July 31, 2025 • 67 mins
Matthew Colloff, an environmental scientist at ANU Fenner School of Environment & Society , is the author of the marvellous book: ‘Landscapes of our Hearts: Reconciling People and Environment’.
In this brilliant conversation, he sets us off on a journey of place, country, landscape, urbanism, community, culture, architecture and society.
Currently working in public policy, researching and advising on adaptation to climate change, he speaks to the interaction between values, rules and knowledge in adaptation decision making.
‘Landscapes of our Hearts:’ won the 2021 NSW Premier's History Award in the NSW Community and Regional History category.
In this brilliant conversation, he sets us off on a journey of place, country, landscape, urbanism, community, culture, architecture and society.
Currently working in public policy, researching and advising on adaptation to climate change, he speaks to the interaction between values, rules and knowledge in adaptation decision making.
‘Landscapes of our Hearts:’ won the 2021 NSW Premier's History Award in the NSW Community and Regional History category.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, this is Goosendaby here again on Local Architecture Now,
and we're privileged to be speaking across the Ditch in
Canberra with Matthew Koloff, a resident at the Benmond School
of Science, School School of Environment, Society and Society. And
I've kind of met Matt just through reading his wonderful
(00:26):
book Landscapes of Our Hearts Reconciling People in the Environment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello Matt, Hi Rosalind, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, so how DoD I mean, it's been a long
history your journey from Leafy, England to Canberra as a
scientist of a scientist in soil.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Plant I'm an environmental scientist. Background is ecology, but more
and more what I do these days is science to
underpend public policy or environment.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Science to underpin public policy and environment. So I mean
this is an architecture program, but architecture, particularly for me now,
is very much related to creating indicators for place and
environment and context and buildings can actally enable people to
(01:26):
respond to their place and to be in their place.
And this is why your book, which is a broad
scope production over a long period of time, like it
seems to be almost autobiographical and scientific and kind of
spiritually based and in terms of like the concept of country,
which is an Australian term which you might like to
(01:48):
I mean, I don't know if you want to link
your book into which I've seen in various quotes which
I've taken down like massively in relationship to urban and
place and town. And you've got a quote they're saying,
the valley needs the city and the city needs the valley.
What is that quote? Yeah, valley needs the square and
(02:09):
the square needs the River Valley.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah. So that's Graham Davidson, environmental historian, social historian from
Monash University in Melbourne, and he said, the River Valley
and the Square they're different but complementary facets of an
authentic contemporary Australian urbanness. Without the first, our lives are
(02:33):
too shallow, and without the second they lack purpose. Together
they may just possibly allow us to be at home. Now,
that speaks to quite a broad sweep of issues in
Australian history and contemporary issues around the first of all,
(02:58):
the rural urban divine. Secondly that sense of place in nature. Thirdly,
the issues around how cities like Melbourne and Sydney have
grown up over time yet still managed to maintain a
sense of what they once were in terms of environment
(03:25):
and links to the environment, and also a strong desire
of people in big cities to be linked to nature.
And I think what Davidson is saying in relation to
you know that without the River Valley, our lives are
(03:47):
too shallow. What he's referring to as a Melbournite is
the Arraw Valley, the river that runs through Melbourne, which
was home to first nations, the Kulin people, a Kulin nation,
and and how that river has really defined the character
(04:10):
of that city and as it continues to do, it's
a really powerful force in Melbourne. So that's that's one
aspect of what Davidson was saying when he talks about
the the role of the city square as something that
(04:34):
gives us purpose what what I what I sense he's
talking about there is not necessarily literally you know, the
town square, but it's a kind of metaphor for connection
and community and being part of that broader community, which
is so important for not just a degree of social cohesion,
(05:01):
but a sense of identity in a place where in Australia,
where with a massive multicultural population with huge degrees of migration,
and not just from overseas but internally with people moving
(05:22):
around the country, that this idea of community and identity
within an urban center is what Davidson is really is
really talking about when he talks about the city square.
And it's a lovely idea, this idea that these two
(05:42):
elements create a cohesion and allow us to be at
home in a land where there is still huge uncertainty
and huge debate about what constitutes home for non Indigenous Australias.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Mm hm m hmm. I mean I love Australia and
I love Sydney because I mean, are you still in
Canberra or no, you've moved can Yeah. I mean Suddeny
is so dominated by and it's pockets of of urbanness
(06:23):
well large, and you can traverse to different sort of
you know, Bealmain to Double Bay and so forth. But
Melbourne I don't know very well. But I was kind
of based near the domain on the river. But my
friend goes there a lot. She's just come back on
Good Friday and she showed me pictures of her last
few days in town walking along the river, and so
(06:44):
the Yarra, I'm not so sure. To me, Melbourne was
just a massive sprawl. I sort of couldn't connect with
the river. But I wasn't there in the right circumstances,
so I wasn't, in a landscape context, the best place
to be, so it'd be very interesting. I mean, I know,
people just love it.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, Look, I think I think Melbourneites and sydney Siders
respond to their city and its natural elements in different ways.
You mentioned the harbor, and of course Sydney has the beaches,
the north Shore, the all all of that stuff, but
(07:25):
it also has, you know, a Royal National Park, one
of the oldest, the oldest national park in Australia on
its doorstep. It has the Blue Mountains just tiny distance
away World Heritage listed.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Do you describe on your book the looking towards the
Blue Mountains? The colors?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I do. I talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Spot.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I talk about something that's.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Going there and being struck by it. I stayed in
a youth hostel in whatever it's called this Cutumber, Cutumber,
and I walked across the various.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Town Well that for me, the Blue Mountains. I knew
about the Blue Mountains long before before I actually went there,
and it was like when I first arrived in Australia
and I got off the plane and smelled this amazing smell,
(08:26):
which was eucalypt oil on a hot summer's night, and
that eucalyptile had drifted down from the Blue Mountains forests
and it was this extraordinary, overpowering.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Scent of landing on the ground. On another.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It captured my heart and my imagination immediately. And now
you know, when I smell that smell, I kind of
think this is you know this, It's like, this is
the welcome this is where I belong, this is where
I live, this is this is my place.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Now do you want to say, how like from an
English perspective, when you really were immersed in your local
village and your local environment, but that's a long way.
Now you're really immersed in Australia because this very visceral
connection to land.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's right, and there are commonalities, and this is true
for a lot of adult migrants where you have this
kind of cultural hybridism. You are it's a land of here,
(09:42):
but seen through the mind's eye, are there the place
that you've come from? And that goes to the heart
of something that is critically important for many people who
arrive as migrants in Australia's big cities, which is the
(10:04):
idea of placemaking, the idea of taking somewhere which is
not home and imbuing it with characteristics, with attributes, with
elements that they can relate to culturally, but also in
a sense in a nostalgic and personal way that give
(10:27):
that place meaning. And so you just imagine, you know,
a big public park in Sydney, Saint George's River Park
comes to mind, where you'll find, you know, Vietnamese families,
Greek families, Italians all getting together and doing their thing
(10:50):
with family and friends and making a place. And so
you have these multiple layers of meaning from each of
those different communities overlying this this this persane which which
is you know, from a from a point of view
(11:11):
of urban design, and of course leading on to to
issues relating to architecture. I mean, it's such a powerful
idea in terms of what you can do with those
multiple meanings and how you might think differently about about
urban design and layout and function and structure, and how
(11:37):
it relates to Graham Davidson's idea of being at home.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yea, and I think the sort of multiculturalism and the
constant change that's happening not just in like the urban
big urban city centers, but also the provinces are now
becoming much more activated because of affordability and choices that
people are making. And I think we start to take
into account and more strongly that the power of public space,
(12:05):
of open space between buildings, because that is where a
lot of a lot of people cannot afford. A lot
of immigrants are used to living in multi high density
for instances, and they're familiar with living in an apartment
situation and going out to the public space for their
sort of social experience. And that is where as architects
and urban designers we have to sort of revalue and
(12:28):
actually be able to take some kind of ability to
allow our expertise to help articulate their spaces as being
able to be given. Is so that the users can
gain ownership of these public spaces. And it's not just
your building, which you may or may not can afford
it whatever level of value, but you all get together
(12:52):
and then the public space does mean the mixing of
so many different cultures.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
But that if the place is is already there or
it has head inter venus from architecturally, it actually connects
people to the environment at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So the buildings, the urban like you're talking about the
city easter, the town square, that urban space gives people
that deep core sense of being home because they can
see it as part of the environmental content and that
makes meaning for them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, every year, pretty much at Christmas time, my family
spends Christmas Day at Western Foreshaw's Park at Lake Ginnindera
in Belcono and Canberra and we just take a bottle
(13:44):
of sparkling wine, kilo prawns, take the dog, have a
picnic and the other people that are there are Indian,
Sri Lankan's, Filipino, Afghans, Chinese, Sudanese. And that multiculturalism is
(14:08):
there in action in people sitting alongside each other, comparing
and looking at what different cultures are doing by way
of food, by way of activities, exchanging occasional comments and conversation.
And you know that physical being with people from very
(14:30):
different cultures really only plays out in selected parts of
our Arabian environment and parks that are a big part
of that. And there's something extraordinarily moving about Christmas time
at Lachin and Dara because a lot of those people
(14:51):
have come from places countries where you know, they've experienced persecution,
they've experienced war, they've experienced displacement, some of them have
been in refugee camps. And here they are and this
is peace. This is one thousand miles from conflict. And
(15:15):
for you as a special.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And special for you to be there in that proximity
and to know the sort of incredible power of all
of these histories that these people bringing to it, and
it's still in Australia. And and then I guess that's
potential hope for our cities as being as being really
meaningful places for people and in the future. The cities
(15:41):
are complex in terms of in terms of like the
planning point of view and the and the various institutions
which are sort of responsible for the sort of general
legislative things, but for them to be actually healthy and
growing at a time like now, which is so much
conflict in terms of economics, and the hope is that
(16:01):
we and with books like yours which kind of give
us sort of vision and give us sort of perspective.
And I think words also are really important because you know, architects,
we can't often get the building off the ground for
a long time. But the words can set the scene,
the words can give the vision, and they can create
a direction, make a statement about what is possible.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah. I mean, as you're talking there, I was just
reflecting on something that I just realized. It's maybe a
bit of a generalization, but compared with cities that I
knew in the UK, particularly London, Bristol, Glasgow, the one
(16:43):
thing that's different about particularly Sydney, Melbourne, but also Canberra
to a lesser extent Adelaide, It's true is that those cities,
whilst they have high migrant populations, have not become ghettoized.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
No.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And you know, some people would disagree with that and say, oh, well,
you know, look at Cabramatta in Sydney, that's Chinatown and
that's where Vietnamese people live, and blah blah blah. Yeah,
up to a point. But in fact, places like Cabramatta,
for all its social problems, what I get an overwhelming
(17:26):
sense of is that there is there is culture on display.
There is culture that is open to anyone to go
and engage and learn from, participate, get involved. It's not exclusive,
it's not it's not dangerous. It used to be dangerous.
(17:46):
At one time, not so long ago. But that sense
of this is, this is who we are, this is
what we've got now, because you know, migrant communities move,
they change constantly, they build on each other. There might
have been originally, you know, originally it would have been
Irish and Scots migrants in parts of Sydney, and they
(18:09):
got displaced by Italians and Greek migrants after the Second
World War, and then in came Vietnamese people and now
it's it's people from Sudan or wherever. And these people
displace each other and they move out two different areas
and suburbs. So our cities are constantly changing in terms
(18:32):
of their cultural characteristics, and that that is what I
think prevents that gheta rization. You know, I think of
the East End of London. You know when I was
when I was a young man, and that was still
very strongly working class Jewish, poor, dangerous, and yeah, it's
(18:58):
become uppified, and it's changed now and it's it's it's
it's become parts of it have become an up market.
But it was like that for a very long time,
and you don't tend to see that in Australian cities.
I think that turnover the rate of change is pretty rappy,
and I think, you know, that's that's an interesting phenomenon.
(19:21):
From from an urban planning and urban design perspective.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I think so, and we we need to we need
to like have I think our job is not sort
of from the urban planet urven design point of view,
is just to capture those cultural the sort of flavors
that you're talking about, that cultural their cultural life, and
just intervene with little markets which which kind of can
(19:47):
be responding to the moment of that sort of the
poeticness of that complete mix of culture, and the market
can be just a very sort of temporary thing that
enables people to own it and then sort of change it,
and we can sort of like the architecture is an
ongoing continual flow simple, which is so correct because it's
(20:07):
so simple of the moment.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
That's right. Yeah, But but in that change, there is
also continuity. There's a continuity of narrative.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, there's narrative.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, there's a continuity of.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And I think that's we can we can really meet
the needs of all of the sort of the people
that the cultural mix if we allow that continuity, we
keep we we work with the continuity, we keep adding
to it, but we allow people kind of to understand it,
to be informed by buildings, so that they actually interact
(20:43):
with it and they make the change, they inform the
changes that the part of that continuity.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, that really, Yeah, that requires a much broader conversation
between communities and town planners and developers.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It's very hard because the station is so well ingrained,
and it's very hard to move individuals within councils, because
councils are so siloed within their different management departments, and
it's very hard to get these simple things across. You know,
usually there's lots and lots of incredible of timon planning
and tendering and procurement big projects. But if we can
(21:22):
like manage the vitality of that public space that you're
talking about in a simple architectural form, and then we've
got sort of real dynamic city scape.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
We've got We've got an issue in Canberra at the
moment where you know, the center, the center of Canberra
is pretty small, not particularly built up, very broad sprawling suburbs,
a lot of quarter acre blocks, but it's constantly expanding
(21:56):
outwards and part of the driver for that is incentivization
of tax incentives for property as an investment, so second homes,
negative gearing, blah blah blah. And we're starting to come
(22:18):
up against serious barriers and thresholds regarding sustainability, particularly water supply,
urban heat island is an issue, so on and so forth.
And you know, I was talking to somebody from Australian
(22:41):
Capital Territory government who came to see me and asked
about adaptation of climate change and how how you would
start to put in place principles for adaptation within a
city like Camber, And I said, where, You've got to
start with issues around water, and that's that's fundamental. But
(23:05):
the problem that he said he was facing was really
a cultural one in which all the all the all
the effort on adaptation is on incremental issues and his
colleagues don't necessarily see the bigger picture where climate change
(23:27):
is going to actually force transformational change. And I said, well,
that really starts with with how you change the culture
within within your particular department and how you start to
influence people to think and act differently. So this is going,
but you know this is way before you start to
put in place plans like how how to address a
(23:51):
heat island problem, or how you stop builders building houses
with black roofs and so on. It goes to the
heart of cultural change. Oh my god, you know, how
am I going to start that? That's when we start
by having conversations.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
That's where your role is.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Absolutely, that's well, that's part of it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
That's a much broader into disciplinary approach.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Oh yeah, very much so. I mean, you know, half
of my work is dealing with adaptation of climate change
in various circumstances.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
But the but you know, there's two sort of things.
I mean, in the present, there's this kind of this
real estate economy in New Zealand particularly, Yeah, just about
real estate. We're all making money out of land and
it's got no relevance to quality of life of an
urban experience, and it's got no absolutely no relevance to
the value of the land. And it's its ecology. Sure,
(24:50):
but you're reaching way back. You also say that, you know,
the settler culture, way way back, you know, talking about
the Scots, the Irish and the New Zealand as well.
It was all about you know, getting my piece of land.
And we still see an evidence here in orat it's
just like cut down every single tree because the land
is valuable for flock and for sheep and cow, and
(25:14):
so there are still and here there's still that attitude
that that pioneer thing of cut down the trees. It's
kind of like a DNA thing got these forces of
like it's valuable to the councils to have lots of
development because they get all these rates off that and
they get a huge amount from resource consents and survey applications.
So there's a kind of like a like an engine
(25:36):
that's just moving forward without without the reflection, which is
what I would like to say. Your book is a tool,
is a contribution.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right that they with that idea of ridership, there's also
you know, this this concept of a sense of entitlement.
And to my mind, if you accept the fact that
you know, humans are part of nature and part of
(26:05):
our responsibility as sentient beings is to maintain, conserve, preserve,
protect care for environment, then the idea of being part
of which gives us a sense of identity, a sense
(26:28):
of belonging, sense of purpose and so on and so
forth that carries with it a set of responsibilities. You
don't get this stuff from nothing. You've got to put
stuff back now. In the settler ideology where you go
and somebody gives you land because you asked for it,
because you've just dispossessed an indigenous community. In that system
(26:54):
where you justify the possession of that land through saying
that I will make it productive in ways that it
wasn't before, well it completely, it completely misunderstands the nature
of what productive land actually means in a sustainability context.
(27:14):
But also it implies that in order in order that
you are doing this thing, that you should be entitled
to all sorts of other things. You know, traditionally in
nineteenth century before the abolition of before during the convict era,
(27:41):
it was free labor, it was free land. It was
a whole range of entitlements.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The equisitiveness. And it's also this idea of that the
colonial thing of another land as a resource for the colony.
Your land Australia is just a resource for Britain.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well, it was. Land was power both individual and collectivity.
So if you were a landowner, you're more likely to
be a magistrate. That would differentiate you from other people.
You had power over your neighbors, so and you had
the capacity to stock that piece of land with sheep
(28:27):
or cattle or whatever and make a lot of money.
And a lot of the time you were selling your
your your produce, your whatever you were raising on that
land back to the government. So there was this kind
of somewhat in Braid economy. But you know, we are
(28:48):
now having to deal with some of the cultural legacy
of that issue in terms of how we reinvent our
understanding of land ownership and entitlement. I mean, if you
get if you go to big European cities, the idea
of home ownership is just completely alien. People rent their
(29:12):
houses or their apartments. They and they do so generations, generations.
The idea of real estate is investment and economy based
on is just stupid. Why would you do that? So,
I mean, you know, what we're seeing here is now
(29:32):
that there's a housing affordability crisis and people are more
and more people are renting houses and so on, and
there's an ongoing debate about about reducing incentives for investment,
(29:53):
property ownership and so on and so forth. I think that,
you know, I look at the urban sprawling Canberra and
I think, well, some sometimes this has got to start
because she's it's just going to run out of going
to run out of water, We're going to run out
of not going to be We're going to run out
(30:16):
of space to.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Build, and run out of a lot of cultural potential
that collections of people and cities can create. If it's
kind of if, yeah, and yet there are others they're
all the same worldwide. These sprawl and they ignore the
land upon which these boundaries are created, and it's just
(30:37):
so complex, and so it creates these complex local body
institutions to manage this kind of abstract concept of ownership.
But then you you're sort of say, you're right in it,
trying to understand how you and we can't we can't
just change things without understanding the political mechanisms or being
able to or what that mechanism problem.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
But also what you know, I'm constantly amazed where where
you see initiatives where people say, look, we don't want
to do this kind of thing anymore, we're going to
do something different. Just up the road for me, about
ten five kilometers west of here, there's a new suburban
(31:24):
development called Gin Andderry where they've essentially built a kind
of hybrid between an intentional community and a kind of
sustainable suburb. And the first thing I did was put
up a community center with a cafe and a restaurant
and shops and all of that, and then built some
brand it it's got, you know, it's got it's got elements,
(31:51):
it's got solo, it's got sustainable water supply, and it's
got a sense of community about it. It's it's been
well designed from a social perspective, not just an architectural perspective.
And you know, I go out there and it gives
me great hope that people can actually change and think
(32:14):
about this stuff differently. And people I know who live
out there say it's bloody fantastic. You know, It's like
they don't want to live anywhere else. They feel connected,
they feel that, you know, they're not big houses, they
don't need big houses. Don't mean a bloody great McMansion
(32:35):
stuck on a you know, right up to the boundaries
of a quarter acre block, which is which is what
we're seeing more and more of got around the place,
so that that integration of those social elements within within
(32:55):
sort of urban design as driven by drivers have changed,
like climate change. I think, you know, I I'm quite
hopeful about that. I'm hopeful that one can rethink and
and act differently to create suburbs that are more sustainable
(33:17):
in the future. I mean, the other the other story
I love about this kind of stuff is the city
of Melbourne, where that the the the idea of the
urban forest really took off. And originally what the city
(33:38):
did was it had a map of all the street trees,
so that if people found a tree that wasn't doing
too well or was damaged or carr and smashed into it,
or you know, it was losing its leaves or it
was churning up the pavement with its roots or whatever,
they could report it. What happened was people started writing in.
(34:04):
They get that, they get the number of the details
of the tree, and they send an email in actually
writing to that tree. They had favorite trees that they said, oh,
you know the Morton Bay figure at the bottom of
my street. It's beautiful and I love it and I
pass it every day and I love that tree and
(34:24):
it inspires me and blah blah blah. And this just
took off, and so they now have this incredible network
where people email trees in Melbourne and they have this
sense of ownership and belonging and care for those trees
(34:47):
which then get you know, replanted if they if they're dying,
and get looked after. And you know, if you want
to reduce an urban tree an urban heat island, then
plant bloody tree in the street.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Tree calling they absorbed storm water.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
You've got it. You know. It's like, I mean, I've been.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Create urb but they create little outdoor rooms around them.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I've been. I've been in Melbourne on a thirty six
degree day, walked under a Morton Bay fag and it's
about twenty degrees under that tree. It's fifteen degrees difference easy, yeah,
you know, yeah, I mean just.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
That tree in an urban environment, just one tree you
can reconnect you like you don't need love. It's like
a homeopathic idea. You don't need a little bit of
something to get the whole healing. And one little tree
like Tokyo does that incredibly highly intense urban area but
they just have one tree out and it sort of
solved experience for natures, for need of nature, right.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
But the you know, if if you've got as we
have in Canberra, a planning structure and department which is
completely dominated by the development lobby, where new suburbs have
been put up without any street trees whatsoever. You just think, well,
(36:14):
you're storing up a problem for the future. You're going
to have to retrofit this down the track.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
In the social problems, isolation livable, the social isolation of
people where your property and your house is a kind
of sense of status. It's removing so much potential for
for sort of social health.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, I mean to my mind, you know, if people
are moving the suburbs and they're not saying seeing that
bigger picture of what that urban environment looks like, then
I kind of question what else is going on there?
And I suspect that what you're seeing is is people
(36:59):
moving to place. Is where the whole issue is around
the house, the home, the family, but it isn't about
the community and what works for that collective as a whole,
because there isn't much of a sense of community because
everyone is off in their own little McMansion or their
(37:20):
own big McMansion. And you know that then becomes a
you know, how do you how do you get a
community like that mean engage? How do you get them
to address issues like if there aren't sufficient public amenities,
(37:43):
how do they how do they even engage with with
trying to change that. You know, they're already behind the april.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
The weird thing is you're talking about this lovely community
that was built in Camera. I can't understand we're talking
about this stuff it and we're getting subdivisions eating up
the land north of Wales existing greenfield when we've got
all this sprawl and it's a very beachy town so
it's very loose fits. It's not really attractive. We should
(38:12):
be building in there, but they're still and they're and
they're excavating massive amounts of a native of Pete. You know,
the sort of potential for Pete is an amazing absorber
of carbon, you know, and they're all being dug up
and this day and age, I mean it's because the
developers really do have the go ahead by councils, because
they've got it all set up, they have the little
(38:33):
sort of format councilors have to question. It's simple and
you know they're going to get so much money from
from the rates out of this. So it's still going
on today like right now.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I mean the standard the standard joke about the Act
the Australian Capital Territories that our Chief Minister has never
met a developer he didn't like.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, yes, that.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Really angers a lot of Canberra resid that, you know, disenfranchised.
They have no real say in those sorts of we
don't we don't have much say in what our city
is going to look like or you know, and and
to get a say it's hard work and it's not straightforward,
and it requires an awful lot of time and investment.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You're in the middle of it, aren't you were trying
to you understand the experience.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
I understand it, and I'm happy to work with people
who want to change it. But you know, I've got
it's not my core business in terms of areas of
public policy that I want to get particularly involved in
Oban development is not my my area of expertise.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
But it's it's a kind of of how things don't
get as the processes that enable us to continue what
you seem to have a bit of a grasp on.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Well, that's right, and excuse me sorry. And also there's
this sort of sense of I've got to live in
the city and I've got to navigate parts of it
on a daily basis. I've seen huge amount of change
(40:20):
already a lot of it for the worse. I don't
want that to continue. I think about my kids who
are now in their thirties and when they when they
were young, you know, there were a whole load of amazing,
fantastic places that we could go to and they could
(40:42):
play and run around and all the rest of it.
A lot of those places have now been built on,
you know, they've gone no more. And I kind of
think about some poor kid who's stuck out in some
distant suburb, no trees nowhere to play at a forty
(41:05):
five degree summer day, you know, will pee what kind of.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
What kind of waste? The waste of the land resource,
the waste of people's money in terms of developing all
this when it's actually producing a not a very kind
of intelligent response that waste, which is unquestioned, and the
residents just have to experience this low level of I've
(41:31):
kind of experienced with.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
But what this stuff does come down to, Rosslyn is
changing the way that people think and act about this stuff.
It's fundamental. It's transformative, and it's slow and steady and
you know, incremental a lot of the time, and then
occasional opportunity for transformation or change comes around and you
(41:56):
grab that opportunity with both hands and go for it.
So with those windows of opportunity don't come around very often,
but occasionally they do and you go for it. You're
ready for it. And that's that's what I hope for.
I mean, that's what keeps me going, is that kind
of approach where you know, never ever ever give up,
(42:19):
but at the same time, don't get hopes up too
high that something is going to magically transform, because it won't.
But you know, if people didn't care about stuff, what
a crappy society we live in. And Canberra has got
one huge advantage, which is it's got a highly connected
(42:40):
and very well educated population who do care about the environment,
they do care about the city they live in, and
they want more of a say and they're being let
down by planners and politicians. And that's that's going to change.
I know it will change.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
How will we change it? Just incrementally, as you're saying, I.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Think, well, multiple ways. I mean, my conversation with the
bureaucrat from Urban Services was one example. I said, you
go away and start having informal conversations with your colleagues
if you want to change the way that people think.
Go and have a kappa and have a discussion about
(43:23):
the sustainability issue in Canberra and what we can do
to adapt to climate change. That goes beyond stupid, piecemeal
incremental stuff that ain't going to make any difference and
puts the emphasis back on the homeowner to do stuff
like you know, sort of channels and saving water and
(43:45):
you know, native gardens and all of this crap, which
doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Instead of saying, actually, we
need to rethink the way that we you know, I mean,
almost every house in my street has got a solar
(44:07):
panel on the roof right. Act government has a green
energy policy, but what we've seen is feedings a terraced
back to the grid go down and down and down.
That's disincentivizing people. The bit that's missing is a scheme
(44:33):
would allow people to buy batteries at a reasonable price
so they can actually complete the solar panel battery link.
That would incentivize and buying electric cars because they can
then charge their bloody cars battery et cetera, et cetera.
And we're stuck in this thing of just going for
some panels and oh yeah, that's kind of enough, and
(44:55):
it's not. It's just halfway. So the other thing it's missing,
I think in the in the change the way you think,
think and act stuff is it's actual joined up thinking,
is systems thinking. And that's where you know, architecture, urban design,
(45:17):
the idea of geography, it's all ties together and you've
got to think through all aspects of that and we're
not used to that. We get our eyes in our
thinking into disciplines or or sectors or whatever, and that's
that's got to change. Part of adaptation is changing how
(45:39):
how we think about systems, how we think about care
for others, how we think about the long term. You know,
all of those sorts of things are a part of
what we're going to do differently.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I mean, I think you know you're obviously highly experienced
than an expert, but I think you know everybody and
stands at a basic level that systems thinking is good.
I mean, people want to be connected in all sorts
of ways, and they want to connect to the environment
if it means sustainability programs to achieve to improve that.
(46:17):
So the potential is there in people.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
And it's degnating where you can learn systems thinking and
what's stopping those sorts of approaches primarily is vested in
short term invested interests.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
So it seems so much easier to think the way
you do. I mean, all of us would naturally think that.
It's harder to think about the developmental because it's so abstract.
It's harder to think about the stuff that happens because
it's abstracted and it's kind of based on a monetary
kind of it's mind bending. Does it don't make any sense?
Speaker 2 (46:52):
But a lot of what I have to do in
the adaptation policy space is find when winds where there
are there are long term benefits to be had which
are not going to become maladaptive in two or three
years time, but also in which they don't pose a
(47:16):
huge or immediate challenge to those existing vested interests. So
one piece of work I'm doing at the moment is
trying to figure out a way of adapting irrigated agriculture
in the Murray Daling Basin under climate change so that
irrigators don't put all their eggs in one basket with
(47:38):
one irrigated crop like cotton or almonds or whatever, but
are much more, much more resilient to droughts, floods, and
everything in between, which requires diversification of how they how
they how they design their their farms, and how they
(48:01):
diversify their crops and their income sources. And that is
incredibly challenging because you've got the cotton industry, you've got
the armond industry, you've got the citrus industry, You've got
you know, multiple interests all thinking that somehow magically they
(48:24):
can do business as usual. And under climate change, there
is no business as usual. Under climate change, there's no
going home because home ain't going to be there anymore.
It's going to be different. And you know, we have floods, droughts,
bushfires on a regular basis. And people go, oh yeah, right, okay,
(48:47):
well we're recovering from that. We're just put back things
the way they were. No, you go, don't put things
back the way they are were. Actually, think about what
you need to adapt and change. Are we getting there slowly?
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Giving this slowly? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
But what worries me is that, you know the pace
of natural disasters picks up the point that you're recovering
from one, and then the next one comes along and
you just get overwhelmed. And that's starting to happen in
northern New South Wales around lis More and places like that,
where they've just been hit with one flood after another
(49:24):
in the last few years. That's that's a real concern.
But you know, we can we can build a different
environment which fire proof, that is flood proof, that is
drought proof, that is sustainable. We know how to do it.
It is not rocket science, but it's cultural change that
(49:48):
needs to take place. It's not it's not a we
don't lack the knowledge. What we lack is what we
need is changes in values and rules rather than changes
in knowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
I'd just like to say here that I mean, you're
talking at this point in your career, which is this
climate is this public policy around climate change, and your
book is sort of part of that landscape of our
hearts reconciling people in the environment, which is you know,
it's it's books, it's works, it's words that can actually
go a long way because it's something people can hold.
(50:24):
It's there, it's it's it's it's knowledge, it's philosophy, it's
it's science. It's all you can really do. But I
just like the listeners to know that you've got to
this point of public policy and teaching at the university
or whatever. But you can talk about the issues around
the river, what do you call it? The with the
(50:46):
almonds and the oh one of those the because you've
come you've worked for decades in Australia at a very
basic at a science level, at a site, you know,
looking at science, creat developing data, so you understand the
science of all of this from decades ago.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
But yeah, and that that is about a system's approach.
It's about approach to landscape and understanding how landscapes work,
how they change, how they evolve, what their limits are,
and how you look after them. Really, and that to
(51:32):
me is the basis of what sustainability is. It's that
idea of care and stewardship as a responsibility. And that
means you think of the landscape not as some kind
of abstract thing or even some biophysical thing that's there,
(51:56):
but you think of it as effectively an actor in history.
It has agency, It responds to what's done to it
in ways that are often unpredictable and that require a
systems understanding to be able to connect with and relate
(52:17):
to and manage in a way. Now, Indigenous Australians discovered
this starting sixty five thousand years ago, and you know,
if we can't learn from that, we are missing this
huge opportunity about what our future could hold, what what
could be, what should be, what could be, and what
(52:41):
can be. And you know that to my mind, those
lessons from history and lessons from traditional owners and indigenous
peoples is part of that sustainability journey.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
So it's it's the it's the ecology, it's a physical
nature of the land and trees and rivers and water.
But it's also that deep people connection, which is the
connection to land. So it's the spiritual and the cultural
and the social is absolutely critical. Is a part of
the fabric of the of the physical.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah, I mean we had, we had. You know, we've
seen just recently the death of Pote Frances, and Pope
Frances did something that was absolutely extraordinary. He wrote an
encyclical called Loudato Sea, which was basically care for Care
(53:45):
for our Common Home, which was essentially an environmental manifesto.
And what he did in that in that incyclical was
he pulled together a couple of things. The one that
I think was was was really pretty special was ah,
(54:10):
you know, in care for our common home. It was
the message of a moral framing of the relationship between
people and nature that was grounded in social justice and
environmental justice, and so by considering people as part of
nature inextricably linked. What what Pope Francis did was he
(54:34):
he connected with the earliest philosophies of human existence. And
for a Catholic pontiff to do that is absolutely revolutionary
because if you think of traditional teachings about dominion over
nature and so on and so forth, this is this
(54:57):
is fundamental.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
He was doing to it more, going back, going.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Back to what Aboriginal people are known for years and
years and years and millennia. And then he said, well,
you know, our environmental dilemmas can really Therefore, if they're
about environmental justice and social issues, then they can only
be addressed by and he said this, he said, they
(55:26):
can only be addressed by cultural and ethical revolution. Science
and technology can't provide the solution alone. And I thought, wow,
you are totally on the money, mate. You know, this
is this is exactly, this is exactly what I teach
my students not have.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
The answers, because a religious experience comes from connection to
land and connection to I mean you do it. I mean,
where do we get out of religion from? I mean people,
but that place and land, an experience.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Of nature is a big part of it.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
And so I get, you know, I mean yeah, and
he's probably going back to that, really core.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
I don't know, I think. I mean, it's an amazing
I mean, you know, it's been a while since I
read it now, but I remember when I first read
load data. See, I just goodness, you know, this is like, yeah,
this could have been written by I don't know, Jared
Diamond or some you know, one of these hot shots,
(56:30):
you know, sustainable Paul Erlich or someone like that, and
it's written by the bloody Pope.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
You know, he took us, he really recognized he took
us role as a world leader and took it totally.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
To the core as a moral leader.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
As a moral leader, how how.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
To ensure that everybody receives justice and everything received justice?
Because if you if you're talking about morals, then you
don't make the distinction between people, animals, plants, you know,
other beings. And that that to me was pretty special.
(57:17):
That was that was so out of touch with you know,
I was brought up Catholic and we weren't brought up
with the idea. We were brought up with the idea
that people and nature were separate and different. And you know,
and therein lies our problem.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
Modern theology can be just as valuable, It can be
just as valuable, and as movement forward have joined up systems.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not a religious
person anymore, but I you.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
Know, the over other field of study, well, the.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Overlap between morals and ethics, you know, as a humanist,
I see that all the time, with with with theology,
and I respect it and I understand it, and I'm
happily engaged with it. You know. It's you need, you
need everybody find the same battle. I don't care what.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
And the Pope was using his position to elucid eight
joined up systems.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah he was, you.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
Know, which is a wonderful thing. And then I'm sorry
to diverge, but I can't think, you know, here we
are talking about what we can do in Canberra, in
New Zealand and Australia, and then you think, I mean
referring back to your to the refugees, and we're thinking
about this and it's so important that we think it's
so hard, and we think it's so important to do.
But you think of places in the world which are
(58:44):
just war zones. Absolutely, I mean, what does all that mean,
what we're talking about mean, or maybe there was some relevance,
maybe maybe we wouldn't have these war I don't know,
how does that? I mean, it's such a different it's
a parallel kind of universe.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
One of the things I find incredibly moving about the
war in Gaza is how even though Gaza City has
been bombed flat, even though almost everything has been destroyed,
the Palestinians from Gaza, the idea of relinquishing that land
(59:22):
is so such an such anathema to them that they
would never ever do it. And that's why, you know,
Trump and Neti Yahoo's idea of building this kind of
luxury resorts there is just morally obscene, you know. So,
even even that destruction, those people still hang on to
(59:48):
the idea of of of of belonging to that place.
And to me, that that is something that you know,
there's Israeli military and the Israeli government and never ever
going to understand or never ever be able to overcome,
even though paradoxically they themselves have gone through the same
(01:00:12):
experience and this is this is what's so shipful about
that bloody war is the very people who ought to
understand the position of the other seeming capable of doing so,
and that that is tragic and heartbreaking. Yeah, but you know, I.
Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Mean, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.
I mean, you're talking about the Pseudanese and America and
Australia and means through and what's happening, And I mean,
is there any narrative, Is there any stories that we
can get from people's love of land or the conflicts
that arise from whatever? I mean, And we're talking about
collective urbanization and our and our sort of reasonably advanced
(01:00:55):
to western cities.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Good question. Yeah, I don't I don't have the full
answer to that, but I think I think what I
just sort of musing on that one. In relation to
(01:01:28):
migrants to Australia, I think that what we're starting to
see in that sort of that sort of issue of
cultural hybridism of where people are from one place, you know,
it's this this land of here and there where migrants
(01:01:53):
original country retains a place in the imagination and identity
of how people strive to recreate elements of their homeland
in the landscape of their adoptive country. But that thing
is only going to last one or two generations if that,
(01:02:14):
and then it's going to merge away into nothing or
be replaced by new migrants and so on. So if
one's got to capture, if one's going to capture the
idea of of multiple meanings of urban environment, then then
(01:02:35):
one's got to You've got to You've got to be
You've got to be quick and nimble and responsive and empathetic. Absolutely,
and also think where are the universalities here? Where the generalizations?
What's going to work for one community and for others?
(01:03:00):
What do people really want, what do they really value,
and what do they have in common? Now, that to
me joins up a really important link in the whole
story of multiculturalism of bringing people together. You know, what
des urban design? What what does that look like that
(01:03:22):
can satisfy and can meet the needs of multiple different ethnicities.
Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I think, as we run out of time, that's a
pretty good a question. And also I'm just thinking, you know,
you're talking about the gardens, and you're previously not talking
about popes. I don't know the name of his works.
But I mean he was talking about that as a
world leader at the very but I mean what the
(01:03:51):
gardens and essence are understanding their land at the same time.
I mean there's a real connection between from one from
top to bottom, you know, from one level to another. Yeah, indeed,
but that's complex.
Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
So but it's also it's also fascinating and engaging. You know,
these these sorts of questions, they don't often get asked
and addressed in the context of of how you can
pull elements of of community together in in in a
(01:04:29):
in a multicultural city to influence urban design. And I
think that's you know, that that is that's something that
is exciting and is underdone and presents lots of opportunities.
I mean, you can get very creative with that.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
You can do very creative and with the background that
you're talking about the same time as sustainability, the environment
as a cultural diversity, rupture it's activity and its connection.
Then the questions can be asked and problems can be
solved by a connection of people in such a sort
of active and vital space, and you can start to
ask all these questions and start to solve them. Round
(01:05:09):
it round around an agent, you know, around an arena
together and we can solve it together as a community,
as an intelligent people's native intelligence when they're given the
space and the place.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
And if we're going to address if we're going to
address the challenge of adaptation of climate change, the only
way you do that is part of a collective. You
can't do it on your own. You have to be
part of a collective in order to achieve change.
Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So excitingly for architecture, we are we actually are the
one lot who actually have the skills to know how
to understand the cultural imperiodives within a particular place and
do a bit of a built in dimension to enable
an arena for people to gather happily. But with that
you and enable the tensions enabling indecision. It's not a
fixed thing. I think I'm going, I want, I just
(01:05:58):
like to finish your glowing statements.
Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
No, that's terrific. I really like that. You know that
the role of architects and social change and social entrepreneurship.
That's that's great, that's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Indeed, thank you very much, listeners. Matthew Koloff, and you
are now having had a decade three as a scientist.
You are now working at the Finnis School of Environment
and Society at the a n U after years with
the c s I r O. Thank you very much.
(01:06:42):
Here we are on local architecture, now across the ditch,
but very relevant at a local and universal global level.
This program was made with assistance from New Zealand on
Air for radio broadcast and through the Accessmedia dot z website.
Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Thank you New Zealand on Air
Hi, this is Goosendaby here again on Local Architecture Now,
and we're privileged to be speaking across the Ditch in
Canberra with Matthew Koloff, a resident at the Benmond School
of Science, School School of Environment, Society and Society. And
I've kind of met Matt just through reading his wonderful
(00:26):
book Landscapes of Our Hearts Reconciling People in the Environment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello Matt, Hi Rosalind, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, so how DoD I mean, it's been a long
history your journey from Leafy, England to Canberra as a
scientist of a scientist in soil.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Plant I'm an environmental scientist. Background is ecology, but more
and more what I do these days is science to
underpend public policy or environment.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Science to underpin public policy and environment. So I mean
this is an architecture program, but architecture, particularly for me now,
is very much related to creating indicators for place and
environment and context and buildings can actally enable people to
(01:26):
respond to their place and to be in their place.
And this is why your book, which is a broad
scope production over a long period of time, like it
seems to be almost autobiographical and scientific and kind of
spiritually based and in terms of like the concept of country,
which is an Australian term which you might like to
(01:48):
I mean, I don't know if you want to link
your book into which I've seen in various quotes which
I've taken down like massively in relationship to urban and
place and town. And you've got a quote they're saying,
the valley needs the city and the city needs the valley.
What is that quote? Yeah, valley needs the square and
(02:09):
the square needs the River Valley.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah. So that's Graham Davidson, environmental historian, social historian from
Monash University in Melbourne, and he said, the River Valley
and the Square they're different but complementary facets of an
authentic contemporary Australian urbanness. Without the first, our lives are
(02:33):
too shallow, and without the second they lack purpose. Together
they may just possibly allow us to be at home. Now,
that speaks to quite a broad sweep of issues in
Australian history and contemporary issues around the first of all,
(02:58):
the rural urban divine. Secondly that sense of place in nature. Thirdly,
the issues around how cities like Melbourne and Sydney have
grown up over time yet still managed to maintain a
sense of what they once were in terms of environment
(03:25):
and links to the environment, and also a strong desire
of people in big cities to be linked to nature.
And I think what Davidson is saying in relation to
you know that without the River Valley, our lives are
(03:47):
too shallow. What he's referring to as a Melbournite is
the Arraw Valley, the river that runs through Melbourne, which
was home to first nations, the Kulin people, a Kulin nation,
and and how that river has really defined the character
(04:10):
of that city and as it continues to do, it's
a really powerful force in Melbourne. So that's that's one
aspect of what Davidson was saying when he talks about
the the role of the city square as something that
(04:34):
gives us purpose what what I what I sense he's
talking about there is not necessarily literally you know, the
town square, but it's a kind of metaphor for connection
and community and being part of that broader community, which
is so important for not just a degree of social cohesion,
(05:01):
but a sense of identity in a place where in Australia,
where with a massive multicultural population with huge degrees of migration,
and not just from overseas but internally with people moving
(05:22):
around the country, that this idea of community and identity
within an urban center is what Davidson is really is
really talking about when he talks about the city square.
And it's a lovely idea, this idea that these two
(05:42):
elements create a cohesion and allow us to be at
home in a land where there is still huge uncertainty
and huge debate about what constitutes home for non Indigenous Australias.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Mm hm m hmm. I mean I love Australia and
I love Sydney because I mean, are you still in
Canberra or no, you've moved can Yeah. I mean Suddeny
is so dominated by and it's pockets of of urbanness
(06:23):
well large, and you can traverse to different sort of
you know, Bealmain to Double Bay and so forth. But
Melbourne I don't know very well. But I was kind
of based near the domain on the river. But my
friend goes there a lot. She's just come back on
Good Friday and she showed me pictures of her last
few days in town walking along the river, and so
(06:44):
the Yarra, I'm not so sure. To me, Melbourne was
just a massive sprawl. I sort of couldn't connect with
the river. But I wasn't there in the right circumstances,
so I wasn't, in a landscape context, the best place
to be, so it'd be very interesting. I mean, I know,
people just love it.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, Look, I think I think Melbourneites and sydney Siders
respond to their city and its natural elements in different ways.
You mentioned the harbor, and of course Sydney has the beaches,
the north Shore, the all all of that stuff, but
(07:25):
it also has, you know, a Royal National Park, one
of the oldest, the oldest national park in Australia on
its doorstep. It has the Blue Mountains just tiny distance
away World Heritage listed.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Do you describe on your book the looking towards the
Blue Mountains? The colors?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I do. I talk about.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Spot.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I talk about something that's.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Going there and being struck by it. I stayed in
a youth hostel in whatever it's called this Cutumber, Cutumber,
and I walked across the various.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Town Well that for me, the Blue Mountains. I knew
about the Blue Mountains long before before I actually went there,
and it was like when I first arrived in Australia
and I got off the plane and smelled this amazing smell,
(08:26):
which was eucalypt oil on a hot summer's night, and
that eucalyptile had drifted down from the Blue Mountains forests
and it was this extraordinary, overpowering.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Scent of landing on the ground. On another.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It captured my heart and my imagination immediately. And now
you know, when I smell that smell, I kind of
think this is you know this, It's like, this is
the welcome this is where I belong, this is where
I live, this is this is my place.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Now do you want to say, how like from an
English perspective, when you really were immersed in your local
village and your local environment, but that's a long way.
Now you're really immersed in Australia because this very visceral
connection to land.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
That's right, and there are commonalities, and this is true
for a lot of adult migrants where you have this
kind of cultural hybridism. You are it's a land of here,
(09:42):
but seen through the mind's eye, are there the place
that you've come from? And that goes to the heart
of something that is critically important for many people who
arrive as migrants in Australia's big cities, which is the
(10:04):
idea of placemaking, the idea of taking somewhere which is
not home and imbuing it with characteristics, with attributes, with
elements that they can relate to culturally, but also in
a sense in a nostalgic and personal way that give
(10:27):
that place meaning. And so you just imagine, you know,
a big public park in Sydney, Saint George's River Park
comes to mind, where you'll find, you know, Vietnamese families,
Greek families, Italians all getting together and doing their thing
(10:50):
with family and friends and making a place. And so
you have these multiple layers of meaning from each of
those different communities overlying this this this persane which which
is you know, from a from a point of view
(11:11):
of urban design, and of course leading on to to
issues relating to architecture. I mean, it's such a powerful
idea in terms of what you can do with those
multiple meanings and how you might think differently about about
urban design and layout and function and structure, and how
(11:37):
it relates to Graham Davidson's idea of being at home.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yea, and I think the sort of multiculturalism and the
constant change that's happening not just in like the urban
big urban city centers, but also the provinces are now
becoming much more activated because of affordability and choices that
people are making. And I think we start to take
into account and more strongly that the power of public space,
(12:05):
of open space between buildings, because that is where a
lot of a lot of people cannot afford. A lot
of immigrants are used to living in multi high density
for instances, and they're familiar with living in an apartment
situation and going out to the public space for their
sort of social experience. And that is where as architects
and urban designers we have to sort of revalue and
(12:28):
actually be able to take some kind of ability to
allow our expertise to help articulate their spaces as being
able to be given. Is so that the users can
gain ownership of these public spaces. And it's not just
your building, which you may or may not can afford
it whatever level of value, but you all get together
(12:52):
and then the public space does mean the mixing of
so many different cultures.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
But that if the place is is already there or
it has head inter venus from architecturally, it actually connects
people to the environment at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
So the buildings, the urban like you're talking about the
city easter, the town square, that urban space gives people
that deep core sense of being home because they can
see it as part of the environmental content and that
makes meaning for them.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah, every year, pretty much at Christmas time, my family
spends Christmas Day at Western Foreshaw's Park at Lake Ginnindera
in Belcono and Canberra and we just take a bottle
(13:44):
of sparkling wine, kilo prawns, take the dog, have a
picnic and the other people that are there are Indian,
Sri Lankan's, Filipino, Afghans, Chinese, Sudanese. And that multiculturalism is
(14:08):
there in action in people sitting alongside each other, comparing
and looking at what different cultures are doing by way
of food, by way of activities, exchanging occasional comments and conversation.
And you know that physical being with people from very
(14:30):
different cultures really only plays out in selected parts of
our Arabian environment and parks that are a big part
of that. And there's something extraordinarily moving about Christmas time
at Lachin and Dara because a lot of those people
(14:51):
have come from places countries where you know, they've experienced persecution,
they've experienced war, they've experienced displacement, some of them have
been in refugee camps. And here they are and this
is peace. This is one thousand miles from conflict. And
(15:15):
for you as a special.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And special for you to be there in that proximity
and to know the sort of incredible power of all
of these histories that these people bringing to it, and
it's still in Australia. And and then I guess that's
potential hope for our cities as being as being really
meaningful places for people and in the future. The cities
(15:41):
are complex in terms of in terms of like the
planning point of view and the and the various institutions
which are sort of responsible for the sort of general
legislative things, but for them to be actually healthy and
growing at a time like now, which is so much
conflict in terms of economics, and the hope is that
(16:01):
we and with books like yours which kind of give
us sort of vision and give us sort of perspective.
And I think words also are really important because you know, architects,
we can't often get the building off the ground for
a long time. But the words can set the scene,
the words can give the vision, and they can create
a direction, make a statement about what is possible.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah. I mean, as you're talking there, I was just
reflecting on something that I just realized. It's maybe a
bit of a generalization, but compared with cities that I
knew in the UK, particularly London, Bristol, Glasgow, the one
(16:43):
thing that's different about particularly Sydney, Melbourne, but also Canberra
to a lesser extent Adelaide, It's true is that those cities,
whilst they have high migrant populations, have not become ghettoized.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
No.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And you know, some people would disagree with that and say, oh, well,
you know, look at Cabramatta in Sydney, that's Chinatown and
that's where Vietnamese people live, and blah blah blah. Yeah,
up to a point. But in fact, places like Cabramatta,
for all its social problems, what I get an overwhelming
(17:26):
sense of is that there is there is culture on display.
There is culture that is open to anyone to go
and engage and learn from, participate, get involved. It's not exclusive,
it's not it's not dangerous. It used to be dangerous.
(17:46):
At one time, not so long ago. But that sense
of this is, this is who we are, this is
what we've got now, because you know, migrant communities move,
they change constantly, they build on each other. There might
have been originally, you know, originally it would have been
Irish and Scots migrants in parts of Sydney, and they
(18:09):
got displaced by Italians and Greek migrants after the Second
World War, and then in came Vietnamese people and now
it's it's people from Sudan or wherever. And these people
displace each other and they move out two different areas
and suburbs. So our cities are constantly changing in terms
(18:32):
of their cultural characteristics, and that that is what I
think prevents that gheta rization. You know, I think of
the East End of London. You know when I was
when I was a young man, and that was still
very strongly working class Jewish, poor, dangerous, and yeah, it's
(18:58):
become uppified, and it's changed now and it's it's it's
it's become parts of it have become an up market.
But it was like that for a very long time,
and you don't tend to see that in Australian cities.
I think that turnover the rate of change is pretty rappy,
and I think, you know, that's that's an interesting phenomenon.
(19:21):
From from an urban planning and urban design perspective.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I think so, and we we need to we need
to like have I think our job is not sort
of from the urban planet urven design point of view,
is just to capture those cultural the sort of flavors
that you're talking about, that cultural their cultural life, and
just intervene with little markets which which kind of can
(19:47):
be responding to the moment of that sort of the
poeticness of that complete mix of culture, and the market
can be just a very sort of temporary thing that
enables people to own it and then sort of change it,
and we can sort of like the architecture is an
ongoing continual flow simple, which is so correct because it's
(20:07):
so simple of the moment.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
That's right. Yeah, But but in that change, there is
also continuity. There's a continuity of narrative.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, there's narrative.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, there's a continuity of.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And I think that's we can we can really meet
the needs of all of the sort of the people
that the cultural mix if we allow that continuity, we
keep we we work with the continuity, we keep adding
to it, but we allow people kind of to understand it,
to be informed by buildings, so that they actually interact
(20:43):
with it and they make the change, they inform the
changes that the part of that continuity.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, that really, Yeah, that requires a much broader conversation
between communities and town planners and developers.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It's very hard because the station is so well ingrained,
and it's very hard to move individuals within councils, because
councils are so siloed within their different management departments, and
it's very hard to get these simple things across. You know,
usually there's lots and lots of incredible of timon planning
and tendering and procurement big projects. But if we can
(21:22):
like manage the vitality of that public space that you're
talking about in a simple architectural form, and then we've
got sort of real dynamic city scape.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
We've got We've got an issue in Canberra at the
moment where you know, the center, the center of Canberra
is pretty small, not particularly built up, very broad sprawling suburbs,
a lot of quarter acre blocks, but it's constantly expanding
(21:56):
outwards and part of the driver for that is incentivization
of tax incentives for property as an investment, so second homes,
negative gearing, blah blah blah. And we're starting to come
(22:18):
up against serious barriers and thresholds regarding sustainability, particularly water supply,
urban heat island is an issue, so on and so forth.
And you know, I was talking to somebody from Australian
(22:41):
Capital Territory government who came to see me and asked
about adaptation of climate change and how how you would
start to put in place principles for adaptation within a
city like Camber, And I said, where, You've got to
start with issues around water, and that's that's fundamental. But
(23:05):
the problem that he said he was facing was really
a cultural one in which all the all the all
the effort on adaptation is on incremental issues and his
colleagues don't necessarily see the bigger picture where climate change
(23:27):
is going to actually force transformational change. And I said, well,
that really starts with with how you change the culture
within within your particular department and how you start to
influence people to think and act differently. So this is going,
but you know this is way before you start to
put in place plans like how how to address a
(23:51):
heat island problem, or how you stop builders building houses
with black roofs and so on. It goes to the
heart of cultural change. Oh my god, you know, how
am I going to start that? That's when we start
by having conversations.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
That's where your role is.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Absolutely, that's well, that's part of it.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
That's a much broader into disciplinary approach.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Oh yeah, very much so. I mean, you know, half
of my work is dealing with adaptation of climate change
in various circumstances.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
But the but you know, there's two sort of things.
I mean, in the present, there's this kind of this
real estate economy in New Zealand particularly, Yeah, just about
real estate. We're all making money out of land and
it's got no relevance to quality of life of an
urban experience, and it's got no absolutely no relevance to
the value of the land. And it's its ecology. Sure,
(24:50):
but you're reaching way back. You also say that, you know,
the settler culture, way way back, you know, talking about
the Scots, the Irish and the New Zealand as well.
It was all about you know, getting my piece of land.
And we still see an evidence here in orat it's
just like cut down every single tree because the land
is valuable for flock and for sheep and cow, and
(25:14):
so there are still and here there's still that attitude
that that pioneer thing of cut down the trees. It's
kind of like a DNA thing got these forces of
like it's valuable to the councils to have lots of
development because they get all these rates off that and
they get a huge amount from resource consents and survey applications.
So there's a kind of like a like an engine
(25:36):
that's just moving forward without without the reflection, which is
what I would like to say. Your book is a tool,
is a contribution.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right that they with that idea of ridership, there's also
you know, this this concept of a sense of entitlement.
And to my mind, if you accept the fact that
you know, humans are part of nature and part of
(26:05):
our responsibility as sentient beings is to maintain, conserve, preserve,
protect care for environment, then the idea of being part
of which gives us a sense of identity, a sense
(26:28):
of belonging, sense of purpose and so on and so
forth that carries with it a set of responsibilities. You
don't get this stuff from nothing. You've got to put
stuff back now. In the settler ideology where you go
and somebody gives you land because you asked for it,
because you've just dispossessed an indigenous community. In that system
(26:54):
where you justify the possession of that land through saying
that I will make it productive in ways that it
wasn't before, well it completely, it completely misunderstands the nature
of what productive land actually means in a sustainability context.
(27:14):
But also it implies that in order in order that
you are doing this thing, that you should be entitled
to all sorts of other things. You know, traditionally in
nineteenth century before the abolition of before during the convict era,
(27:41):
it was free labor, it was free land. It was
a whole range of entitlements.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The equisitiveness. And it's also this idea of that the
colonial thing of another land as a resource for the colony.
Your land Australia is just a resource for Britain.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well, it was. Land was power both individual and collectivity.
So if you were a landowner, you're more likely to
be a magistrate. That would differentiate you from other people.
You had power over your neighbors, so and you had
the capacity to stock that piece of land with sheep
(28:27):
or cattle or whatever and make a lot of money.
And a lot of the time you were selling your
your your produce, your whatever you were raising on that
land back to the government. So there was this kind
of somewhat in Braid economy. But you know, we are
(28:48):
now having to deal with some of the cultural legacy
of that issue in terms of how we reinvent our
understanding of land ownership and entitlement. I mean, if you
get if you go to big European cities, the idea
of home ownership is just completely alien. People rent their
(29:12):
houses or their apartments. They and they do so generations, generations.
The idea of real estate is investment and economy based
on is just stupid. Why would you do that? So,
I mean, you know, what we're seeing here is now
(29:32):
that there's a housing affordability crisis and people are more
and more people are renting houses and so on, and
there's an ongoing debate about about reducing incentives for investment,
(29:53):
property ownership and so on and so forth. I think that,
you know, I look at the urban sprawling Canberra and
I think, well, some sometimes this has got to start
because she's it's just going to run out of going
to run out of water, We're going to run out
of not going to be We're going to run out
(30:16):
of space to.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Build, and run out of a lot of cultural potential
that collections of people and cities can create. If it's
kind of if, yeah, and yet there are others they're
all the same worldwide. These sprawl and they ignore the
land upon which these boundaries are created, and it's just
(30:37):
so complex, and so it creates these complex local body
institutions to manage this kind of abstract concept of ownership.
But then you you're sort of say, you're right in it,
trying to understand how you and we can't we can't
just change things without understanding the political mechanisms or being
able to or what that mechanism problem.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
But also what you know, I'm constantly amazed where where
you see initiatives where people say, look, we don't want
to do this kind of thing anymore, we're going to
do something different. Just up the road for me, about
ten five kilometers west of here, there's a new suburban
(31:24):
development called Gin Andderry where they've essentially built a kind
of hybrid between an intentional community and a kind of
sustainable suburb. And the first thing I did was put
up a community center with a cafe and a restaurant
and shops and all of that, and then built some
brand it it's got, you know, it's got it's got elements,
(31:51):
it's got solo, it's got sustainable water supply, and it's
got a sense of community about it. It's it's been
well designed from a social perspective, not just an architectural perspective.
And you know, I go out there and it gives
me great hope that people can actually change and think
(32:14):
about this stuff differently. And people I know who live
out there say it's bloody fantastic. You know, It's like
they don't want to live anywhere else. They feel connected,
they feel that, you know, they're not big houses, they
don't need big houses. Don't mean a bloody great McMansion
(32:35):
stuck on a you know, right up to the boundaries
of a quarter acre block, which is which is what
we're seeing more and more of got around the place,
so that that integration of those social elements within within
(32:55):
sort of urban design as driven by drivers have changed,
like climate change. I think, you know, I I'm quite
hopeful about that. I'm hopeful that one can rethink and
and act differently to create suburbs that are more sustainable
(33:17):
in the future. I mean, the other the other story
I love about this kind of stuff is the city
of Melbourne, where that the the the idea of the
urban forest really took off. And originally what the city
(33:38):
did was it had a map of all the street trees,
so that if people found a tree that wasn't doing
too well or was damaged or carr and smashed into it,
or you know, it was losing its leaves or it
was churning up the pavement with its roots or whatever,
they could report it. What happened was people started writing in.
(34:04):
They get that, they get the number of the details
of the tree, and they send an email in actually
writing to that tree. They had favorite trees that they said, oh,
you know the Morton Bay figure at the bottom of
my street. It's beautiful and I love it and I
pass it every day and I love that tree and
(34:24):
it inspires me and blah blah blah. And this just
took off, and so they now have this incredible network
where people email trees in Melbourne and they have this
sense of ownership and belonging and care for those trees
(34:47):
which then get you know, replanted if they if they're dying,
and get looked after. And you know, if you want
to reduce an urban tree an urban heat island, then
plant bloody tree in the street.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Tree calling they absorbed storm water.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
You've got it. You know. It's like, I mean, I've been.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Create urb but they create little outdoor rooms around them.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I've been. I've been in Melbourne on a thirty six
degree day, walked under a Morton Bay fag and it's
about twenty degrees under that tree. It's fifteen degrees difference easy, yeah,
you know, yeah, I mean just.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
That tree in an urban environment, just one tree you
can reconnect you like you don't need love. It's like
a homeopathic idea. You don't need a little bit of
something to get the whole healing. And one little tree
like Tokyo does that incredibly highly intense urban area but
they just have one tree out and it sort of
solved experience for natures, for need of nature, right.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
But the you know, if if you've got as we
have in Canberra, a planning structure and department which is
completely dominated by the development lobby, where new suburbs have
been put up without any street trees whatsoever. You just think, well,
(36:14):
you're storing up a problem for the future. You're going
to have to retrofit this down the track.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
In the social problems, isolation livable, the social isolation of
people where your property and your house is a kind
of sense of status. It's removing so much potential for
for sort of social health.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, I mean to my mind, you know, if people
are moving the suburbs and they're not saying seeing that
bigger picture of what that urban environment looks like, then
I kind of question what else is going on there?
And I suspect that what you're seeing is is people
(36:59):
moving to place. Is where the whole issue is around
the house, the home, the family, but it isn't about
the community and what works for that collective as a whole,
because there isn't much of a sense of community because
everyone is off in their own little McMansion or their
(37:20):
own big McMansion. And you know that then becomes a
you know, how do you how do you get a
community like that mean engage? How do you get them
to address issues like if there aren't sufficient public amenities,
(37:43):
how do they how do they even engage with with
trying to change that. You know, they're already behind the april.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
The weird thing is you're talking about this lovely community
that was built in Camera. I can't understand we're talking
about this stuff it and we're getting subdivisions eating up
the land north of Wales existing greenfield when we've got
all this sprawl and it's a very beachy town so
it's very loose fits. It's not really attractive. We should
(38:12):
be building in there, but they're still and they're and
they're excavating massive amounts of a native of Pete. You know,
the sort of potential for Pete is an amazing absorber
of carbon, you know, and they're all being dug up
and this day and age, I mean it's because the
developers really do have the go ahead by councils, because
they've got it all set up, they have the little
(38:33):
sort of format councilors have to question. It's simple and
you know they're going to get so much money from
from the rates out of this. So it's still going
on today like right now.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I mean the standard the standard joke about the Act
the Australian Capital Territories that our Chief Minister has never
met a developer he didn't like.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, yes, that.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Really angers a lot of Canberra resid that, you know, disenfranchised.
They have no real say in those sorts of we
don't we don't have much say in what our city
is going to look like or you know, and and
to get a say it's hard work and it's not straightforward,
and it requires an awful lot of time and investment.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You're in the middle of it, aren't you were trying
to you understand the experience.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
I understand it, and I'm happy to work with people
who want to change it. But you know, I've got
it's not my core business in terms of areas of
public policy that I want to get particularly involved in
Oban development is not my my area of expertise.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
But it's it's a kind of of how things don't
get as the processes that enable us to continue what
you seem to have a bit of a grasp on.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Well, that's right, and excuse me sorry. And also there's
this sort of sense of I've got to live in
the city and I've got to navigate parts of it
on a daily basis. I've seen huge amount of change
(40:20):
already a lot of it for the worse. I don't
want that to continue. I think about my kids who
are now in their thirties and when they when they
were young, you know, there were a whole load of amazing,
fantastic places that we could go to and they could
(40:42):
play and run around and all the rest of it.
A lot of those places have now been built on,
you know, they've gone no more. And I kind of
think about some poor kid who's stuck out in some
distant suburb, no trees nowhere to play at a forty
(41:05):
five degree summer day, you know, will pee what kind of.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
What kind of waste? The waste of the land resource,
the waste of people's money in terms of developing all
this when it's actually producing a not a very kind
of intelligent response that waste, which is unquestioned, and the
residents just have to experience this low level of I've
(41:31):
kind of experienced with.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
But what this stuff does come down to, Rosslyn is
changing the way that people think and act about this stuff.
It's fundamental. It's transformative, and it's slow and steady and
you know, incremental a lot of the time, and then
occasional opportunity for transformation or change comes around and you
(41:56):
grab that opportunity with both hands and go for it.
So with those windows of opportunity don't come around very often,
but occasionally they do and you go for it. You're
ready for it. And that's that's what I hope for.
I mean, that's what keeps me going, is that kind
of approach where you know, never ever ever give up,
(42:19):
but at the same time, don't get hopes up too
high that something is going to magically transform, because it won't.
But you know, if people didn't care about stuff, what
a crappy society we live in. And Canberra has got
one huge advantage, which is it's got a highly connected
(42:40):
and very well educated population who do care about the environment,
they do care about the city they live in, and
they want more of a say and they're being let
down by planners and politicians. And that's that's going to change.
I know it will change.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
How will we change it? Just incrementally, as you're saying, I.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Think, well, multiple ways. I mean, my conversation with the
bureaucrat from Urban Services was one example. I said, you
go away and start having informal conversations with your colleagues
if you want to change the way that people think.
Go and have a kappa and have a discussion about
(43:23):
the sustainability issue in Canberra and what we can do
to adapt to climate change. That goes beyond stupid, piecemeal
incremental stuff that ain't going to make any difference and
puts the emphasis back on the homeowner to do stuff
like you know, sort of channels and saving water and
(43:45):
you know, native gardens and all of this crap, which
doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Instead of saying, actually, we
need to rethink the way that we you know, I mean,
almost every house in my street has got a solar
(44:07):
panel on the roof right. Act government has a green
energy policy, but what we've seen is feedings a terraced
back to the grid go down and down and down.
That's disincentivizing people. The bit that's missing is a scheme
(44:33):
would allow people to buy batteries at a reasonable price
so they can actually complete the solar panel battery link.
That would incentivize and buying electric cars because they can
then charge their bloody cars battery et cetera, et cetera.
And we're stuck in this thing of just going for
some panels and oh yeah, that's kind of enough, and
(44:55):
it's not. It's just halfway. So the other thing it's missing,
I think in the in the change the way you think,
think and act stuff is it's actual joined up thinking,
is systems thinking. And that's where you know, architecture, urban design,
(45:17):
the idea of geography, it's all ties together and you've
got to think through all aspects of that and we're
not used to that. We get our eyes in our
thinking into disciplines or or sectors or whatever, and that's
that's got to change. Part of adaptation is changing how
(45:39):
how we think about systems, how we think about care
for others, how we think about the long term. You know,
all of those sorts of things are a part of
what we're going to do differently.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I mean, I think you know you're obviously highly experienced
than an expert, but I think you know everybody and
stands at a basic level that systems thinking is good.
I mean, people want to be connected in all sorts
of ways, and they want to connect to the environment
if it means sustainability programs to achieve to improve that.
(46:17):
So the potential is there in people.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
And it's degnating where you can learn systems thinking and
what's stopping those sorts of approaches primarily is vested in
short term invested interests.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
So it seems so much easier to think the way
you do. I mean, all of us would naturally think that.
It's harder to think about the developmental because it's so abstract.
It's harder to think about the stuff that happens because
it's abstracted and it's kind of based on a monetary
kind of it's mind bending. Does it don't make any sense?
Speaker 2 (46:52):
But a lot of what I have to do in
the adaptation policy space is find when winds where there
are there are long term benefits to be had which
are not going to become maladaptive in two or three
years time, but also in which they don't pose a
(47:16):
huge or immediate challenge to those existing vested interests. So
one piece of work I'm doing at the moment is
trying to figure out a way of adapting irrigated agriculture
in the Murray Daling Basin under climate change so that
irrigators don't put all their eggs in one basket with
(47:38):
one irrigated crop like cotton or almonds or whatever, but
are much more, much more resilient to droughts, floods, and
everything in between, which requires diversification of how they how
they how they design their their farms, and how they
(48:01):
diversify their crops and their income sources. And that is
incredibly challenging because you've got the cotton industry, you've got
the armond industry, you've got the citrus industry, You've got
you know, multiple interests all thinking that somehow magically they
(48:24):
can do business as usual. And under climate change, there
is no business as usual. Under climate change, there's no
going home because home ain't going to be there anymore.
It's going to be different. And you know, we have floods, droughts,
bushfires on a regular basis. And people go, oh yeah, right, okay,
(48:47):
well we're recovering from that. We're just put back things
the way they were. No, you go, don't put things
back the way they are were. Actually, think about what
you need to adapt and change. Are we getting there slowly?
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Giving this slowly? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
But what worries me is that, you know the pace
of natural disasters picks up the point that you're recovering
from one, and then the next one comes along and
you just get overwhelmed. And that's starting to happen in
northern New South Wales around lis More and places like that,
where they've just been hit with one flood after another
(49:24):
in the last few years. That's that's a real concern.
But you know, we can we can build a different
environment which fire proof, that is flood proof, that is
drought proof, that is sustainable. We know how to do it.
It is not rocket science, but it's cultural change that
(49:48):
needs to take place. It's not it's not a we
don't lack the knowledge. What we lack is what we
need is changes in values and rules rather than changes
in knowledge.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
I'd just like to say here that I mean, you're
talking at this point in your career, which is this
climate is this public policy around climate change, and your
book is sort of part of that landscape of our
hearts reconciling people in the environment, which is you know,
it's it's books, it's works, it's words that can actually
go a long way because it's something people can hold.
(50:24):
It's there, it's it's it's it's knowledge, it's philosophy, it's
it's science. It's all you can really do. But I
just like the listeners to know that you've got to
this point of public policy and teaching at the university
or whatever. But you can talk about the issues around
the river, what do you call it? The with the
(50:46):
almonds and the oh one of those the because you've
come you've worked for decades in Australia at a very
basic at a science level, at a site, you know,
looking at science, creat developing data, so you understand the
science of all of this from decades ago.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
But yeah, and that that is about a system's approach.
It's about approach to landscape and understanding how landscapes work,
how they change, how they evolve, what their limits are,
and how you look after them. Really, and that to
(51:32):
me is the basis of what sustainability is. It's that
idea of care and stewardship as a responsibility. And that
means you think of the landscape not as some kind
of abstract thing or even some biophysical thing that's there,
(51:56):
but you think of it as effectively an actor in history.
It has agency, It responds to what's done to it
in ways that are often unpredictable and that require a
systems understanding to be able to connect with and relate
(52:17):
to and manage in a way. Now, Indigenous Australians discovered
this starting sixty five thousand years ago, and you know,
if we can't learn from that, we are missing this
huge opportunity about what our future could hold, what what
could be, what should be, what could be, and what
(52:41):
can be. And you know that to my mind, those
lessons from history and lessons from traditional owners and indigenous
peoples is part of that sustainability journey.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
So it's it's the it's the ecology, it's a physical
nature of the land and trees and rivers and water.
But it's also that deep people connection, which is the
connection to land. So it's the spiritual and the cultural
and the social is absolutely critical. Is a part of
the fabric of the of the physical.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah, I mean we had, we had. You know, we've
seen just recently the death of Pote Frances, and Pope
Frances did something that was absolutely extraordinary. He wrote an
encyclical called Loudato Sea, which was basically care for Care
(53:45):
for our Common Home, which was essentially an environmental manifesto.
And what he did in that in that incyclical was
he pulled together a couple of things. The one that
I think was was was really pretty special was ah,
(54:10):
you know, in care for our common home. It was
the message of a moral framing of the relationship between
people and nature that was grounded in social justice and
environmental justice, and so by considering people as part of
nature inextricably linked. What what Pope Francis did was he
(54:34):
he connected with the earliest philosophies of human existence. And
for a Catholic pontiff to do that is absolutely revolutionary
because if you think of traditional teachings about dominion over
nature and so on and so forth, this is this
(54:57):
is fundamental.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
He was doing to it more, going back, going.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Back to what Aboriginal people are known for years and
years and years and millennia. And then he said, well,
you know, our environmental dilemmas can really Therefore, if they're
about environmental justice and social issues, then they can only
be addressed by and he said this, he said, they
(55:26):
can only be addressed by cultural and ethical revolution. Science
and technology can't provide the solution alone. And I thought, wow,
you are totally on the money, mate. You know, this
is this is exactly, this is exactly what I teach
my students not have.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
The answers, because a religious experience comes from connection to
land and connection to I mean you do it. I mean,
where do we get out of religion from? I mean people,
but that place and land, an experience.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
Of nature is a big part of it.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
And so I get, you know, I mean yeah, and
he's probably going back to that, really core.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
I don't know, I think. I mean, it's an amazing
I mean, you know, it's been a while since I
read it now, but I remember when I first read
load data. See, I just goodness, you know, this is like, yeah,
this could have been written by I don't know, Jared
Diamond or some you know, one of these hot shots,
(56:30):
you know, sustainable Paul Erlich or someone like that, and
it's written by the bloody Pope.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
You know, he took us, he really recognized he took
us role as a world leader and took it totally.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
To the core as a moral leader.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
As a moral leader, how how.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
To ensure that everybody receives justice and everything received justice?
Because if you if you're talking about morals, then you
don't make the distinction between people, animals, plants, you know,
other beings. And that that to me was pretty special.
(57:17):
That was that was so out of touch with you know,
I was brought up Catholic and we weren't brought up
with the idea. We were brought up with the idea
that people and nature were separate and different. And you know,
and therein lies our problem.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
Modern theology can be just as valuable, It can be
just as valuable, and as movement forward have joined up systems.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not a religious
person anymore, but I you.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
Know, the over other field of study, well, the.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Overlap between morals and ethics, you know, as a humanist,
I see that all the time, with with with theology,
and I respect it and I understand it, and I'm
happily engaged with it. You know. It's you need, you
need everybody find the same battle. I don't care what.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
And the Pope was using his position to elucid eight
joined up systems.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah he was, you.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
Know, which is a wonderful thing. And then I'm sorry
to diverge, but I can't think, you know, here we
are talking about what we can do in Canberra, in
New Zealand and Australia, and then you think, I mean
referring back to your to the refugees, and we're thinking
about this and it's so important that we think it's
so hard, and we think it's so important to do.
But you think of places in the world which are
(58:44):
just war zones. Absolutely, I mean, what does all that mean,
what we're talking about mean, or maybe there was some relevance,
maybe maybe we wouldn't have these war I don't know,
how does that? I mean, it's such a different it's
a parallel kind of universe.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
One of the things I find incredibly moving about the
war in Gaza is how even though Gaza City has
been bombed flat, even though almost everything has been destroyed,
the Palestinians from Gaza, the idea of relinquishing that land
(59:22):
is so such an such anathema to them that they
would never ever do it. And that's why, you know,
Trump and Neti Yahoo's idea of building this kind of
luxury resorts there is just morally obscene, you know. So,
even even that destruction, those people still hang on to
(59:48):
the idea of of of of belonging to that place.
And to me, that that is something that you know,
there's Israeli military and the Israeli government and never ever
going to understand or never ever be able to overcome,
even though paradoxically they themselves have gone through the same
(01:00:12):
experience and this is this is what's so shipful about
that bloody war is the very people who ought to
understand the position of the other seeming capable of doing so,
and that that is tragic and heartbreaking. Yeah, but you know, I.
Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Mean, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.
I mean, you're talking about the Pseudanese and America and
Australia and means through and what's happening, And I mean,
is there any narrative, Is there any stories that we
can get from people's love of land or the conflicts
that arise from whatever? I mean, And we're talking about
collective urbanization and our and our sort of reasonably advanced
(01:00:55):
to western cities.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Good question. Yeah, I don't I don't have the full
answer to that, but I think I think what I
just sort of musing on that one. In relation to
(01:01:28):
migrants to Australia, I think that what we're starting to
see in that sort of that sort of issue of
cultural hybridism of where people are from one place, you know,
it's this this land of here and there where migrants
(01:01:53):
original country retains a place in the imagination and identity
of how people strive to recreate elements of their homeland
in the landscape of their adoptive country. But that thing
is only going to last one or two generations if that,
(01:02:14):
and then it's going to merge away into nothing or
be replaced by new migrants and so on. So if
one's got to capture, if one's going to capture the
idea of of multiple meanings of urban environment, then then
(01:02:35):
one's got to You've got to You've got to be
You've got to be quick and nimble and responsive and empathetic. Absolutely,
and also think where are the universalities here? Where the generalizations?
What's going to work for one community and for others?
(01:03:00):
What do people really want, what do they really value,
and what do they have in common? Now, that to
me joins up a really important link in the whole
story of multiculturalism of bringing people together. You know, what
des urban design? What what does that look like that
(01:03:22):
can satisfy and can meet the needs of multiple different ethnicities.
Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I think, as we run out of time, that's a
pretty good a question. And also I'm just thinking, you know,
you're talking about the gardens, and you're previously not talking
about popes. I don't know the name of his works.
But I mean he was talking about that as a
world leader at the very but I mean what the
(01:03:51):
gardens and essence are understanding their land at the same time.
I mean there's a real connection between from one from
top to bottom, you know, from one level to another. Yeah, indeed,
but that's complex.
Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
So but it's also it's also fascinating and engaging. You know,
these these sorts of questions, they don't often get asked
and addressed in the context of of how you can
pull elements of of community together in in in a
(01:04:29):
in a multicultural city to influence urban design. And I
think that's you know, that that is that's something that
is exciting and is underdone and presents lots of opportunities.
I mean, you can get very creative with that.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
You can do very creative and with the background that
you're talking about the same time as sustainability, the environment
as a cultural diversity, rupture it's activity and its connection.
Then the questions can be asked and problems can be
solved by a connection of people in such a sort
of active and vital space, and you can start to
ask all these questions and start to solve them. Round
(01:05:09):
it round around an agent, you know, around an arena
together and we can solve it together as a community,
as an intelligent people's native intelligence when they're given the
space and the place.
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
And if we're going to address if we're going to
address the challenge of adaptation of climate change, the only
way you do that is part of a collective. You
can't do it on your own. You have to be
part of a collective in order to achieve change.
Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So excitingly for architecture, we are we actually are the
one lot who actually have the skills to know how
to understand the cultural imperiodives within a particular place and
do a bit of a built in dimension to enable
an arena for people to gather happily. But with that
you and enable the tensions enabling indecision. It's not a
fixed thing. I think I'm going, I want, I just
(01:05:58):
like to finish your glowing statements.
Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
No, that's terrific. I really like that. You know that
the role of architects and social change and social entrepreneurship.
That's that's great, that's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Indeed, thank you very much, listeners. Matthew Koloff, and you
are now having had a decade three as a scientist.
You are now working at the Finnis School of Environment
and Society at the a n U after years with
the c s I r O. Thank you very much.
(01:06:42):
Here we are on local architecture, now across the ditch,
but very relevant at a local and universal global level.
This program was made with assistance from New Zealand on
Air for radio broadcast and through the Accessmedia dot z website.
Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Thank you New Zealand on Air
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