This Must Be The Place Podcast

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 owners, Chris and Meaghan Blackwell, about their hopes and ideals, the gamble of opening a café in the first place, and the local response.

In the wake of London’s catastrophic Grenfell Towers fire, and of local incidents including a balcony fire at Melbourne Dockland’s LaCrosse Tower, governments are increasingly acting to limit the use of Aluminium Composite Panels (ACP) and Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) cladding. Also referred to as flammable or combustible cladding, use of these materials – especially in buildings over 3 levels – is now presumed non-compliant with building and construction codes in Victoria. In its 2017 report the Victorian Cladding Taskforce found the widespread use of combustible cladding to have been enabled by a poor culture of industry compliance; issues with supply and marketing of materials; and multiple regulatory systems failures.

In this episode of This Must Be the Place Elizabeth speaks with Sahil Bhasin, National General Manager of Roscon – a building consultant group specialising in expert reports – about his perspective on the causes and costs of the combustible cladding problem (AKA ‘fiasco’). Sahil provided advice to the Senate Committee for Building Defects, and to the Victorian Cladding Taskforce.

Here Sahil explains what combustible cladding is, why and where there is so much of it (look, low cost, easy to install, etc.), applicable standards, enforcement and data gaps, and who is paying for the scramble to rectify. He also offers a glimpse into the black hole of governance decisions behind it. The episode considers the effects of decades of cumulative legislative changes including to insurance, building surveyors, and building authority jurisdictions, combined with a construction boom. Compounding difficulties of ongoing compliance, Australia faces the legacy of thousands of buildings already swathed in combustible materials. In Victoria tens of thousands of buildings, and hundreds of thousands of people, are in the midst of auditing and rectification set to last several years. Owners Corporations are grappling with estimates as high as $40,00 to $60,000 per apartment and millions of dollars per building, and an uncertain process within which properties are in limbo.

A theme is governments passing the costs of fixing cladding onto apartment owners. For example courts ruled that, as a result of legislative changes, the Victorian Building Authority cannot order directions to builders to fix non-compliant buildings after owners move in. Combined with audits and with changes exempting builders from home warranty insurance for buildings over three levels, homebuyers particularly in high-rise buildings have few consumer protections. With major builders going into administration, there are also often few legal recourses. To Sahil, “the government’s got itself to blame and the consumers are the ones paying the price”. Sahil argues recently announced loan schemes are not only unfair, but are political spin and too complex to work in practice.

Sahil says cladding is a bigger problem in Victoria than figures often cited. And that new construction continues to use cladding, even in the same municipalities currently issuing hundreds of notices to owners: “the message isn’t getting to the core, which is the builders”. Also included are perspectives on: lack of warranty insurance; misleading language of suppliers, media and the politics of risk, devaluation, commercial buildings, differences between Australia and UK, the role of fire engineers, resourcing issues including essential services audits, fixes (avoided), and the power and influence of the building industry.

With an aggregate bill of billions of dollars, the fallout from cladding is unfolding through industries, property markets, and legal systems. As well as immediate practical challenges, the cladding story raises broader questions around the nature of risk and liability in our buildings and cities, and the frameworks that govern them.

Disclosures: Elizabeth owns and lives in an apartment in an impacted building. Sahil’s company consults for buildings with cladding.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth speaks with RMIT’s Associate Professor Anitra Nelson about a new book, “Housing for De-Growth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities”, and a slightly less new (but still 2018) book, “Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet”.

‘Degrowth’ — a type of ‘postgrowth’ — is a political, practical and cultural movement for down-scaling material and energy throughputs. Housing for Degrowth, co-edited by Anitra with Francois Schneider, includes an international collection of critical case studies, many written by activist scholars, of practical experiments – ‘demonstrations’ – in approaches to housing. While diverse in their contexts, they tend to share principles such as an emphasis on housing justice, security, and basic rights. Degrowth projects also emphasise moving forward with the best available technologies, rather than austerity/moving backwards, or ‘decoupling’ that emphasises technological solutions. They also prioritise re-use and reduction in materials and energy, and designing for future re-use. The case studies explore benefits but also unexpected trade-offs - for example, the chapter on tiny house living reflects critically on the colonial and homesteading narratives of tiny homes. Without closing down discussions of larger system change, Housing for Degrowth is about grassroots groups and experiences: with the logic that “the only way we can actually get people on board is if they feel confident that they’re not going to be losing their safety and security and those things they really care about”.

Small is Necessary is not explicitly about degrowth, but speaks to case studies consistent with degrowth principles. It examines examples and ideas for housing based on sharing and collaboration: including cohousing, land-sharing, and ecovillages. In it Anitra speaks about the move to smaller housing and to co-living in terms of what it can offer diverse groups, including older people: more security, affordability, amenities, support from neighbours. The episode notes parallels with the utopian thinking, and ideas of quality over quantity, of William Morris in “Notes from Nowhere” (1890). For example, huge increases in housing size often go alongside reduced rights to public space.

The episode also covers challenges of prevailing housing systems; the difficult role of rights-speak in social movements; tensions between environmental and social movements; and planning regulations. For example Anitra suggests planners should enable and allow simple and smaller buildings as long as they are safe and secure. However, most policy frameworks directly discourage these kinds of housing. Each of the cases in “Housing for Degrowth” reflects on difficulties met with permit processes. These highlight basic dilemmas in policy: standards based on fears of overcrowded families, while serving a purpose and having historical grounding, are not necessarily consistent with current issues in housing systems.

Anitra talks about what is drawing people in to models like co-housing. One driver is the housing market: the experience of higher housing and energy costs, and of housing insecurity. In Europe, shrinking areas and cities are another driver – Anitra was recently part of a workshop at the EU Parliament, where policy-makers unexpectedly open to hearing about alternatives to growth models commented, “honestly, we feel like we have exhausted mainstream possibilities”.

Anitra has lived in co-housing for several decades.

Housing for Degrowth is available through the Routledge Environmental Humanities Series.

Small is Necessary is available through Pluto Press and also open access.

http://www.routledge.com/Housing-for-Degrowth-Principles-Models-Challenges-and-Opportunities/Nelson-Schneider/p/book/9781138558052

http://anitranelson.info/small-is-necessary-shared-living-on-a-shared-planet/

For the latest 'ep' (showbiz podcasting talk) of This Must Be the Place David has a chat with Anthony O'Donnell, one of the three authors of the book Moss Cass and the Greening of the Australian Labor Party. Cass was a minister in the Whitlam government of 1972-75 and made major inroads in the Labor party's embrace of the green movement (so, paving the way for the saving of the Franklin River in the early 80s for instance) and was responsible for the granting of the public radio licenses which, let's face it, have completely changed Australia's cultural landscape since the mid-1970s. It's a great piece of Australian political history.

In this experimental episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth pilots a computer program named Digital Death Trip, or alternatively Trove Town Tragedy, coded by Elizabeth’s sister Sarah. The program selects a random location in Victoria, then a random ‘tragedy’ from that location using the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive of digitized newspapers, and the Trove API. The olden days articles retrieved are mostly from between the 1860s and 1950s. The program uses ‘Speak’ to read out articles in a robot voice. It’s art meets historical geography meets Perfect Match robot.

Death Trip is a reference to 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip, a collection by Michael Lesy of photographs and news articles from two small superficially comfortable Wisconsin towns in the late 19th century. By picking darker articles – suicides, epidemics, bankruptcies, murders, tramp armies – the effect was “constantly repeated themes”, with fragments illustrating each another and the disruptions of their times. Elizabeth wondered if something broadly similar could be done with Australia’s Trove.

Trove’s API allows you to use a key to search and use results automatically, to create your own application (one example is the Trove Penguin Bot). Much of Trove is open and crowd-sourced - anyone can search, or correct machine-read text, or create lists. While it doesn’t yet have specific location data, experiments like this bring more of a spatial dimension.

What the Death Trip code does is randomly select a place name in Victoria, combine this with the key word “tragedy”, search Trove, shortlist and read out headlines, and compile a case file on a random article. Depending what comes back, the idea is to investigate the selected town tragedy. This could be an excuse to go on trips to visit Victorian towns, perhaps some with swimming pools. While the code could search for any kind of event or word, this project is specifically interested in the word ‘tragedy’.

Tragedy was a common news headline partly because covering Coroner’s courts and police beats was a convention of the emerging popular newspaper industry of the 19th century. The articles the bot retrieves are not just any tragedies, but those tied to a place, usually with ‘the’ definite article. Nearly every Australian town seemed to have had incidents headlined The [insert Town Name] Tragedy. These included forces of nature – drowning and fires, and what we might now call negligence involving workplace machinery. Car accidents, as we now know them, were at first ‘tragedies’. And violence: it covered suicides, murders, and murder-suicides particularly in the context of the home.

Naming things ‘The’ town tragedy seemed to suggest such things couldn’t and haven’t happened in that place, and that if they did they would leave a lasting impact. One thing the experiment shows is these things have happened, usually more than once, and they are forgotten, and happen again. Tragedy seemed then, as now, to mean the line between things we want to try to understand or control, and those we do not. Some of these change, and some don’t (notably, some of the language of domestic murder suicides).

As part of this project, Elizabeth has so far corrected and tagged about 1,100 tragedies. Words like farm, ‘pea-rifle’, and ‘quarrel’ have new connotations. In this test, Elizabeth and Sarah run through the concept, then the mechanics and mishaps of running the code, and see which towns and tragedies the bot picks. As it turns out, those selected are from 2 irrigation towns in Victoria: The Tatura Tragedy 1905; and The Quantong Tragedy 1894. As a follow up, Elizabeth will use the results to find out more about the incidents and their contexts in time and place.

Trove Town tragedy list:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?l-publictag=trovetowntragedy

Github project:

http://github.com/SarahTaylorProject/trove_experiment

This episode of This Must Be The Place was recorded at Apulia Grove, an olive farm of 2,500 trees near Toolleen in Northern Victoria (between Heathcote and Elmore). Elizabeth and David met Ceilidh and Charles, the co-owners/farmers, after Elizabeth arranged for some backyard olives to be pressed into oil. She went in with Elmore neighbours to send olives to a farm that does small batch (50-200kg) processing. In the process she found out Charles, one of the owners, used to be the drummer in a band called The Ears, that David knows a weird lot about. By association Charles had a part in the 1986 film Dogs in Space, starring Michael Hutchence (INXS) and based on The Ears, which David is editing a book about. The interview covers the making of the Dogs in Space film, life in The Ears and small Melbourne bands of the 1980s, and the business of a small olive farm.

Charles, self-described “star of stage screen and dole office”, recently retired from IT. Ceilidh grew up in Western Victoria, instilled permaculture early, and worked in universities. They bought the farm in 2007, ran it on weekends, and both recently moved there full time. Apulia, named for the region of Italy Charles’ father was from, is a “large small farm” by Australian standards. The interview discusses olive production in Australia, with one company making up 80%. But unlike e.g. broad hectare agriculture, olive production is not agglomerating. Demand is growing and large producers are expanding, but small and medium producers continue. Smaller and older groves have different planting layouts to mechanized operators, making it less likely big producers buy smaller farms. It’s hard work: Ceilidh describes the learning curve. Having an oil machine (named Ivan) is a feature of the farm. Most presses only do larger amounts, so backyard and hobby producers travel to process oil at Apulia Grove.

Dogs in Space was written and directed by Richard Lowenstein, and set in 1978-80 in Melbourne’s “little band scene” - an experimental post-punk music scene with many short-lived interlinked bands. It was shot in a huge old house in Richmond, the one Charles (and Richard, and Sam the Ears singer) lived in with a rotating cast of housemates. Charles basically plays himself (6-8 years prior) in the film and is the only person in the Ears who plays a member of the Dogs in Space band. One of his lines is “god I hate parties, where’s the booze?”. His character description was “ugly, arrogant, bad complexion”: Caleigh says “I’ve been told he wasn’t really acting all that hard”.

Charles was in other bands including Olympic Sideburns, Dresden War Crimes, and Dorian Grey; and was a community radio host. The interview, helped by old posters, covers early band days and places played at including The Exford, Beverley’s, and Seaview Ballroom. Charles stresses he was in the earlier, not later poppy Ears lineup: “so you left because they were changing direction?”, “no I got chucked out – probably because I wasn’t very good”. While they had good songs “nobody knew how to play a note, as was the fashion at the time”. When they recorded the film soundtrack Charles remembers asking “what we might have achieved back then if we had those resources, and also, been able to play?”

The interview reflects on changes to housing markets in Melbourne, with the Richmond house emblematic. The film characters are mostly unemployed, playing in bands, living in inner city sharehouses. Housing costs have increased well ahead of incomes since then. David’s book uses the film “as a way to hang a series of investigations on the idea of inner city creativity and gentrification”. Dogs in Space was a boon to Charles, paying enough for a deposit on a milk bar in Northcote. From there, he and Ceilidh bought Apulia grove, but were briefly tempted the (renovated, pricey) Richmond house. Small bands, small farms, changing industries, changing places.

http://www.apulia-grove.com.au/

http://www.punkjourney.com/ears.php

This episode of This Must Be The Place is a four-way conversation between David and Elizabeth; and the hosts of another Melbourne planning-related podcast – Planning Xchange (or ‘PX’). PX hosts Jess Noonan and Peter Jewell are both practicing planners, and their podcast features interviews with people employed across different roles in planning related fields. PX aims to “promote a better understanding of urban affairs and city design”.

The episode is an effort at cross-fertilisation between TMBTP and their “podcast cousins” (to use Peter’s phrase). Of course, that troubling mixed metaphor might bring to mind questions of the merits of cross-fertilising between cousins. The idea seems to be called crossover in the music industry, like when you get Tim McGraw and Nelly together. Incidentally this episode will exist on PX in a slightly different format: without our “spooky” music, and possibly with a different approach to ums and ahhs (which Elizabeth enjoys editing).

A central theme in the discussion is the crossover between academic and practicing planning worlds – or rather the lack of it, whether there is a need for it, and how to go about closing gaps that exist. (Podcasts are one modest part of the answer). We debate to what extent the onus in on universities to better transmit research findings; or on practicing planners to stay more open to new ideas. The lack of historical perspectives in planning practice is an example. We also touch on fundamental differences in forms of knowledge, and the dangers of trying to measure impact.

We also ask: how is university education preparing planners for practice, and should it? While mostly we agree the purpose of a university education isn’t to learn how to fill out a permit form, there are different thoughts about how broad a view planning education should give. What sort of generalist skills do you need, and realistically how does a university transmit them? Will this be on the exam? In the process we get an idea of what our jobs are; how we access and use information; and some misconceptions different sectors have of each other.

Plus:

David and Elizabeth muddling through explaining what their podcast and their research programs are actually about;

The promises and perils of technology in planning: digitized records; plagiarism; driverless cars; parking; machine learning, robot planners…

Comparing metrics by which work is judged – peer reviewed output and research grants in universities; financial returns, project delivery and client relations in consultancies;

David at the tail end of teaching: “we’re in week 12 now and if someone said to me right now we’ve added a week 13, I’d just go, OK I’m going to Peru”;

How 20,000 signatures were collected to stop the pioneer cemetery becoming the Victoria Market.

And more. PX are now part of the Urban Broadcast Collective, so while you can subscribe to PX you can also hear more of them via UBC in future.

Peter Jewell runs his own consultancy, Jewell Partnership. And we hear how Peter:

Mainly remembers university for discovering Australian Literature;

Enjoys BBC podcasts Thinking Allowed and In Our Time (including the Highland Clearances one);

Is optimistic about machine learning, but worried about surveillance and human rights.

The last academic research Peter read was a UK study on using machine learning to understand whether a view is “scenic or not”.

Jess Noonan is an urban planner working with Tract Consultants. And we hear how Jess:

Has a degree in public health;

Works as a tutor at RMIT;

Is an optimist about technology: she recently experienced a trial of a driverless bus in Perth.

The last academic paper Jess read was, ironically (or at least, proving the title a bit more wrong), “Not a lot of People Read the Stuff”.

Planning Exchange: http://www.planningxchange.org/

“Not a Lot of People Read the stuff”: http://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111146.2014.994741?journalCode=cupr20

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth corners son-to-be Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton just before his retirement from RMIT after around 20 years. Michael describes his move to academia from state government (“as a refugee from regulated planning culture”), and as someone who has been closely involved in local government politics. Change is a recurring theme in the discussion: Michael was initially involved in major changes to the structure and content of planning and environment courses at RMIT. This content overhaul took 2 months – a similar endeavor today would take at least 2 years, reflecting broader changes to university management and administration styles.

Amidst an increasingly centralized and casualised university culture, the RMIT planning course has expanded from what was only a few staff and students into what is now the biggest postgraduate program in planning in Australia. Yet Michael expresses some doubts: “because we’ve put out the majority of the planners that are working in local and state government at the moment, and I don’t know what’s changed”. Graduates have moved into a progressively deregulated system, and there is high turnover. Few have moved into senior management roles or into politics: “it’s just proved a lot harder for them than I thought”. In retrospect, Michael suggests RMIT could have a whole component of teaching around the politics of change: or more cynically, “sometimes I think I achieved more in 1 week in local politics and state government than I have in 20 years at RMIT”.

Michael and Elizabeth discuss the best role of academics in public policy debates, and different strategies for this. There’s the networking approach (applied successfully in Melbourne’s ill-fated urban growth boundary), working with community groups, and getting in the media (as Michael often has) to try to change attitudes yourself – “the down side of that is you cheese all the politicians off, and so that’s an incompatible approach to the networking approach”. Pointing out the privileged position academics are in, Michael argues they have an onus on them to work more closely with community groups to achieve policy outcomes. By this Michael often means mobilizing with residents against high-rise– Elizabeth suggests also connecting with people who actually live in high rise.

They also discuss the merit of research and its voluminous outputs – the dream that, one day at least, someone might read it and find it useful. At least, that’s what researchers like to tell themselves. The interview with Michael is also peppered with critical commentary zingers about planning in Melbourne – on code assessment, illusory growth boundaries, infrastructure lags, and proliferating high rise buildings. Changes in political cultures and attention spans are speculated upon – Michael describes “the most precious group of politicians that have ever represented people”, with vastly reduced reading and attention capacities - “after 10 minutes they’re starting to go spare, you know”. This bit comes about 30 minutes into the interview, so the politicians won’t hear it. If they were listening. Or reading this. Both of which are highly doubtful.

The episode finishes up on the massive collection of stuff that is Michael’s former office, much of it acquired via the garages of former public servants. There are about 3,000 volumes of historical policy material being shifted from Michael’s office, that the school will archive and eventually make public. Although Michael is retiring from paid work, he expects to continue writing and being involved in RMIT for a few years at least. After that he may pursue his interest in warfare and military theory – how closely this relates to his take on planning, you may wish to ponder.

How do people in Melbourne apartments travel? How often do they drive cars, or use public transport? How much parking is enough? Can planning influence this? Such questions are often debated in the planning system (and beyond). However, there is little data available on the observed travel behavior of people living in apartments. Instead, most discussions are based on rough demand estimates, or on personal experience.

In this episode of This Must Be The Place, Elizabeth speaks with Dr Chris De Gruyter, who has recently undertaken – along with a small army of students – a comparative study of travel in apartment buildings in Melbourne. Chris is formerly of Monash University and starting a fellowship in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT. Originally a traffic engineer, he has been in transport planning for around 15 years.

Chris used to prepare ‘travel plans’: sets of initiatives or facilities to manage car use at a site. Over the past 10 years in Melbourne these have often been required for new apartment buildings. Travel plans typically include public transport tickets, bicycle parking and repair equipment, car sharing, and information about transport options. They are sometimes used to argue for reduced parking, but also used by developers as selling points. Chris wondered how effective these plans really were, and undertook research on this topic.

Chris describes the approach taken to examine how different the travel patterns of apartments with travel plans are to similar buildings without them. Researchers identified 4 inner Melbourne apartment buildings with travel plans, and matched them (based on age, location, size, tenure) to 4 similar buildings without travel plans. There were around 1,000 apartments in total. Researchers counted people and cars coming in and out of the buildings during weekday and weekend peaks. They also went early in the morning and counted how much parking there was and how many spaces were used. And they distributed household travel surveys.

For context: across Melbourne, on average 70-80% of trips are made by car. In the inner city, car use is lower, but normally around 40-50%. The study found that of the buildings with travel plans, 26% of trips were made by car, compared to 40% of trips at the control sites – a fairly large difference. Based on analysis of the household travel surveys, they found self-selection (existing differences in personal values) was a factor but not as important as differences between buildings.

The buildings all had less than the standard parking requirements for Victoria, and slightly more than the required bike parking rate. In buildings with travel plans, there were on average 130 car parking spaces, of which 90 were used and 40 empty. Parking occupancy in the travel plan sites was around 60-70%. Control sites without travel plans had more parking, and lower occupancy. One building had 170 parking spaces, of which only 100 were used. Car parking was used at a rate of 0.4 cars per dwelling in the travel plan buildings, and 0.5-0.6 in the control sites. All bike parking in the buildings was used, sometimes with more bikes than spaces. In one case there were 80 bikes for 60 spots.

The results point to travel plans as an effective influence on travel patterns. They also point to an oversupply of apartment car parking, and an undersupply of bike parking. Possible implications are changes to parking policies (car and bike); and ‘unbundling’ of housing from parking. While low-car and apartment living is not for everyone, Chris’ research points to there being market for this housing, and a need for better planning for it. The discussion concludes by touching on Chris’s new research on the impacts (conversely) of apartments on public transport and bike infrastructure.

Understanding travel plan effectiveness : http://trrjournalonline.trb.org/doi/abs/10.3141/2537-14

Measuring self-selection:

http://trrjournalonline.trb.org/doi/abs/10.3141/2564-07

In this episode of This Must be The Place Elizabeth is joined by Sam Whiting, a PhD candidate and lecturer in popular culture in the school of Media and Communications at RMIT; and by Dr Sarah Taylor (Elizabeth’s sister), who recently completed a PhD on the historical geography of live music in Sydney and Melbourne and who is now a data scientist, also at RMIT.

Sam’s PhD explores small live music venues: how they work as concentrations of cultural & social capital, and as places where acts get their first break. His study sites are The Old Bar and The Tote, in Melbourne’s inner north. Sarah’s PhD compared spatial patterns of live music in two cities over three decades, during which Sydney’s live music scene declined, and Melbourne’s grew, albeit both in spatially uneven ways. Both Sam and Sarah spoke with musicians about how they got started with gigs, and their experiences in different venues and cities.

Inspired by Elizabeth recently reading autobiographies by Phil Collins and Johnny Marr, they discuss the ways musicians live and remember their lives in the context of spaces and places. Geographies of live music are revealed not only by memoirs (which are, in Sam’s words, usually “romanticised, but that’s kind of what rock and roll is all about”), but patterns of success clearer at a wider scale.

One theme is the pull of cities like Melbourne in the migration of musicians, famous and not. Sam explains most staff and musicians at Melbourne venues are from regional and interstate areas. Aspiring musicians often migrate based on authenticity myths surrounding venues (“the home of rock”). Also covered: places musicians get breaks, musicians as public figures (or, often, notable jerks), managers & social connections, conundrums of liking songs despite musicians’ personal lives, community radio, planning regulations, and long-running venues- these are rare, and those that survive navigate risks of becoming a museum to their pasts.

Sam is suspiciously averse to musician biographies and claims to have rarely read past a first chapter, as musicians are “fundamentally boring people”. Sam is a musician, and teaches music & writing about music - which may explain his burnout on biographies. Sarah by contrast (though also a musician) is a voracious reader of musician biographies, even bad ones.

The episode was recorded outside the Curtin Hotel in Carlton, a live music venue. You can hear the band upstairs starting up, adding to sounds of motorbikes, buses, sirens, and chewing ‘loaded’ fries. Tune in for trivia on bands you may like, dislike, or like (but risk disliking if you hear about their biographies). Explicit content warning – swear words, horrible musician stories.

Reading List:

Phil Collins “Not Dead Yet”

Johnny Marr “Set the Boy Free”

Jeff Apter “Tomorrow Never Knows: The Silverchair Story”

Jimmy Barnes “Working Class Boy”

Carrie Brownstein“Hunger Makes me a Modern Girl”

Kim Gordon “Girl in a Band”

Tex Perkins “Tex”

David Nichols “The Go-Betweens”

Andrew Stafford “Pig City”

Bruce Springsteen “Born to Run”

Daryl Easlea “Crazy in Love: The Beyonce Knowles Biography”

Spandau Ballet “Soul Boys of the Western World” (documentary)

Martin Kemp “True”

Gary Kemp “I Know This Much”

Anthony Kiedis “Scar Tissue”

Motley Crue “The Dirt”

Nikki Sixx “The Heroin Diaries”

David Hasselhoff “Making Waves”

Mark Seymour “Thirteen Tonne Theory”

Sara Cohen “Rock Music in Liverpool”

Justin Heazlewood (aka The Bedroom Philosopher) “Funemployed”

George Orwell “Road to Wigan Pier”

Burke, M. & A. Schmidt How should we plan and regulate live music in Australian cities? Learnings from Brisbane. Australian Planner.

Sarah:

http://cordite.org.au/essays/lost-venues-long-nights/4/

http://www.rmit.edu.au/study-with-us/engineering/surveying-and-geospatial-sciences/meet-our-students/sarah-taylor

Sam:

http://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2017/feb/first-melbourne-music-memorabilia-event

http://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-whiting-04849a110