This Must Be The Place Podcast

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth speaks with Michael O’Neill, one of the volunteer organisers of the group “Yarra Pools”. Yarra Pools are a community-led proposal to reintroduce recreational swimming to the lower reaches of the Yarra. While swimming in the upper Yarra – Laughing Waters, Pound Bend, Warburton – is popular, swimming in the lower urban reaches is now not only rare but technically illegal (due to boating regulations). Not that, as is noted, many people are being held back by the letter of the law.

Swimming in the urban reaches of the Yarra dropped off steeply about 50 years ago, mostly in the wake of environmental movement. Through the 1970s Melbournians became more aware of the scale and implications of pollution, and much less inclined to gleefully drench themselves in the Yarra’s soup of raw sewage, industrial goobers, tyres, and frightening compounds. Things like the traditional 3-mile swim to Princess Bridge became the equivalent of incredulously remembering how your Dad used to smoke in his office.

The environmental movement has since achieved huge gains in cleaning up the Yarra. Yet awareness has made people more wary of urban waterways. Michael characterises the cleanup of the Yarra as being about halfway there. The biggest remaining challenge is stormwater – AKA diffuse source pollution. Part of the idea for the urban pool proposal is about using swimmability as a benchmark – making the Yarra clean enough to swim in would represent a tangible and relatable measure of liveability. It would tie together the many cumulative efforts of environmental improvements including green roofs, tree canopy strategies, environmental allocations, and water sensitive urban design.

Inspired by similar proposals and examples worldwide – Thames Baths, Plus Pool New York, Helsinki, Brisbane - Yarra Pools is developing and testing the idea of a river pool on the Yarra River. They see it as a swimming spot but more generally as a social and meeting space. The chosen site is Enterprise Park opposite the Casino – perhaps best known for recent controversies about Melbourne’s homeless population. Michael discusses the history of the site including its status as an Indigenous meeting space and as site of first contact. He discusses the involvement of indigenous groups and indigenous design principles in developing the Yarra Pools project, and the history of swimming at the spot - “it’s not new what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to bring something back”. The pool idea is one example of how becoming aware of what has been lost can be a way of reimagining a future.

Also discussed is the “big journey to go on with regulators”. In olden-days Australia, people traditionally swam in rivers – pre-Olympic pools were areas of town rivers. Municipal chlorinated pools emerged alongside these spots as a sort of formalized offshoot, then outstripped them for reasons of pollution, public health, and local and national pride. Now, pubic pools are themselves under threat and river pools rarely contemplated. Both face the challenges of financialisation and risk mentalities. With pools seen as financial liabilities and as risks, this fuels a cycle of restrictions and cutbacks, undermining the benefits of spaces. Michael points out that this mentality has not (yet) been applied to parks. Yarra Pools’ vision is to create a space more akin to open space, with a cost model that keeps general access cost as low as possible, and facilitates community involvement.

Yarra Pools see themselves as positive disruptors – if it doesn’t happen now, someone will take up the idea eventually. Michael points to the success of Eastern Beach in Geelong – a pre-Olympic swimming spot restored using proto-crowd funding. Yarra Pools are on a timeline from 2016-2023. See their website to fill in a survey and see other updates. p.s. apologies, the sound quality drops substantially about 10 minutes due to a Dictaphone mishap. http://yarrapools.com/

In this episode Elizabeth and David do a round-up review of the 14th Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference, themed “Remaking Cities” and hosted by RMIT University in January-February 2018. The UHPH is a biennial (every 2 years! For anyone else who wonders about that word) conference, and Elizabeth and David contributed in various respects to the planning and organizing of this, the 14th installment of the UHPH. In this discussion they cover (with varying levels of impartiality) several of the excellent plenaries including Chris Gibson on the geographies of making and manufacturing; and Cathie Oats on the future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital archive service. They also comment on a few different sessions of interest including (in no particular order) quarrying and clay pits (the discussion is itself recorded at Fleming Park Brunswick, itself a former claypit); PBS radio; INXS and the Eels; post-war campuses including La Trobe and Macquarie; the failed border realignment of the ACT; Rambo the merino in Goulburn; Kodak in Melbourne; arcades; Ruth and Maurie Crow; past plans for a ‘mega centre’ at Moorabbin Airport; and modern Jewish Melbourne (featuring Catherine Townsend of the Newlands Estate episode). They also discuss the logistics of conferences generally and the final panel held at the conference. The final panel covered the future of the UHPH conference, of digital resources, and of the urban history discipline within the constraints and exclusions of the casualised university. The panel featured Lauren Piko, Seamus O’Hanlon, and Kate Folington (PROV). Frankly it would have been a good (or better) podcast in itself than a roundup discussion a week later, but this wasn’t thought of at the time. See the UHPH program website here: http://www.remakingcities-uhph2018.com/. Full papers will be available soon. Note - the next UHPH will (probably, but not officially) be held in Launceston.

This episode of “This Must be the Place” is the second of our ‘walking tours’ – in which we revisit the walks of the 1980 book “Melbourne on Foot: 15 Walks Through Historic Melbourne”. This tour was recorded in the way-back-machine, in September 2017. In it, Elizabeth and David tour St Kilda with one the book’s authors, Professor Graham Davison of Monash University. We’ve split it into two parts as there was, and is, a lot to see in St Kilda. If you’d like to hear about the genesis of the 1980 book in general, listen to the Richmond episode (http://soundcloud.com/david-nichols-738987609/revisiting-melbourne-on-foot-1980-book-richmond-walking-tour-retraced). Some of the walks in the book originated as urban history material for students. They were also partly inspired by the book ‘Chicago on Foot’ and the Chicago school tradition of urban walking. Plus, they were pitched at a wider readership: the authors – who comprised a mix of academics and of community activists – encouraged readers to visit parts of the city that they perhaps overlooked or were reluctant to see historic merit in. Like Richmond, since 1980 St Kilda has undergone a shift in status. For example, several grand mansions that during the 20th century were made into flats and boarding houses, have returned to single-family dwellings of the large and fancy kind. This reflects St Kilda’s variable trajectory over time from what was once a fashionable middle class seaside suburb, to a scruffy and down at heel area over the course of the 20th century (see Hal Porter’s reflections of St Kilda in the 1940s), and of late being gradually expunged of its few remaining seedy elements. In St Kilda you can often see traces of successions of uses and of rebuilding – for example being the shop facades of Fitzroy Street can be seen the remains of what were originally residential buildings. One relative constant has been real estate returns – Graeme discusses Dalgety and other early property speculators making 4000% returns in the original subdivision of the area. This first part of the St Kilda tour takes in around a third of the walk as set out in the book – from the old train station (now a light rail stop set amidst assorted cafes), past the hotels and coffee palaces of Grey and Fitzroy Streets (including David’s recollections of the Seaview Ballroom in the 1980s), and taking in several notable mansions and flats around Jackson, Dalgety and other streets. Stay tuned for The Esplanade and Acland Street in part 2.

In this installment of TMBTP, presumably the final for 2017, David continues his policy of/compulsion for reviewing films alongside people whose first names begin with E as he is joined by Dr Effie Karageorgos to discuss the new Alexander Payne film Downsizing. This is the second attempt at recording a review – the first time was thwarted by poor sound quality in a park in Balwyn – this time the recording is not thwarted exactly but certainly coloured and textured by children screaming and Effie's neighbours chatting not to mention her dogs' interjections. Enjoy this slice of life. There is a spoilers section at the end!!!

In this episode of This Must be the Place Elizabeth and David and joined by (The) Rebecca Clements and Dr Crystal Legacy to discuss the politics and hidden costs of parking and of transport policy. We begin comparing this history of on-street parking rights in Germany, Australia and (the topic of Rebecca’s PhD research) Japan. For example in Japan a 1958 federal law discouraged parking on public streets. Rebecca explains how Japanese cars are thus less likely to be stored on-street, and more likely to be wrapped up in adorable cartoon branding in a private garage. While pondering the role of the car in the storage of junk (David observes that an Australian car “becomes like a big bag”) Crystal joins us to give an account of the politics of Melbourne’s impending West Gate tunnel (or link – or whatever it’s optimistically called now). This is a 6.9 billion dollar public private project of murky provenance for which contracts have just been signed. A large chunk of the funding is either to be paid for by tolls, or from public revenue. Crystal explains how the project morphed from a 500 million dollar freight project, to 5.5 million, and on to the current Transurban behemoth. While the choice is framed as a binary (tolls or public funding), Crystal also describes the growing politics of questioning this vision, and of building alternative visions for transport in Melbourne. While Elizabeth makes favourable comments about road user pricing, Crystal points out that the project tolls are not used for any particular purpose or strategy. This leads to some more pondering on competition versus planning versus monopoly. With apologies to all, we recorded the podcast last week so some of the references to an upcoming rally are now out of date (I guess they will be eventually anyway). This is a rather unplanned episode that nonetheless manages to cover a lot of ground around parking, transport, roads, road speeds, plebiscites, markets, animals on transport, the role of academics (“pontificators”) and more. Is the lesson that less planning is good? In podcasts, or in transport projects? Lucky for us, more research and podcasts are required.

“Basically if you thought of it, someone Japanese had thought of it before you and catered for it in some way” – three travelling planners discuss their initial impressions of Japanese cities. In this episode of This Must be the Place Elizabeth chats with two traveling companions - Helen Rowe, a transport planner, and Nicole Cook, a lecturer in urban geography – at the tail end of their recent short trip through Japan. They debrief in a tapas bar at Tokyo main station, amidst one of the many glistening expanses of shopping malls that make up commuter life in Japan and set to the soundtrack of adult contemporary music including “Everybody Plays the Fool”. The discussion isn’t based on any particular expertise on Japanese planning or any research on it – it’s just some initial impressions of the striking features of urban life in Japan. They cover off subways, bullet trains (suggested slogan for Australia – “bite the bullet train”), braille signage, urban agriculture, toilets, car parking, Kyoto’s lost trams, coffee vending machines, love hotels, piped-in street music, plastic food coverings, being uncomfortable to avoid causing offense, smoking laws, crime (lack thereof), criminal law (force thereof), and the mysterious etiquette of slippers. Aside from occasionally feeling like a buffoon and having trouble finding vegetarian food in Kyoto, Elizabeth now suffers from more than a little case of Japanese envy and has taken to unfavorably comparing everything in Australia to things in Japan. For an Australian Japan is a wonderfully topsy turvy world where, for example, it’s illegal to smoke outside but inside restaurants is OK, and instead of having to buy a parking space when you buy a house (because you might get a car) when you buy a car you have to prove you have a parking space in walking distance. If you know more about the topics feel free to correct us or offer explanations - for example, the piped-in Beatles music of Shibuya and the origins of urban agriculture.

This Must Be the Place (for now): In this episode Elizabeth speaks with Robin Chang, a Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of European Planning Cultures at TU Dortmund in Germany. Robin’s research looks at temporary urbanism: uses that contravene formal zoning, which last for a time frame that is not intentionally permanent, and which are spontaneously initialized. ‘Temporary urbanism’ is a growing field of study including tactical urbanism, pop-up shops, food markets, and squatters’ collectives. Robin has five such case studies in the port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and will add more from Bremen in Germany. In a context of post-industrial transition, urban shrinkage, and fallout from the financial crisis, municipalities and communities in these areas have found ways to activate vacant and brownfields sites. Some of Robin’s case studies of temporary uses are now major tourist and gastronomic attractions for the city.

Robin discusses the role of temporary use for entrepreneurs, for communities, and for Rotterdam in particular (which has a history of experimentalism). She also discusses the unintended consequences of laws discouraging risk, and how temporality challenges the field of planning. Also, the shifting role of planners when past plans have not materialized. (The Ruhr for example was planned for twice the population it now has). Robin suggests it isn’t impossible to have long term planning in parallel with short-term mixed uses and uncertainty. The challenge is how to manage the specifics spatially, legally, and financially. Post-industrial regions are at the cusp: compared to other cities (say, Melbourne) that have other developmental pressures or other industries to count on and which are, as Robin suggests, maybe just 20 years behind. Temporality is here to stay. (No-one ever steps in the same Ruhr River twice?). Alternative river pun: if you wait by the Ruhr river long enough, the bodies of your industrial plans will float by? p.s. The music in this episode is “We are all Detroit”, by Taylor Project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Wnm14Lyl0)

http://phys.org/news/2017-08-temporary-urbanism-struggling-industrial-towns.html

A few weeks ago David interviewed Dr Zoe Myers of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia about an article she wrote in the Conversation regarding the 'retrofitting' of urban streams. http://theconversation.com/more-than-just-drains-recreating-living-streams-through-the-suburbs-83345 He then lost his Dictaphone for about a week, only to find he'd put it in the last place he expected (e.g. the drawer he kept all his electrical things).

In this episode of This Must Be The Place Elizabeth reports from the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany. The area’s recent history is famously characterised by industry – coal, steel, cars – and its present by post-industrial restructuring and by new forms of tourism. The introduction to the podcast includes some soundscapes from the Ruhr Museum, housed in the Zollverein, a former coal works near Essen. The Rhine-Ruhr is a huge urban agglomeration and while the public transport facilities are far better than in Melbourne, it is also home to a large and growing number of cars. Car parking amply lines most streets and, in a special twist, when they can’t find a parking spot the locals are very comfortable parking cars all over the footpaths too. This podcast reports on the local Dortmund installment of “Park(ing) Day”, held September 16th as “an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks”. The broader goal is to critically reflect on the amounts of urban public space allocated to stationary cars. This year, in Dortmund’s first Parking Day. the German Transport Club (VCD) (Dortmund-Unner) and local community initiative “Open Answers” paid the meters for 5 parking spaces on Kaiserstrasse, a popular inner suburban street. They installed a drawing and art table, cake stand, games, seating, posters, and a car wrapped up in bed sheets (!). People stopped by to discuss and question, or to participate in activities. In the podcast Elizabeth speaks with Christian Lamker of TU Dortmund and a member of the VCD about how the event went. On Kaiserstrasse around 80% of the street is parking. There are some nice trees – although one resident not only didn’t like the parking day event taking parking space from cars, but also suggested that the trees too ought to be removed to make room for more parking. Others stopping by took the opportunity to suggest ideas for the street involving more greenery, seating, or space for children. In a dramatic twist, the police turned up – someone had called to complain about people using parking spaces. The police advised that under German law, only cars are allowed in parking spaces, so the tables and activities had to be packed up. (The decorated car was allowed to stay). Next year the group plans to try Parking Day again, with a larger and more planned event. They will probably apply for permission as a political demonstration - I think that’s the more feasible way for people to use car space legally in Germany. Meanwhile in the cities of the Rhine-Ruhr, parking on the footpaths continues unabated. You gotta park all those cars somewhere.