Working With Pioneers

TEXT ON SCREEN:  Working with pioneers. A partnership between VicHealth and RMIT University has helped the developers of a new housing estate set a new standard for greenfield housing. RMIT logo.

AUDIO. Ambient music playing

VISUAL: Sue McGill sits facing the camera. Bookshelves filled with books are behind her. A caption reads: Sue McGill, ‘Healthy Environments’ program manager, VicHealth.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: The Selandra Rise Evaluation Project is a partnership between VicHealth Now and RMIT and a range of other organisations.

VISUAL: Shot of a grassy field with one tree and a billboard advertising Home and Land packages for sale, from twenty eight thousand dollars.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: What we went through in the initial stages was to create an evaluation, a concept, to try to understand how can you evaluate health and wellbeing in a community master plan process.

VISUAL: Return to Sue McGill facing the camera, intercut with a street scene featuring a billboard, and the same grassy field from earlier being dug up by tractors for development. Camera pans across development site.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: We went through a competitive public processand RMIT, as a leader in planning and the development of communities,won the opportunity to drive the evaluation of that project.

VISUAL: Dr Cecily Maller sits facing the camera, with a classroom behind her. A caption reads: Dr Cecily Maller, Senior Research Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University.

DR CECILY MALLER SPEAKS: Selandra Rise is a demonstration project being built in the City of Casey...

VISUAL: Yellow and blue map of Victoria, zooms in on Selandra Rise which is in between Dandenong and Frankston. Video then cuts back to Dr Cecily Maller in classroom.

DR CECILY MALLER SPEAKS: ...and it's a demonstration project because there's a number of unique partners involved and the idea behind Selandra Rise is to trial a whole lot of best practise planningfor health and wellbeing to see if the health and wellbeing of residents can actually be improved through design.

VISUAL: Mike Davis, sits in a home office, at a slight angle to the camera. A caption reads: Mike Davis, Region Manager, Stockland. As he speaks, we cut between him in his office, to a family with young children enjoying lunch at a picnic table in the development, and a development site at sunset.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: We're very much a customer-led business and understanding our customers from an insight perspective will help our business better tailor our product options to our market, so we saw the Selandra Rise demonstration project as being a great opportunity tomore intimately understand our customers, what they demand from a community andI guess as a developer, have an ability to better provide product that suits their needs.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: Now, the project itself, the evaluation is still underway.

VISUAL: Return to Sue McGill in her office.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: It's a five-year research practise fellowship that VicHealth have supported through my partnership with RMIT. What Cecily is able to do in her work is quite unique in that she's developing relationships...

VISUAL: Children playing in a playground.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: ...and evaluating the community connections that people have before they move into Selandra Rise as well as what they develop when they're there.

VISUAL: Exterior of townhouses with billboard welcoming residents to Selandra Rise.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: So we're finding what's important to people in the development of a community so it's putting people at the centre of community planning...

VISUAL: Teenagers playing basketball at the development.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: ...and what we're finding is that access to open space, to parks, to opportunities to connect with other people

VISUAL: Car driving in front of new houses, followed by a lady gathering information at the community center.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: through community houses and neighbourhood centres.

VISUAL: People working out on outdoor public workout equipment.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: and essentially opportunities to improve connections, physical activity, healthy eating and opportunities to meet and gain social connections with others

VISUAL: Return to Sue McGill facing the camera.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: are the most important things to people in community planning.

VISUAL: Karina Carrel, Selandra Rise resident sits in her modern living room facing the camera.

KARINA CARREL SPEAKS: To have everything so close by and such an abundance of things that are available to families and children is really helpful to us as parents because...

VISUAL: Karina and her three young children reading a book together on the couch.

KARINA CARREL SPEAKS: ...you're always searching for new activities and new things for children to go to or even shopping centres they have fun in..

VISUAL: Karina and her children waving happily at the camera in front of their house.

KARINA CARREL SPEAKS:...So to have those things so accessible to us where we live is great.

VISUAL: Return to Karina Carrel facing the camera in her living room.

KARINA CARREL SPEAKS: It's just a really great place to live.

VISUAL: Return to Mike Davis in his home office.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: Yeah, probably with the commercial benefits of undertaking an innovative approach to residential community development is that...

VISUAL: Camera pans up over billboard advertising Selandra Rise, with land selling from one hundred and fifty nine thousand dollars.

VISUAL: Shot of street with new houses at sunset.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: ...it’s a very responsive education-based approach to understanding customer insight and then responding with appropriate localised employment initiatives,...

VISUAL: Montage of Selandra Rise and people enjoying its facilities and then back to Mike Davis in his home office.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: ...diverse product options and then also health and wellbeing initiatives is very much a point of difference for Selandra Rise in market. Our competitors don't offer what we offer at Selandra Rise and we see that as a commercial advantage and it certainly held our project in this community in good stead.

VISUAL: Karina Carrel reading her her three children.

DR CECILY MALLER SPEAKS: I think the research will help understand what sorts of planning and design can really make a difference to people's health and wellbeing...

VISUAL: Return to Dr Cecily Maller facing the camera in the classroom.

DR CECILY MALLER SPEAKS: ...in terms of an everyday life sense so having places they can walk to, making workplaces and homes closer together and that sort of thing...

VISUAL: Street shot of cars approaching a roundabout with Coles in the background. Followed by children playing on a swing and then back to Dr Cecily Maller facing the camera in the classroom.

DR CECILY MALLER SPEAKS: ...will hopefully mean that these principles that are being tested at Selandra Rise can be used to design and plan and deliver future communities.

VISUAL: Trailer and other building vehicles at development site.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: The research methodology that has been evolved as far as the longitudinal study is concerned is something that could be applied more broadly to other developments...

VISUAL: Paddock with cows and then back to to Mike Davis in his home office.

MIKE DAVIS SPEAKS: ... and not necessarily within a greenfields environment, certainly within an inner-city environment or whatever the case may be, that these types of learnings could be evolved and applied to a local context.

VISUAL: Karina Carrel at home with her children, standing by a staircase.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: For the work that RMIT are doing in this project is essentially central to it, so VicHealth's role is to fund the evaluation.

VISUAL: External shot of housing development and then back to Sue McGill facing the camera.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: Without the work of RMIT, we wouldn't have that evidence base that will take us and all of the organisations including State Government and Growth Area Authority and developers...

VISUAL: External shot of housing development with park at sunset, man playing with soccer ball. Followed by houses in building development silhouetted against an orange sky.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: ...into a position where they now have evidence to ensure that the next community is as healthy as the one before.

VISUAL: Return to Sue McGill facing the camera.

SUE MCGILL SPEAKS: And that's the basis of that is the work that RMIT are doing.

VISUAL: Fade to white.

TEXT ON SCREEN: RMIT logo, www.rmit.edu.au. Additional footage courtesy of Stockland.

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