Could Canberra really become cool?
It's sad to see Canberra emulate the worst of Sydney development, Elizabeth Farrelly writes.
Elizabeth Farrelly is a Sydney-based columnist and author who holds a PhD in architecture and several international writing awards. A former editor and Sydney City Councilor, she is also Associate Professor (Practice) at the Australian Graduate School of Urbanism at UNSW. Her books include 'Glenn Murcutt: Three Houses’, 'Blubberland; the dangers of happiness’ and ‘Caro Was Here’, crime fiction for children (2014).
It's sad to see Canberra emulate the worst of Sydney development, Elizabeth Farrelly writes.
How can we infuse our metaphysical dreamings into physical reality? How can buildings offer this thing I call grace? (And why, actually, isn't this Architecture 101?)
Social media makes mob fury feel righteous, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.
Everything is energy, and energy does shape-shift in strange and mysterious ways. This is especially true of the emotional relationship that exists between human and home.
In the 19 years I've lived there, virtually all of old Redfern has succumbed to a tsunami of smashed avocado and man-buns.
Even now, despite everything, we consider ourselves the good guys. Perhaps it's a universal human conceit: all of us heroes in our own movie. Yet there is irony here.
Western culture has devoted a lot to abolishing shadow: pain, depth and mystery.
As neo-liberal attacks on civilisation get crazier, as we scrape ever lower in the barrel of saleable public assets, it becomes clear that Bernie Sanders had a point. Socialism, in some form or other, must return. Future generations will be forced to re-nationalise.
It's as though we've forgotten anything matters to us, other than money.
Elizabeth Farrelly: What I envy is cities with imagination and principle at the helm. It's wisdom-envy. Governance envy.
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