My book Values in Cities: Urban Heritage in Twentieth-Century Australia has now been released.
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Latest Posts
Values-Based Heritage Conservation: Historical Origins and Future Directions
The Burra Charter and its values-based model is embraced within Australian heritage conservation. For policymaker Max Bourke, it forms ‘the ethical basis for a contemporary “philosophy” of Australian conservation practice [becoming] a sort of “bible”’. Historian Graeme Davison reflects, The Tablets of the Law handed down from Burra have now been translated, like a colonial Book of Leviticus, into the values-based model and an ever-expanding grey literature of heritage statutes, conservation reports, management protocols, and tribunal rulings that are, today, the multi-million-dollar industry of urban conservation management. The entrenchment of values-based heritage means the heritage industry – comprised of consultants and
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Lecture on Fed Square: Public Space, Community and Heritage in Melbourne
On 20 December 2017, the Victorian State Government and Apple Corporation announced plans for a flagship Apple store for Melbourne’s leading public space: Federation Square. The proposal involved the demolition of an original building on the civic square and its replacement by a generic complex. There was an immediate public backlash against the Apple proposal to enter this public space (which had been managed by a government-owned private company). A new advocacy group called Citizens for Melbourne established a campaign called ‘Our City, Our Square’. A key strand of the campaign involved nominating Federation Square for a state heritage listing,
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ABC Radio Interview on Abandoned Buildings and Heritage Places
Have a listen back to our ABC Radio conversation on Abandoned Buildings and Heritage Places in Melbourne and across Victoria. You’ll find an interview with me among the many speakers! Restore, rebuild or raze? Debate rages over the fate of our grand old buildings From the Murtoa Stick Shed in the Wimmera, to the historic Curtin Hotel in Carlton, Victoria’s architectural landscape is awash with heritage-listed buildings saved from demolition. But for every success there are stories of demise – as observed by comedian Barry Humphries in 1978 who asked, “why not call ourselves Mutilated Melbourne?” The question of whether Victoria’s
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Book Review: Cities in a Sunburnt Country: Water and the Making of Urban Australia
This book review is published in the Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, Fall/automne 2023. Australia is the driest continent on Earth. Its regions fluctuate between punishing drought and intense rainfall. With their knowledge of Country, and their conservation cultures, First Peoples have had continual access to water for millennia. Water and weather shaped their everyday activities and cultural traditions. The British colonisation of Australia from 1788 onwards, and the development of its cities since the nineteenth century, has transformed how water is both understood and managed across the continent. The relationships between people, cities, and water, particularly the expanding provision
Read moreWe must protect Melbourne’s 20th-century heritage – here’s how to do it rightt
This article was originally published in The Age on 2 July 2023. The City of Maribyrnong has abandoned its local heritage protections for interwar and postwar housing in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The decision was heralded as a win for housing supply and affordability. But there is another side to the argument – will we look back in 50 years time and rue this decision that may well allow the destruction of this unique era of our history, architecture and social fabric? It’s something we need to consider as we move forward. The multi-year conservation project failed not due to a lack of
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YIMBYs and NIMBYs unite! You can have both heritage protection and more housing
Heritage conservation has been blamed for making the housing crisis worse by standing in the way of new, higher-density housing. But protecting heritage and increasing housing should be complementary objectives.
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Book on People-Centred Heritage Conservation
James Lesh and Rebecca Madgin have co-edited the book collection People-Centred Methodologies for Heritage Conservation: Exploring Emotional Attachments to Historic Urban Places.
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Book Review: Giving Value to Architecture and Heritage
Review of Valuing Architecture: Heritage and the Economics of Culture, by Ashley Paine, Susan Holden and John Macarthur, eds., Amsterdam, Valiz, 2020, 288 pp. ISBN: 978-94-92095-93-0.
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EVENT: James Lesh Public Lecture at the University of Sydney on Values in Cities: Urban Heritage in Twentieth-Century Australia
Join us at 6 pm on Wednesday 24 May 2023 at the University of Sydney for James Lesh speaking about his book ‘Values in Cities’.
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Melbourne, Sydney, and the Population Prize
You’ve probably heard that Melbourne has overtaken Sydney as Australia’s most populous city. This demographic milestone has come about earlier than predicted due to the re-drawing of statistical boundaries, somewhat deflating the weightiness of this momentous moment. But Melbourne overtaking Sydney in population terms is still history making. Since Sydney first overtook Melbourne in population around 1901, both cities have swelled ten-fold to almost 5-million people today. These evolutions speak to enduring contests around cities and rivalries.
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