Urban Broadcast Collective

Energy Futures by Urban Squeeze What does the future look like in terms of energy generation? How can we produce cheaper and cleaner energy to power our cities? Should you put solar panels on your roof? Tony Matthews and Jason Byrne discuss these and other questions, as well as the challenges of connecting renewable energy to the grid and new innovations in the sector. @drtonymatthews @CityByrne

Round-up of the Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference, “Remaking Cities” by This Must be The Place In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth and David do a round-up review of the 14th Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference, themed “Remaking Cities” and hosted by RMIT University in January-February 2018. The UHPH is a biennial (every 2 years! For anyone else who wonders about that word) conference, and Elizabeth and David contributed in various respects to the planning and organizing of this, the 14th installment of the UHPH. In this discussion they cover (with varying levels of impartiality) several of the excellent plenaries including Chris Gibson on the geographies of making and manufacturing; and Cathie Oats on the future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital archive service. They also comment on a few different sessions of interest including (in no particular order) quarrying and clay pits (the discussion is itself recorded at Fleming Park Brunswick, itself a former claypit); PBS radio; INXS and the Eels; post-war campuses including La Trobe and Macquarie; the failed border realignment of the ACT; Rambo the merino in Goulburn; Kodak in Melbourne; arcades; Ruth and Maurie Crow; past plans for a ‘mega centre’ at Moorabbin Airport; and modern Jewish Melbourne (featuring Catherine Townsend of the Newlands Estate episode). They also discuss the logistics of conferences generally and the final panel held at the conference. The final panel covered the future of the UHPH conference, of digital resources, and of the urban history discipline within the constraints and exclusions of the casualised university. The panel featured Lauren Piko, Seamus O’Hanlon, and Kate Folington (PROV). Frankly it would have been a good (or better) podcast in itself than a roundup discussion a week later, but this wasn’t thought of at the time. See the UHPH program website here: www.remakingcities-uhph2018.com/. Full papers will be available soon. Note - the next UHPH will (probably, but not officially) be held in Launceston.

Planning La La Land: A Scholarly View by Suburbanista Podcast   Los Angeles is generally seen as the prototypical car-dependent, sprawling city. Six to eight lane freeways criss-cross the Los Angeles metropolitan region. What many people don’t realise is that Los Angeles has been leading the way in the USA in terms of public transport investment, especially rail-based transit, over the last decade or so. In this, the inaugural episode of the Suburbanista Podcast (@SuburbanistaPod), Paul Maginn, aka @Planographer, discusses some of the major planning and transport issues and challenges within Los Angeles with Prof Marlon Boarnet (@Marlon_Boarnet), Chair of the Dept. of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School.  In this episode Paul asks Prof Boarnet what planning lessons, if any, can Los Angeles offer other global cities.

Natural Disasters by Radio Reversal Natalie and Jo talk about “natural” disasters, and how disasters are constructed and experienced along a variety of intersecting political, economic, social, and spatial lines. They explore environmental justice, what goes into turning an event into a disaster, how disasters intersect with collective trauma and collective identities, and processes and practices of resilience and recovery – with the help of lots of examples and gratuitous scare quotes. @RadioReversal @DrNatOsborne @joanna_horton

Land and Cities by City Road What is the secret life of land title registration? The Torrens system of land title registration, developed in South Australia in 1858, is fast becoming the most popular system of land conveyancing and administration around the world. Sarah Keenan discusses the Torrens system of title registration that was invented for South Australia to assist the project of colonial settlement and land speculation. It was designed to increase efficiency of conveyancing, but title registration fundamentally changes the nature of title to land. The defining principles of Torrens title registration are ‘the mirror, the curtain, and indemnity’. These principles work together to hide the land’s unregistered history, making that history disappear from legal view. However the people who have those histories still exist. The Torrens system of title registration, or versions of it, are today favoured by the World Trade Organisation and World Bank, and are increasingly being adopted around the world in an effort to make land a liquid asset. New forms of title registration are being innovated to assist financial markets in land, for example the Mortgage Electronic Registration System in the US, which played a key role in facilitating the subprime crisis. Whereas title to land in the common law world was previously conveyed using paper deeds that proved the owner had a history of possessing the land, under the Torrens system title is conveyed through the centralised, singular and increasingly electronic process of registration. The system was designed to make conveying land faster and more efficient, but it also changed the legal concept of land title, making it a discrete, dephysicalised object. Registered title is thus out of sync with land, which has a physicality and history that cannot be wiped away. This lack of synchronisation between land and title has a number of troubling effects. Dr Sarah Keenan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. Sarah is a legal geographer with research interests in critical race and feminist engagements with property. https://cityroadpod.org/

Sustainable Housing by Urban Squeeze What are the features of sustainable houses? Is sustainable housing rewarded enough and should it be incentivised? Should you take your house off-grid? Will you be healthier and happier in a sustainable building? Tony Matthews and Jason Byrne discuss these and other questions, as well as some new technologies for sustainable house design. @drtonymatthews @CityByrne

Ernest Fooks, Newlands Estate, & Melbourne modern design heritage by This Must be The Place From Viennese Avant Garde to Newlands Pizza Plus: an episode of This Must Be the Place that’s about two things: a place, and a person who was influential in making that place. The place is the Newlands Estate, an area developed by the Housing Commission in the 1940s and 1950s, in Melbourne’s north. The person is Ernest Fooks – to whom Newlands owes part of its design. Fooks was an avant garde European émigré architect and planner, and Newlands was one of his first projects after emigrating to Melbourne from the war in Austria. The Newlands estate – known for its parks, topography, mix of housing types, ubiquitous red brick, and community facilities – was the beginning of an influential 40 year career in Australia for Fooks, whose work went on to include numerous luxury modernist homes for the Jewish community, and Jewish institutional buildings. In this episode David interviews architect Catherine Townsend, a Fooks expert. And Elizabeth interviews Cate Hall, an active member of the Newlands community who has been involved in campaigns to save the Coburg Olympic Pool (in Newlands), and to regain a high school for the area. The heritage value of modernist design is part of the story, as is the politics of investment in community infrastructure.

Welcome to the Urban Broadcast Collective. We are a curated network of podcast and radio shows on everything urban. Our goal is simple, to bring together all the amazing urban focused podcasts on one site. In this episode you’ll hear from some of our podcasters and radio makers. We’ll also tell you how to get involved in the Urban Broadcast Collective. For more information, please contact one of our podcast producers: Natalie Osborne from Griffith University; Elizabeth Taylor from RMIT; Tony Matthews from Griffith University; Paul Maginn from the University of Western Australia; Jason Byrne from the University of Tasmania; or Dallas Rogers from the University of Sydney. You can also find us on Twitter at @urbanpodcasts and ApplePodcasts. So sit back and enjoy some fascinating discussions about cities and urbanism.