The proposed redesign of Federation Square includes demolishing the iconic Yarra building for an Apple store.
Read moreHeritage value is in the eye of the beholder: why Fed Square deserves protection
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Seminar: Heritage preservation, urban transformation and everyday life in the twentieth-century Australian city.
My thesis offers a fresh global urban history of the Australian city, its heritage places, and the preservationists who shaped those places. Twentieth-century Australian urban preservationists – such as architects and planners, heritage consultants and regulators, boosters and policymakers, and activists and everyday people – valued and sought to safeguard many kinds of urban landscapes, comprising buildings, streets, precincts and suburbs and invoking communities, histories, memories and stories.
Read moreApple store has no place in the people’s square
FEDERATION Square CEO Jonathan Tribe told us in these pages that the square faces significant challenges. Apparently, its buildings are deteriorating, its visitor numbers are in free fall and its visitor experience is old-fashioned.
Read moreApple is exploiting the power of its brand to claim an important part of our city
Five days before Christmas, news has dropped that a section of Federation Square has been given to Apple for its flagship Melbourne store. The Yarra Building will be demolished, and its tenants, including the Koorie Heritage Trust, relocated to make way for a globally familiar glass cube design.
Read moreExhibition Review: A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne
My review of the exhibition A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne, presented at the City of Melbourne Gallery. It originally appeared in the Melbourne Historical Journal (vol. 44).
Read moreSatirising the Australian City: Bruce Petty
Bruce Petty was awarded the gong for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Journalism’ at the annual Australian Walkley journalism awards this evening. I first came across Petty as part of my research into Australian urban history. From the 1960s onwards, his political satire appeared across various periodicals including the Bulletin magazine, the Australian and the Age newspapers.
Read morePreserving cities: how ‘trendies’ shaped Australia’s urban heritage
An article on how ‘trendies’ in the 1960s-70s changed how we think about the inner suburbs of Australia’s cities.
Read moreSketching the National Trust of Victoria
Two thousand and sixteen marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the National Trust of Victoria. Drawing from my research into heritage in Victoria, I wrote the following article for the National Trust of Victoria’s special anniversary magazine.
Read moreBrisbane and Gold Coast urban heritage in the early 1970s (and today)
In late January, a hundred or so urbanists descended on the Gold Coast for the 13th Australian Urban History Planning History (UHPH) Conference. Attendees included academics, historians, planners and practitioners, who delivered a range of papers on the Australian city, from pre-colonial times to the present-day. Hosted every two years—the next in 2018 is in Melbourne—this is the largest Australasian conference of its kind.
Read moreBook Review: Shane Ewen, What is Urban History? (Cambridge: Polity, 2016)
Last year I published a book review of What is Urban History? by Shane Ewen in the Melbourne Historical Journal (vol. 43). Since then, reviews have appeared on the LSE blog and in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, amongst other places. Ewen was also recently interviewed on the excellent German based Global Urban History blog. Written for an Australian audience, my review is republished below.
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