Melbourne is widely recognised as a global food destination, yet rising food insecurity is prompting questions about who the city's food system serves. An RMIT expert explains why design must move beyond efficiency and centre the communities most affected by these challenges.
Dr Areli Avendaño Franco, School of Design:
"Melbourne promotes itself as a world‑class food city, yet nearly half its residents experience food insecurity, affordable food cultures are being displaced, and First Nations foodways remain largely invisible. This raises questions about the role design has played.
"Design in this context extends well beyond products like packaging or branding to include the design of services, systems and policies that shape how food is grown, distributed, accessed, consumed and disposed of, and crucially, who benefits from those systems.
"Design has typically responded to a broken food system by optimising it through better packaging, logistics or branding, but improving efficiency alone does not address the underlying causes or outcomes.
"Issues like food waste, gentrification, the marginalisation of First Nations knowledge and the invisibility of migrant labour are deeply connected and reflect a system that prioritises extraction over sustainability.
"Design has been part of shaping this system, but it also has the capacity to support more equitable and regenerative approaches.
"Designers need to begin not with solutions, but with accountability, working alongside communities and understanding the structures that shape these systems."
Dr Areli Avendaño Franco is a designer, researcher and educator at RMIT University specialising in systemic design, circular economy and restorative practice across food systems, climate justice and decolonising design pedagogy.
Sociable Designer - Melbourne Design Week
Dates: Thursday 21 May and Friday 22 May, 9 am-6 pm
Panel talk: Friday 22 May, 5-6 pm
RMIT Media Portal (Building 14, Level 2, Room 13), 414-418 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Free
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