Urban Broadcast Collective

Podcasts from Perth: A UBC Special Edition from the Planning Institute of Australia National Congress 2018. (@drtonymatthews) put on their bicycle helmets and clips and take a ride with James Thoem and Michael Wexler, from Copenhagenize Design Co in the first of a series of special podcasts from the 2018 Planning Institute of Australia’s National Congress held in Perth from 9-11th May. James and Michael outline the philosophy of the Copenhagenize Design Co, what bicycle urbanism is, and its role in helping making cities more liveable spaces and capacity for enhancing health and well-being. Find out more about the Copenhagenize Design Co at https://copenhagenize.eu/

Musicians, memoirs and maps: a bookish Curtin-side chat with Sarah Taylor and Sam Whiting. In this episode of This Must be The Place Elizabeth is joined by Sam Whiting, a PhD candidate and lecturer in popular culture in the school of Media and Communications at RMIT; and by Dr Sarah Taylor (Elizabeth’s sister), who recently completed a PhD on the historical geography of live music in Sydney and Melbourne and who is now a data scientist, also at RMIT. Sam’s PhD explores small live music venues: how they work as concentrations of cultural & social capital, and as places where acts get their first break. His study sites are The Old Bar and The Tote, in Melbourne’s inner north. Sarah’s PhD compared spatial patterns of live music in two cities over three decades, during which Sydney’s live music scene declined, and Melbourne’s grew, albeit both in spatially uneven ways. Sam and Sarah spoke with musicians about how they got started with gigs, and their experiences in different venues and cities. Inspired by Elizabeth recently reading autobiographies by Phil Collins and Johnny Marr, they discuss the ways musicians live and remember their lives in the context of spaces and places.

What role does the government play in facilitating displacement through transit-led development? We often hear about the role of the private sector, private landlords, and the purchasing power of individual real estate buyers in urban renewal, gentrification and displacement debates. The planning of new transit systems and overheating housing markets has renewed interest in understanding the role of government in neighbourhood change, specifically in the context of gentrification and displacement. “Many people conflate gentrification and displacement.” Professor Karen Chapple Karen Chapple and her team developed an online “neighbourhood early warning system;” a set of interactive maps that shows the current and future transformations that are underway in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the United States. “The city is always undergoing a process of renewal in some form.” Associate Professor Kristian Ruming The neighbourhood early warning system is a part of The Urban Displacement Project, which characterises Bay Area neighbourhoods (via census tracts) according to their experience of gentrification and risk of displacement. The early warning system - which is used by tens of thousands of unique visitors each year - develops a gentrification index that characterises places that historically housed vulnerable populations but have since experienced significant demographic shifts alongside real estate investment. “I think we should look at world’s best practice, which is almost the opposite of what we do in Australia” Professor Peter Phibbs We're talking to Professor Karen Chapple, Associate Professor Kristian Ruming and Professor Peter Phibbs about what urban renewal, gentrification and displacement look like in San Francisco with rent control and Sydney without it.

Outdoor advertising & cities: In this installment of PlanningxChange Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview Ged Hart manager of TOM P/L (Total Outdoor Media). Outdoor advertising is a prominent and sometimes derided feature of cities. Ged talks about the role of outdoor in 'public messaging' and suggests that traditional views of outdoor are outdated. This is because in some instances Government takes 60 - 70% of the available space for public messaging campaigns. He talks of new technologies and how the 'creative' role is the new public art. A change in views amongst city design professions and city administrators towards outdoor he suggests is appropriate. A discussion on an aspect of city experience not often heard.

Research on cars, parking, & travel planning in Melbourne apartment buildings: With Chris De Gruyter. How do people in Melbourne apartments travel? How often do they drive cars, or use public transport? How much parking is enough? Can planning influence this? Such questions are often debated in the planning system (and beyond). However, there is little data available on the observed travel behavior of people living in apartments. Instead, most discussions are based on rough demand estimates, or on personal experience. In this episode of This Must Be The Place, Elizabeth speaks with Dr Chris De Gruyter, who has recently undertaken – along with a small army of students – a comparative study of travel in apartment buildings in Melbourne. Chris is formerly of Monash University and starting a fellowship in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT. Originally a traffic engineer, he has been in transport planning for around 15 years.

In New York, where anything’s possible, the privatisation of Manhattan's Central Park is even stranger than fiction. I imagine that few people would choose to travel back in time to visit the run down and quite frankly often dangerous Central Park of 1970s Manhattan. But many people don't realise that a casual and relatively safe stroll through Central Park today has come at significant cost to the park’s maintenance workers. "My dream is to have the park system privatised and run entirely for profit by corporations". Ron Swanson, fictional Parks Department Director, American Television sitcom Parks and Recreation. We’re talking to John Krinsky about his new book with Maud Simonet, Who Cleans the Park? and their research about parks management in New York. John and Maud bring the often-invisible work of the park’s maintenance workers into view. What’s exposed is much more that than an underpaid and unvalued workforce, but a set of questions that go to the heart of urban management today. In America, hundreds of millions of dollars of both public and private funds are dedicated to the upkeep of public assets like Central Park. Keeping a park in order requires not just money, but labour - the not so glamorous and often invisible jobs that are associated with picking up the garbage, painting benches, maintaining equipment, cleaning toilets, raking leaves and removing homeless people. “Parks have been absolutely critical to the maintenance and argumentation of real estate value.” Professor John Krinsky. John talks about how wealthy individuals and corporate actors have directed significant philanthropic funding into the Central Park Conservancy, which holds considerable sway over this public space. He questions the idea that public parks, and the public domain more generally, are best served by allowing the people who have the money to fund and maintain the public domain have their way with these public assets. And what's in it for the wealthy? Well, in the end, the public space rewards the park-side property owners with a financial return on their real estate holdings. John Krinsky is professor of political science, with an interest in labor and community organising in New York. He specialises in urban politics, the politics of social movements, and the politics of work, welfare and labor. He is a co-editor of the online peer-reviewed journal Metro-politics and a co-editor of the journal Social Movement Studies. He co-coordinates the Politics and Protest Workshop at the CUNY Graduate Centre and is a founding board member of the New York City Community Land Initiative. Read more in John Krinsky and Maud Simonet's new book, 'Who Cleans the Park?' Additional Audio: NBC Parks and Recreation: www.nbc.com/parks-and-recreation

On changing rooms, changing boundaries, and change makers: Retirement thoughts with Michael Buxton. In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth corners son-to-be Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton just before his retirement from RMIT after around 20 years. Michael describes his move to academia from state government, and as someone who has been closely involved in local government politics. Change is a recurring theme in the discussion, including changes to university management and administration styles, and changes in political cultures and attention spans. Michael and Elizabeth discuss the role of academics in public policy debates, and different strategies for this. They also discuss the merit of research and its voluminous outputs – the dream that, one day at least, someone might read it and find it useful. At least, that’s what researchers like to tell themselves. The episode finishes up on the massive collection of stuff that is Michael’s former office, much of it acquired via the garages of former public servants.

The utopian visions of architects, planners, philosophers and sociologists are important speculative projects. We take a deep dive into the idea of utopia with Professor Danilo Palazzo, who calls on us to become utopians. “We are all utopians, as soon as we wish for something different and stop playing the part of the faithful performer or watchdog”, argued Henri Lefebvre. Cities have often been used as the laboratory for the imaginations of better futures. Such thinking recognises that the built and natural environments are complex systems of competing relationships; spanning the social, economic, physical, political, and environmental. As Robert Fishman pointed out in 1982, 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”. We ask Professor Danilo Palazzo about the role of utopia today. Can we study the past utopias in search of new ways to face the huge environmental, ecological, social, and urban problems of our times? Is there space for Utopia in our university programs? Professor Danilo Palazzo was born in 1962 in Milano, Italy where he grew up. He completed his Master in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano in 1987 and his PhD in Urban and Regional Planning at Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia in 1993. 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.

Contemporary Landscape Architecture: in this episode of new UBC members PlanningxChange, Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview landscape architect Tim Vernon of the CDA Design Group. Tim talks about the changes in the profession since he started in the mid 1980's, the influence of travel, sources of inspiration and the contemporary challenges (and joys) of landscape architecture. For more details: www.planningxchange.org.

What do planning podcast people do all day? This Must be the Place meets Planning Xchange. This episode of This Must Be The Place is a four-way conversation between David and Elizabeth; and the hosts of another Melbourne planning-related podcast – Planning Xchange (or ‘PX’). PX is a new member of the Urban Broadcast Collective. PX hosts Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell are both practicing planners, and their podcast features interviews with people employed across different roles in planning related fields. Produced in Melbourne, PlanningxChange promotes a better understanding of urban affairs and city design and function. It aims to be a useful addition to the many wonderful urbanist web resources which assess, appreciate, critique and enhance urban living. A theme in the episode’s discussion is the crossover between academic and practicing planning worlds – or rather the lack of it, whether there is a need for it, and how to go about closing gaps that exist. For more details: www.planningxchange.org.