In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth chats with Professor Carolyn Whitzman, on the eve of Carolyn winding up her 16 years at the University of Melbourne. Carolyn will now be heading back to Canada, specifically to Ottowa (“like a Canadian Adelaide”). In the episode she explains how being an academic was her second career, after working as an activist and ‘femocrat’ on violence prevention programs in Toronto. While her early contacts with Melbourne were as part of a campaign agains...
Jul 22, 2019•40 min
In this episode PlanningxChange interview Cazz Redding, Director of Red Ink Planning. Cazz is based in Bright, North East Victoria. She discusses her career progression, starting a business and working 'in the bush'.
May 09, 2019•39 min
An episode about a faceless man, and irrigation history. In April 1905, a man’s mutilated body was found in a bag in an irrigation channel in Girgarre East, northern Victoria. The channel was not far from where hundreds of men were constructing the Waranga Basin– a formative irrigation project storing water from the Goulburn River for distribution through channels that parceled up land for orchards, dairy farms and new towns. The body in the channel had been disemboweled, its head cut off, its l...
May 09, 2019•1 hr 5 min
In this ‘mini’ (read: no guests) episode of This Must Be the Place Elizabeth visits the Murray River town of Koondrook, once the terminus of the Koondrook-Kerang private tramway. This country tram venture was started by the Shire of Swan Hill 1887, making use of private finance but also of Victorian funding from the “Tramways in Country Districts Act 1886”. While we might reasonably assume that the intention of this latter scheme was to subsidise tramways in middling regional cities, the Koondro...
May 08, 2019•17 min
In this episode PlanningxChange interview Aaron Organ, Director and Principal Ecologist at Ecology and Heritage Partners. Aaron outlines current ecological issues, technological advancements and how we are better understanding the world around us. He talks to the link between town planning regulations and better ecological outcomes. In the podcast interview, new ideas are discussed on how to better help the natural world. A wide-ranging discussion on a subject not widely understood. Aaron also m...
May 08, 2019•48 min
In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth speaks with Associate Professor Seamus O’Hanlon of Monash University, about his new book, “City Life: the new urban Australia”. To quote the official blurb: “Remember when our cities and inner-cities weren’t dominated by high-rise apartments? This book documents the changes that have come with the globalisation of the Australian city since the 1970s. It tells the story of the major economic, social, cultural and demographic changes that have co...
May 04, 2019•45 min
In this episode PlanningxChange interview Kate Roffey who has extensive experience as a CEO and Senior Executive within the commercial, government and not-for-profit sectors. In her current role as Director Deals, Investment & Major Projects at Wyndham City, Kate is focused on the growth of key international and national industry sectors and facilitating investment from both public and private entities via the creation of innovative deals that leverage value capture concepts to fast track de...
May 04, 2019•43 min
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 devel...
May 04, 2019•34 min
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 ...
Feb 27, 2019•1 hr 6 min
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 ...
Feb 27, 2019•32 min
“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 he...
Feb 27, 2019•28 min
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 plann...
Feb 04, 2019•40 min
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 typic...
Feb 04, 2019•36 min
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 awa...
Feb 04, 2019•36 min
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.
Feb 04, 2019•52 min
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 Beiji...
Nov 27, 2018•24 min
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 recognise...
Nov 27, 2018•21 min
We’re talking about extinction, climate change, urban development and urban planning futures. Dr Donna Houston says urban planners need to be more attuned to the ecological realities and rhythms of our cities. From switching on a light, recycling a plastic bottle, shopping at the local supermarket, to asking a smartphone for directions, everyday life in cities is a key contributor to processes co-producing the Anthropocene, a potential new volatile geological era marked by the activity of humans...
Nov 27, 2018•21 min
Part II of our chat about democracy and cities. In cities around the world, citizens are channeling their frustration with existing community engagement processes into the creation of urban alliances. These alliances bring together diverse civil society actors in pursuit of social change. This is the second part of our two-part discussion about democracy and cities. We talk to Amanda Tattersall about how urban alliances work in practice in different cities around the world. We travel to Cape Tow...
Nov 27, 2018•20 min
After the Arab Spring, Occupy and the Umbrella Movement the streets were cleared. But as the dust was settling some more durable democratic experiments emerged. These urban alliances sought to make our cities more equitable places to live. In this two-part episode on democracy and cities we’re talking about a new type of political movement that is forming in different cities around the world; its called an urban alliance. In this first episode, Associate Professor Kurt Iveson sets up the discuss...
Nov 27, 2018•16 min
Part II of our chat with Professor Brett Christophers from Uppsala University about his new book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. And it’s a story that we just couldn’t squeeze into one episode, so alas, we’ve given the next two episodes of City Road over to exploring the ideas in the book. In the first episode we talk about the old enclosure acts of the last few centuries before moving to what Brett calls the new enclosure—or the privatisation of publi...
Nov 27, 2018•22 min
How much public land has been stolen from the British people? The short answer is, a lot! In this episode of City Road we talk to Professor Brett Christophers from Uppsala University about his new book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. And it’s a story that we just couldn’t squeeze into one episode, so alas, we’ve given the next two episodes of City Road over to exploring the ideas in the book. In the first episode we talk about the old enclosure acts of...
Nov 27, 2018•23 min
In this episode of City Road we talk to Saskia Sassen about her work on globalisation and the global city by tracing the key ideas in three of her books. We start with Saskia’s most famous book, The Global City, and the idea of intermediation in the global city. We move onto Saskia’s historical and, as Saskia suggests, her best book, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages to discuss the methodological tools of capacities, tipping points and organising logics. We end ou...
Nov 27, 2018•23 min
Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview Jessie Hochberg the CEO of Nightingale Housing which is based in Melbourne Australia. Nightingale is an innovative facilitator in the housing development market bringing together housing creators (the development team)and end users at the outset of projects. Their template has much to be admired. Jessie explains the unique approach of Nightingale and the need for innovation in the housing sector. For more details go to www.planningxchange.org. Audio enginee...
Nov 25, 2018•34 min
Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview Gavin Queit of GK Solutions ('Securing Your Tomorrow') on design measures to improve the safety of the public realm whilst improving aesthetics.
Nov 21, 2018•27 min
In this This Must Be the Place David has a chat with Anthony O'Donnell, one of the three authors of the book Moss Cass and the Greening of the Australian Labor Party. Cass was a minister in the Whitlam government of 1972-75 and made major inroads in the Labor party's embrace of the green movement (so, paving the way for the saving of the Franklin River in the early 80s for instance) and was responsible for the granting of the public radio licenses which, let's face it, have completely changed Au...
Nov 14, 2018•28 min
Jess and Peter of PlanningXChange interview Brett Davis. Brett is the Executive Dirctor of Regional Planning at the VPA. Prior to this he was a senior Panel member at Planning Panels Victoria. A broad range of planning and design topics are covered emphasising the importance of sound regional planning. UPDATE from Liz - file now replaced with the correct file (Brett not Gavin!)
Nov 11, 2018•36 min
In this experimental episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth pilots a computer program named Digital Death Trip, or alternatively Trove Town Tragedy, coded by Elizabeth’s sister Sarah. The program selects a random location in Victoria, then a random ‘tragedy’ from that location using the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive of digitized newspapers, and the Trove API. The olden days articles retrieved are mostly from between the 1860s and 1950s. The program uses ‘Speak’ to read out a...
Nov 04, 2018•44 min
In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth speaks with RMIT’s Associate Professor Anitra Nelson about a new book, “Housing for De-Growth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities”, and a slightly less new (but still 2018) book, “Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet”. ‘Degrowth’ — a type of ‘postgrowth’ — is a political, practical and cultural movement for down-scaling material and energy throughputs. Housing for Degrowth, co-edited by Anitra with Francois Schneid...
Oct 31, 2018•51 min
Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell interview Geographer David Bissell about his recently released book 'Transit Life - How Commuting is changing our Cities'. David is Associate Professor at the School of Geography, Melbourne University. UPDATE - apologies from Liz, this has now been replaced with the correct file (David not Brett!)
Oct 22, 2018•37 min
