How was Australia’s heritage mafia established? To answer, let’s unpack urban heritage in 1990s Australia.
Read moreEstablishing Australia’s Heritage Mafia
Category: Research
Release of “Report on the Place Name: Moreland”
My report on “Place Name “Moreland”, prepared for the City of Moreland, in the inner north of Melbourne, has now been released. Adopting a historical archival approach, the report explores the links between the “Moreland” name and British Caribbean Slavery.
Read moreSeminar: 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 moreRuminating on locked out cities
A couple of weeks ago an article I wrote with Professor Andrew May on urban regulation and specifically the lockout laws appeared in The Conversation. It provoked a strong reaction across social media and also in private correspondence.
Read more555 Collins Street, Melbourne
Every few months tensions flare at Collins Street, Melbourne as the latest development proposal is floated. Once again, the Victorian Planning Minister has intervened at Collins Street. This time to prevent the construction of an 82-storey skyscraper opposite the Rialto Towers at King and Collins Street. As journalist Clay Lucas relays, this is a story of political intrigue, a web involving developers, financiers, and both major political parties–quite typical for Collins Street.
Read moreA historical rumination on heritage advocacy
A few days ago, tumultuous events played out at the National Trust of Victoria, as reported in the Age. Whilst the Trust often appears in print over its activism, rarely does the internal discontents of the organisation spill onto the pages of the city’s newspapers. Over the past few weeks, absent from this blog, I have been exploring how the Trust and various other advocacy and professional organisations campaigned federal, state and local governments for heritage legislation in the 1970s.
Read morePast Liberal ‘Ministers for Cities’
Last Sunday the new Turnbull Liberal Government made Jamie Briggs Minister for Cities. This marks the Liberal Party’s first positive intervention into the Australian city in almost five decades. In excellent articles Liam Hogan and Alan Davies as well as Malcolm Farr and Michael Bleby have many aspects of this appointment covered.
Read moreThe 25,000 Square Metre Rule: An Obituary
Without warning last Friday at midnight the Victorian Government did away with the ‘25,000 square metre rule’ as it has been for the past 20 years. Especially undemocratic, this rule empowered the planning minister to approve any building with over 25,000 square metres of floor space without recourse to the local council or the community. It has had dramatic irreversible long-term impacts for Melbourne. This blog reflects on its history
Read moreInnovation and Reaction: What Would a Minister for Cities Be Good For?
Calls for an Australian Minister for Cities are becoming louder. Groups such as the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council, the Australian Institute of Architects, Planning Institute of Australia, Property Council, Engineers Australia, Green Building Council of Australia, Council of Capital City Lord Mayors and a cross-party parliamentary friendship group for better cities have endorsed the proposal. Various commentators agree, some of whom are members of those groups. A consensus appears to be emerging that the Australian city requires federal intervention.
Read moreAustralia’s greatest urbanist: Hugh Stretton
The Australian City in History has yet to be written. If it were, there is one person that would loom large: Hugh Stretton. He died on 15 July 2015 after a long battle with illness, three days past his ninety-first birthday. There was a short obituary in the Adelaide Advertiser and his personal friend economist Geoff Harcourt wrote a touching tribute: ‘I doubt that we shall see his like again.’
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