Urban Broadcast Collective

In this episode PlanningxChange interview the dynamic Olivia Christie about her role as a project manager on various large scale commercial projects and specialist developments within the hospitality sector. Olivia talks of the importance of team spirit, co-operative engagement with regulators and the benefits of flexibility. She also talks about what she has learn't as a developer of a high quality mid sized residential development in Melbourne's inner south. Olivia talks about her career development in a traditionally male-dominated industry sector.

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and on the rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe, recounts a joke popular after the first World War: “an anti-Semite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? Asks the one. Why the Jews? Asks the other”. To Arendt the joke illustrates how scapegoating is understood: if bicyclists seem self-evidently harmless, this incongruity shows deep-seated rationaliation of bigotry against Jewish people. (The book goes on to examine identity, rights, and nation states - or it seems to, Elizabeth has only read 50 of 700-ish pages). In the context of nowadays Australia, the bicycle ‘joke’ resonates less and seems even less funny. Actually it’s hard to believe it was ever funny, but most jokes go flat with time. Cycling issues are divisive both on Australia’s roads and its internet forums. In this episode Elizabeth speaks with two researchers interested, in effect, in questions of “why the bicyclists?”: why are Australians so angry about cycling? Tom Andrews is a PhD student in law at the University of Melbourne writing on the history of criminal procedures. Dr Peter Chambers is a senior lecturer in criminology, global crime and boarder security at RMIT University. They have a shared interest in conflicts between cars and vulnerable road users and recently published an article in the Conversation, “Rising cyclist death toll is mainly due to drivers, so change the road laws and culture”, examining statistics on deaths on Australian roads: 1,222 in 2017-18, with 1,100 due to driver inattention. They are critical of responses focused on high-tech sensors and separated infrastructure: arguing these disavow statistics on causes of cyclist deaths and ‘bake in’ infrastructure for paying less attention. Debates downplay real people and causes of injuries, in favour of anecdotes and hypotheticals – “once saw an X”, “what if a Y”. This contrasts with how other sectors –eg. aviation- respond to risk. It also poses questions. Tom recounts a literally frothing-at-the-mouth encounter with rage about cyclists-“there’s nothing about that level of anger that is easy to explain”–and how a comment moderator told him “in Australian media if you publish a piece on violence against women, or about cycling, there will be a rush of aggressive comments”. The episode discusses how ‘third rail’ cycling issues tap into questions of culture, history, and jurisprudence (how people discuss and understand rules). In criminal law, a separate set of offences for driving was introduced because of reluctance of juries to convict drivers of manslaughter. In civil law, prior to Victoria’s no-fault personal injury insurance, when injury occurred as a result of cars people had to go through the (stressful, costly) general legal system for compensation. Registration in large part pays for TAC insurance, proportionate to risks of injury from different motor vehicles. How does this relate to frequent calls for cyclists to be registered? Is a bike an unregistered vehicle? Peter semi-facetiously suggests arguments for cyclists to be registered are less interested in specific implications for rights and responsibilities than “cyclists should be registered…and then put in camps”. It’s a rambling chat touching many third rails – helmets (“in Australia it’s easier to imagine touching someone’s car as a form of assault to the person, than it is to imagine trusting people to make informed decisions about risk and headwear”), liability (strict versus presumed), parking, property, rights to public space, colonialism and land appropriation, gender, f-bombs, ‘boulie tacks’. And Big Lebowski quotes (“at least it’s an ethos”).

Sadie Black: Café and community in Melbourne’s West. Melbournians have been told for thirty plus years now that café society has been a key driver in cultural growth, valuing of place, and foundation of communities (cue Ray Oldenberg). David has been ‘on the ground’ for the last year or more tracking the rise and rise of Sadie Black, a café in his neighbourhood in Melbourne’s west. He spoke to the owners, Chris and Meaghan Blackwell, about their hopes and ideals, the gamble of opening a café in the first place, and the local response.

“Aim for nicer toilets, that’s my main tip for Australia”: Perspectives on Japanese cities from an 8-year old Australian, Juliette. This episode of This Must Be The Place is a kind of follow-up to the late-2017 episode, “Three travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities”, in which Elizabeth, Helen and Nicole did a round-up of their impressions – as planners and geographers, but largely uninformed by research – of Japanese cities in comparison to Australia. Here we hear impressions of Japan from a slightly different perspective – courtesy of Juliette, who is 8 years old and one of Elizabeth’s nieces, and who recently spent about 2 weeks on holiday in Japan. The episode was recorded at a dinner party in Jan’s backyard (so there’s a bit of plate clanking, and chattering, and some other guests including Nyoko from Japan sometimes chiming in). Juliette discusses: • Toilets - “aim for nicer toilets, that’s my main tip for Australia”; • Streets – with crowds of people, but “there wasn’t that many cars, and people were just walking in the middle of the road”; • Children walking to school (in single file, parentless, and on Saturdays); • Riding bikes, without helmets; • Traffic - “they drove considerably noticeably slower than they do here, and they weren’t eager to run the people on the bikes over” (a bit of link to the recent TMBTP episode on ‘roads, rights and rage’); • The uncomfortable dynamics of cat, owl, and other animal cafes (at one “there were 5 cats lined up at the window just looking out”); • Trains (bullet, rapid, and local) - “and there was one running pretty much every 5 minutes”; • Food – wasabi octopus, kit kats, vending machines, milk tea; • Making sense of the world via dire warning cartoons; and • (Perhaps a bit too much for a planning podcast) things about Harry Potter, porcupines, and video games. There are also musings on the dynamics of public space in different countries. The day after returning to Australia, there was “a man doing graffiti in the telephone booth”, and Sarah (Juliette’s mother’s) bike got stolen. Juliette reflects on how unexpected things like this rarely happened to them as tourists in Japan, which has some pros and cons. “My overall conclusion is there’s some things which I would definitely miss about Japan” (for example “I miss everyone actually being polite to you”), “but then there’s some things which you just have none of in Japan, like crazy guys, or graffiti artists”. Also preferred (in a way) about Australia is “you never know what’s going to happen – like you never know when someone’s going to steal your bike”.

PlanningxChange 46 features Doctor Elizabeth Taylor academic and podcaster ('This Must be the Place' – fellow UBC member). Her first book 'Dry Zones: Planning and the Hangovers of Liquor Licensing History' considers the temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th century and the campaign for 'local control' of alcohol outlets in Victoria Australia. The author makes the case that these campaigns helped form the basis of contemporary planning practice. Also that many of the contested planning battles of today echo the events of 100 years ago.

In PX45, author David Sornig discusses his recently published book 'Blue Lake'. It concerns an area adjacent the Melbourne CBD known for many years as 'Dudley Flats'. This area contained squatter camps, rubbish dumps, noxious industry and the working infrastructure of the metropolis. Originally a place of pristine beauty, hence the title of the book, the area was degraded and became 'the other', a place outside respectable Melbourne. A wonderful pseudo - geographical study of an urban area typically overlooked.

A special podcast by PX as part of the PIA Victorian Division 2018 Symposium – In PX42, Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview Pru Goward. Pru is the New South Wales Minister for Family and Community Services, Minister for Social Housing and Minister for the prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. An earlier portfolio included Minister for Planning. Prior to Parliament Pru was Australia's Sexual Discrimination Commissioner. She had a long career at the ABC where she received many awards including a special Walkey Award. A wide ranging discission on public policy and the need for fresh ideas. (PX42).

In PX 44, Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview long term journalist and author Peter Mares about his new book 'No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia's Housing Crisis'. An interesting discussion on contemporary housing and planning policy in Australia.

In the early 1990s, when China’s artists were less able to participate in open debate about the shape of Chinese society, they turned to the production of urban space instead. “If you want to see the political impact of Chinese artists, we can look to the city in order to see that.” Dr Christen Cornell After the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, Chinese cities entered a period of radical social and spatial reorganisation. During the process, artists began to move from the countryside into Beijing. Some artists took up residence in the old communist compounds that had once housed the collective work units – compounds that were now earmarked for demolition. You have probably heard of Ai Wei Wei, the controversial Chinese artist who designed the so-called birds nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. But what you might not know about artists like Ai Wei Wei is they have been reshaping the physical, cultural and perhaps even the political fabric of Beijing. We’re chatting with Dr Christen Cornell to find out how. Christen says, when we look for examples of urban political activism in China many people search for signs of open protest in Chinese cities. And when we take an interest in the country’s artists, many people look for the political commentary in their artwork. But the role of the artist as a political actor in China involves a more complicated form of urban activism. Drawing on ideas that were popular in western cities at the time, the Chinese artists renamed the sites they were claiming ‘artists villages’ and ‘art districts’. This was a political move to save these sites and their artistic practice. We talk to Christen about the shape and significance of these urban arts communities, and the impact they had on the physical and cultural life of the city. Guest Dr Christen Cornell is a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Christen is working across issues of cultural policy, housing, urbanism and contemporary Chinese culture. She has lived and worked in China on and off since 2001.You can read more about Christen’s work here: Using movement: how Beijing’s post-1989 artists capitalized on a city in flux in Cultural Studies; and here: The temporal pocket: 1990s Beijing artist colonies in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

The utopian visions of architects, planners, philosophers and sociologists are important speculative projects. “We are all utopians, as soon as we wish for something different and stop playing the part of the faithful performer or watchdog”. Henri Lefebvre. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the idea of utopia with Professor Danilo Palazzo, who calls on us to become utopians. Utopians claim that cities can be used as a laboratory for imagining better urban futures. Such thinking recognises that the built and natural environments are complex systems of competing relationships; spanning the social, economic, physical, political, and environmental. These ideal cities “were convenient and attractive intellectual tools that enabled each planner to bring together his many innovations in design, and to show them as part of a coherent whole, a total redefinition of the idea of the city”. Robert Fishman In the nineteenth and twentieth century, utopian visions emerged to confront the challenges of the urban disorder and decay that followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Urban pollution, water quality issues, natural disasters, and the overall decay of the urban physical environment inspired new urban visions that relied on building a strong relationship between humans and their environment. We ask Professor Danilo Palazzo about the role of utopia today. Can we study the utopias of the past in search of new ways to face the huge environmental, ecological, social, and urban problems of today? Is there space for Utopia in our university programs? Guest Professor Danilo Palazzo was born in 1962 in Milano, Italy where he grew up. From 1997 to 2012, he has taught at Politecnico di Milano as Assistant Professor and later as Associate Professor of urbanism, urban planning and urban design. In 2012 he moved to United States as Director of the School of Planning, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati. His articles have appeared in Landscape and Urban Planning, Landscape Journal, Oikos, Urbanistica, Territorio, among others, and his books include Urban Ecological Design. A Process for Regenerative Places, Island Press, Washington D.C., 2011 (with Frederick Steiner); Urban Design. Un processo di progettazione urbana, Mondadori Università, Milano, 2008; Sulle spalle di Giganti. Le matrici della pianificazione ambientale negli Stati Uniti, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1997. He resides in Cincinnati.