BUILDING CULTURAL CAPITAL

 CULTURALcapital as an idea is something that emerges as a consequence the disruptions taking place that are challenging comfortable beliefs invested in postcolonial status quo sensibilities.

In defining ‘culture’ the shared patterns of behaviour and the interactions, the cognitive constructs and the understanding that are acquired by social interactions. Thus, culture can be seen as the evolution of group identities and individual identities that come about through social patterning specific to a group – family, tribe, nation and all that relative to place and placemaking. .

Culture encompasses belief systems, food choices, what we wear and how, when we wear it. Moreover, the languages we use and share, the relationship models, musical expressions, and what is collectively understood to be moral and immoral. Then comes how we gather and where we we share food and other resources, who we accept and how we might greet visitors, how we behave with our loved ones and more still. .

As discussed earlier, there are four fundamental imperatives that define our humanity and ourselves as humans. Firstly, we all require the same life sustaining elements, oxygen, water, food. Then comes our need to identify and be identifiable. Then comes the need to procreate genetically and ideologically. Not lastly by any means comes the imperative to secure safe shelter, a place where we feel safe and are welcomed.

When we have satisfied these thing what in fact we have done is create CULTURALcapital via our mutual and collaborative investments in our 'placedness'.

MAKING AND PLACEDNESS

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Source Link

'Artisanship'  is a term coined by Mark McClelland in his 2023 White Paper 'Cultural Placemaking'. He sites the New South Wales town, Braidwood and talks about the most recognisable vernacular building material there as being granite taken from the local landscape. In so many ways granite defines the town's placedness. 

Other places have other materials to underpin their placedness: sandstone in Sydney, Brisbane’s distinctive volcanic tuff plus its 'tin and timber', bluestones in Melbourne and Adelaide and Launceston's brick and lace iron and so on. 

The 'materiality' of local materials and the built forms that reflect this materiality quite simply belongs in its CULLTURALlandscape. That builders might develop  placedness in their buildings is unsurprising. This 'placedness' is magnified as builders adapt to the materials' placedness and their characteristics, all of which can become deeply embedded in their artisanship. 

Artisanal 'making' fundamentally needs the considered application of a holistic relationship between hands, head and heart. The investment that makers  making in their making, in their labour, in their skill sets is all-pervading and it takes on cultural expressions that play a large part in the evolution of placedness and the creation of CULTURALcapital. 

That’s why we value real artisanal products, as quite simply they reveal something of the collaboration that humans invest in the places they understand to be 'home'. The work of artisan builders absorbs us in an urban CULTURALlandscape where human expression can be felt over time. 

We might look for and see the distinctive marks of an individual artisan. Or to put it another way the marks of the 'maker' and the maker's marks. It is not just  the imprints of their tools in the materials they have shaped something with, it is something more than that – something almost inexplicable. This type of lets say 'architectural artisanship' has become lost, as 'building' has increasingly been industrialised as much 'making' has since the Industrial Revolution. 

The demise of artisanship, craftsmanship cum material sensibility plus the mythologies and their methodologies in 'the making' of things somehow turns out to be  more than impoverishing. The missing innate nurturing and celebration of material, the honouring of their realities, the observance of innate spiritual values, the honour paid to their cultural meaningfulness in physical infrastructure and the 'things' that are manifested within, come  loaded with stories. The loss of any of this within our 'made things' is quite simply lamentable. More than that it underpins the TROWaway mindset that gives us floating PLASTICislands in the Pacific

We are diminished by their loss, diminished by their apparent absence, somehow weakened by the lack of visual language invested in something and the lack of shared 'ownership' of the sensibilities invested in the things that in the end contributes to the CULTURALcapital we have invested in our places. The loss of all that ultimately disempowers us – and sadly so.

The 19th C 'Arts and Crafts Movement' [LINK] (ACM) was an international but essentially a British cum British Empire reaction to the increased mechanisation of the making of things as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and at the same time it reflected British 'colonial dominance'. Likewise, 'the movement' was initiated in a reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts and the conditions under which they were produced. The movement flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920.

The Anti-Industrialisation idealists within the ACM movement disliked the increasingly power of the industrial world in Victorian Britain.  The mass-produced, machine-made 'things' were intrinsically linked to the nation's social, moral and artistic decline in their 'world view'. 

It is significant that the ACM movement campaigned for a new social order in which the worker was freed from factory working conditions and could take pride in 'his' craftsmanship and skills in a way akin to the way the Medieval Guild System had worked. In a way that system protected and fostered a place's, a nation's, a city's, CULTURALcapital albeit not expressed in such a way.

Then came the 20th C 'World Crafts Movement' [1] - [2] - [3] (WCM) that was essentially founded by Ms.Aileen O.Webb, et al at an international meeting at the University of Colombia,New York City, on 12 June,1964. As a non-governmental cum not-for-profit organization the aim was to maintain, strengthen, and ensure the status of 'the Crafts' – Proper noun plural – as a vital part of cultural life cum cultural reality – a noble idea all things being equal.

The WCM also aimed to promote the human values of 'the crafts' and a sense of fellowship among the craftspeople around the world.The World Crafts Council is the only body setup to support the aspiration of the world’s craftspeople, whether in maintaining honorable inherited traditions, or in extending frontiers by experiment and innovation.

However, it turns out that all things are never 'equal' and for the WCM somewhat poignantly this is the case. Keeping in mind that in 1964 the 'Cold War' (1947- 1991) was in full swing and that just two years earlier the world watched on, fearfully, as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. In the world at the time nothing was in any way 'equal'.

LINK TO SOURCE

Notably, Rose Slivka – [1] - [2] –  shifted 'Craft Horizons' magazine away from technical articles towards more professional and critical writing that included contributions from many outside the field. As Editor-in-chief at Craft Horizons, Slivka published The New Ceramic Presence in 1961, which the American Craft Council called "groundbreaking." Rose Slivka's (nee Schiffer) sensibilities are deeply embedded in the New York ARTscene of the Cold War era and that is far from being insignificant given that she was David Slivka's second wife.

Consequent to the narratives embedded in the DEEPhistories here it is unsurprising that there are subterranean narratives in play in support various idealogical positions. These narratives evolve outside the apparent benign 'norms' that in large part are subjective, speculative and contestable. For instance 'cold war warriors' had inclinations to advance the perception of freedom in subliminal ways. So, it is unsurprising that the so-called World Crafts Movement might find its 'values' contested and moreover by cold war commentators.

Interestingly, there were 'cold war warriors' contesting the value of 'abstract expressionism' and the notions of 'freedom' that were often deemed to be a fundamental 'value'. There was an argument advanced that was, perhaps paraphrased, "there is golden road between Moscow and Paris paved by writings in support of the art craft debate, abstract expressionism etc. etc." [Pers Com Prof James McAuley circa 1975/6] McAuley also advanced the idea that the work of many international CRAFTheroes was "neither fish nor fowl" . He was a 'foodie' and he knew about such things. Interestingly McAuley's biographer, Peter Pierce, noted that "McAuley was a bold and bitter jester. More droll than the Ern Malley hoax was his projection of Poets' Anonymous, wherein bad poets would be encouraged to discuss their affliction and be paid by the government not to write."

By way of context here, McAuley was living inTasmania at the time and it was often boasted that the state had more paid up members of the Australian Crafts Council than any other state. And somewhat ironically many Australian poets proffered the idea that Ern Malley poetry was his best work. [Pers Com Tim Thorne circa 1990 and noteably Thorne was a McAuley student]

Alongside these narratives there was yet another that suggested that the 'World Crafts Movement' was deeply implicated in an American agenda to homogenise 'world cultural realities' under a kind of imperial cultural umbrella where the American flag flew high denoting that the USA was the dominant power – Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Conspiracy theory yes, but it had currency for those who consumed Superman via those easy to read comic books .

What relevance has any of this to the realities being contested relative to housing and HOMEmaking in the 21st C? 

Well, if we look around us and we explore our literature, rather the somewhat subliminal literature and storytelling that informs us in subtle ways almost daily there is much to be found. And, in doing so we might well bring to the surface Ella Wheeler Wilcox. and find that she tells us about "TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE" 

She says ...." There are two kinds of people on earth to-day; Just two kinds of people, no more I say. ........... Not the sinner and saint, for it's well understood The good are half bad and the bad are half good. ........... Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man's wealth, You must first know the state of his conscience and health. ........... Not the humble and proud, for in life's little span, Who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man. ........... Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years Bring each man his laughter end each man his tears. ........... No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean Are the people who lift and the people who lean. ........... Wherever you go you will find the earth's masses Are always divided in just these two classes. ........... And oddly enough, you will find, too, I ween, There's only one lifter to twenty who lean. ........... In which class are you? Are you easing the load Of overtaxed lifters who toil down the road? Or are you a leaner who lets others bear Your portion of labor and worry and care? "

Looking to Ella Wheeler Wilcox's 'lifters and leaners' it is not a huge stretch to tie the 'artisanship'  that Mark McClelland invokes his 2023 White Paper 'Cultural Placemaking into the binary he implies is there. Then comes the 'art craft binary' that lingers on in the imaginings all too many, albeit bound up in  the 'World Crafts Movement' such as it is/was.

In their own ways there are two or three Australian commentators who speak loudly of our CULTURALlandscapes and the CULTURALcapital that is invested in them. 

There are no real surprises when one delves into the messy business of politics in Australia to gather a gleaning from Rhodes scholar and Prime Minister Tony Abbott in his Election night victory speech, Sydney, 7 September 2013 he said ... “I give you all this assurance – we will not let you down. A good government is one that governs for all Australians, including those who haven’t voted for it. A good government is one with a duty to help everyone to maximise his or her potential, indigenous people, people with disabilities, and our forgotten families, as well as those who Menzies described as ‘lifters, not leaners’. We will not leave anyone behind.”

AND, when we might look here to Judith Brett in her 1993 book Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, Menzies’ middle class was a moral rather than an economic category (Brett 1993). Brett tells us that almost anyone could be 'middle class' if they identified with middle class values like ambition, effort, independence, and readiness to serve. Menzies said the only true classes in Australian society ‘are the active and the idle’ (Menzies 1954). This was the point he made in his 1942 speech ‘The forgotten people’ where he distinguished between society’s ‘lifters’ and ‘leaners’ and warned against those who wanted to benefit from government help but were reluctant to make any contribution in return (Menzies 1942a). As a moral category, ‘leaners’ included only those who chose not to contribute. Menzies acknowledged that there was group in society who were neither lifters nor leaners—those who could not work because of sickness or disability. He saw this group as deserving of compassion and support. AND, it is not for nothing that we might mine Joe Hockey's and Peter Costello's speechmaking looking for this class of POLITICALmorality being called upon.

Link to the WHITEpaper

All that said, and front and centre on the table, we might more profitably visit Mark McClelland's 2023 White Paper 'Cultural Placemaking' where he talks about 'artisanship'  in the context of CULTURALcapital. 

Seemingly decision makers are disinclined to take on board in such ideas within planning processes. If we think about McClelland's 'artisans' as 'makers' and/or 'designer makers' we can extrapolate that making stuff is also 'placemaking' and that makers can be quite safely be imagined as 'lifters'. 

As  Ella Wheeler Wilcox. tell us  "oddly enough, you will find, too, I ween, There's only one lifter to twenty who lean."  That might be the case, but Mark McClelland makes a good case for the makers in communities being the real builders when it comes to investing in CULTURALcapital.

Thinking upon all this in the Antipodes and imaging 'colonisers' loading their 'social misfits' on ships and one way or another dumping them a long way away in a 'terra nullius place' kind of resonates in discourses to do with landfill given that it has turned the way it has. Those colonisers of convenience's legacy is the sure and certain knowledge that there is no "away" albeit that their peri-colonial descendants still imagine that they can 'chuck stuff away' – spent plastics and dispossessed people somewhat alike.

At the risk of firing up the Cold War defenders of the status quo, the vacuous  ART/CRAFTdebate, THEenlightenment, the AWAYNESSsensibility and the PROPERway we might well look at CULTURALcapital in the context of there being "lifters and leaners" – bankers and users.

Haptically, and experientially, makers bring sensibilities and sensitivities to DECISIONmaking cum PLACEmaking in ways that Mark McClelland et al alert us to when they invoke ideas like artisanship, craftsmanship, workmanship, artistry, masterfulness etc. 

These are the very things Medieval Guilds built their reason for being upon – indeed their purposefulness. They are the cornerstones upon which CULTURALcapital is built and shaped with, the things that humanity has relied upon in CULTURALlandscaping for eons. It has been so since the first stone, stick or straw was imagined as a tool. TOOLmaking we can imagine was important in separating the 'lifters from the leaners' albeit that within a 'place aware culture' there are roles in the binary for the lifters and the leaners – References [1] - [2] - [3].

There is a great deal to unpack here and that may well turn out to be something that a PhD candidate somewhere might grapple with. Here, there is something to work on a little bit at a time, and when that's done we will all end up with with an understanding that is quite massive. CULTURALcapital does not come in a bottle, and it turns out that it is a hands on and hard won thing.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN

 

The lyrics of that Bob Dylan song that goes: Come gather 'round people ... Wherever you roam ... And admit that the waters ... Around you have grown ...And accept it that soon ...You'll be drenched to the bone ...If your time to you is worth savin' ...And you better start swimmin' ... Or you'll sink like a stone ... For the times they are a-changin' ... currently carries a message as poignant as it was when in 1964 it was the title track of his album. It was a song with a purpose and it resonates still. Literature is fertile ground to till if we are illuminate our search for meaning and metaphor.

Somewhat curiously a Launceston Councillor in talking about the binary of relative wealth and poverty somewhat surreptitiously, knowingly or unknowingly, invoked the opening paragraph  of a Charles Dickens novel, A Tale oF Two Cities.

In his Letter to The Examiner's Editor he wrote:

"LAUNCESTON tells the tale of two cities: A tale of poverty and prosperity, scarcity and affluence, hunger and abundance, despair and comfort. We see these contradictions in strips of land a few hundred metres apart, a five-star hotel next to people experiencing homelessness, living in poorly constructed tents or old caravans, exposed to harsh, Tassie winters. 

Recent conversations have highlighted some of the devastating reasons so many Launceston locals are experiencing homelessness, such as mental health conditions and domestic violence.  

"Some nights it gets so cold that they cannot sleep, they stay awake at night and go to sleep during the day." "One day I woke up with the water flooding my tent." 

"We often eat tinned food because we do not have fridges to keep fresh food." 

"I suffer from asthma, and I had to be admitted to hospital because of Pneumonia." 

"I suffer from mental health issues, and I struggle to find a doctor and get medications." 

We need to address the root causes of the problem, rather than merely shift the homeless from one place to another as if they do not exist. 

They are partly the result of social changes of modern society obsessed about accumulating wealth leading to worsening inequalities and poverty, with nearly a quarter of Tasmanians suffering from food insecurity. 

We need to reclaim the Australian ethos and become more active in caring for each other by making space and room for all Tasmanians who deserve to be seen and heard. Cr Dr George Razay, Relbia."

Yet Cr Dr Razay sits on a Council that sends impoverished people suffering from the loss of a secure HOMEplace off to some charity or other rather than seriously examining the Council's own planning cum placemaking imperatives and its raison detre as a PLACEmaker. And, the irony seems to have been missed.

 

The CULTURALmindset on display is troubling when so many of a jurisdiction's consituents are in distress.

The irony of the opening paragraph of Dickens book is lost to all who seeming do not know how to care or have become quite lost in the bureaucratic humbug that is increasingly evident in current PLACEmaking in this jurisdiction. However, the city is not alone by any means.  The CULTURALmindset is there for all to see if they dare to look.

It may well be that the City of Launceston's Councillors just do not see the irony in invoking Charles Dickens writings. Until recent  times Launceston's 'heritage imaginings' where almost completely invested in the city's 'colonial era'.  That was a time when Launceston was a port albeit a somewhat unsatisfactory one. The city's placedness, albeit named as it was for a place elsewhere, was 'invested in' what left for elsewhere and arrived from elsewhere, essentially to enrich the colonisers and later on, the peri-colonists – people for whom their 'HOMEplace' was elsewhere.

Dickens wrote of a place, the 'motherland', that consigned its unwanted social misfits to places as far away from 'home' as they might be before they might be imagined as getting closer again nin another direction. Dickens, albeit via the devises of fiction, talked about the life and times of the 'motherland', that nurtured them in their colonial imaginings and that began the 'settlement' in 1806 that grew to colonial Launceston.

Dickens' novel 'Tale of Two Cities' , 1859, spoke of a time in the 'motherland' when the 'French Revolution's' – 1787-1799 – social upheaval was ever present.  It was a revolution that set out to fundamentally change the relationship between rulers and the citizens and to redefine political power. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the French Revolution and he led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. 

Napoleon was the leader of the French Republic 1799 to 1804, then  the French  Emperor  from 1804 until 1814 and briefly again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy endures and he is a celebrated and controversial leader. Along the way he initiated many liberal reforms that persist.  Recounting all this here and now alerts us to a subliminal historic backgrounding that still shapes Eurocentric sensibilities in the City of Launceston's governance.

In all this there are some TAKEaways that let somer light fall upon some darkened corners in the MINDsets that make up the 'place's' pacedness'.

Albeit somewhat haplessly Cr Dr Razay kind of stumbled into this aspect of CULTURALimaging in the city. Nonetheless there is a certain poignance relative to the city's CULTURALcapital. It is especially so when we look at the dates and times that have shaped a large slice of the city's CULTURALlandscape. Moreover, there is a certain poignancy in Dickens' opening phrase inn the 'Tale of Two Cities' ..."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

Indeed, 'haplessness' seems to be a trait all too evident in Town Halls all over as the roles and functions of governance and management get to be blended and blanded with a 'weather eye' focus on the the status quo. Here it is worth thinking about Ronald Reagan and his understanding of the status quo. He told us "Status quo you know is Latin for the mess we are in".

Councillors and Alderpeople all too quickly learn to stand behind the parapets of their 'castles', defended as they are by an army of mercenary bureaucrats, in order that they might fire off a slingshot and an arrow or two into the marauding  constituency. They do so not to defend and build upon the city's CULTURALcapital, rather it is more to do with ensuring that their bank accounts continue to be topped up as the Parkin's Law 'underlings' get on with things. 

You see, in TOPdown bureaucracies is are the places where autocratic subordinates need subordinates ad infinitum. It is self-serving and self-defeating all at once. In pyramidal TOPdown structures those at the top may only stay aloft until one or other of those holding them up inevitably buckle or tire.

Watching from a safe distance to witness pragmatic ideologues in governance fire their shots into the ether simply to announce their presence becomes a kind of existentialist 'theatre of the absurd'. In a kind of a way it is 'WAITING FOR GODOT' writ large.

Albert Camus argues that life is essentially meaningless, although humans continue to try to impose order on existence and to look for answers to unanswerable questions. The irony of the pointlessness is all too poignant. Yet the status quo need not pertain. So, now is the best of times, and the worst of times for pyramidal structures that persist in rising and falling in CULTURALlandscapes.

Video Link

CULTURAL CAPITAL

In his WHITEpaper 'Cultural Placemaking',  CULTURALproducer, ARTmaker, designer and creative director of Cultural Capital, Mark McClelland explores the emergent work of cultural placemaking. As an award winning artist and designer, Mark is framing a visionary approach to CITYmaking, and he shows how contemporary actions can repair and mitigate the damaging homogenisation that has characterised urban development for more than a century. 

Cultural placemaking develops places in which we experience a sense of belonging. These are the places that animate the flourishing of our human spirits — delivering a civic legacy for generations to come. In business organisations the concept of CULTURAL CAPITAL is also being in ways that is not that far away  from the interrogation of the concept in PLACEmaking and CULTURALlandscaping.

LINK

Mark McClelland in his WHITEpaper 'Cultural Placemaking' base as it is upon reflections gleaned over the ten years of his practice in the operation, 'Cultural Capital' he founded. During that time, he brought his ARTmaking and curation practices to the urban realm. McClelland has established a point of view about the forces that have shaped our cities and he explores the consequences of the dynamics 'modernism' and the INVESTMENTmindset that in the last half of the 20th C that have been driving forces the CULTURALlandscaping of cities and urban 'placedness'. 

McClelland goes on to introduce the practice of cultural placemaking – a way of integrating art and creative practice into our urban environments in ways that encourage our human natures to flourish. 

McClelland's thoughts are neither definitive nor prescriptive. They’ve grown and developed along with the progress of his practice — and his own experience within it. The concept will continue to evolve and McClelland shares some of these observations and ideas with many of the capable and dedicated people with whom he has worked. 

This paper is simply an expression of hisown way of seeing things, looking back on ten years of Cultural Capital’s distinctive practice. His starting point is an observation that today’s cities are burdened by a contradiction. Though typically regarded as the pinnacle of human achievement, cities often feel inhuman, cultural baron or at best ONEdimensional.

Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron coined and defined the term 'cultural capital' in the essay "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" (1977). Bourdieu then developed the concept in the essay "The Forms of Capital" (1985) and in the book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power (1996) to explain that the education – knowledge and intellectual skills – of a person provides social mobility in achieving a higher social status in society.

If we are to usefully talk about CULTURALcapital an interrogation of it requires us to muse upon the notion of INVESTMENTcapital in order to build some kind of foundation upon which to contextualise our interrogations.

What Is IINVESTMENTcapital? Invested capital is the total amount of 'money' raised by a company by issuing securities to equity shareholders and debt to bondholders, where the total debt and capital lease obligations are added to the amount of equity issued to investors. In 'housing' the situation is not all that different given the MINDset that a 'house' is a WEALTHstore first and HOMEplace as a consequence.

The 'KEY TAKEAWAYS' being:

•  Invested capital refers to the combined value of equity and debt capital raised by a business/investor, inclusive of capital leases. 
• Return on invested capital (ROIC) measures how well a business/investor uses capital to generate profits and/or grow wealth. 
• A business's/investors' weighted average cost of capital calculates how much invested capital costs the business/investor to maintain.

Most of us are familiar with the concepts of financial capital and human capital. They’re the resources that companies draw on to produce goods and services. They represent a company’s foundation for generating value and profits today and continuing to be viable and relevant in the future. 

But for an individual in today’s labor market — whether you’re in the midst of changing jobs, looking to re-energize your career, or simply wanting to strengthen your job security — it isn’t about your financial resources or even your skills. Another type of capital is even more important. 

Two types, in fact: 

• One being SOCIALcapital; and 
• And the other being CULTURALcapital. 

Depending on one's career stage, most people have probably encountered some aspect of workplace politics. People form cliques, bosses value some skills over others, and some personality types thrive while others face an uphill struggle. 

Most 'workers' probably also know something about the corpurate culture. And if you’re considering a new job, ask former employees, read company reviews, and discuss it during your interview. 

But even if you’re a veteran of workplace dynamics and feel up-to-speed on corporate culture, you’re leaving potential on the table and missing opportunities to set yourself up for success if you don’t understand the types of capital that matter at work. 

Having a solid grasp of the differences between SOCIALcapital and CULTURALcapital and how they function in a workplace is critical in regard to being 'a success'.

Likewise, learning how to build and use these important forms of capital has become all important and in many respects sadly so. 

In a ONEdimensional PLANINGmindset the imperative has evolved into a one-size-fits-all paradigm where some imagined 'lowest-common-denominator' has become the measure of that PLACEmaking must conform with, and sadly so. 

In local governance, and in the vernacular, the space within which 'the rubber hits the road' there is good evidence to suggest that the PLANNINGmindset and PLACEmaking find themselves seriously at odds with each other.

For instance:

• When local governance's 'management operatives' deem that their 'constituency does not need to make a profit' it is evidence of a serious disconnect; and

• When local governance's 'planning operatives' assert that "cultural landscaping" is a noun and "not a doing word/phrase"; and

• When local governance's 'planning operatives' assert that the concept of 'military crest' can be used in defining planned zoning etc. etc;

points to bureaucratic humbug and subjective self-serving administrative imperatives that is seemingly driving PLACEmaking in all too many  local governance jurisdictions. 

Such subjectivity should have nothing whatsoever to do with the CULTURALcapital and/or the CULTURALlandscaping that goes on in PLACEmaking. ... [pers. com Launceston Town Hall circa 2015] Importantly, it is argued that PLACEmaking. is entirely the business of local governance and its 'purpose for being'.

'Land zoning' pertains to the set of state and municipality laws which ensure that a piece of land is developed for the correct purpose to meet the need of the population within a defined area. Without such considerations, rural landscapes, towns, cities, streetcapes etc. would be a hotchpotch of inconsistent properties. While there is some veracity ton this MINDset it pays too little attention to the CULTURALcapital that lends to places their 'placedness'. It is lamentable when 'zoning' drives CULTURALlandscaping to a point where placedness is driven by autocratic TOPdown decision making that is careless of the geography and the diversity of cultural sensitivities and sensibilities that have shaped placedness for eons .

On  12 Sep 2023 the Australian Broardcasting Commission aired its Program 'BIG IDEAS'.

There were four guest speakers: Mark McClelland, Elizabeth Farrelly, Alison Page and Craig Kerslake and the concept of CULTURALcapital was canvassed and interrogated from the standpoint of designing cities in ways that allow people to feel and celelbrate their placedness again.

In the deliberations it was noted that some local government jurisdictions in Australia had moved proactively to transform 'Planning Departments' into 'Placemaking Departments'. Somehow the apparent implication that investment driven housing infrastructure that is seemingly being endorsed by 'governance' delivers sterile CULTURALlandscapes within which CULTURALcapital is diminished becomes all too obvious. Sadly, the paucity of current investment driven PLACEmaking becomes all too clear as does the increasing disempowerment of Communities of Ownership and Interest.

Likewise, the counterproductive social imperatives attached to 'housing' as a WEALTHstore is becoming increasingly pronounced. In Australia this is evidenced by ever increasing numbers of people who lose their HOMEplaces ostensibly due to MARKETforces.

HOUSE BUILDING AND MATERIALITY

Thinking about 'properness' and  proverb that goes "the proper way is that straight and narrow path that leads all the way to the land of mediocrity" it is not all that hard to imagine that the speculative 'houses' that Australians are expected to 'invest' in and make HOMEplaces are increasingly less fit-for-purpose than they ever might have been.

Indeed that 3RDlittlePIG's fabled BRICKhouse has undergone some cost cutting and is mostly built inside-out, over engineered and is hard to heat and difficult cool. Yet BUILDINGstandards have this underlying expectation that each and every one as a NEWbuild should last say three to four generation on the land upon which bit is built. 

Likewise, they must be able to withstand all kinds calamitous events. The TRICKLEdown being , that the default position that too many planners and Planning Authorities adopt is all to do with status quoism and what that delivers to them. And, then there is the spectre of CUTcorner BUILDINGdesigners – not architects by necessity however – which tends to mitigate against developments current understandings of 'construction materials', more relevant construction methods and contemporaneous CULTURALlandscaping and placedness.

LINK

By way of contrast, all Pacific Islands by 20th C had been colonised with their indigenous populations variously deemed to be primitive, savages, noble savages, even ignoble savages. The indigenous architecture was likewise somewhat disparaged  – if considered 'architecture' at all. That was/is so albeit that these shelters'  placedness was quite 'enlightened' and that it fitted the local circumstance and whatever the local 'placedness' was/is plus the  geography and CULTURALlandscape quite well. 

As mentioned earlier, it turns out that in regional Vanuatu villagers are returning to their traditional 'building practices' because albeit somewhat ephemeral they provide safer and more amenable accommodation. The 'cement block and tin structures' that patronising Eurocentric 'missionaries' et al persuaded them that they were superior to what had served them very well for eons turned out to rather dangerous in a cyclone. Solid brick walls blew over and flying TINrooves can be, and have been, lethal. Moreover, the traditional structures that villagers depended upon, made of bamboo, in a cyclone out performed the imported so-called enlightened technology and everything needed was at hand and free. It is story that is repeating itself throughout the Pacific [LINK]. 

There is no value in the belief that there’s no particular virtue in doing things they way they’ve always been done except when the NEWways on offer turns out to be expensive and not as safe as the OLDways.

In Fiji an Australian, Peter Drysdale, has been building houses as a solution to the problem of growing squatter settlements to accomodate people suffering from the loss of their homes due to cyclones. His solution was Koroipita – AKA Peter's Village – and he played a role in every aspect of its development, including its ability to withstand cyclonic conditions. While this housing is fulfilling a real need it seems to lack the amenity and placedness the village life they no longer have.

Koroipita is just outside Fiji's second biggest city, Lautoka, an it 'shelters' some of the country's poorest people. Despite their disadvantages, residents live in homes designed to withstand powerful storms, at a cost of only $1 a day. Peter Drysdale, has  built more than 160 houses since he arrived in Fiji as a young man to work in forestry before building hundreds of houses for people left destitute by cyclones. Fiji has about 110,000 people squatting.

Links  [1] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5]

Australia is not short of calamitous events that have left thousands of people without housing and it seems that when they strike governments find the possibility of looking for better ways to house and home people too hard. Also, finding innovative ways forward seems just that little bit out of reach. Looking back at Darwin's Cyclone Tracy 1974 sounds some alarms albeit that 40 plus years on the city functions as well as most cities despite everything.  

In Darwin and elsewhere in the Northern Territory to this day there is another CULTURALlandscape and sensibility that sits alongside the assumed dominant Eurocentric colonised, peri-colonial CULTURALlandscape that challenges its assumed dominance. The people known as LONGgrassers [LINK] [LINK] coexist outside the urban environment . Essentually, these people are imagined as living 'private lives in public places' and this is where the contentiousness begins. Add into the mix the notions of 'Crown Land' and 'traditional ownership' and the contest turns into a kind of TURFwarfare where there it will be unlikely that there can ever be a 'winner'. However, a mutual accommodation might be achievable with better understandings.

In the 'investment driven sensibility' and MINDset there are threats and dangers and in the CULTURALlandscape occupied by LONGgrassers there is a placedness affords a sense of security, safety and a space where, if needs be, a transitory HOMEplace  'gunya' might be  welcomed.

 

It seems that the Westernised FIRSTworld in the aftermath of colonialism somehow cannot acknowledge the impoverishing vectors that come with the attempt to transplant an 'ideologically enlightened' cultural into another where its 'placedness' offers quite different opportunities and a preexisting CULTURALlandscape with CULTURALrealities that predate their own elsewhere.

Interestingly Launceston on Tamar UK and Launceston on kamalukaTAMAR offers a rather poignant exemplar here. Launceston Tasmania's predisposition to celebrate its colonial 'heritage' comes loaded with irony given the richness and fecundity of the pre-colonial CULTURALlanscape populated as it was by people with an ongoing cultural reality that is among the oldest, if not the oldest, on the planet. To have that concept challenged by a city planner has a certain irony not to mention the 'terra nullius' idea seemingly informing the assertion [Pers Com circa 2019] well, there is something to be gleaned from the sensibility on display.

Like geographic locations all over the nation there are people for all kinds of reasons who are unable or unwilling to maintain or embrace the assumed common denominator one-size-fits-all mainstream pri-colonial housing MINDset. Many will be HUMbugged by 'the authorities' on this or that premise. Most often the possibility of living a private life in a public place will be vigorously contested and mostly because governments essentially exist to maintain the status quo given all that the decision makers have invested in it.