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.

IS REAL CHANGE A POSSABILTY?

In essence when looking at housing possibilities or houses with HOMEplace potential, what is on display is a catalogue of 'what was and what is', not what might be/should be/could be. Then if we GOOGLE "modern housing architecfture" what is generally on display oversized dwellings that are resource hungry WEALTHstores that are anything but 'sustainable'  HOMEplaces. 

Moreover, if you listen in on a Local Govt Planning Authority meeting you will rarely hear the words "self-sustainable, off-grid, autonomous, water recycling" used in the deliberations. Looking around you in this way it is not hard to imagine that there is significant resistance to the kinds of change that might disrupt the status quo in any substantial way.

However, you are very likely to hear a lot about this or that regulation most of which 

seem to have been put in place eons ago and quite often ambiguous or at odds with each other. All too often "The Three Little Pigs"  fable about three pigs who build their houses of different materials come to mind. A 'Big Bad Wolf' blows down the first two pigs' houses which are made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house that is made of bricks. 

LINK

In a kind of a way the fable reminds us of just what is invested in the one-size-fits-all MINDset that invokes 'properness'. And, then there is a proverb that goes "the proper way is that straight and narrow path that leads all the way to the land of mediocrity". The fable is 19th C and while it has relevance in the 21st C it is worth some time to think about the third little pig's BRICKhouse. In the 21st C standards have slipped and nowadays it is typically a cost cutting inside-out over engineered building that is hard to heat and difficult cool. Even so, the default position that too many planners and Planning Authorities adopt is all to do with status quoism and what it delvers to them.

 

The inherited Eurocentric middle-class standard that keeps on keeping on like BRITISH PAINT is as redundant as the planners who keep on talking about the 'proper way' ad nauseam. Along with the climate things do change – indeed, must change. Anyway, as  Amelia Earhart said “Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done.” Status quoists do that all the time.

On 'leadership' David Pledger (Thinker and Provocateur) has this to say ... "Aborescent leadership is hierarchical, based on a tree-like conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. An arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections. It is the dominant knowledge system of the globalised modern world. In Australia, it has taken the form of neo-libealism. ... Neo-liberal power structures may be read vertically, top-down silos with clear values, hierarchies and control flows. The vertical tends to ensconce power at the top, creating elites, perceived and actual."

Pledger  goes on to say that " In the arts space, I’ve been talking quietly about rhizomatic forms of leadership and organisational design. A rhizome is basically a plant stem that sends out shoots and nodes – things heading somewhere, and points for those things to go through. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections. The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favouring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.

Rhizomatic systems are worth a look because they consolidate growth horizontally whilst also having the capacity to shoot upwards. So, their behaviour is kind of familiar. There are some good examples already in the arts around collective artistic directorates and operational models in project contexts. The Tasmania-based Big hART are quite good at the latter.

As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of ‘things’ and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those ‘things.’ A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by ‘ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles'.

In the 21st C the case for the irrelevance of HIERARCHICALgovernance diminishes almost daily as 'The Enlightenment's' consequences continue to change and transform the world. In a way the 'status quoists' cum anti-transformers cling to a past where the 'authority of GOD' licences their self-serving aspirations and imaginings. Many come very close to 'authority and fiefdom aspirations' can somehow, albeit curiosly, be akin to the notions that underpinned 'The Divine Right of Kings'.

Real and meaningful change IS a possibility but it seems that the STATUSquoists must be dislodged from their ASSUMEDthrones that they generally occupy unsustainably.  'The Enlightenment' tells us that their authority is vacuous and that it is only possible for 'their power' to be there by default. Also,'the people', the STATUSquoists' imagine to be their 'subjects' just have not yet realised their authority and their capacity to dethrone them. Their power is only there because the adherents to Indirect Representational Democracy are by default STATUSquoists too because of the largesse it delivers to them.

If we look at Direct Deliberative Democracy it offers a vision that is that light at the end of tunnel.There is guidance available for public officials and policy makers that outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy. Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken. Eight models to consider for implementation: 

1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels 

2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees 

3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy 

4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels 

5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle 

6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process 

7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions 

8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning

The case for RHIZOMATICthinking laying down the foundations for fundamental change in the ways 'sustainable'  HOMEplaces can be delivered and planned for is compelling. That is so even though HIERARCHICALgovernance's adherents will no doubt fight 'tooth and nail' to maintain the status quo.

The most inhibiting factor for a MINDset shift is, and will be, the accountability and transparency implications that it will bring with it. Warren Bennis' poignant insights alert us to a MINDset that is worth some time to think about ... "The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it." and that "Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.".

Watch this Space!

THE HOUSE/SHELTER CONUNDRUM

House/Shelter understandings have become a confusing and difficult problem or question in the investment driven social cum cultural realities that are becoming increasingly evident in the Western First World.

To reiterate the four human imperatives:

• Firstly, we all need sufficient air to breath, water to drink and food to eat. 
• Secondly, given that we are social animals we need to be able to identify, and be identifiable, within our group/family/tribe and relative to others in the group. 
• Thirdly, we need to procreate and that is genetically and ideologically; and 
• Fourthly, but not lastly, we need a safe and secure HOMEplace.

Evidently, the THIRDworld is better placed culturally to embrace and understand the FOURTHimperative and that would be so even though in regard to FIRSTworld understandings a large cohort of people could well be living in poverty – at times abject poverty.

In the FIRSTworld it seems that the understanding or belief that, ‘home’ is synonymous with ‘house’. ‘House’ is a physical concept, and for a ‘home’ there doesn’t need to be a 'house' in that place. Clearly, a 'house' is to do with the physical  infrastructure people live in and that offers shelter from the elements and protection against the predations of animals and even humans.

In the FIRSTworld people become increasingly concerned about their material possessions and the 'shelter' a house offers them and their possessions.  This distinction seems to have been blurred somewhat by the notion that a 'home (AKA house' is one and the same that they are are interchangeable and can be seen as an 'investment'. While in the FIRSTworld that might fit the CULTURALlandscaping in that MINDset, It is nonetheless ONEdimensional thinking.

Moreover, it is hard to imagine a rich person leading a happy and fulfilling life alone in a BILLIONdollar mansion.  That is let's say as happy as  less wealthy person living with their family in a two-bedroom apartment. What is at play here is not to downplay the importance of being rich and successful, but to emphasise that of having one's  loved ones near and mutually supportive. Of what 'value' is it if one does not have kith-and-kin being mutually supportive? Indeed, of what 'value' is it given that it is something that is beyond the reach of being something that can be bought and sold as an 'investment' which must be the case to garner a profit or store wealth?

Being able to 'identify' as being within a cohort who regard each other as 'kith-and-kin' you have a share cum stake in the fruits of it's endeavours. When we achieve something we share the wellbeing. On the other hand, we are shattered when we fail in our endeavours we bear the loss together. Our 'kith-and-kin' are the ones who offer mutual support through thick and thin and especially so when the going gets tough. 

Our 'kith-and-kin' are the ones who are more concerned about whether we have enough food etc. more so not than if we managed to submit that tedious report on time.

It is our 'kith-and-kin', who eagerly wait for us and welcome us 'home' after a tiring day at work. The truth is that our families, our 'kith-and-kin' , are our most effective support system. They do not hinder us in the achievement of our goals. If anything, they complement those goals. Indeed, it is their unconditional positive regard (love!) for us is what make us who we are. 

The 14th Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and the exiled head of state of China-occupied Tibet, is known to have said: “Home is where you feel at home and are treated well.” Somewhat ironically the Dalai Lama was born in Tibet and currently lives safely in Dharamshala and is the exiled Tibetan Head State and spiritual leader of the Tibetan Bhuddhist community worldwide and yet is at home.

Likewise, his sort of 'religious eqivelant', Pope Francis was born in Argentina and is now 'at home' in the Vatican, Rome where he presides as the head of the Roman Catholic church. It is where he is at home albeit elsewhere.

All this runs counter to any belief that a HOMEplace is fundamentally and profit oriented wealth storing investment and acquired for that purpose albeit that it may consequently provide shelter. As 'shelter' it might be reasonably understood as an investment but a HOMEplace need not include or even be built infrastructure. That it is the case when a HOMEplace is regularly imagined, and fundamentally so, as an 'investment'. This is a demonstration of the extent to which the purpose of a HOMEplace has become distorted and arguably corrupted.

When we look at the notion of 'homelessness' typically the 'housing stress' people are suffering is attributed to their inability to 'invest' in a HOMEplace. That is pay the 'rent' to an investor who owns a house for the purpose garnering a profit, store wealth or where someone has been unable to acquire a 'house' as a HOMEplace for whatever reason or by whatever means.

This seems to bear all the hallmarks of the FIRSTworld is evolving as a collective where the wealth generating MINDset that measures wellbeing in accord with the volume of assets acquired via investment is the new normal. 

In a SECONDworld cum THIRDworld context despite the encroachment of  FIRSTworld sensibilities. 

The evidence seems to be there for the Dalai Lama's cultural cum spiritual insight relevant to how we might better understand our HOMEplaces.  

HOUSES AND HOMES

LINK

Linguistically, 'house' can be understood in multifarious ways: 

• As a building for human habitation, especially one that consists of a ground floor and one or more upper storeys.... a residence, dwelling, abode; and
• As a building in which people meet for a particular activity ... say a house of prayer"
• As relating to a firm, institution, or society. ... say "a house journal"
• As a place that provides shelter or accommodation.... give accommodation to, provides  a place to sleep etc.

Whereas, a 'home' is understood in a much more specific way ... In general as the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household, or as the Dalai Lama puts it ..."Home is where you feel at home and are treated well". It is the shelter we can rely upon and where wev are secure and welcomed within.

The two sets of understandings are somewhat at odds with each other when the 'investment factor' is added in. Given that 'investment' is to do with the action and/or process of investing money for profit. In the 20th C in the Western First World investment in 'housing' has turned out to be profit oriented rather than shelter driven.

This can be evidenced in urban CULTURALlandscape are built where there are row upon row of houses that on the premise that they are 'investments' built to appreciate in value more than to provide 'safe and amenable shelter' ... investment first, shelter second.

 People of a certain age will surely remember Pete Seeger singing his anthem 'Little Boxes', a kind of protest against the housing being built in America, indeed the Western First World at the time ... 1963. Here there is a poignant take-away when a CIVICplanner insists that CULTURALlandscaping is always a noun, a thing and never a verb, a doing word. While they may have since retreated from their folly that it was ever mouthed in such a context will remain forever poignant given that they were not alone in their imagining.

 

The effectiveness of the satire in the song was attested to by a university professor quoted in 1964 in Time magazine as saying, "I've been lecturing my classes about middle-class conformity for a whole semester. Here's a song that says it all in 1+1⁄2 minutes;" however, according to Christopher Hitchens, satirist Tom Lehrer described "Little Boxes" as "the most sanctimonious song ever written".

Historian Nell Irvin Painter points out that the conformity described in "Little Boxes" was not entirely a bad thing, indicative as it was of "a process of going to university to be doctors and lawyers and business executives" who "came out all the same" and then lived in "nice, new neighborhoods with good new schools. ... Suburbia may be monotone, but it was a sameness to be striven toward." SOURCE

 The term "ticky-tacky" became a catchphrase during the 1960s, attesting to the song's popularity. In song's lyrics Malvina Reynolds and her friend, Pete Seeger, in a kind of way mark a point in time when the ihousing nvestment paradigm began to be criticised in popular culture. This seems to have waxed and wained in the public concousness ever since and with the onset of the current housing crisis the 'investment imperative comes, as it should, is increasingly being put under ever closer scrutiny.

Firstly, the baron treeless streetscapes to be found in McBURBIA should be sending shivers up local government planner's spines but it seems not. Then the typical corner cutting development proposals that pay almost no attention to energy use and generation or onsite water management should also worrying them but again it seems not. Apparently this can be attributed to the 'developer friendliness' of planning regulations and in turn to the protection of the imperatives of the 'investment paradigm'.

The fact that this  McBURBIAN class of housing construction has become 'traditional' and often with 'heritage values' invested in them as infrastructure, efforts to shift the planning emphasis has been likened to maneuvering the mega steam ships of the 20th C – namely the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. As unsustainable as this housing might in part be it is what it is albeit that in the 21st C the required MINDshift needs to be given serious consideration in a world that uncritically embraces McBURBIA.

"In Port-Vila and Luganville—Vanuatu’s two largest cities—most people live in buildings that are made in much the same way as those found in New York, Paris, or Sydney. But across most of Vanuatu, the great majority of people still live in small villages, and it is in these areas that we see the wisdom of traditional approaches to building houses. The advantages of these techniques—and the potential lessons for other areas that suffer increasingly from severe tropical weather—may be especially timely in light of Hurricane Florence, which has buffeted North and South Carolina with high winds and heavy rains.

Two basic differences distinguish house construction in most of the world’s modern towns and cities from the methods used in the traditional villages of Vanuatu and throughout the South Pacific. First, modern homes are generally designed as a single building, with separate rooms for sleeping, cooking, eating, bathing, and relaxing. 

By contrast, in Vanuatu’s villages, most people construct separate structures for the

various activities of their lives. One is used for sleeping, but another is built at some distance to serve as the kitchen, which helps to keep the sleeping quarters cool and free from vermin. Bathing and toilet facilities are located in more secluded parts of the village, to ensure privacy. Each of these structures tend to be small, even cramped by modern standards, largely because people spend the greater part of their days outdoors, whether working in their gardens, performing kastom (customary) activities in public areas, or relaxing in the shade of a coconut tree. ... SOURCE"

Moreover, this 'South Pacific' CULTURALlandscape can be quite quickly replaced/restored after a catastrophic event using materials to hand from the landscape, the employment of proven traditional age old techniques and collaborative community effort. In fact the infrastructure built in accord with First World 'standards' has been proven to be inappropriate and quite dangerous in many cases, not to mention expensive. Most importantly communal living that still prevails comes with social advantages not any longer experienced by design in First World suburbia.

Interestingly, the impoverishment that all often arises as an outcome of housing being imagined as as a 'wealth indicator' does not appear to be anything that impacts upon South Pacific communities. Yes, money is an important component of South Pacific economies but not to the extent that it is always the purpose for being. There are other sensibilities at work. The land that Pacific Island housing in village setting is by-and-large communal and thus acessable. Traditionally housing has been designed to be ephemeral rather than permanent and built in setting where collaborative community planning takes place based very local CULTURALlandscaping imperatives.

All this lends a kind of credibility to the notion that life in the Pacific is ideal and paradise like but it is not quite that simple. However, abject poverty is rare despite other consequences and inherent Pacific 'placedness'.

By way of perspective the American writer James A. Michener who wrote extensively about the Pacific said that "the South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific."