Bendigo City Plan

**Policy Development - Commendation**
Bendigo City Plan
Client: Landscape Architect:	City of Greater Bendigo Hassell Pty Ltd
The Bendigo City Plan is an important strategic tool for directing the future of Bendigo’s Central Business District (CBD). Enclosed by Council as a reference document in its new format Planning Scheme, it provides policy direction and guidance for Council and developers, and acts as a strategic tool for directing the future of Bendigo’s CBD over the next two decades. The project is an initiative of the Victorian Government’s Pride of Place programme. The plan establishes the physical parameters for the future development of Bendigo, identifying strategic goals for land uses in and around the CBD, highlighting potential projects and providing both precinct and site-specific development guidelines. It also identifies retail, commercial, cultural and social activities required in order to create a vibrant and robust urban environment, and provides the physical settings for these activities to take place. While the Bendigo City Plan looks to the original Victorian framework for the CBD for its inspiration, this project remains a forward-looking design, which simultaneously recognises and reveals the bones of the existing city grid for their own worth, and proposes schemes and projects which will establish Bendigo as a vital, contemporary city.

J U R Y ' S C O M M E N T S The Bendigo City Plan, as prepared by HASSELL, is notable in that it consolidates and builds on previous strategic planning for the city and for its response to the heritage and built form of the place. Within the City Plan the salient issues, goals and outcomes for the various precincts within the CBD have been identified and stated with great clarity. Particular and noteworthy attention has been paid within the Plan to the nexus between statutory implementation, financial management and physical design – a central function of good policy development. This project demonstrates the potential for landscape architects to undertake leadership roles in placemaking - from policy to design. HASSELL is commended for preparing a document that will be highly useful to both the public and private sectors in preparing and assessing future development within the City centre.
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