Urban Broadcast Collective

Design with confidence (Koos de Keijzer). Melbourne based architect, Koos de Keijzer talks with PX of the changing professional environment for architects and the challenges to create better citzen and residential outcomes within urban areas. He talks as a practising architect with offices in Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam. The interview discusses the golden rules of architecture, the benefits...

Clarksdale Blues & Resurrection (John Henshall). Melbourne economist John Henshall has a long term romance with the Mississippi delta town of Clarksdale. The birthplace and inspiration for many blues legends (and playwright Tennessee Williams), Clarksdale fell on very hard times, its great blues heritage all but forgotten. The resurrection of the town as a focal point of blues heritage, the associ...

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 preve...

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'.

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 orchard...

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 th...

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 bette...

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 19...

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 ent...

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 quali...

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 s...

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...

“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 geograp...

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 camp...

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...

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 Australi...

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.

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 a...

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...

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-...

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 ab...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 Assemblage...