City Road Podcast

Climate-change threatens peri-urban agriculture and food security. This session explores innovative social practices that secure food futures: in Sydney an evolving system connecting urban organic waste to peri-urban agriculture, and in Bologna Italy cooperatives in emerging food solidarity economies. Each case demonstrates how trusting relationships ensure local food futures in urban places.

Panel

Dr Abby Mellick Lopes, University of Technology Sydney

Gabriele Morelli, University of Milan-Bicocca

Dr Michelle Zeibots, University of Technology Sydney

Dr Stephen Healy, Western Sydney University

Chaired by

Dr Adrienne Keane, University of Sydney

Associate Professor Abby Mellick Lopes is a design studies scholar engaged in interdisciplinary, design-led social research and the Director of Postgraduate Design Studies at UTS. Her research practice brings design into relation with a vast range of disciplines that includes cultural studies, geography, urban studies and sociology.

Gabriele Morelli is a PhD Student in Urban Studies at the University of Milan-Bicocca and currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society (Western Sydney University). His ongoing research project is on the transformative potential of Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) initiatives in a Southern European urban context: the city of Bologna. He has also been active in several grassroots organizations, cooperatives and collectives in Bologna.

Michelle Zeibots is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UTS and transport planner, specialising in the analysis of sustainable urban passenger transport systems. She is also a farmer located in the Lithgow Region in Central NSW where she produces organically grown garlic using regenerative agricultural farming methods that contribute to the circular economy.

Stephen Healy is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Sydney’s Institute for Culture and Society. His research has concentrated on the relationship between economy, subjectivity and the enactment of new econo-socialities exploring various topics: health care reform policy, cooperative and regional development, and the solidarity economy movement.

Adrienne Keane is a Senior Lecturer, researcher and urban planner. Her primary research interest is in the area of statutory land use planning particularly the consequences of policies in nature conservation. Adrienne is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning having completed a Master in Urban and Regional Planning and a PhD. Current research falls under the umbrella of protecting natural values in cities.

Cities and regions across the world have experienced profound disruption from the rise of digital platforms across all areas of urban life. From housing, to transport, shopping, and the way we work, global firms such as ‘Airbnb’ and ‘Uber’ typically evade local (place based) policy and regulatory settings. However, their impacts have large socio-spatial footprints which need to be understood and factored into future urban policy and planning. Understood within the wider prism of technological innovation and emerging forms of digital automation across the urban sector, this session engages critically with notions of the ‘smart city’. Will the future city be dictated by ‘techno-capitalist’ firms or are ‘smart’ and socially accountable forms of urban governance still possible?

Panel

Dr Niels Van Doorn, Amsterdam University

Dr Sarah Barns, Urban Strategist & Researcher

Dr Justine Humphry, University of Sydney

Rory Brown, Smart Places at Transport for NSW

Chaired by

Dr Sophia Maalsen, University of Sydney

Niels van Doorn is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture in the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Platform Labor research project (2018-2023). His research asks how digital platforms are reshaping how people work, earn a living, and care for each other in urban environments. Niels holds PhD in Communication Science (2010) from the University of Amsterdam.

Dr. Sarah Barns brings two decades of experience navigating and shaping the impacts of digital transformation for cities and communities. She is author ofPlatform Urbanism: Negotiating Platform Ecosystems in Connected Cities (Palgrave, 2020) and a practitioner, researcher and strategist in place-based media and urban digital governance. Currently a Co-Director of urban media practice Esem Projects, Sarah is also an Industry Fellow at the QUT Design Lab and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne Centre for Cities.

Dr Justine Humphry is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Justine researches the cultures and politics of digital media and emerging technologies with a focus on the social consequences of mobile, smart and data-driven technologies. Her recent research addresses the materialisation of smart cities and the datafication of urban life with a focus on the mediation of home and urban space through smart street furniture, smart voice assistants and robotics.

Rory Brown is the A/Executive Director Smart Places at Transport for NSW. In this role he leads the NSW Government to deliver great places and outcomes for people using connected technologies and data solutions, working collaboratively across all tiers of government, with the research and academia sector and industry. He was also the architect of the flagship Smart Western City Program to co-create the Western Parkland City as a future-focused, digitally enabled city.

Sophia Maalsen is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Her research is predominantly situated at the intersection of the digital and material across urban spaces and governance, housing, and feminism, with particular interest in the digital mediation and reconfiguration of relationships across these spaces.

Many of the built environment’s peak industry associations recognise the need for rapid decarbonisation and have publicly stated their commitment. But what does it mean in reality? What are the barriers that we need to urgently address? How do we support innovation and accommodate rapid technological advances through our planning system? What opportunities should we leverage now and what preparation do we need for future changes? This Panel will focus on the practicalities and challenges facing those working towards zero carbon outcomes through the planning system, and the opportunities they see to advance this ambition.

This event has been co-organised with the Planning Institute of Australia

Panel

Peter Murrell, Senior Sustainability Advisor, Infrastructure, Strategy & Planning, VPA

Euan Williamson, Environmentally Sustainable Development Advisor, City of Yarra

Natasha Palich, Executive Officer, Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment (MAV)

Ellen Witte, Principal & Partner SGS Economics and Planning

Moderator

Jane Keddie, Director Hansen Partnership & Vice-President PIA Victoria.

Co-organised with the Planning Institute of Australia

This new book considers how Australians have provided water and sewerage for growing, sprawling urban centres. In this land of drought and flooding rains, we may need to rethink water use strategies, including embracing centuries of Aboriginal knowledge, seeing water as a resource to be conserved, rather than wasted or exploited.

Panel

Dr. Margaret Cook is an environmental historian who specialises in the history of ‘natural’ disasters in Australia, especially floods. The history of floods in the Brisbane River catchment was the subject of her PhD (UQ 2018) and is now a book, A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods (UQ Press, 2019).

Lionel Frost is an associate professor in the Department of Economics, and Head of the Monash Business School (Peninsula Campus). He is author of several books and articles on Australian and US urban history and Pacific Rim history, including contributions to the Cambridge History of Australia (2013), Cambridge World History (2015), and Cambridge Economic History of Australia (2015). He is current president of the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Dr. Ruth Morgan is an environmental historian, whose prize-winning work on the histories of water and climate has been generously funded by the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a lead author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report.

Martin Shanahan is Professor of Economic and Business History at the University of South Australia and Elof Hansson Visiting Professor in International Business and Trade at Gothenburg University, Sweden. A recipient of the Butlin Prize in Economic History, he has also written on wealth and income distribution, international cartels, and water markets.

Moderator

Ms Claire Smith, Department of Management, Monash Business School

We’ve got a treat for you today, a conversation about speculative fiction and cities with a fantastic panel.

Our panel includes award-winning author and critic James Bradley. James is the author of books such as Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and Clade, the first two books of The Change Trilogy for young adults, The Silent Invasion and The Buried Ark, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. His latest novel, Ghost Species, was published in 2020.

Matt Levinson is a built environment professional in Sydney and a voracious reader of all things urban. Matt has a lifelong passion for cities, culture and social change, and now leads corporate affairs and communication for the city’s peak advocacy and urban policy think tank, the Committee for Sydney.

Professor Nicole Gurran is an urban planner, and as you'll learn in this conversation a keen reader of speculative fiction.

The panel opens by talking about The City We Became, a speculative fiction novel by N. K. Jemisin.

Your host is Dr Rebecca Clements.

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City Road and The Henry Halloran Trust partnered to bring you this Festival of Urbanism podcast series.

Fifty years after former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s short-lived attempts to foster decentralisation, this event, held in Albury, one of Whitlam’s flagship National Growth Centres, examines the prospects for future growth in regional Australia. With a diverse panel of regional leaders and experts, the discussion will canvas opportunities and risks confronting communities beyond the major cities and the priorities for contemporary government intervention.

For the first time in four decades, Australia’s largest cities – Sydney and Melbourne – witnessed population loss last year, while many regional areas have experienced an influx of new residents. Some analysts view this shift as a temporary, pandemic driven phenomenon which has only exacerbated the regional housing crisis, but others see rich and dynamic opportunities for sustainable growth beyond metropolitan Australia. Fifty years after former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s short-lived attempts to foster decentralisation, this event, held in Albury, one of Whitlam’s flagship National Growth Centres, examines the prospects for future growth in regional Australia. With a diverse panel of regional leaders and experts, the discussion will canvas opportunities and risks confronting communities beyond the major cities and the priorities for contemporary government intervention.

 The Henry Halloran Research Trust would like to acknowledge the support of the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) in hosting this panel event.

Panel

Aunty Edna Stewart, Wiradjuri Elder

Andrew Boyd Barber, Urban Planner

Dr Julie Rudner, La Trobe University

Keynote address

Nicole Gurran, Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, Director Henry Halloran Research Trust, the University of Sydney

Chaired by

Michael Keys, Regional Growth NSW Development Corporation

Australia’s housing system is in crisis, and recent policy interventions have ranged from ineffective to counterproductive. From the deepening divide between home owners and renters, to unsustainable patterns of residential development and escalating climate risk – Australia’s housing policy framework needs an urgent reset. With new national and state housing initiatives on the table, this panel will debate whether it is possible to ‘renovate’ Australia’s housing system or whether radical change is needed to bring about a more inclusive and sustainable future.

Australia’s housing system is in crisis, and recent policy interventions have ranged from ineffective to counterproductive. From the deepening divide between home-owners and renters, to unsustainable patterns of residential development and escalating climate risk – Australia’s housing policy framework needs an urgent reset. With new national and state housing initiatives on the table, this panel will debate whether it is possible to ‘renovate’ Australia’s housing system or whether radical change is needed to bring about a more inclusive and sustainable future.

Panel

Jenny Leong, Greens Member, NSW Parliament

Rebecca Pinkstone, Bridge Housing

Leo Patterson Ross, NSW Tenants Union

Carrie Hamilton, Housing Action Network

John Engeler, Shelter NSW

Ben Spies-Butcher, Macquarie University

Chaired by

Nicole Gurran, Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, Director Henry Halloran Research Trust, the University of Sydney

In this event inspired by Elizabeth Farrelly’s acclaimed book ‘Killing Sydney’, we challenged creative thinkers, activists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to share their top-of-the-list solutions. Convened by prominent columnist, architectural critic and author Dr Farrelly, we invite you to join this frank and fearless conversation about Sydney’s future.

Has Sydney reached her tipping point? Following a series of existential threats – from the devasting summer 2020 fires and smog which enveloped the metropolis and surrounds to the urban exodus sparked by two years of global pandemic, from “faulty towers” to ongoing concerns about unbridled development – we must now ask: is it still possible to save the Sydney we love from rampant gentrification, environmental degradation, and climate catastrophe?

In this event inspired by Elizabeth Farrelly’s acclaimed book ‘Killing Sydney’ (Picador, 2021), we challenged creative thinkers, activists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to share their top-of-the-list solutions for saving our city. Convened by prominent columnist, architectural critic and author Dr Farrelly, we invite you to join this frank and fearless conversation about Sydney’s future.

Panel

Michael Rodrigues, Investment NSW  

Kerri Glasscock, Sydney Fringe Festival  

Prof Chris Gibson, University of Wollongong 

Dr Lyndal Hugo, Urban food entrepreneur  

Prof Philip Thalis, Architect   

Prof Michelle Leishman, Macquarie University  

Dr Elizabeth Farrelly, Writer and Journalist

Dallas talks with Megan about high-rise legal architecture make vertical urban growth possible, but do we really understand the social implications of restructuring city land ownership in this way?

Geographer and architect Megan Nethercote enters the condo tower to explore the hidden social and territorial dynamics of private vertical communities. Informed by residents’ accounts of Australian high-rise living, this book shows how legal and physical architectures fuse in ways that jeopardize residents’ experience of home and stigmatize renters.

As cities sprawl skywards and private renting expands, this compelling geographic analysis of property identifies high-rise development’s overlooked hand in social segregation and urban fragmentation, and raises bold questions about the condominium’s prospects.

Author

Dr Megan Nethercote is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research. Within the Centre for Urban Research she co-leads the Housing Research Program and, for the Urban Futures ECP, she co-convenes the Housing@RMIT network. In 2017, Megan was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship and a Malcolm Moore Industry Research Award.

What do authors think about when they’re writing a book about cities for kids?

And why are books about cities and urban life important for kids?

Dallas chats with kids book illustrator James Gulliver Hancock and Alexandra Crosby and Jesse Stein from UTS about kids, books and cities. We cover a lot of ground, from what it’s like to be an author to being a reader, parent and urbanist.

Guests

James Gulliver Hancock stylishly illustrated the popular book How Cities Work 1 (How Things Work). This innovative book for younger readers is packed with city facts, loads of flaps to lift, and unfolding pages to see inside buildings and under the streets. Children aged 5+ can learn about skyscrapers, subway systems and stinky sewers. Discover where people live and peek behind closed doors to see what’s going on in houses and apartments, or why not find out about what goes on underneath the streets you walk on every day?

Dr Alexandra Crosby is an internationally recognised scholar and visual communicator with an interest in expanding design practice. Her current body of research is focused on more-than-human design and recombinant ecologies in urban environments. Here, she explores the relationships between plants and people, revealing the systems and ecologies that will be critical to overcoming the impacts of climate change on our cities. Key projects include Mapping Edges, a transdisciplinary research studio in partnership with Associate Professor Ilaria Vanni Accarigi that uses permaculture design principles to create sustainable systems within urban environments. Repair Design, a collaboration with UTS researcher Dr Jesse Adams Stein, is another major piece of work that embeds repair practices and designing for zero waste at the core of traditional design disciplines.

Dr Jesse Adams Stein is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the UTS School of Design. She is an interdisciplinary design researcher specialising in the relationship between technology, work and material culture. Her research shifts between historical and contemporary contexts and focuses on the quieter and less fashionable aspects of design: industrial craft, manufacturing, repair, skill loss and the human experience of economic restructuring and deindustrialisation. Stein was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Fellowship (DECRA), commenced July 2021, and is currently investigating the project “Makers, Manufacturers & Designers: Connecting Histories”, a project that brings together design histories with manufacturing, production and technical education, in the Australian context.