City of Kilbourne — Innovation from the Middle, Out

Abstract

The City of Kilbourne sits at the foothills of the Dandenong Mountains, 20 kilometres southeast of Melbourne, and is home to over 140,000 residents. First settled in the 1830s as a cattle-run, Kilbourne is now one of the largest and most rapidly growing urban centres in Victoria. The municipality sprawls across 114 square kilometres and is characterized by a diverse social and geographic topography. The North is traditionally working class, and is a mixture of residential and commercial development with a significant light industrial sector. To the east lie the greener suburbs, with the picturesque backdrop of the Dandenong Ranges. Further west sit the more affluent residential suburbs, where elegant double-storey homes, pools and BMWs abound. In the south, a heavily subdivided and rapidly expanding dormitory suburb shares a boundary with another that is more sparsely populated, with large allotments, open fields and dense bushland standing defiantly against development pressures.