Victoria’s major waterways traverse through varied landscapes and communities, yet for a long time they were planned for in isolation. Planning controls often stopped at municipal boundaries, leaving river corridors managed inconsistently despite functioning as continuous systems. This made it difficult to acknowledge and protect their environmental health, cultural values and recreational role as shared public assets within wider regional landscapes.

Hansen Partnership worked on behalf of the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) to help address this challenge by taking a regional view of waterway planning for urban and peri-urban waterways. The project was undertaken across three interlinked packages of work, including:

• Waterways of the West: focusing on the urban reaches of the Maribyrnong River, Moonee Ponds Creek, and Werribee River (Wirribi Yalak).
• Rivers of the Barwon: considering the full length of the Barwon, Leigh, Moorabool and Yarrowee Rivers.
• Planning controls for waterways: focusing on Cherry Creek, Darebin Creek, Deep Creek, Edgars Creek, Emu Creek, Gardiners Creek (Kooyongkoot), Jacksons Creek (biik wurdha), Koonung Creek (Koonung Koonung), Kororoit Creek, Merri Creek (Merri Merri), Plenty River (kurrum), Skeleton Creek, Steele Creek, and Stony Creek.

Over the span of four years, Hansen built a detailed understanding of how these waterways are experienced within the surrounding landscape and how they are changing with ongoing urbanisation in specific areas. The work combined on-site documentation with GIS terrain and visual analysis mapping, aerial imagery and policy review, allowing landscape character, views, sensitivities and future pressures to be understood in regional context rather than in targeted isolation.

This understanding informed the development of a new set of planning controls that treat waterways as significant environmental features traversing varied landscapes, from rural to suburban, to urban and industrial settings. Hansen supported the Department in preparing a series of Significant Landscape Overlay schedules, tailored to the specific qualities of each river corridor and the varied riparian ‘reaches’ along its length. Alongside strengthened State and Regional Policy, the overlays provide a clearer and more consistent framework for managing riparian environments across both urban and regional Victoria.

Traditional Owners were involved throughout the project through Ministerial Advisory Committees, ensuring cultural knowledge and values informed the work from beginning to end.

The project delivered key actions under the Victorian Government’s Rivers of the Barwon Action Plan and Waterways of the West Action Plan.

Amendment VC201, gazetted in December 2022, introduced new planning controls for key waterways on an interim four-year basis. These controls were informed by Hansen’s work undertaken between 2019 and 2024 and applied a consistent, regionally based approach to managing river corridors across multiple municipalities.

In late December 2025, these controls were confirmed and strengthened through Amendment VC278, making the interim controls permanent. The new controls also protect the unique landscape character, cultural values, amenity and ecological health of 17 urban waterways through the introduction of Significant Landscape Overlays.

To read the full technical report, visit the DTP website here.