The Anthropocene heralds unparalleled changes that impact communities across a range of scales and locations. Supporting regional communities and places is increasingly essential given these are where the destructive impacts of climate change – including prolonged drought, catastrophic bushfires and flooding – are keenly experienced, and will ripple out and greatly affect the lives of those in metropolitan regions. In addition to environmental loss, shifting weather patterns and the flow-on effects that impact industry, agriculture, energy consumption, jobs and education, as well as COVID-19, will continue to disrupt recovery strategies. These are strategies based on current development approaches which rely on industries such as tourism, sport and agriculture (Greenville et al. 2020; Shipway and Miles 2020) and the vulnerable groups and communities dependent on these industries (Berg and Farbenblum 2020; O’Kane 2020).