Archive for the 'Urbanism' Category

WorkChoices goes undercover

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Activism, Federal Elections, Film, TV, Video etc, Industrial Relations, Media, Sociology and Urbanism
. 24 Comments

I was out at Ipswich the other day, to do an interview with Geraldine Doogue for a show she’ll be broadcasting on the pivotal Queensland seat of Blair. We sat down to have a chat at Murphy’s pub, next to T. J. Ryan House, the home of the Ipswich Workers Club and the Trades and Labor Council. Ipswich isn’t the big union and working class town it once was, because it was hit hard by the globalisation of the Australian economy in the late 80s and early 90s. The coal ran out, and the Goss government shut down the railway workshops which had been a large local employer. The Hanson phenomenon is better explained by economic changes than some sort of purely Quinceland racial redneckism in many ways.

Cruelly, the attempts of a fairly enlightened city council in the late 90s and early 2000s to reinvent Ipswich as something of an information and creative economy hub on the back of the 1998 opening of a local campus of UQ were probably stymied by the rep Pauline gave the place. It’s a pity in more ways than one, because it’s a nice town. Rather like Newcastle, a lot of the economic life of the city has been sucked towards the metropolis as it’s increasingly become a dormitory suburb for Brisbane, as have the new houses along the Warrego Highway, also in Blair. So the CBD is a bit of a ghost town during the day. But interestingly orange shirted Rights at Work campaigners were out and about in the searing heat, and on the way back to Brissie I saw quite a few of them near a shopping centre along the Ipswich motorway planning their doornocking.

Continue reading ‘WorkChoices goes undercover’

Brisbane Central by-election

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Brisbane, Elections, Film, TV, Video etc, Media, Politics and Urbanism
. 10 Comments

As I noted in a previous post about the Greens’ campaign, residents of Brisbane Central vote in a by-election tomorrow called as a result of Peter Beattie’s retirement from the Queensland Parliament. I’ve had a fair few bits of propaganda in my mailbox from both Labor’s Grace Grace and the Greens’ Anne Boccabella. But, even though a campaign such as this tends to focus much more on local issues than a state wide or a commonwealth election, the basics of the campaign process are similar. There are few opportunities to meet the candidates, and fewer for citizens to put them under pressure with probing questions - which may relate to issues the parties have not chosen to highlight (and perhaps don’t want to highlight). The New Farm Neighbourhood Centre organised a Politics in the Pub session at the Brunswick Hotel on Tuesday night which did provide such opportunities. But most in attendance were friends, family and supporters of the candidates.

Gone are the days when candidates would address lively public meetings full of engaged citizens, and press coverage of the campaign is sketchy at best. While the potential of video and YouTube to capture “Macaca moments” and unforced errors is something that’s been widely discussed, it also has a much more informative and democratising potential through citizen journalism, something already seen in the federal election campaign with Youdecide2007. So, as a modest contribution to that process, I’m posting videos of the addresses by Grace Grace and Anne Boccabella, and segments of the questions from the audience which I captured on Tuesday night and which I’ve uploaded to Google video. My hope is that this will allow aspects of Tuesday night’s proceedings to reach a wider audience than those who were present, and with any luck, perhaps there’s also the potential for undecided Brisbane Central voters to use this as part of their decision making process.

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger on the by-election.

Update: The Poll Bludger is live blogging the results.

Labor’s Grace Grace speaks:

The Greens’ Anne Boccabella speaks:

Continue reading ‘Brisbane Central by-election’

Lazy Sunday! (Beer, bocce, bands and glockenspiel photo-essay edition)

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Brisbane, Culture, Life, Music, Photography, Sociology and Urbanism
. 72 Comments

So, since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!

It’s Jacaranda time in Brisneyland, and the livin’s easy. My peregrinations on Friday night have already been Facebooked, and Saturday really was a lazy day. But we’re dealing with 30+ days in Brisneyland at the moment (gloriously relieved tonight by the first summer spring storm), and I was a bit wary of wandering down to the Powerhouse for the free Sunday arvo LiveSpark gig. But we’re inured to the weather, we Brisvegans, and so I thought I’d do a bit of a photo essay, as part of my visual/urban sociology project, to document how we enjoy hot afternoons in my neck of the woods. I’ll post all the photos over the fold, but for best results, click through and then click again on the photo or on the full view link for the larger version.

The full set of pics can be viewed @ Facebook. I tend to reserve the deviantart gallery for the ones I like most/think are actually half way decent photos.

The bands playing were the excellent Do the Robot, whom I’ve blogged previously, surely Brisvegas’ premier indie rock glockenspiel band, and Iron On. I’ll be uploading some vids overnight, so watch this space or check out their myspaces (follow the band name hyperlinks) for a taste of what I listened to this arvo. Anyway, I hope everyone had a glorious weekend. I’m kicking back tonight with a six pack of James Squire amber ale and some cashews!


Hot October afternoon by *phenomenologist on deviantART

Continue reading ‘Lazy Sunday! (Beer, bocce, bands and glockenspiel photo-essay edition)’

And the words of the prophet are written on the subway Robertson St wall

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Activism, Art, Brisbane, Culture, Imperialism, Life, Music, Photography, Sociology, USA and Urbanism
. 27 Comments

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel (who incidentally I saw live back in the 80s at Lang Park)… But who would have thought that the James Street home of the inner city nouveaux riche and very self consciously fabulous would have contained so much political graffiti? A sign of the times? Who knows?

Continue reading ‘And the words of the prophet are written on the subway Robertson St wall’

The Toaster awards for crimes against amenity

Published
by
Phil
1 year, 2 months ago
in Activism, Miscellaneous, Policy, Sydney and Urbanism
. 16 Comments

Yesterday The NSW Greens Sylvia Hale announced their annual Bad Developer Awards, with Meriton’s Harry Triguboff the big winner for these glorious comments on developing Sydney’s Royal National Park.

You go north and we have all these reserves and you go south and you have all the reserves, and they are the best part of the coast. That is crazy. We should be building on this area,” he said. If they want to see trees, they can go to Katoomba, there are plenty of trees there.

In the Metro category the worst Commercial or Industrial development was the proposed Rose Bay Marina development by Addenbrook and the most environmentally-destructive development was the Port Enfield inter-modal freight centre by the NSW government.

Regional winners were Stocklands for a shopping mall in Mudgee and a residential development in Vincentia, with the most environmentally-destructive regional development going to Centennial Coal for the Anvil Hill coal mine in the Hunter Valley, something that will affect water sources and increase greenhouse emissions.

The worst council award went to Canada Bay in Sydney for its granting of public land to a politically connected private developer, a matter that is currently before the ICAC, and for its approval of the demolition of a cottage in an urban conservation zone, and Richmond Valley for planning a sprint car track next to an aged care home and for a sewage ocean outfall just off the beach.

There were positives too, not the least of which was an award to the always terrific Elizabeth Farrelly of the SMH for commentary on planning issues and The Friends of Callan Park as the best community campaign.

The full list is below the fold. Oh and speaking of development, there is a property for sale by private owner in todays SMH Domain, it looks lovely.

Continue reading ‘The Toaster awards for crimes against amenity’

Innovation, creativity, culture and industry policy

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Australiana, Culture, Economics, Federal Elections, International, Politics and Urbanism
. 58 Comments

One of the cut through lines that Labor has been reciting this year has been “ensuring prosperity beyond the resources boom”. There’s obviously a degree of political spin in it, but there’s also some truth. State Labor governments, particularly Victoria and Queensland, have picked up the innovation ball and run with it, while the best the Commonwealth government can do is to promise that in the opinion of the Dear (Co)Leader and Duumvir $weetie, the Subprime Minister, the resources boom will run forever. There’s a fair bit of deliberate or wilfully ignorant forgetting here that the resources sector is only a very small one in terms of employment, and that its benefits are very unequally distributed, though that sort of surfaced with the narrative of a “two speed economy” we heard a while back.

While the Coalition pans Rudd’s industry policy ideas as some sort of “back to the socialist future” disaster, it seems to me to be axiomatic that we, as a nation, need to focus on ensuring that we do ensure that our assets are leveraged properly in order to ensure a secure future for all of us, and that we focus equally and concomitantly on value-adding where we can build a competitive advantage not dependent on the vagaries of commodity prices. Continue reading ‘Innovation, creativity, culture and industry policy’

Forgotten Brisbane and fading Valley

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Activism, Brisbane, Culture, Indigenous, Photography, Sociology and Urbanism
. 19 Comments

The cityscape of our fine town is in constant flux, and often what’s buried by the reconstruction of the urban environment is not just memories and narratives which counter the traditional Quinceland theme of progress ever upwards but also distinctive spaces with their own cultural formations (something I related to music in the context of West End and Brisbane v. Brisvegas in an earlier post.)

Continue reading ‘Forgotten Brisbane and fading Valley’

The musical is the political: West End cabaret

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Brisbane, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, History, Music, Politics and Urbanism
. 37 Comments

It’s interesting how one evening can crystallise a few strands of thought. Recently, former Brisbane Labor Lord Mayor (and now paid huckster for developers) Jim Soorley hit out at West End folks:

FORMER lord mayor Jim Soorley has accused West End residents of living in denial and thinking “they can preserve their little dung heap as it is”.

One of the contentions of the Queensland front in The War on the States and its associated Howardian ideology of aspirational nationalism is that the local and the communal is the hawtness. But in fact, local government is often easily able to be captured by developers and special interests. Local interests are frequently to be found defending community against the local state. The trajectories of both Soorley and West End probably demonstrate that in spades. Soorley, a former Marist priest, and then management consultant, was an “accidental mayor”, defeating the out of touch and unpopular Liberal incumbent Sallyanne Atkinson in 1991. Initially, he made a big song and dance about taking public transport to work, refusing to wear mayoral robes and having his phone number listed in the directory. By the time he left office he was under a big ethical cloud for accepting corporate board positions, had a reputation for rudeness and aggression, and he promptly reinvented himself as a “consultant” to some of the same developers who’d arguably trashed the character of parts of Brisbane’s inner city. Through Soorley’s incumbency, we witnessed the transformation of West End from a vibrant and multicultural inner city community (think Glebe with more dykes, Greeks and Murris…) and a hub of social, political and ecological anarchism to SUV street. Its Brisvegasification, if you like, and it’s often forgotten that “Brisvegas” was originally an ironic term for the Joh/Sallyanne driven bright lights, big gambling losses urban strategy.

Continue reading ‘The musical is the political: West End cabaret’

Why does Guy Rundle hate Facebook?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Life, Media, Relationships, Sociology and Urbanism
. 86 Comments

There are two standard cliches that feature in almost every op/ed about social networking sites. Pedophiles are lurking on the intertubes, and most people write narcissistic nonsense about their cats. (As if there’s anything wrong with catblogging, and narcissism is in the eye of the beholder - most people’s conversations or photos or activities are important to them and their friends and family - even if they’re not deemed worthy of consumption or notice by media elites and some cultural critics.)

Writing in Crikey, Guy Rundle manages to avoid recycling at least one of those canards, but he fails to avoid another one beloved of the intellectual left:

After the novelty of having 900 ‘friends’ wears off, people will find that, though useful, social networking is cold and non-reciprocal, the measure of an atomised society rather than the answer to it.

As a sociologist, I’m automatically sceptical of claims that social interaction is somehow debased if it takes place online. There’s an element of the privileging of speech over writing that the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida famously traced back to Plato, and there’s a bigger element of a romantic suspicion of technology. Community, it’s often said, has been rent asunder by capitalism.

Well, maybe. Continue reading ‘Why does Guy Rundle hate Facebook?’

Brisvegas photoblogging

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Brisbane, Culture, Photography, Sociology, Sydney and Urbanism
. 11 Comments


Hitherto unnoticed sculpture by *phenomenologist on deviantART

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Housing (un)affordability II

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Australiana, Federal Elections, Howardia, Markets, Policy, Politics and Urbanism
. 23 Comments

Recently, I blogged about the release of Treasury papers which suggested land supply was not a panacea for facilitating entry into the housing market. Peter Costello has announced a probably pointless audit of land supply, which appears to be yet another symbolic blame the states exercise with no real potential to change anything. There are some hard choices to be faced if we want to seriously address this question as a nation, and some, like the removal of incentives to invest in medium density high priced inner city housing and diverting public money into social housing, are unlikely to be tackled seriously by either major party.

Andrew Bartlett has an excellent post on this issue, reproducing a piece he wrote for yesterday’s Crikey, which is well worth reading. Even Matt Price acknowledged his serious work on this issue on the weekend, though he couldn’t resist his usual quota of too smart by half snark.

Continue reading ‘Housing (un)affordability II’

Urbanism and ideas and blogging

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Australiana, Brisbane, Culture, History, Life, Photography, Sociology and Urbanism
. 39 Comments

One of the by products of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas blogging that Kim discussed in this post has been my discovery of one of Gary Sauer-Thompson’s blogs that I hadn’t previously been aware of - Junk for Code. I can’t see an explicit statement of the aims of this blog, but it seems to me to be a series of reflections on “urban textures” enhanced by photography, and personal and musical counterpoints. Adorno or Benjamin for an urban Australia caught somewhere between modernity and postmodernity, if you like.

It was interesting to read about Gary’s take on Brisbane in this post. The city’s recent urban transformation is interpreted as a contrast with Gary’s own home town of Adelaide, through a lens which focusses attention on the connections between the economic and the cultural and the shaping of feeling and lived experience:

Brisbane is a lovely city despite the development ethos and the boring high rise apartments towers scattered along the river. Its growth highlights just how much Adelaide has become a regional city; one that is surviving rather than thriving like Bendigo or Ballarat in Victoria, which are feeding off a booming Melbourne and its export hubs.

The Marriott Hotel (one of my favourites of the newer CBD buildings for its explicit homage to the nearby Customs House) from which the photo in the post is taken is one of the few highlights of a fairly forgotten zone of inner North Brisbane - once called Petrie Bight, a name rarely heard now. The links between de-industrialisation and urban change are very much in play in this neck of the woods.

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Streets of my town

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
1 year, 5 months ago
in Life and Urbanism
. 14 Comments

Well, it is not really a town. It is a called the Central Coast (just north of Sydney) where I live. The SMH has been running stories on the Central Coast all this week highlighting the problems this area faces as its population rapidly expands.

The problems faced by the Central Coast are a good example of what happens when expansion is not met with proper planning. As pointed out in this article, commuting is a major problem with the F3 between Gosford and Sydney struggling to cope and the rail network regularly running into trouble. Like this morning for example. Lucky my start time is very flexible. Also, like many who do the commute to Sydney, I’m armed with a Blackberry and a laptop. A mobile office if you will (though I detest people using mobiles on trains but that is another issue).

Regardless of the merits of using public transport, I can’t see how people drive to the CBD everyday from the Coast. Last time I did I came home with a massive headache and stressed from dealing with the traffic. The CBD to Hornsby is a painful crawl during peak hour. The trip of 13km takes at least twice as long as the 40 odd km from Hornsby to Gosford.
Continue reading ‘Streets of my town’

Cancer genes and other factors

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 6 months ago
in Medicine and Urbanism
. 11 Comments

There’s been a lot of press this last week about the reported breakthough in genome testing that will pinpoint clusters of imperfectly-copied genes that increase the risk of inheriting breast cancer. Much of the excitement is due to the fact that the technique can be equally well used in testing for other genetic combinations that increase the risk of developing cancers of all sorts, not just the breast tissue.

There’s no doubt that it is an exciting development indeed. There’s been plenty of hoopla, and the scientists who developed this will no doubt do very well from it, and so they should. However, I want to pinpoint one aspect that’s missing or at least glossed over in a lot of the coverage of the original Nature article detailing the new technique: inherited cancer vulnerability doesn’t explain most diagnosed cancers.

Contrast this fairly typical coverage from Business Weekly:

Two of the genetic regions they identified contain genes that are thought to increase breast cancer risk by about 20 per cent in women who carry one faulty copy of a gene and by between 40 and 60 per cent if they carry two faulty copies.

The lifetime risk for women who carry two faulty copies in either of these two genes would rise from one in 11 to around one in six or one in seven, respectively.

With this from Medical Laboratory World:

Breast cancer that is caused by inherited genetic faults is thought to account for around 5% to 10% of the 44,000 new cases diagnosed each year.

They’re both actually saying the same thing about the proportion of inherited gene factors leading to cancer, but one is using obfuscation to glide by it and the other is being clear about how inherited genetic faults are a minority of cancer cases.

Now obviously, if people with a genetic vulnerability know of it and are thus more aware of possible early symptoms and thus seek early treatment, this has the potential to save thousands of lives, or at least to prevent them from having to undergo radical surgery if their cancer can be treated less invasively and still be controlled. But what are the factors thought to be oncogenic amongst the 90-95% of breast cancer patients diagnosed each year who aren’t thought to have a particular genetic vulnerability?

Continue reading ‘Cancer genes and other factors’

The urban|rural divide

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 6 months ago
in Urbanism
. 20 Comments

LP missed the big day, but 23 May 2007 was calculated as the day when for the first time in history the world’s urban population outnumbered the rural population.

Although rural natural and social resources are necessary for urban people and places, the researchers say rural people do not fare well relative to their urban counterparts. Maps of U.S. quality-of-life conditions show that poverty and low education attainment are concentrated in rural areas – especially the rural South – where the nation’s food, water and forest resources exist.

Over much of the globe, rural poverty is much worse than in the United States. Findings by the International Fund for Agricultural Development show that 1.2 billion of the world’s people live on less than what a dollar a day can buy. Globally, three-fourths of these poor people live in rural areas.

The researchers add that, in addition to having a highly disproportionate share of the world’s poverty, rural areas also get the urban garbage. In exchange for useable natural resources produced by rural people for urban dwellers, rural places receive the waste products – polluted air, contaminated water, and solid and hazardous wastes – discharged by those in cities.

So, I’m an urbanite. I suspect many LarvyProdders are as well. What is your response to the above press release?