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Headline : “Yes, we can ‘Do Better’: the ugly truth about racism in Australia”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/yes-we-can-do-better-the-ugly-truth-about-racism-in-australia-20210204-p56zqq.html
Leadership is critical to anti-racism. Racism fades and falls or flourishes according to the political settings of the day. The Morrison Government have not demonstrated any commitment to antiracism. There is not a single antiracism program initiative and not a single policy of the Morrison Government committed to antiracism.
Headline: ‘Queering Home’, Episode 1, Season 3 of Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (UK) podcast ‘That Feels Like Home’
Podcast: https://pod.link/modamuseum/episode/8ad971aa91ddc608b559106df8806fc0
Podcast and further resources on MoDA site: https://moda.mdx.ac.uk/conversations/home-queering
In this episode, MoDA's curator, Ana Baeza, opens up questions about the relationship between home, gender and sexuality to consider the project of ‘queering’ home. She discusses ways in which homes might be queer, and why it’s important to look at practices of queering the domestic in a conversation with Andrew-Gorman-Murray, Professor of Geography at Western Sydney University, Australia, and Matt Cook, Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck University, London, the editors of Queering The Interior (2018, Bloomsbury). What do we mean by home as a queer space? How have queer homes contested or conformed to traditional imaginaries of home? How are homes, suburban, urban or otherwise, not just spaces for conventional domesticity and sexuality, but also sites of resistance and transformation?
Headline: Under-resourced and undermined: as floods hit south-west Sydney, our research shows councils aren’t prepared
https://theconversation.com/under-resourced-and-undermined-as-floods-hit-south-west-sydney-our-research-shows-councils-arent-prepared-178293
Headline: Planning shake-up needed to help those whose job it is to make NSW a healthy place
https://theconversation.com/planning-shake-up-needed-to-help-those-whose-job-it-is-to-make-nsw-a-healthy-place-159638
Headline: ‘I don’t think the police would do much’: new research shows racism during COVID is rarely reported
https://theconversation.com/i-dont-think-the-police-would-do-much-new-research-shows-racism-during-covid-is-rarely-reported-165312
This article was published in The Conversation on August 4, 2021. It draws on findings from the research reported in Asian Australians’ Experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic , lead by Dr Alanna Kamp. The article highlights that four in ten Asian Australians experienced racism during the pandemic (and nearly the same number witnessed racism). The majority did not report the racism they experienced or witnessed due to lack of trust of reporting authorities and feelings of hopelessness, shame and disempowerment. The research also revealed the relationship between experiencing racism and poor mental health and feelings of belonging.
Headline: Training in Urban Planning for Local Aboriginal Land Councils
Local Aboriginal Land Council Training Program won an award for ATSI Planning at the PIA awards on 4th of Nov. 2021. Details are here: https://www.planning.org.au/documents/item/11572
Awais Piracha delivered training in town planning to Northern NSW Local Aboriginal Land Councils (LALCs) in Coffs Harbour on July 5 2022 on the invitation from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE)
The Department of Planning and Environment NSW in collaboration with a few volunteer town planning academics offers training in town planning to Local Aboriginal Land Council LALC officials. That helps the LALC realise the full development potential of the land they hold. The DPE NSW and the academic team has developed a training manual for the course. They deliver the course every alternate month.
Headline: Urban Adaptation
https://100climateconversations.com/sebastian-pfautsch/
As part of the 100 Climate Conversations weekly podcast, which is part of the Powerhouse Museum’s latest multi-year climate change project, selected innovators presented their views on what can be done to save our planet. In episode 17, Dr Sebastian Pfautsch explains what can be done to cool playgrounds, schools, and homes to improve health and reduce our carbon footprint. Clever and sustainable planning, construction and living just may change the date of Earth Overshoot Day in Australia. His ideas are positive, practical, and most importantly, achievable.
Headline: Population growth forecasts for Western Sydney slashed as migration stalls during pandemic
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-20/western-sydney-migration-slowing-down-business-concern/101000388
Headline: Christchurch attacks strike at the heart of Muslims’ safe places from Islamophobia
https://theconversation.com/christchurch-attacks-strike-at-the-heart-of-muslims-safe-places-from-islamophobia-113922
This article uses Dr Itaoui’s PhD research on the geographies of Islamophobia to respond to the calamity of the Christchurch Mosque attacks that killed 51 Muslims in March 2019. The article proposes place-based responses and solutions to the spatial threat of racism, advocating for the protection of spaces of belonging for multicultural communities in urban spaces.
Headline: Census and the city: Inner Sydney’s wealth is wildly outside the Australian norm
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/census-and-the-city-inner-sydney-s-wealth-is-wildly-outside-the-australian-norm-20220630-p5ay40.html
Article quotes Professor Phillip O’Neill on the distribution of jobs income and wealth in Sydney. “O’Neill said inner Sydney benefits from a massive concentration of well-paid knowledge industry jobs in finance, professional services and IT. These industries have thrived in job hubs near Sydney Harbour since the deregulation of the Australian economy in the 1980s.”
Headline: Climate change hits low-income earners harder – and poor housing in hotter cities is a disastrous combination
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-hits-low-income-earners-harder-and-poor-housing-in-hotter-cities-is-a-disastrous-combination-180960
Over the last half century, the balance of Sydney’s social housing has been pushed to the west, where it can be up to 10℃ hotter than the breeze-cooled coast. Meanwhile, rapid housing development reduces existing tree canopy daily, further intensifying heat.
This situation locks in cycles of disadvantage for decades and generations to come. Even if we limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century, Western Sydney will still experience fewer than 17 days of 35℃ per year by 2090. Australia needs a more holistic, forward-thinking approach to the design of hot cities, one that’s up to the task of changing with the climate.
