Every so often someone will bail me up at the pub and ask why their miniscule little gallery gets weekly visits from every bureaucrat with a badge, yet its possible to get approval to build terrible apartment blocks everywhere/mine national forests/demolish public housing etc etc. The short answer is that Australian planning and building laws… Continue reading A Brief History of Terrible Planning Law: The Batman Treaty
Category: Blog
Blog posts
On the Merits of Darwin Not Being Copenhagen
A few months back I did a talk at Trading Ideas, with Joanna Best from Troppo Architects, Charles Darwin PVC Giselle Byrnes, and one of my favourite Lord Mayors, Katrina Fong Lim. The thing I like most about Darwin is that, unlike so many cities in Australia, it isn’t hell bent on being anything other… Continue reading On the Merits of Darwin Not Being Copenhagen
Fire, Death, Disease and Vibrant Laneways: A Short History of the Building Code
On Monday I was asked to talk about the Building Code in a laneway for the Sydney Architecture Festival. I was part of a walking tour, consisting of popular local entrepreneur Simeon King, Martin O’Sullivan of Grasshopper/Small Bar Association and Tim Horton, Registrar of the NSW Architects Registration Board. Here’s a picture of Tim and… Continue reading Fire, Death, Disease and Vibrant Laneways: A Short History of the Building Code
Marco Pantani
A couple of weeks back I got to read from Twenty-One Nights in July as part of a double feature at the Golden Age. Much thanks to Kate and Simeon for setting up the evening. For anyone who missed out and is now lamenting my soliloquy on Pantani, followed by a reading from the book,… Continue reading Marco Pantani
Selected Images from the 2009 Format Festival
The 2009 Format Festival started on Friday March 1st, with an exhibit from our long time collaborators ST5K (later to morph into Street Dreams) and James Dodd. James was a lovely guy and built a projector rack for us out of a milk crate. Here’s a picture of his opening night work, in our back… Continue reading Selected Images from the 2009 Format Festival
A Speakeasy with Flammable Exit Signs: Memories of the 2009 Format Festival
People had been enthused about the 2008 Format Festival or, at least, I believed they were enthused. Either way, there was virtually nothing else of interest in my life other than the occasional No Through Road show. So, after Joel left the country, I decided not only to run Format again, but to expand it… Continue reading A Speakeasy with Flammable Exit Signs: Memories of the 2009 Format Festival
Fear and Weeping: Some Memories of Format’s Pre-History
I’ll be heading back to Adelaide at the end of the week to launch Twenty-One Nights in July at Format’s 2014 zine fair. This is fitting, given the original version was launched at the 2009 zine fair. All the event details are here. This has set me wandering down memory lane, remembering the early days… Continue reading Fear and Weeping: Some Memories of Format’s Pre-History
Cultural Political Economy of Small Cities, edited by Bas van Heur and Anne Lorentzen
I’ve become a big fan of Bas van Heur lately. Asides from heading Cosmopolis, he writes a lot about small and regional cities. He’s got a great chapter on “Small Cities and the Sociospatial Specificity of Economic Development” in a book he’s co-edited with Anne Lorentzen called Cultural Political Economy of Small Cities (2011). For… Continue reading Cultural Political Economy of Small Cities, edited by Bas van Heur and Anne Lorentzen
By Bread Alone by Ernie Old
I had a wonderful time at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival last week with Emma Ayres, Tom Doig and Greg Foyster, notably all long distance touring aficionados. Coincidentally, so is the MWF’s director, Lisa Dempster, who rode across the Nullarbor on her Surly. Whilst I’ve done long rides, I’ve never done so without ending back at… Continue reading By Bread Alone by Ernie Old
A Quick Note on ‘Moron to Moron’.
I’ll be in Melbourne next week for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, where I’m sitting on a panel on cycling at Footscray Community Arts Centre, along with Greg Foyster, Emma Ayres and Tom Doig. We’ll be riding from the Henry Turner Memorial Reserve near Victoria University’s Footscray Park Campus (leaving about 1:30) to Footscray Community Arts… Continue reading A Quick Note on ‘Moron to Moron’.