Given that the YIMBY/NIMBY thing is creeping (maybe even galloping!) into the discourse on urban planning and housing here in Australia, here’s a few thoughts on Bill McKibben’s new piece "Yes in our backyards" in Mother Jones , which seeks to offer some principles for when we should be saying “no” and when we should be saying “yes”… McKibben sets up his argument by stating that while…
Every now and again, I give a little 10 minute 'class' for "Self-Improvement Wednesday" with Richard Glover on ABC Radio 702. I've been trying to use these classes to encourage listeners to think about some of the habits and infrastructures that we often take for granted in city life. In the past I've done episodes on the physical geography of the internet, on the role of advertising in public…
From the Equality poster series, with Wendy Murray, see https://www.busymakingposters.com/equality It was an honour to be asked to respond to Steve Dovers' Patrick Troy Memorial Lecture on the subject of urban inequality for the State of Australasian Cities conference this year. For the record, here's the long version of my response, minus the swearing (!!) ... which tried to talk through the…
At a deserted Federation Square in Melbourne, the big screen broadcasts this message: ‘If you can see this, what are you doing? Go home.’ Cassie Zervos/Twitter Kurt Iveson , University of Sydney Authorities have imposed significant restrictions on the size, purpose and location of gatherings in public space to slow the transmission of COVID-19. The massive impacts of these escalating restrictions…
[Yesterday, a meeting of the Sydney Alliance Council passed a motion about the language the Alliance and partner organisations are going to use in the face of COVID-19 ... with so many stories of social isolation and disconnection emerging, there's a general aversion to the language of "social distancing". I was asked to write a short backgrounder for that discussion ... so figured I'd post here…
The Global Strike for Climate today in Sydney, and in towns and cities across Australia, was massive! They've been such a source of inspiration and determination in hard times. It was fantastic to see so many university staff and students participating. I was honoured to speak for the National Tertiary Education Union as we assembled at the University of Sydney this morning. For what it's worth,…
[Originally published on The Conversation ] With the re-election of the Berejiklian government, NSW now has a Minister for Public Spaces – Rob Stokes. This new ministerial portfolio was first mooted in February, when the Premier announced that it would be tasked with identifying and protecting publicly-owned land for use as parks or public spaces. As important as this task is, we need even more…
There are still a few days left to catch Wendy Murray’s exhibition Sydney - We Need to Talk at Cross Art Projects in Sydney . The exhibition features some of the illustrations that Wendy made for the book of the same name ( which you really should download, if you haven't already! ). I was honoured to be asked to speak at the launch of the exhibition. Taking inspiration from the title of Wendy’s…
So, there was controversy here in Sydney a couple of weeks ago about the NSW Government's decision to force the Opera House to display an advertisement for a horse race . I wrote an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald about the broader issue of advertising and its impacts on public space. Premier Gladys Berejiklian's intervention to insist the Sydney Opera House allow blatant Racing NSW…
I'm excited (and proud!) to announce the publication of a new book that I've been involved in pulling together. It's called Sydney -- We Need to Talk! It has been written by a group of folks at the University of Sydney -- geographers, plannings, political scientists, visual artists, staff and students -- who have been meeting every week to talk about our work on the politics of urbanisation. We're…
I was invited to contribute something on safety and public space for a series of articles in The Conversation called Cities for Everyone . Figured I should post it here too! ** The central role of public spaces in the social, cultural, political and economic life of cities makes it crucial that they're accessible to everyone. One of the most important qualities of accessible public spaces is…
I'm excited to say that we're having an event here in Sydney on Thurs Feb 22 called "Cities and Citizenship". It's a Sydney Ideas event, with some fabulous speakers who are in Sydney that week to participate in a workshop that Amanda Tattersall and I have organised to discuss the democratisation of cities. Amanda and I will be talking about our work on urban alliance building, and we'll be joined…
OK, this is completely off topic ... but in cleaning up an old office, I have just found a good, working version of The Green Revolution Game . The graf lover in me wants to keep it just because the fonts are so cool. But it's not for me, and before it ends up in a skip, I'm hoping someone might want to rescue it. I don't really know much about it, beyond the basic idea that it's a role-playing…
Yesterday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced the results of the postal survey it was directed to conduct by the Turnbull Government about the Marriage Act. Across Australia, 61.6% supported changing the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry. Yay! But the uneven geography of this vote has also attracted attention. The 'Yes' vote was slightly lower in NSW - largely because 12…
Back in May, NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance announced plans to go to competitive tender for buses in the inner west of Sydney - effectively privatising bus services in that densely-populated region. (In Sydney, bus services in different parts of the city are divided up into 'contract regions'. The government-owned State Transit Authority (STA) currently holds the contract to provide…
For the past few months, I've been co-hosting a fortnightly segment on FBi Radio 94.5FM, based here in Sydney, called Down to Earth . It's a segment about stuff we can do to make cities fairer and more sustainable. So far we've talked about a bunch of things, from the recent re-emergence of green bans in Sydney (of course!), to disposable coffee cups and plastics waste, urban beekeeping,…
Pokémon GO players gather at Peg Patterson Park in Rhodes, Sydney. Source: ABC In an earlier post here , I argued that Pokémon GO involves players in a form of 'playbour', because playing the game involves the production of geospatial data that is owned and can be traded by the game's creator, Niantic. In this post, I want to take a look at a related set of issues that have arisen with the rapid…
Street sculpture and tents, Hong Kong 2014. Source: Mapping the Umbrella Movement McKenzie Wark has written a great review of Judith Butler's 2015 book "Notes Toward A Performative Theory of Assembly" over at Public Seminar . Butler's book includes a chapter called ' Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street ', that appeared online a couple of years back as a talk given by Butler in the…
Right then, this was fun. The Sydney Morning Herald piece on Pokemon GO got picked up by the lovely people at The Stream on Al Jazeera , and I was just involved in an interesting panel discussion on the game and its politics. The 30 minute discussion covered political appropriations of the game, the apparently racialised uneven distribution of PokeStops and Gyms in the game, the accessibility of…
So ... Pokémon GO has been a thing, right?! The article below was published as an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald last week. It's included here with active links for anyone who's interested. It's about the way the game turns play into a kind of 'digital labour', through the collection and monetisation of data about our movements through the urban environment. I've got a bit more to say…
Last weekend, my fam and I popped in to Canterbury Racecouse, where a food market has just started up on Sundays. Empanadas and stuff. Right on. At the far end of the market sat a parked bus that announced itself as a 'Talk Bus'. People with black t-shirts and balloons covered in hashtags were trying (and mostly failing) to connect with passers-by. They wanted to know what we loved about living in…
A few weeks back, Sadiq Khan was elected Mayor of London. He has committed to a target of 50% affordable housing in new housing developments in London. That's a stark contrast to what's going on here in Sydney, where the affordable housing target is ... well, there isn't one. Out of some frustration with that situation, I banged out an opinion piece that got a run in the Sydney Morning Herald ,…
[Crickey, a year since the last post here! Time to get things going again...] Protesters in the Place de la Republique, Paris. Image source: The Guardian Twelve nights of protests and counting in Paris, under the Nuit Debout banner. There's a story in the Guardian here about the first week of protests. As with many other occupations that have taken place in the last five years or so, there's a…
I'm in the US right now ... and the killing of Freddie Gray while in police custody, and the subsequent protests and riots taking place in Baltimore, have dominated the news. Today, protests took place in Philadelphia, and more are planned in further cities over the next few days. A change has got to come. These two videos spoke to me in different ways today...
For those in Sydney ... get in while you can to check out Some Posters/Local Positions , an exhibition of posters by Alison Alder and Mini Graff at The Cross Arts Projects. Mini Graff, 2015, Pipped at the post (Dominos) The exhibition is a part of the gallery's program to celebrate the 40th anniversary of International Women's Year (1975). It features new work from both artists that responds to…