This is the ReSurfaced initiative in Louisville, in the US state of Kentucky, where the community, working with a not-for-profit organisation called City Collaborative, is using some of the many parking lots and vacant spaces to experiment with ideas to improve the city. It's a way of finding out what works, without risking huge investments of taxpayers' and developers' money. Here's more of that project.

It's an undertaking one of Melbourne's leading thinkers in design and making community spaces, Lucinda Hartley, founder and chief executive of Co-Design Studio, nominates as a fine guide for Fishermans Bend. There are more coming up later in this piece, as well as a list of big-picture ideas of how to get things right generally.

Tactical Urbanism

This is Lucinda.

She argues we can help get Fishermans Bend right by using something called 'tactical urbanism'.

Let's hear from Lucinda: "Tactical urbanism is an internationally proven approach to neighbourhood building that uses low-cost, short-term projects to drive long-term change. This simple entrepreneurial approach focuses on try-by-doing, using real-world local results instead of imported best-practices. Tactical urbanism has been used to rapidly transform major cities around the world: New York City, Detroit, Christchurch and Auckland to name a few. The key is starting small, starting immediately, and focusing on people first.Melbourne has a once in a generation opportunity to reinvent itself, to build neighbourhoods that are flexible and connected enough to weather the anticipated challenges of this century."

Lucinda and CoDesign principal Jessica Christiansen-Franks – after consulting with the office of Planning Minister Richard Wynne, the Metropolitan Planning Authority and Melbourne University Professor of Urban Design Professor Carolyn Whitzman – have prepared some images of how it might work right now in Fisherman's bend, where there are many spaces that could be experimented with before making permanent moves.

Here are some more thoughts from Lucinda:

"Long-term master plans may get the hardware of a place right, specifying the numbers of apartments, retail floorspace, public open space and roads, but they rarely address the 'software'. This urban software – the people, the activities culture and the identity – is key to making great places to live. Major urban renewal projects like Fishermans Bend need to critically address the need for urban software if they are to be successful. You can't manufacture great communities.

"For start ups and artists, you might look at using existing buildings as co-working or studio spaces, allowing small, flexible tenancies with ample shared space for collaboration and mobile working. To attract families, Fisherman's Bend would have to be seen as a thriving, healthy neighbourhood for children. While it may take a while to get permanent parks, it is relatively cheap and easy to turn temporarily vacant lots into green spaces and thriving community gardens with room to play. Pop-up libraries or book vans, local markets and ample childcare options in refurbished existing buildings - not to mention family-friendly interim transport options – could make it appealing to parents."

What to do – Learning the Docklands lesson

As the planning for Fishermans Bend accelerates, the irony is that the biggest risk might be, well, too much planning. Sure, we need careful, enlightened planning – but there's a sweet spot between being too prescriptive and being too unstructured. Today's instalment of The (Idea's) Zone is about how we might achieve that sweet spot.

One place they seem to have done it is Vancouver, which has become known as one of North America's most family-friendly cities by doing things like this (pic by Flickr user Daniel Lobo):

Some of the experts cited here and I will be online throughout today to chat with anyone interested in discussing this, or other ideas to improve Melbourne as a place to work and live. Just post your comments and questions below and we'll respond. The (Ideas) Zone is an online space for you – a space for the community to discuss ways to make our city and our state even better places to live in and to work in, to share and to enjoy.

How not to stuff it up

1. Experiment

Instead of creating an overly-engineered expanse of concrete and steel offices and homes, there needs to be space and time for experimentation. It's a balance that many would suggest we did not get right during the past two decades or so with the Docklands project; the place is widely considered to still be in search of a soul, as this image by colleague Craig Sillitoe suggests.

Many people feel Docklands is developing a better, local, feel – but it would have been easier to make it a more welcoming environment had there been smaller-scale retail and fewer wind tunnels.

Aside from the errors of Docklands – get scale right, so that local, intimate spaces can evolve and flourish, and don't build too many towers of dog-box apartments, for example – what other pitfalls might be avoided? To use Lucinda's analogy, this is about allowing space for the software, rather than focussing overly on the hardware. In other words, it's about not subscribing to the notion "build it and they will come".

This mistake happened, many believe, is London at the Canary Wharf redevelopment.

My photographic colleague Nicky Catley, who does fabulous research for The (Ideas) Zone, worked in magazines for years in London, including at Canary Wharf.

Here's Nicky: "I recall the place a glossy bubble of boutiques, expensive apartments, high-end supermarkets, busy bars, packed restaurants. At the heart of the area were two towers filled with media companies and bankers who spilled out into surrounding pubs or green spaces when the sun shone. The whole place had a Truman show character with its manicured landscapes and demographic of wealthy, leisured people who lived or worked in the towers. Masses of hospitality workers poured off the tube to cater to the white-collar needs."

And here's Lucinda on that same issue: "Our fear is that Fisherman's Bend will end up a generic landscape of concrete and cranes, empty apartments and chain stores, devoid of character or life while the 50-year master plan is slowly implemented. Creating hardware with no urban software, or with software that hasn't been user tested with the families and local businesses that use it every day, is a recipe for a cold, generic neighbourhood."

2. Keep politics out of it

The head of Monash University's Architecture Department, Professor Diego Ramirez-Lovering, and one of PhD students, Peter Charles, whose doctorate examines Fishermans Bend, argue urban planning decisions should be "de-coupled" as much as possible from politics.

Political cycles are short, but projects like Fishermans Bend are very long. So, it is important to keep the decision-making in the hands of an independent authority. The new Victorian government is moving in the right direction by setting up its Ministerial Advisory Committee and a taskforce to be led by the Metropolitan Planning Authority.

3. Get developers to cough up more for infrastructure

Diego and Peter also reckon that under existing plans, developers would be not making a sufficient contribution, at 1.5 per cent of construction budget, to the cost of creating infrastructure and community assets like parks.

Lucinda: "Large urban developments currently rely on top-down planning and speculative decisions made by governments and experts who usually don't live or work in the area. They also don't have answers for questions beyond the streets and buildings, like establishing a great community.

Docklands hasn't had time to evolve, change and be personalised by the people that live and work there. But equally, the urban fabric doesn't allow for easy personalisation. Rather than slowly delivering the hardware and hoping it gains character over time, a tactical urbanism approach works with the community as they arrive to deliver something right now that is relevant and reflects their needs."

Here's another example of tactical urbanism she likes – Winn Lane in Brisbane, photographed by Emily Nelson.

The vibe...

So, getting the vibe, as it were, right is crucial to the overall success of this multibillion, long-term project. But what might that entail, aside from, tactical urbanism? Here are some ideas from leading local architect Koos de Keijzer. He is with DKO Architecture and is a member of the Victorian Design Review Panel.

4. Respect the past

Koos: "Fishermans Bend is not necessarily a wasteland. Fishermans Bend has one of the richest histories in Melbourne, which covers manufacturing, transport and other industries. Lots of established positive communities exist within Fishermans Bend and we need to understand their traces of history and the tapestry of life thriving down there now."

Over at Monash, Diego and Peter have a number of further suggestions including:

5. Diversity

A diversity of housing types and scales that invite a diverse population.

6. Open space

Ensure stronger definition of open space guidelines within developments to foster open space for community and events. Given 90 per cent of land is private, these spaces take on a new civic role. Planning authorities need to manage these open spaces of neighbouring individual parcels within a block as a connective network efficiently.

7. Flexible parking

Encourage flexible car-parking strategies potentially as separate buildings that can be decommissioned/re-used as demand dwindles with limited disruption to the neighbourhood grain.

8. Community Facilities

Integration of educational and cultural facilities in line with projected population, into private development."

9. Embrace diversity

Back to Koos: "We need to establish diverse ethnic, diverse economic and diverse social communities. We need to ensure we are not merely building dwellings for the wealthy."

Here are some projects Koos nominates as models that "have a huge emphasis placed on the public realm and activating the edges of the development and creating 21st century spaces.

West Eight Housing in Java Island, Amsterdam:

The Sliced Porosity Block, a cluster of five towers around a public plaza in Chengdu, China:

Stratospheric stakes, rich history

The stakes are beyond high, which is why the recently arrived state government is setting up a Ministerial Advisory Committee to report back next year after consulting with the community, developers, councils and experts. Here're some numbers that indicate the size and scope of the project:

This map shows just how huge the project is:

Although it is so central, it is a part of Melbourne few people are familiar with. Here is a taste of what it looked like in the past. This first picture of the ship canal across Fishermans Bend is by engraver F. A. Sleep and was published in The Illustrated Australian News on 26 May 1886.

Half a century later, Holden was making cars there, and did until the recent death of the car industry in Australia. Here's the Holden factory in 1936.

A here, a dozen years later, is then prime minister Ben Chifley with a fine example.

Back to the future – and over to you: what do you reckon might work? What would you like to see happen in Fishermans Bend? What might help make you wish to live there? You are welcome to join the discussion below.

• • The 455-hectare redevelopment will double the size of Melbourne's CBD.
  • There will be some 80,000 residents and 40,000 jobs in the area by 2050.
  • The project will involve massive investment in infrastructure, including public transport, parklands and schools.
  • Where Docklands was primarily public land, as much as 90 per centof Fishermans Bend is privately held, making compulsory land acquisition a potentially tricky issue.