Creating protected spaces for regenerative development: lessons from the swimmable Birrarung/ Yarra river initiative, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract Rivers are increasingly becoming sites of sustainability transformation. In some cases, legal mechanisms recognise them as legal persons and living entities. Consequently, new niches are being created that can address the health of rivers and their communities. However, niche creation requires protected spaces to nurture and strengthen new ways of doing, thinking, and organising. In urban settings, this translates to reversing existing regime selection outcomes in practice. This paper analyses how regenerative thinking contributed to conceptualising and developing a protected space and guided the development of an envisioned river system transformation. Regenerative development approaches recognise rivers as living beings and active agents in the transformations of social-ecological systems. Few regenerative initiatives have been applied to urban contexts, and even fewer have been empirically studied. Action research and case study methodologies are applied to the Swimmable Birrarung / Yarra River by 2030 (SB20130) initiative, located in Melbourne, Australia. The ways that the regenerative paradigm can support niche creation for conceptualising urban river system transformations are discussed. The study found that new narratives, capabilities and partnerships are needed to apply regenerative approaches to niche creation. We demonstrate that when centring on place and embracing the regenerative approach, the river (Birrarung) itself, as a shield, was instrumental in establishing a protected space. Place also provides a means of bridging Indigenous, sustainability and regenerative theories and practice approaches. A framework is proposed for creating and evolving niches from a regenerative paradigm perspective.