Kate Cavanough

Kate Cavanough is an urban designer with a passion for creating vibrant, safe and equitable cities. Kate believes that Australian cities are at the precipice of significant change due to the quantity of aged social housing stock that will need to be renewed. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we need to get right for the benefit of social housing renters and the wider city. 

Kate’s project experience spans complex large-scale master plans, strategic planning and frameworks, built form studies, policy guidelines, development guidance and advice. She has worked across NSW and Victoria. She is committed to enabling long-term positive outcomes through effective stakeholder engagement and management, strategic thinking and a collaborative, interdisciplinary design approach. 

In 2021 Kate co-authored the ‘Vertical Villages’ research project at Macquarie University that explored people’s experiences of living in multicultural high-rise, mix-tenure and high-density urban environments in Sydney. 

Kate is currently working as a Principal Project Manager on the High-Rise Redevelopment Program at Homes Victoria. This will be the largest urban renewal program in the country and create homes for 30,000 people. The legacy of a program like this will be important for many generations to come.

Kate holds a Bachelor of Design (Landscape Architecture) from RMIT and a Masters of Urban Design from the University of Melbourne.

Kate was awarded the 2023 Churchill Fellowship to research best practice approaches to the master planning and renewal of social housing estate in the UK.

Kate seeks to further understand how public officials, advisors, investors, creatives, operators, renters and community can come together to deliver great city neighbourhoods. In particular, how social housing renewal programs can deliver multi-generational value through the master planning process that accounts for the variety of stakeholder needs and requirements.