A Brief History of Terrible Planning Law: The Batman Treaty

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

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

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