similar kinds of challenges.

HOST [LAURA]: Great. Let's start with the first stage of the project. You engaged lots of community members. Could you tell us about how, who you engaged and the concerns or challenges that this process of engagement surfaced?

GUEST [DARREN]: Absolutely. So stage one of the project undertook about 50 interviews actually with people from local and state government, the City of Monash, the city of Greater Dandenong, the CSIRO, and also a range of other partners as well.

We also then went through this process of ethnographic field work on the ground as well, where we actually undertook walking interviews with Monash staff, students and visitors, and actually audio and video recorded them. To understand how they move around the campus, how they get to and from the campus.

Do they take public transport? Do they drive? What's their energy use like? We have got a number of students actually that live on campus in residential services. So there's thousands of students who actually live full time at the university. So again, it's like a mini city.

 So we interviewed a number of people in the precinct and identified various drivers and barriers to net zero transitions. These kind of boiled down to governance and leadership challenges that people were experiencing.

One concern was that there's no clear institution leading the net zero transition agenda. While the university has its own ambitions, there's no clear signals from either the commonwealth or state or local government to sort of get the precinct to net zero by a particular date or at all.

There's also business and investment, barriers around infrastructure and skills and investment crucial to net zero. So there's a lot of diversity in the precinct from sole traders to SMEs to large corporates and major institutions, but the capability mix within those organizations is quite mixed.

From a community engagement point of view, there were various barriers that were identified. The view was that there was a lot of interest in net zero, but it was seen as a top down thing that was sort of led by major institutions and some of the community members interviewed didn't necessarily see how they could play a role.

Whilst there's acknowledgement, for instance, that First Nations perspectives and knowledge of place was seen as really important, it was also viewed as largely absent from net zero transition processes.

But on the other side of things, there's obviously a huge number of assets that we could tap into at the campus and precinct scale. Whether it's university staff and students, local residents, businesses, et cetera. And then on the technology side of things, there was a strong interest in decentralized renewable energy infrastructure. But some of the barriers were like inertia and old habits as obstacles to net zero. So we kind of took all those insights around the drivers and barriers that were identified in stage one.

And through that we actually developed what we called four frames which are kind of like little visions or of the future of the precinct from stage one. The first frame was called Electrify Everything, which had a strong focus on technology, and infrastructure that could enable behavior change. Then the second frame was called Place Matters, which prioritized, livability, mobility, inclusivity, and sociality and more active transport options.

And the third frame was called Going Green, where there was a strong interest in embracing circular economy principles and more nature-based solutions and green infrastructure, things like green roofs, walls and facades to reduce the urban heat island effect, more open green space to support health and wellbeing.

And in the fourth frame was called innovation hotspot, which had a really strong focus on, jobs and growth and the knowledge economy and entrepreneurship and industry development and job creation and so on.

So those kind of four frames are sort of like lenses as to how our people that we interviewed were sort of starting to see the opportunity space in terms of the Monash precinct and how they could come about driving changes or intervening that system, not through a singular intervention point, but through these multiple perspectives.

It's about opening up the problem space, trying to identify solutions and working with our community partners in a collaborative way to do that.

HOST [LAURA]: I think that's a really commendable aspect and great that you did take the opportunity to engage so broadly. So we've learned about the frames, how does that map to visions and what came next?

GUEST [DARREN]: So. Stage two of the Net Zero precincts project was all about envisioning the future. And to do that, we went through this really creative process. We were trying to understand as a team, how could we bring our diverse stakeholders into the envisioning process to imagine preferred futures in 2030. We started looking at like a bird's eye view of the precinct. 'cause it's so large and it's so hard to kind of grapple with as a little human being walking around this massive area as a tiny little person.

And we realized that was quite alienating. So we developed this idea of going on these walking tours, which as a team we'd been going on, and, which is quite an established technique in ethnographic research. We actually organized these walking tours with about 50 plus of our participants, and we took them on these journeys throughout the Clayton campus, starting at the Aboriginal Gardens right near where I work at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, there's these aboriginal gardens that were set up in 2008 by Dr. Beth Gott, that feature. Over 150 native plant species used for food, medicine and tools. There's an ancient tree, a scar tree that was used by the Wurundjeri people. Uh, uh, that's so we wanted to start these walking tours to get people into the mindset of, hey, this is a real place with this deep history.

There's a lot of people that have been part of this community over many years. Going back to our First Nations people, going back to when the university was established and even before then , right up to the present moment. And we wanted people to experience the sight, the sounds of the Clayton campus in particular.

And so we took our participants on these walking tours and we showed them the learning and teaching building, kind of a nod to the landscape of the place. We described how the architecture responds to the environment. We showed them the bus loop where the main transit point, at the entrance to the university where there's an electric bus trial going on.

So we showed how there's transitions in the making underway at the moment . Then we went on to the makerspace and there's a student led group called Precious Plastic, and they take plastic waste and they upcycle it and they turn it into,, jewelry and furniture and all these other objects. So we wanted to kind of introduce this of a circular economy, a circular precinct. We then went to the Woodside Building, which has subsequently changed its name due to some pushback from staff and students, which is a major new, uh, net zero building. And we took our participants on the rooftop, which has a whole lot of solar panels, and you can sort of see all the solar, happening across the entire campus to inspire people to see how, this major university is using it's rooftop space to install pVC renewable energy.

Then we went to another walking tour, went to the lake. There's a science lake, which is, near MSDI as well, and the student residences. It's a great example of water sensitive urban design. And it's also a space which is used as a research vehicle for conservation and biological research.

And then we took people on a tour also of the student residences. So again, it really is this idea of a mini city and we wanted to demonstrate all these changes that are happening on the ground to get people into the mindset of net zero transitions looks like at the moment, and how it could evolve into the future.

So all these kind of little kind of walking tours with a few people in each of them. We work closely with our colleagues in Monash buildings and property, the facilities team.

We could breathe in and smell the flowers. We could go to these different buildings, these different areas of the campus that are quite green. Understand where students live, understand cutting edge technology and design in terms of the new infrastructure that's going in to get people into the mindset of what the future could look like.

And then we brought them back in the afternoon for the visioning activity itself. They came together and they actually created what we call living worlds, which is a part of our approach. We actually developed these terrariums, we built these like fish tanks essentially, and put soil and created these little microcosms.

And then we provided our participants with a whole bunch of different objects, both found objects that they collected on their walking tours, so we encouraged them to collect. You know, weeds and seeds and gum, nuts and flowers, even rubbish that they collected. And then we gave them blocks that Precious Plastic had built for us to represent the circular economy in their designs for the future.

HOST [LAURA]: Well, I just wanna ask first, how can I sign up to be part of this research project? Because it sounds like an absolute delight to not only explore and learn about Monash in that way, but also then build something, you know, make something with your hands and dial into your imagination. Uh, is that standard research design for your areas?

GUEST [DARREN]: No, we, it's not standard research design. We were really trying to come up with new ways of being interdisciplinary and. Bring in, you know, that systems thinking through our transition management approach, in combination with design anthropology, to be more grounded, to be more place-based, to understand how we could learn from changes happening on the ground and read into and lean into the relational aspects of net zero transitions, which I think often get overlooked. We sort of tend to focus on the, the technological and infrastructural changes that people wanna see through ev charging infrastructure and through solar panels and so on. And then we overlook, um, the deeper kind of connections to nature. The deeper connections to community , to place-based solutions.

So we wanted to, um, overcome this, this idea of carbon tunnel vision, which is not an idea that we came up with, but it's this idea that, you know, the transition to net zero, it's. Uh, trying to solve multiple problems across a range of socioecological political, uh, technological domains. It isn't trying to just get us to, you know, all be driving EVs and having solar on our rooftop, that isn't gonna get us there.

So that was the logic behind it.

HOST [LAURA]: I see. And I'd love to just unpack a couple of those terms there, but perhaps it's best described through the idea of relationships. You mentioned systems thinking, transition management and design anthropology. What do they mean in the context of the relational nature of the, of the net zero transition?

GUEST [DARREN]: Sure. So systems thinking is just recognizing that the campus, Monash Clayton campus is. Part of a broader precinct. It's part of a broader city. It's trying to, deal with transitioning multiple domains across energy built environment, transport, waste, water. So there's these multi-domain, nested sort of scales that make a change on one level has flow on effects in other parts of the system. So that's kind of why we're trying to understand the precinct to campus as a, part of this kind of system that needs to be transitioned over time to get us to net zero as quickly as possible.

And then on the other hand, transition management is a particular process that we used to actually coordinate our research, which is going through that process I talked about of identifying challenges within this particular system, then visioning, envisioning the future, how we can get to our preferred futures coming together to experiment and then go through this process of action learning and reflection together on that journey.

And then design anthropology very much led by our colleague professor Sarah Pink at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, who's been a core part of the project, from the beginning. Really it's about those kind of place-based, ground up, embodied solutions, sensory knowledge. How do we engage with people's lived experience? So it's bringing all that together to try and come up with a new approach to doing this sort of research in a place-based way.

HOST [LAURA]: Great. Thank you for pausing to explain those. Let's hear about the visions, what emerged?

GUEST [DARREN]: So the visions that came out of stage two of the projects were really quite exciting and I encourage everyone to go to our project website.

The 10 visions that emerged really spoke to the experiences that our participants had on their walking tours, the engagement they experienced, the conversations that were had with all those different stakeholders involved.

What we saw through the 10 visions was this idea that nature was reclaiming its role in urban environments.

There was also this idea, this theme that weather storms, rising temperatures and urban heat island effect was gonna become increasingly significant towards 2030 and beyond. A role for like water sensitive urban design, a strong interest in the circular economy and so on. We had a lot of students involved in the visioning process and that led to this idea of degrowth being part of some of those visions as well and the idea of socio and political change. Self-sufficiency that more isn't always better, that unending growth is not necessarily the answer to everything. We also had stronger ambitions for active transport. So beyond electric and autonomous vehicles, there was also just an interest in people walking and cycling and scootering to and from campus in the precinct. Interestingly, there was less attention through our visions on energy as a core transition domain. As experts or practitioners in the field, we kind of get obsessed with net zero and energy, but to a range of other people they're not necessarily thinking about net zero. It doesn't necessarily engage them. Same with energy. Like it's not something that people think about day to day. It's sort of invisible. It's in the background, you take it for granted.

But what was really of concern to people was the role of institutions, for example, as drivers of transition, how people and communities and institutions can come together to play a role in that process. You know, rather than just the focus on deploying technology and innovation as the answer necessarily.

And then we had in the visions as well, these more personal aspirations, frustrations, hopes, and feelings. So we tried to lean into people's emotional state as well. People were concerned about safety. People were really interested in community connections as well. How do you create stronger connections between the university community and the precinct and the residents? What does that look like?

But also there were dystopian themes. We tried to get people to lean into their preferred futures, but at the same time, people were also really concerned through their visions about the cost of living, about the housing affordability crisis, about rising inequality and also feelings of chaos, feelings of breakdown, and decay as well.

So the visions are mostly positive, but there were these dystopian elements as well. But then also people were really interested in understanding how indigenous knowledge systems and indigenous design ideas and so on and acknowledgement of place and country could also be brought into how the precinct, the campus can, you know, evolve going forward into the future so they can, you know, respect, um, what's come before and, and also appreciate the knowledge that's there going back thousands of years and how we can try and work with those communities more effectively.

HOST [LAURA]: Wow, that's such a broad suite of opportunities and challenges, and it sounds like the approach that you've taken has really brought them all out. It's managed to surface such a broad range of potentials and it speaks to, you know, removing the carbon blinkers in a way to make net zero an opportunity obligation to address the interlinked issues. But how will you do that? And is that the third stage?

GUEST [DARREN]: Yes. So that is a good segue to stage three, which is just wrapping up at the moment. And we had our stage three report just come out this year in May of 2025, which I, again, I encourage everyone to have a look at. It's available for download.

In stage three, it's all about this idea of activation. So we've gone through and identified the sort of problem space, the opportunities, the drivers and barriers in stage one. In stage two, we've gone through this visioning process, understanding people's emerging preferred futures, what that looks like in this really creative and place-based way.

Stage three is about trying to bring some of those ideas to life, and we decided to use what's called a living lab as a vehicle to help us. Explore these, uh, emerging transitions together. And so living labs have been around for a few decades now and they're really just like a collaborative vehicle for staff, students, industry, government, community partners to come together and run experiments in a really collaborative way. What we mean by an experiment in the context of the work we're doing, it's something which is inclusive, it's practice-based, it's challenge led and it's trying to drive systems change.

And we're then trying to learn from what we're doing as we're doing it. We treated the whole Clayton campus as a living lab, and we tried to extend that out to the broader precinct as well. And so we ended up developing this portfolio of 10 living lab experiments and we really drew on the participation of our student teams to help us do that because we as a research team led by myself, my colleagues professor Rob Robin, Sam Rai and others in the research team, we couldn't run these experiments ourselves, so we got our PhD students to run experiments in the living lab. And then we actually engaged with, through our project a whole lot of other student teams, including a number of final year honours students in the faculty of engineering who got involved.

And then there was a staff member from buildings and property who ran an experiment and then a local resident as well who we connected with. And so the living lab itself, it provided this coordinated approach for the experiment leads to engage with this range of partners and to develop interdisciplinary knowledge and also test new governance arrangements.

Like how do we try to make changes happen at the Clayton campus and the broader precinct, and how do we bridge that gap? Between research and implementation. And so the living lab is like a bit of a test bed, a demonstrator, a way to kind of bring those stakeholders together that don't normally get a chance to work together, to try and come up with new approaches to that.

HOST [LAURA]: So who was involved in the labs and what did they do?

GUEST [DARREN]: There was an experiment around circular food waste that one of our final year honours teams led. They used an asset mapping approach to run this experiment through a workshop where they brought in staff, students and other stakeholders to learn about what is happening with food waste at the moment, and then to prototype solutions to make improvements. What that led to was the team itself, the experiment leads being brought in to deliver a university-wide webinar where they present their recommendations for how to tackle food waste on campus. And then Monash buildings and property also used the student team's hotspots approach, in an all team workshop and have shown interest in using these similar kinds of methods in their decision making processes to inform the design of future food waste interventions on campus. So it's an example of a living lab experiment, bringing these stakeholders together, then influencing institutional change at the level of the university by working with the operations team to make stuff happen.

Then another one of our interesting experiments was led by a community member, that we connected up with. And he wanted to come up with a plan for planting more trees in the city of Monash. We actually brought him together with our main local government partner, the City of Monash, to develop participatory urbanism experiment in the living lab where, he spent a number of workshops going through, identifying, the different teams involved, which is quite complex. There's the biodiversity team, the place team, recreation team, et cetera, in council. And then through that workshop series the idea for a tree planting pilot emerged, which is actually underway at the moment. So that's an example again, of how a living lab experiment can foster collaboration between in this instance a local resident with council, and then actually lead to various perceived barriers being overcome through this living lab approach and trusted relationships being developed over many months to the point we're at now where that local resident is actually running this pilot with the city of Monash and they're trying to work out a plan for how that can become more embedded in terms of how the community in grassroots actors can get more involved in tree planting and related work in their local community.

HOST [LAURA]: Well, what really resonates with me from those two examples is how the project demonstrates participatory engagement and, I think, a model that can apply not just to precincts, but to streets everywhere, to projects everywhere where nobody owns the actual area, whether it's a street or a precinct as we're talking about.

And yet the people who use it or live on it or work on it are the ones who would like to have a say in how it functions. Yet it's not naturally the way that we go about things. And so you've taken us on a journey from understanding concerns and learning about place as a first step to then formulating visions, surfacing challenges at the same time, and then actually testing, piloting, testing in real time with a broad range of stakeholders possible solutions.

You did say that Living Labs were an established tool, so how could, how can people get involved in initiatives like this?

GUEST [DARREN]: It's a good question, Laura. Um. I think the way to do that is just to sort of. Have your an antenna attune to like what's happening in your local community.

So stay close to your local universities, your local councils and community groups. A lot of, there are a lot of grassroots groups, like friends of groups and so on. There are a lot of different community panels that you can get involved in. And the work that we do like this project is, is university led, but it relies on our really deep relationships and partnerships with our industry, government and community partners. And so by plugging into what's happening on the ground in your local community, you can learn about other sustainability related projects that are looking for participants and stakeholders to have a say, to get involved, to offer up their expertise, their ideas, their creativity, their innovation.

We're not gonna get to sustainability transitions or net zero, or realize our objectives for better futures by just top down solutions alone, by just rolling out more technology and infrastructure. It's about these different stakeholders coming together across those different sectors, working collaboratively, innovating together, asking that hard questions, trying to overcome challenges, navigating, working through solutions together that's gonna help us through this next period that we're facing.

HOST [LAURA]: Thanks for that. And on that note, what is next for the project and who is going to be involved going forward?

GUEST [DARREN]: So we're in the final stages of our project now, and. We're in the process of developing our urban transitions framework. So we're gonna have our final report come out next year in 2026.

And it's gonna provide really strong guidance and a toolkit for urban actors, people who are practitioners who might be planners, policy makers, grassroots innovators, researchers, creatives, a whole range of different people who wanna learn from our approach. And whilst we very much had a place-based focus and some of the insights, uh, specifics what's happening on the ground at Monash Clayton, and the Monash precinct, I think there's gonna be a lot of findings that are more generalizable and relevant to neighbourhoods, communities, precincts, all around the world to learn from how you bring diverse people together to come together in good faith, to work through difficult conversations about the future of their local community, and to kind of try and be really creative and bold and ambitious in envisioning better futures and then going through a process of experimentation together and learning from that learning by doing in a place-based setting.

So the insights are gonna come through our final report and be made available to the community next year. We've got our project website, net zero precincts at Monash Uni, which is gonna be there as a resource available. We've got a whole range of other. Publications and resources, and we're always happy to have conversations with other urban innovators, practitioners, researchers, local state, federal governments, industry partners, community partners, to see how we can build on this exciting work that we've done over the last four years and take it to other places and, really continue with this necessary work going forward.

HOST [LAURA]: How can those interested people get in touch with you, Darren?

GUEST [DARREN]: You can just email me, um, darren.Sharp@monash.edu. You can have a look at our net zero precincts website. Have a look at our reports, read through them, reach out to me and the team, and we're always happy to catch up for coffee in a conversation.

HOST [LAURA]: Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for sharing all of that with us today, Darren. Very inspiring and a lot of work.

GUEST [DARREN]: Thank you so much, Laura.

HOST [LAURA]:  You've been listening to the Regenerative Streets podcast. This show starts from a simple belief when local businesses, residents, and organizations treat streets as shared places, our communities become more connected, abundant, and resilient. Businesses, streets and communities regenerate each other.

I'm Laura Aston, your host. Regenerative Streets is produced by Wayfinder Labs in connection with Better Streets and Regen Melbourne. You can find links to today's guests and to related projects in the show notes. Thanks for listening and for creating space to imagine streets and communities where people, nature and everyday life can thrive.

The music in this show is Carefree by Kevin sourced from incomp.com and licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0. Linked in the show notes.