A new shopping centre in Melbourne’s east is on track to become the “world’s most sustainable shopping centre.

We often see shopping centres criticised for disconnecting our cities and breaking down our communities. Although the central community hubs that shopping centres create are often forgotten. These centralised hubs also offer big opportunities for sustainable development that often developers fail to capture. Frasers Property Australia have made an exception with their newest development which is a revitalisation of an old brickworks in the suburb of Burwood, in Melbourne, Australia.

This new development will see the 2000-square metre rooftop of the building turned into restaurant and urban farm that will take up 20 percent of the site. As for the agricultural production on site, there will be up to 60 different types of plants grown here and developers also plan to pay tribute to the sites former apple orchard days, by researching what type of apples used to grow there.

In addition to this, the building will be carbon neutral, produce more water and electricity then it uses and have zero waste. This not only sounds exciting, but all these elements will help Frasers meet the rigorous Living Building Challenge Requirements.

This development is still in the planning stage, so it will be quite a while before you are sitting down to locally produced sustainable meal, but it will be exciting to watch it unfold!

To check out more of Fraser’s projects click here and here

Photo credit Right Angle Studio and Frasers Property