there's our catastrophe

Anonymous asked: what's your stance on yards? do you prefer frontyards to backyards? are you anti-yard altogether?

open space is really important!  especially for kids.  when it comes to private yards, I favour neither frontyards nor backyards, but courtyards, peranakan style. maybe my opinion on this would be different if I lived in a cooler climate, but for places where it regularly gets >35C, they’re the greatest. 

but that’s a kind of liminal space between inside and outside, not a yard in the sense you mean, right?  really I’m kind of anti-yard, in that I’m in favour of pooling our open space to create more parks and fewer yards.  On the other hand, you sometimes have to fight for your right to use communal open spaces.  they can be dangerous; they can be taken from you.  but the home can also be dangerous, isolation within the home is dangerous, ultimately I believe that it’s more realistic to make society as a whole less dangerous, make our lives more public, decrease isolation, than to make every single home safe.

the Victorian state government has banned political meetings or doorknocking on all public housing estates in an apparent form of revenge for public housing tenants successfully organising against a sell-off of their open space to developers

I’ve been struggling for a while now to comment on this but something about it is so perfectly evil that it fries my higher cognitive capacities. 

there’s an action group “HOME — Hands Off Melbourne’s Estates” who are a bit less immobilised by shock, if you’re interested. 

rgr-pop:

remember when the Associated Press determined that Ann Arbor was the least segregated city in Michigan because its population was 7% black instead of 50% black or 80% black or 20 % black in a state that’s 15% black

by “segregation is a problem” we know everyone means “oh god there are a lot of black people in detroit” not “ann arbor is a majority white city just outside of the blackest city in the country and has been pretty strongly responsible for uneven distribution of resources in the region for a very long time now”

I think the context around the use of the term “segregation” when referring specifically to Black people in the USA, in a specific city, is really important.  Having said that, I think it’s relevant that last year I read a lot of policy from Australia, North America and Europe that was concerned with “segregation” or “ghettoisation” or similar concepts in the urban environment.  Without exception, an area was considered segregated and in need of a policy response if it had a large population of people of colour or otherwise ethnically marginalised people; without exception, disproportionately white areas were not considered “segregated”.  This was also true of poverty: poor people living together are ghettoised and need to be broken out of that with gentrification, rich people living together is just the way of the world.  Discourses of “integration” in urban policy are almost all progressive-sounding ways to talk about large groups of marginalised people as a problem. Basically you’re right and this is a huge issue in other places as well. 

Victorian state government’s plan to turn the housing of the neediest into a profit-making venture

riserefugee:

MEDIA RELEASE - 18/01/2013

Since its inception, RISE has been dedicated to supporting refugees and asylum seekers settle in Australia. This has included our commitment to working with various housing services and advocacy groups to address the lack of sustainable and affordable housing for asylum seekers and refugees in this country.

We were appalled to hear the suggested plans for the redevelopment of public housing in the Fitzroy and North Richmond areas. The residents of most housing estates in this area consist of people from refugee/asylum seeker backgrounds as well as low income earners, both old and young. The plans put forward involve the privatisation of 50% of public housing in these areas. This announcement is great cause for alarm as the demand for affordable housing increases, while available properties decline. Potential outcomes of such a move will be increased homelessness in our community as well as the breakdown of community cohesion as individuals and families in need are left to compete with one another for very little remaining assistance.

A similar scheme has gone ahead in the Kensington area where it failed to live up to the reality it suggested to public housing tenants. Although some residents were offered places in the new development, 50% of tenants were forced to move into already overwhelmed housing estates, due to the reduced number of homes offered to the public sector.

We must not forget implementing such scheme not only affects community members and their wellbeing but also it will also overload crisis accommodation services where there are overwhelming numbers of people currently on waiting lists. Rather than the suggested scheme which has been tried and has failed elsewhere, RISE believes a complete review of the public housing sector is needed. Those in need should be prioritised with homes designed and built for families and pensioners, rather than those seen in Kensington favouring individual studios and one/two bedroom apartments that have limited capacity.

The current plan by the Victorian state government has targeted some of the poorest members of our community in order to benefit middle class Australians. The current residents of public housing properties in Fitzroy and North Richmond are members of an established community. They have roots, friends, family members, jobs, schools etc. in these neighbourhoods. On top of shaky housing options, our community in these regions is also dealing with under-servicing by government agencies as well as the scant opportunities available to them in a society that can be incredibly hostile to the newly arrived and poor. Rather than displacing our community in the pursuit of profit, RISE calls on the Victorian state government to scrap its current privatisation plan and instead, increase resources for public housing.

Media contact:
Mohamed Nur (RISE Support Service worker)
0418 810 036 or admin@riserefugee.org

Take action and push the State government to scrap its privatisation of public housing. Contact your local MP via phone/fax/email and voice your concerns!

Wendy Lovell,
Minister for Housing
Phone 03 9096 0301
Email wendy.lovell@parliament.vic.gov.au

Richard Wynne
Shadow Minister for Housing
Phone 03 9415 8901
Email richard.wynne@parliament.vic.gov.au

Lily D’Ambrosio
Shadow Minister for the Suburbs
Phone 9465 9033
Email lily.d’ambrosio@parliament.vic.gov.au

Ms Jenny Mikakos
Shadow Minister for Seniors and Ageing
Phone 03 9462 3966
Email jenny.mikakos@parliament.vic.gov.au

Adam Bandt
Federal Member for Melbourne
Phone 03 9642 0922
Email: adam.bandt.mp@aph.gov.au

Colleen Hartland MLC
Phone 03 9689 6373
Email colleen.hartland@parliament.vic.gov.au

groanemics:

the interesting thing about one direction is that their iconography is so london-centric when in fact 4 of them are from the north (i like to think that, in the event of bitter internecine north-south war, the industrial midlands would take the side of the north) and one of them isn’t even from the uk

like the whole one thing video is them larking about in hyde (?) park and passing notable london landmarks on an open top bus

it’s peculiarly circular - they’re only allowed access to this sterile, faux-neutralising visual language of ‘britishness’ because they’re an international phenomenon that makes tons of money, but they could only have become an international phenomenon that makes tons of money by dissolving their (radically different) regional identities entirely within that language

the shallowness of the british-industrial complex laid bare 

doreen massey has written some really top-notch stuff about the idea of london and what the actual effects are of the UK being increasingly identified with london, increasing concentration of population and resources in London, etc

basically, the identification of the UK with london and the reinforcement of this through the circulation of twee London-y imagery hurts brits

dorkblogging:

idk i just resent how ~since jane jacobs we’re supposed to hate on massive brutalist (infra)structure. whenever i look at these buildings i can’t help but get sappy idealistic early-bauhaus/constructivism feels and i guess it’s weird but whatever, i’ve made peace with it.

jane jacobs has had the worst fucking influence on urban planning

her entire take on social mix is so toxically under-thought, it literally just comes from being part of a gentrifying wave, being completely unaware of that, looking around her, and saying “quaint village atmosphere!!!”

jane jacobs is the reason or at least the theoretical justification for the “social mix” policies that form the biggest plank of modern state-supported neoliberal gentrification

as in, neoliberalism posits itself as the defender of variety and pluralism against brutalist conformist communist totalitarianism, and jacobs-influenced planning policy is one of the most easily traceable uses of that rhetoric in the recent history of cities and housing

I’m all for critiques of top-down planning processes but what people don’t realise is that jacobs-esque social mix type policies are also top-down and bureaucratic and insensitive to the needs of local people, especially people in need of affordable housing

I could go on about this all day and I have and I’ll probably do it again