Journal articles: 'Urban planning; Space standards; House size' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The article reveals the problem of green areas of the urban environment, which is becoming one of the most topical in Russian cities. The creation of comfortable housing is inextricably linked to the urban situation, the degree of urbanization of the living environment. With the increase in the size of cities, changes in the environmental situation the nature of the connection "housing – environment" is modifying. Activities for the improvement of areas, the organization of environmentally comfortable areas around the houses (the creation of parks, playgrounds in the yard, etc.) and the provision of standards of gardening in the absence of conditions for the usual long-term gardening can be carried out using mobile landscaping. The use of green recreational space in the city improvement allows solving the problem of green areas shortage, and will have a positive impact on the appearance of the city.

Abstract:

<p><strong>Abstract</strong><br />The 22nd Presidential Decree of 2006 on the coordination of Housing Development Planning in Urban Area (PPRSKP Coordination Team) has turned the existence of a terraced house (vertical housing) into a housing solution for the over population in big cities. Simple flats (RUSUNA), according to the government is measures by 18 m2, 25 m2 and 36 m2. Ownership of this unit will not automatically in the tax subsidies by the government and the developer. This is in accordance with the regulations of Government Regulation No.31 of 2007, provides consumers with a VAT exemption on certain conditions.<br />Government of DKI Jakarta during the time of governor Jokowi had a program of development of the Flats as an effort to fulfill the housing needs of the people who inhabited the slums of Jakarta. As many of the towers with adequately spaced units are<br />very limited, they don't comply with the minimum necessities for a single family. Therefore, it is necessary to further research on the space of residential units in this Flat. This study will look at the extent of the influence of relationships between activity<br />and unit size. Does the size of residential units in the towers are in accordance with the needs of users, of which the majority are lower middle class people who are married and have children? With a hybrid of qualitative and quantitative research methods,<br />researchers conducted observations and data collection on simple towers of residential units in the area of Tanah Abang, Tebet and Kalibata. Results of the analysis showed that it can be concluded that some of the size of each room in a residential unit towers built in the 80s, 90s and 2000s already fulfilled the<br />standards of housing needs, but some of them don't. Results of this study was proposed to be practical reference that can be used as a guide by the Jakarta City Administration and the Department of Public Works (MPW), the developer of flats in Indonesia and the general public in need.<br /><br /></p><p><strong>Abstrak</strong><br />Keputusan Presiden No.22 Tahun 2006 tentang koordinasi Perencanaan Pembangunan Rumah di Kawasan Perkotaan (Tim Koordinasi PPRSKP) membuat keberadaan rumah bertingkat (vertical housing) menjadi solusi bagi pemenuhan perumahan penduduk di kota besar. Rumah Susun Sederhana (RUSUNA) menurut pemerintah adalah berukuran 18 m2, 25 m2, dan 36 m2. Kepemilikan unit ini otomatis tidak akan di subsidi pajaknya oleh pemerintah dan pihak pengembang. Hal ini sesuai dengan peraturan Peraturan Pemerintah No.31 Tahun 2007, berisi pembebasan PPN pada konsumen dengan syarat-syarat tertentu. Pemerintahan DKI Jakarta di masa gubernur Jokowi memiliki program pembangunan Rumah Susun sebagai upaya pemenuhan kebutuhan perumahan rakyat. Kelak penghuninya adalah masyarakat dari daerah kumuh di Jakarta, karena banyak dari Rusun yang ada besaran luas unitnya sangat terbatas, tidak sesuai dengan kebutuhan minimal untuk satu keluarga sederhana. Perlu diadakan penelitian lebih mendalam tentang besar luasan unit hunian Rusun ini. Dalam penelitian dilihat sejauh mana pengaruh hubungan aktifitas dengan besar unit hunian. Apakah ukuran unit hunian di rusun sudah sesuai dengan kebutuhan penggunanya, yang mayoritas adalah<br />masyarakat kelas menengah bawah yang sudah berkeluarga dan memiliki anak. Dengan metode penelitian campuran antara kualitatif dengan kuantitatif peneliti melakukan observasi dan pendataan terhadap unit hunian rusun sederhana di wilayah Tanah Abang, Tebet dan Kalibata. Hasil analisis menunjukan bahwa melalui analisa di atas dapat disimpulkan<br />bahwa ukuran tiap ruang dalam unit hunian Rusun yang dibangun tahun 80an, 90an dan 2000an ada yang sudah sesuai dan ada yg belum sesuai dengan kebutuhan penggunanya. Hasil penelitian ini diusulkan menjadi acuan praktis yang dapat dijadikan panduan oleh Pemerintah Daerah DKI Jakarta<br />dan Departemen Pekerjaan Umum (DPU), para pengembang rumah susun di indonesia dan masyarakat umum yang memerlukan.</p>

Abstract:

It has recently come to light that there is an increasing demand for a new type of small house design, which vary in area from 20 square metres to 100 square metres and even more. Being remarkably different from traditional types of spatial organizations, the new house types present an open plan concept with a highly flexible and adaptable spatial arrangement that exhibit diverse functional spaces within one open, integrated space. In light of this, the main aim of this study is to reveal the new dynamics of spatial organization found in today's small house types and identify the significant changes in the contemporary design approaches to small house layouts which have evolved from a need for minimized space usage and a requirement for diverse living spatiality. Subsequently, thirty houses have been chosen to be analysed for the purpose of this study to reveal the differences between integrated and segregated spatial organizations in regard to flexibility, adaptability, transformability and permeability within the spaces. In addition to this, the new spatial relations will be overviewed considering spatial depth, interpenetration and density to define more implicit organizations which are able to expand constantly and accommodate different functional spaces in one open space with the help of spatial identifiers. The main focus of this research study concentrates on the above mentioned dynamic forms of spatiality that change from being weak to strong, implicit to explicit and indistinct to clearly defined spaces. These forms are measured, analysed and basically compare by means of a space syntax application on the values of the space and convex maps of the thirty selected houses. In summary, the analysis and measurement of the spatial characteristics of contemporary small houses in this sphere include both theoretical and empirical components. Firstly, the study discusses the basic definitions of spatial relations and organizations. Secondly, the space syntax method was used to test and compare new spatial design approaches by means of the Mean Depth, Mean Integration, Basic Difference Factor and Space Link Ratio values mainly to clarify how the spatiality changes according to the size although the plan type stays the same as 1+1.

Abstract:

A variety of standards exist to guide architects and engineers in the design of recreation facilities. Existing recreation facility standards do not, however, adequately meet the needs of college and university master planners. No existing standard answers the basic question of how much gross area should institutions set aside for recreational uses. Based on a study of recreation field space at 11 major, urban universities, this article proposes a standard of one acre per 1,000 students enrolled as the amount of area needed, relative to the size of the institution, to satisfy the recreational needs of a campus population.

Abstract:

Purpose – This paper aims to report on research aimed at determining the nature of business strategies employed by micro small and medium-sized street vendors in a local market area in Bangkok. Design/methodology/approach – The research consisted of a longitudinal study of the defined research site, involving ethnographic interaction and observation mediated by the use of a research diary. Findings – The research found that the use of business strategies was quite limited and varied in line with the street vendor's relationships with other actors and business practitioners. Research limitations/implications – The research was deliberately limited in terms of space and is ongoing in terms of time. Additional areas of Bangkok will also be studied for comparative purposes. Practical implications – Street vending and markets offer valuable opportunities for informal employment and for part-time employment to provide additional income generation for the working poor. Vendors also help sustain a decent standard of living for migrant workers. Social implications – Street vending of this sort reflects the nature of underlying changes in urban life: the building of new mass transit routes, the opening of condominiums in place of shop houses and the flourishing of the frozen food industry. Many street vendors are mobile and flexible but not all of them. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature on street vending and urban micro-entrepreneurs and will be of interest not just to scholars of business but also in planning for social policy and urban management.

Abstract:

In 2016 all new houses in England and Wales must be zero carbon. To date most work in zero carbon housing has been carried out on detached family housing typologies. Practice has shown that one of the overriding factors in the struggle to achieve zero carbon status (Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6) is the projected significant increase in construction cost. While grant funding can offset some of this increase, further costs savings will be required to allow developers to deliver affordable homes within reasonable profit margins. One result of this will be a reduction in design quality; which will impact on the quality of the spaces provided and the robustness and longevity of the construction and finishes. In order to deliver better design standards, higher density attached family housing models should be considered to ensure that a proportion of the projected increase in cost of the building fabric can be transferred to the internal volume of the house, thus achieving better quality living spaces. The following paper reviews the context for future housing provision in the UK and examines two existing medium density terraced housing developments. The existing examples reflect two contrasting approaches: one derived from low-energy principles utilising minimum space standards, the other reflecting the need for high quality spaces but at premium cost. A new medium density terrace model is proposed that deals with these conflicting demands to demonstrate that it is possible to provide affordable, high quality, higher density, family housing whilst meeting low energy targets.

Abstract:

Urban open public spaces that provide multiple services for residents are essential for improving life quality and urban ecosystem function and promoting healthy development, the safety of human settlements and the sustainable development of urban cities. Based on Sustainable Development Goal 11.7 of the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda, this study combines the big earth data with the Theil index, a coefficient of variation and Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) to analyze the regional differences and spatial distribution of urban open public space in 2015 for China, and uses the geographical detector to identify key factors that affect the distribution of open public spaces. The results show that (1) open public space scales in provincial-level cities have an ‘East–Central–West’ low-lying land pattern in spatial distribution, where the eastern region has a relatively larger open public space scale. (2) In the prefecture-level cities, the open public space scale increases with an increase in city size and economic development level, and the differences in urban open public space reduce with an increase in city size and increase with a decrease in the economic development level. (3) Factors including economic development level, residents’ living standards, the urbanization level and the population size have sound explanatory powers in varying degrees on the scale of open public spaces; interactions between these factors have improved the explanatory power of the scale of urban open public space.

Abstract:

Focusing on small houses has become one of the recent trends in housing design in Japan, as has been observed in many house design works. Periodical coverage can tell that the number of such works has clearly been increasing since the 90s, as compared with the 70s and 80s. The trend of small houses was also observed in the 50s. In those postwar years of economic growth, it was driven by the conditions of the time, such as supply and housing shortages and urban centralization. Today’s social conditions are significantly different from those in the 50s, and naturally, the whole concept of small houses has greatly changed from the past. In this research, we evaluate the experiments of small houses, from the view of the idea of sustainability and open building concept. Specifically, the study compares the small houses of the 50s and those after 1990 to examine their differences or similarities in terms of size, structure and building systems. And thus clarify how industrialization and standardization reflect on these experiments. The former period, most were constructed on wood, with traditional construction method. The purpose of design was rather how to adapt the industrialization to the traditional construction and how to realize the modern way of living in the smallest space, than fulfillment of flexibility. Moreover, low cost was also included in the design purpose. In latest examples, the “small” means “small building area” rather than “small space for life and minimal cost for construction” The experimental projects were conducted by the intention exploring new possibilities and diversities of space design, with various highly industrialized materials. The small houses after 1990 can be regarded as experimental efforts to explore new approaches to skeletons within the context of urban tissue.

Abstract:

This paper explores use-related and socio-demographic variations in the valuation of urban green space (UGS) characteristics in the Brussels Capital Region (BCR), lending insights into the valuation of the cultural ecosystem services provided by UGS. Mismatches in the supply of and demand for UGS characteristics are also identified. Knowledge on the ways in which valuation of UGS characteristics vary and on an inadequate supply of UGS characteristics should guide and inspire planning and management of UGS to ensure that UGS provision meets the unique needs of communities. Online surveys were conducted in the BCR to determine how people use UGS, how they experience these spaces, and whether these spaces fulfil their needs for urban green Our findings indicate that socio-demographic characteristics (namely age and household composition) correspond with distinct patterns of use and valuation. Two subgroupings of users are identified: nature-oriented users and social users. Our accessibility analysis shows that, compared to social users, nature-oriented users tend to travel farther to reach their most frequently used UGS but are more often satisfied with the supply of UGS characteristics. Our findings point to an inadequate supply of nature and overcrowding of UGS in the city centre of Brussels. We recommend that planners not only consider size and distance in UGS standards but also consider the demand for UGS characteristics as well.

Abstract:

Taking its cue from the UK government's declaration that every new home should be ‘zero-carbon’ by 2016, this paper explores how close a flexible, prototype-housing model might come to meeting this target (accepting that there is currently some ambiguity between the respective official ‘zero-carbon’ definitions regarding off-site renewable supply). The prime aim is to design economically (affordable by housing associations) to the European ‘passive house’ standard of no more than 15 kWh/m2 for space heating and a maximum total consumption of 70 kWh/m2 adding in hot water and electricity. The model also prioritizes generous access to sunlight and daylight, as well as realistic levels of air change in a low-volume, intensively occupied scenario. Associated aims are: a) to meet thermal loads without use of fossil fuels such as gas or oil; and b) to employ architecturally integrated active solar thermal and electrical arrays to respectively meet at least one third of the water heating and electrical loads. Micro-wind generation is excluded from the study as too site-dependent. A subsidiary agenda is to achieve a flexible plan in terms of orientation and access, and to provide utility facilities that support the environmental strategy (e.g. drying clothes without compromising energy use or air quality). The paper goes on to address equivalent prospects for retrofit, briefly discusses institutional and other barriers to achievement, and muses on how much of the balance of the electrical demand can be met renewably in Scotland in the near future.

Abstract:

This article addresses the issue of planning of urban territories by the children's playgrounds according to the modern standards, the requirements of safety, aesthetics and ecological aspects and playgrounds, which is adapted to the needs of children with disabilities. The authors are performed a study of the providing of the Kharkiv city districts by modern sites. It is established now there are insufficient amount of children's play complexes with all current necessary requirements. Moreover, the question remains of organization of the complex playgrounds including for needs of children with disabilities. The analysis of recent studies of Ukrainian and foreign authors on the issue was conducted. The aim of this work is the problem of insufficient providing of playgrounds on urban territories locational nearby of existing buildings and sites of new construction. Recommendations for implementation of architectural decisions of small and large playgrounds of subdistricts are developed. Planning should be done taking into account the requirements of increasing the level of ecological environment and meeting the needs of population different categories. The planning criteria in designing of playgrounds on the urban territories, regardless of their size, are defined. These criteria are included of protection against noise and dust of the playing area, making of appropriate covering and application of modern safe equipment for playgrounds. The paper proposes the organization of play space by way of functional zoning. The schematic structure of the child's complexes of residential districts with the main functional zones and the corresponding equipment for each zone is developed. The diagram illustrates the components of the design process for playground complexes, the principles that should be guided in the organization of children's play space and the tasks, which must be solved. It is concluded that serious work is being done in this field, but there is not enough of quality playgrounds for urban areas. Therefore, the landscaping and beautification of territories around of new buildings, as well as the renovation of sections of territories of existing buildings, should include the design of a children's play area, taking into account the stated principles and needs of all categories of population.

Abstract:

In Thailand, the concept and measurement of urban planning rely on conventional zoning, which includes land use, building usage, and open space ratio. Conventional zoning focuses on both the growth of buildings in terms of physical dimensions and their usability in lowland areas. The guidelines and measures used in urban planning do not reflect the spatial relationship of the community, as they have a less detailed design and place no emphasis on the identity of the district. Urban planning might not protect the sense of any given place, as it often uses a one-size-fits-all plan that is then applied to whole communities. Form-Based Codes (FBCs) are urban planning tools that are used to maximize land use, benefit the public, focus on creating a specific physical form, and design the development and public spaces in a way that matches the community’s vision. FBCs are the result of the cooperation between stakeholders, architects, urban planners, government agencies, and members of the local community who are willing to create a plan for their public space and to preserve the physical characteristics of the city. In this paper, we aimed to understand the relationship between various historical contexts and the FBCs using the case study of phu*ket’s old town, which has a fusion of Sino–Portuguese architecture. Building form standards suitable for phu*ket’s old town were created by comparing them to a baseline case that uses existing codes and regulations and using the FBCs’ components. FBCs have the potential to enhance the character and vibrancy of the historic area by improving façade design and preserving the sense of place and community pride. The results support the hypothesis that FBCs are able to supplement conventional zoning in historic districts. Recommendations for a local historic preservation commission and communities that are considering the adoption of FBCs for historic resources and districts are provided.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the private housing in Hong Kong in terms of flexibility. Since the last few decades Hong Kong Government is steadily endeavoring to achieve a sustained and healthy development of private housing property market. With Hong Kong's economy on the rise, and its fertility rate being one of the lowest in the world, more people are looking for increased space standards even for higher price. Currently, around two-third of the population of Hong Kong lives in private flats. However, it is observed that these flats, especially the highrise housing estates do not come as open shell like the public housing estates do. This paper at first identifies the major prototypes of contemporary private housings built in the past few decades. Then it compares the flexibility of different prototypes in four sequential levels of construction i.e structure, envelop, building services and infill. Flexibility is measured by means of potential layout options that the users practice inside these prototypes. It finds that some prototypes offer more flexibility than the others. It concludes that flexibility in recent private flats is gradually reducing. But on a positive note, they are offering more varieties in size and layout design in order to meet the increasing demand in spatial standards.

Abstract:

The paper illustrates how housing produced by the low income in Ogbere area of Ibadan is negotiated from the societal complex due to the inability of government to provide for them and low income housing not being attractive to the profit driven private sector. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted while using the lens of Lefebvre’s theory of space to examine the people, the process and the houses produced. The findings necessitate situating low income housing standards, quality and policy interventions in the social context to upgrade the quality of life in urban areas. Keywords: Lefebvre, Low income, Housing production, Social context eISSN 2514-751X © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.

Abstract:

This paper explores home gardening geography in metropolitan outskirts, seen as a major asset and challenge of the alternative suburban city model. Studies that estimate the domestic production of backyard gardens are scarce, but they all confirm the persistence of an ancient and “ordinary” phenomenon still firmly rooted in the food landscape of the globalised North cities. To fill a gap in European alternative urban and food systems studies, we focus on the case of two subsectors of the extended suburban belt of greater Paris agglomeration. We designed and performed a spatial analysis protocol that differentiates vegetable garden types to test spatial relationships between environmental and intrinsic factors and assess clustering patterns. We had to overcome several methodological barriers by building an original vegetable gardens database and applying distinct qualitative and quantitative methods. Our results show spatial home gardening patterns differentiation at three intertwined levels: At the micro-level of domestic space (according to the size and share of vegetable plots); at the house block level (according to their socio-economic and built environment profile); and at the level of the housing estates or urban agglomeration (according to the geography of social specialisation).

Abstract:

Key drivers that influence space design in today's higher education environment are technology, changing demographics, increased focus on student engagement, and carbon footprint. Just as important, but not typically on the list, is the growing population of students with Learning Disabilities (LD) for which the physical environment plays an increasingly important role in successful learning outcomes. The research goal was to examine the role of “place” as a component of academic success for those students with LD. Methodology included both literature review and the development of a case study analysis of three post-secondary institutions in the United States. The universities were chosen based on the size of the university, the campus setting, and the mission of the Disabilities Services team. The conclusion of the research surfaced three specific components of the physical environment that hold an increased value for a student with LD. These components are wayfinding, formal learning spaces, and disability services spaces. The key to integrating a sense of place with the needs of students with LD is moving beyond meeting the minimum standards of the legal mandates and bridging the principles of universal design to the built environment.

Abstract:

By North American standards Toronto is a concentrated agglomeration. Its downtown has enjoyed spectacular growth since the 1960s; most inner-city neighbourhoods are perceived as desirable; and public transit patronage is high relative to that of same-size North American metropolitan regions. Still, it is within dispersed, car-oriented, suburbs that most post-1950 development has taken place. This agglomeration is composed of two realms—a concentrated and a dispersed realm—differentiated by their respective land-use-transportation dynamic. The concentrated realm is defined by a considerable reliance on walking and public transportation, a mixing of land uses and overall higher employment and residential densities than elsewhere in the metropolitan region. Meanwhile, the dispersed realm is car dependent, dominated by large monofunctional zones and developed at a relatively low density. The author links the coexistence and respective importance of these two realms in the Toronto agglomeration both to the nature of urban policies implemented since 1950 and to the circ*mstances that have led to their adoption. The construction of expressways, suburban type land-use planning, and a generous provision of open space have abetted dispersion. By contrast, the construction of a subway system and measures encouraging the redevelopment of underused land have promoted growth within the concentrated portion of the agglomeration. It is noteworthy, however, that these measures have failed in their attempts to induce concentration beyond the prewar urbanized perimeter. The author examines the positive and negative aspects of the presence of these two realms within a given agglomeration and highlights the threat newly adopted policies represent for the concentrated realm.

Abstract:

Both academics and practitioners concur that parking restraints should be actively introduced in urban centers and job-intensive areas, to prevent overdependence on automobiles. Many Chinese metropolises have reduced the level of parking minimums for non-residential premises in central and transit-rich areas. However, there is a lack of research examining the effectiveness of these policies. Taking Shenzhen as a case study, this paper compares the parking supply with the parking minimums at each policy period, and analyzes the spatial characteristics of parking provision for office use. The descriptive analysis found that the effects of minimum parking requirements (MPRs) on parking provision vary by floor area ratio (FAR), operation period, and transit accessibility. By conducting a geographical weighted regression (GWR) model, this paper further examines the spatially varying effects of the built environment on parking provision. The modeling results conclude that the significance and strength of the effects of built environments on parking provision vary across space. (1) The total parking quantity increases with the growth of the FAR, and this increasing effect is larger in suburban areas than in the city proper. (2) Lot size has a positive relationship with parking provision, and the effects are stronger in areas with higher parking demand. (3) Transit accessibility has inconsistent associations with parking provision at different locations, in terms of the direction and strength of the influence. These results provide relevant insights into the development of context-specific parking policies in the high-density contexts of China’s large cities.

Abstract:

Housing is the most important element of the city, which is of great importance in the sustainable development of the city. Therefore, achieving sustainable housing in order to enhance and improve the quality of life of the present and future generations is a major issue. Housing from various perspectives, including architecture, construction of buildings, residential buildings, land and building costs, housing loans, housing market, housing regulations, house prices, Desirable housing, etc., can be considered. On the other hand, housing is the most important concern of the present-day human being and its most important function is economic performance. And its most important function is economic performance. The housing situation and the analysis of housing prices are of particular importance, because the main goal of urbanization is to create human settlements and, among the various uses of urban land, residential use is of particular importance. Also the share of housing is also significant in quantitative term. One of the indicators for measuring poverty is housing. Good and adequate housing is a housing that does not have too much density. And, in many cases, housing and environmental conditions are the most important factor affecting on level of satisfaction of a person in a neighborhood. Apart from the social class and economic conditions of individuals, housing is always one of the most important needs and priorities of the household. The main factors that have led to provide a place to live become a crisis, especially for low-income groups, are: Rapid population growth, a sharp increase in urbanization rates, lower household size, higher rates of profitability of the land market and housing, reduced demand for housing, reduced access rates and poor financial capabilities of the poor, the plummeting market of land and housing to the detriment of low-income groups, the reduction of land and housing supply, the lack of attention of the private sector and, ultimately, unsuccessful government policies. In spite of various experiences to address the problem of disadvantaged low-income groups, the root cause of this problem is the need to examine its structural factors. This paper has been conducted with the purpose of providing a affordable housing pattern for vulnerable urban areas with a sustainable development approach in the Mehregan township of Mashhad Metropolis detachable area using a descriptive-analytical method of applied type. The population of the study is 366 people based on the Cochran formula. Using descriptive and inferential statistics from the completed questionnaires, experts have been analyzed using non-parametric and parametric statistical methods. Since housing is a cross-domain and multidimensional domain, the attitude to it must be all-round and multi-dimensional. Hence, effective policies in the field of housing for low income groups regarding the potential of the marginal areas of Mashhad for system effectiveness will be considered. Finally, in the city of Mehregan, we can solve this problem, By drafting urban planning, architecture and housing construction in accordance with international standards and enhancing their flexibility and encouraging activities in marginalized fabric for the benefit of low income groups and changing the views and plans of urban development projects.

Abstract:

Caricin Grad, Justiniana Prima, urban planning, fortification, settlement, aerial photography, geophysical surveys, LiDAR, photogrammetry, excavations, GIS. Thanks to the application of modern non-destructive sensing and detection methods, in recent years a series of new data on urban planning in Caricin Grad was obtained. For the most part, the current research programme studies the Upper Town?s northern plateau, wooded until recently and hence the only previously unexplored unit of the city. In the course of this programme, the classical research method - the excavations started in 2009 - is for the first time combined with the systematic application of airborne and terrestrial sensing and detection techniques. The analysis of historic aerial photographs and topographic plans proved to be very useful as well. Along with them, LiDAR-derived DTMs, photogrammetric DEMs, different geophysical and orthophotographic plans are stored in the GIS database for Caricin Grad and the Leskovac Basin. In this way almost 80 percent of the plateau area was defined, and the obtained plan is hypothetical only to a small extent, which particularly refers to the unexcavated northern rampart of the Upper Town. Each source provided relevant information for the reconstruction of both the rampart and the settlement, which points to the value of a holistic approach to documentation from various dates. The first source to be studied were archival aerial photographs of Caricin Grad from 1938 and 1947 (Figs. 1, 2.1). The latter one was originally processed by Aleksandar Deroko and Svetozar Radojci}, who drew the plan of the town after it, labelling the unexplored Upper Town?s northern plateau as ?a probable habitation area?. The route of the northern rampart was aslo rather precisely determined by the authors (Fig. 2.2). Recently, these photographs were rectified and georeferenced in the GIS. The 1938 shot reveals the position of some towers as well, and it is also indicative of the way of construction of certain buildings. From the spatial layout of whitish zones, originating from mortar scattered along the slope, it can be deduced which buildings were constructed in opus mixtum - the horreum and the so-called Building with Pillars east of it. Traces of mortar can be observed along the route of the rampart too. These archival images are particularly important because they record the topography of the site before it was filled with heaps of earth from the excavations. The topographic mappings of this area were conducted in 1981 and 2006 (Fig. 3). The first plan was drawn after an airborne stereophotogrammetric survey of Caricin Grad, and in 2006, after the wood was cut down, this whole area was surveyed with the total station, with a density of nine points per square meter. This survey also resulted in a 3D terrain model (Fig. 3.2) indicating the layout of the buildings, which was to be proved by geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations. In the course of the Serbian-French reaearch programme, in 2007 geomagnetic surveys were carried out by Alain Kermorvan of the University of Tours. Thanks to the application of this method the remains of collapsed stone structures could be observed, and in 2015, in cooperation with the Roman-Germanic Central Museum, Mainz, and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute from Vienna, the middle and eastern parts of the plateau were scanned with GPR (Fig. 4.2). Precise plans of the buildings were obtained in the areas in which LiDAR scanning and photogrammetric and geomagnetic surveys failed to produce clear images. Within the framework of the ArchaeoLandscapes Europe project, in 2011 we managed to organise an airborne LiDAR survey of the wider area of Caricin Grad. With its density of some 20 points per square meter, this scanning proved to be crucial for our comprehension of the town. The standard DTM provided numerous important data, especially its version calculated in the focal statistics function of the ArcGIS software package (Fig. 5. 1-2). These models show not only the route of the Upper Town?s northern rampart, the position of its towers and the layout of the buildings, but also the line of the Outer Town?s western rampart. Visible only in the DTM, this entirely new aspect of the Caricin Grad fortification has been attested by the excavations. Highly important plans of the town, and of the northern plateau of the Upper Town in particular, were obtained by UAV photogrammetric surveys. The first drone survey was conducted in 2014 within the scope of the same project. It resulted in a cloud with up to 1,600 points per square meter (Fig. 6.1-2). Unlike the LiDAR technology, photogrammetry cannot penetrate vegetation; therefore the preliminary clearing of the ground proved to be a most important step. After the 2015 campaign was finished, the excavation area in the Upper Town was documented again in the same manner. Regular photogrammetric surveys make possible the control of the works and reliable visual monitoring of the progress of exploration (Fig. 9). After the wood was cut down in 2006 and enormous heaps of earth from twentieth-century excavations and restoration works were carefully removed by machinery in 2008 and 2010, without disturbing the original layers of debris, wide excavations could begin. At first only the humus layer was removed from fifteen-meter squares, which was followed by technical drawing. In 2009 and 2010 we did not explore the debris or the cultural layers (Fig. 7.1-2). The additional two squares were opened and documented in the same fashion in 2011, when previously recorded buildings 11 and 15C were explored in detail, together with the part of the corridor between them where a bread oven was found. These buildings were oriented south-north, cascading along the mild slope towards the northern rampart of the Upper Town. Fragments of pithoi and carbonised fruits were found in the buildings, allowing for an economic interpretation. Judging by coinfinds, the buildings ended in fire after the year 602. Some of the buildings on the northern plateau were oriented differently, following the route of the northern rampart of the Acropolis in the east-west direction. In 2012 building 18 was excavated, leaning on the rampart. Rectangular in plan and some 12 by 7.5 meters large, it had a storey and a 7 by 5.5 meters spacious paved atrium in the west. Parallel to building 18 is building 20, the only one on the northern plateau constructed in opus mixtum. The two buildings are separated by a four-meter-wide street, running from east to west. This street, corridor 4, was partly cut in the rock. In some sections it had a substructure of fragmented debris. Building 20 has been carefully excavated for several years now. After the initial documenting, the surface layer of debris was removed, but not the collapsed structures with characteristic construction details; to the east of the building a collapsed wall was uncovered, containing as many as eight successive rows of stone and brick. Beneath these layers are the occupation ones, so far investigated only to a small extent. Building 20 is rectangular in plan, covering 25 by 12.5 meters. In its central axis there is a row of masonry pillars, dividing the building into two naves. On its western side there was a vestibule with a pair of doors matching the main entrances to the building. In the back of the vestibule, between these entrances and in axis with the pillars, there was a staircase. Adetailed analysis of these features led us to conclude that building 20 was a horreum, the first such edifice to be discovered in Caricin Grad. Taking into account the details of its ground plan, pillars, parts of collapsed walls and especially arches, it will be possible to reconstruct the original form of the horreum. Judging by the existing estimate, although somewhat rough, it was 13.5 meters high. It could be observed that in its later phases the horreum was partitioned into several rooms, and some of its entrances were walled up. In the vestibule only these later occupation phases were documented, as the original brick pavement was removed from its northern part. This was followed by a significant accumulation of cultural layers, which were sealed by the debris stratum. South of the horreum there is a spacious courtyard connected with the western street of the Upper Town. The Upper Town?s northern rampart has never been graphically reconstructed, despite the fact that Aleksandar Deroko and Svetozar Radojci} published its accurate (although schematic) ground plan as early as 1950 (Fig. 2.2). This part of the town has gradually been left out of the research focus, mainly due to the vegetation growth. Upon employing all the methods described above, however, it is possible to undertake such an effort. The ideal reconstruction suggested here includes the rampart route, the disposition and the form of the towers, and the possible locations of the posterns. The line of the rampart can be traced following the trenches left by the locals dismantling the walls. Only the section of the northwestern rampart in front of the western postern of the Acropolis cannot be presented, being still covered by massive earth deposits. On the other hand, the recently discovered western rampart of the Outer Town can be traced to its full length in the LiDAR-derived DTM. Its form can be easily reconstructed on the basis of the results of the 2012 excavations and the section of the same rampart uncovered east of the main fortifications in 1955-56 (Fig. 8). Having studied the microtopography of the terrain, we were able to determine the position of a number of towers. They were clearly indicated by bumps, regularly distributed along the northern and northeastern sections of the rampart. The position of the tower below the Acropolis? western postern could be easily determined as well, unlike the position of the tower opposite to the horseshoe-shaped one of the Acropolis fortification. Yet, it is hard to imagine that a hundred-meter-long section of the rampart was left unprotected. The rectangular shape of the towers is suggested because almost all the towers of the town?s outer fortification were constructed in that way. On the other hand, at present we cannot exclude the possibility that some towers were different, horseshoe-shaped in plan, like the ones on the Acropolis rampart. The disposition of the towers along the northeastern rampart of the Upper Town, in the area where the northern street presumably met the fortification, is not clear. This part of the site still lies under massive heaps of earth, and even the 1938 and 1947 aerial photographs are not indicative enough in this regard. However, the tower(s) might have been erected there, not only because the eighty-meter-long stretch of the rampart would be left without protection in an opposite scenario, but because it is likely that the northern street ended in a gate, or at least a postern. It is already known that some of the posterns on the Caric in Grad fortifications were defended by towers. The average distance between the towers of the town?s main fortification extends from 20 meters on the southern to 40 meters on the western rampart of the Lower Town; in our reconstruction the average interval on the Upper Town?s northern rampart is 44 meters. Another argument is that this gate might have connected the Upper and the Outer Towns. The position of the second postern is determined thanks to a depression in the terrain following the axis of another communication route in the Upper Town, leading from corridor 4 and running towards the north along the rows of buildings. Finally, the 3.8 meter width of the rampart in the section adjoining the northern tower of the Upper Town?s eastern gate may only indicate a staircase, the last reconstructed fortification element. On the plateau stretching between the northern ramparts of the Acropolis and the Upper Town fortifications a settlement developed with its radially distributed rows of buildings cascading down the slope. In the eastern part of the plateau there is the horreum, adjoined from the east by another building - the storage called Building with Pillars. Larger than the other buildings and constructed in opus mixtum, the two buildings follow the route of the Upper Town?s northern street, all of which indicates that they belong to the initial construction phase. One should not exclude the possibility that this part of the town was originally conceived as an economic district with storages and similar edifices. By all appearances, the original concept was soon abandoned. Already at the time of Justinian a settlement of numerous smaller buildings was created. With their walls of stone and wattle and daub, the buildings were roofed with tiles. Yet one should underscore that this construction phase, although less sophisticated than the first one, was accomplished according to a previously prepared plan; the spread of the buildings speaks to that effect. Shortly afterwards, if not at the same time, buildings were erected along the outer face of the Acropolis rampart - a clear indication of abandoning urban planning (Fig. 9). Public space was turned into private, in spite of the legal proscriptions of that time. During the last phase of the town?s life the buildings described, whether public or private, were partitioned into small rooms, often with fireplaces and with some of their entrances walled up. Just like the edifices constructed in opus mixtum, some of the more modest buildings from the second construction phase were used to store food - namely buildings 11 and 15C. The plan of this part of the site points to an organised settlement, most probably inhabited by persons servicing a significant clergy and administration. On the other hand, except for some houses - such as building 18 - small buildings along the Acropolis fortification, facing the main street, corridor 4, might have served as shops and workshops. Traces of furnaces, slag and bone working were also encountered in this area. The parallel application of classical research methods and modern techniques of sensing and detection enabled the reconstruction of the northern rampart and the urban matrix of the Upper Town?s northern plateau. Until recently among the least known parts of the town, this unit can now be regarded as one of the best defined. This is important not only for our understanding of Caricin Grad (Justiniana Prima), but also for the study of Early Byzantine urban planning in general.

Abstract:

The renovation of Adriatic towns under Venetian rule included all major urban settlements on the islands in the Quarnero Gulf. The size of Osor, the Roman centre of the Cres-Lošinj group of islands, radically decreased during this period. The scholarship holds that the town of Cres started to grow in the second half of the fifteenth century while Osor fell into disrepair. Apart from the new Renaissance Cathedral, other late Gothic and Renaissance buildings in Osor have never been thoroughly studied, partly because their state of preservation is modest and party because of the deep-seated opinionthat the fifteenth century was only an epilogue to Osor’s great past. As a consequence, no basic analysis of local architecture has ever been done and the urban layout of historic Osor is not very well known. The causes of Osor’s demise, on the other hand, are well known. The population was decimated by illness and the town itself was destroyed by wars in the fourteenth century. Furthermore, maritime navigation changed from coastal to that accustomed to the open sea and Osor lost the strategic importance it held when it came to sailing along the Adriatic. The relocation of the local Count to Cres, frequently underlined as one of the key moments in the history of Osor’s decline and dated to 1450, does not seem to be as fateful as the reduced numberof its inhabitants and the loss of naval and trading significance. The relocation created a dual government of sorts and a bimunicipal county was established. The historical importance of Osor as a traditional seat of power was paramount to Venice and the town maintained the prestige it had acquired during the Roman period as a town which controlled a large territory.In the mid-fifteenth century Osor was a building site: architectural structures were maintained, repaired and built anew. In the fourteenth century, a Gothic church of St Gaudentius was constructed on the main street and in the first half of the fifteenth century the Town Hall was built on the site of the ancient Roman curia. Until now, it was held that the reason for the construction of thenew cathedral was the bisection of Osor which occurred in the mid-fifteenth century when the new fortification walls – with a reduced catchment area –were erected and so excluded the old cathedral from the perimeter. However, the decision to reduce the circumference of the new walls was made only in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, that is, after the foundations for the new cathedral had been laid. This means that the plans drawn up in the second half of the fifteenth century covered a larger area than previouslt thought and that they were done during the pontificate of Bishop Antun Palčić who wasoriginally from Pag and who witnessed first-hand the building of the new town of Pag. A decree of 1581 records the construction of the town walls at Cres and Osor. The new fortification walls of Cres were being built throughout the sixteenth century and so it is likely that the transversal wall at Osor was constructed at the same time as the new walls at Cres, during thesixteenth century. The building of the new wall was not an ambitious feat of fortification construction but a simple encircling of the remodelled town centre. The new wall was just a consequence of urban reorganization and its directionwas determined by the pre-existing defence buildings which were utilised and incorporated in the new addition. In the late fifteenth century, the main town square was fully developed and surrounded by the most importantpublic and religious buildings. The Town Hall stood on the south-east corner and the new cathedral was built on the square’s south side. The Episcopal Palace extended along the entire west flank of the square. The Palace’s long andnarrow east wing, facing the square, connected the two main wings of the complex. Despite its modest role as nothing more than a link, the east front was the widest part of the Palace and closed the square’s west side, respecting the new, small-scale urban layout of Osor. The north-east corner of the complex is decorated with an engaged colonette topped by a leaf capital. Its counterpart can be found on a building at the opposite side of the square, which was subsequently heavily rebuilt. These corresponding engaged colonettes indicate that the architects wanted to create a meaningful urban space. The north side of the square no longer exists in its original shape. In the mid-fifteenth century, this area was occupied by religious buildings traces of which can be seen in the present-day modest houses. These traces are mostly elements of Gothic decoration and so it can be concluded that this side of the square featured Gothic structures. The analysis of the architecture on the main square demonstrates that it there were consecutive building phases and that the Cathedral was the last building to be built. There was no unifying stylistic concept; the buildings on the square were either Gothic or Renaissance. This does not reduce the importance of this feat of public building because the Episcopal Palace and Osor Cathedral were built at the same time, by the same master builders, for the same patron, the difference being that the former in the Gothic and the latter in the Renaissance style. This, in my opinion, means that the value of the main square at Osor should not be assessed throughstylistic unity but by considering the harmonious spatial relationships between its structures, the attention given to their design, their role as public buildings and the balance achieved by adapting the newly built structures tothe pre-existing ones. It is well known that the late fifteenth century was the time when traditional Gothic decoration was used alongside new Renaissance forms and so the stylistic inconsistency apparent in Osor’s main squarewas done in the spirit of time. The remodelling of the town centre lasted for the whole century and the town was also well maintained in the period that followed. Archival records tell us that a grain store was built inthe late fifteenth century but nothing is known about its location or appearance.Despite the efforts and large-scale building campaigns of public and religious architecture, the migration of able-bodied people looking for work continued and Osor was gradually transformed into an occasional dwelling place of the nobility and the clergy – a town of the Church and aristocracy. Today, Osor is a town with low-density architecture. The legacy of medieval town buildingcan be seen only in the row of houses that face the main street. They are huddled together and arranged around communal courtyards, which is a characteristic of local medieval town planning on the island of Cres. The mostprominent residential building is the palazzetto of the Draža family, an old noble family of Osor. The location of the Draža house and its spatial relationship with the surrounding, more modest houses, implies that it embodied the medieval concept of densely built town blocks dominated by a single aristocratic building. Other aristocratic houses at Osor are more isolated and surrounded by green spaces. These large green areas were once occupied by Roman and medieval houses and insulae. Following the late middle ages, the decaying architectural structures were not repaired butused to create gardens: their perimeter walls were neatly re-arranged and became the dividing walls between different gardens while the spaces they contained were filled with a layer of soil, as archaeological test pits have shown. Apart from large gardens and courtyards, the residential character of Osor as an aristocratic resort is attested by the Latin inscriptions on the building façades but also by the written records about noble familieswhich possessed estates in both Cres and Osor during the period that followed the formation of the bimunicipal county in the fifteenth century.All these events created a set of specific characteristics in Osor during the late fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Its importance as the seat of a commune and a bishop was reflected in the main town square which was planned in the spirit of the Renaissance and according to the redesign of towns under the Venetian rule. The medieval legacy is still evident in the buildings on the main street which are densely huddled around communal courtyards and which centre around dominant aristocratic houses. In contract to them, large gardens and the aforementioned historic circ*mstances indicate that Osor was a residential resort of the local nobility. From the fifteenth century onward, the most frequently recorded features of Osor were its decay and mala aria (bad air). Nevertheless, as late as 1771, Alberto Fortis described it as the only town on the island of Cres to have kept the legacy of its noble past. In addition to the aforementioned Gothic and Renaissance elements of architecturaldecoration, many more were rebuilt into later houses. They are as frequent as the Roman and early medieval spolia and were reused in the same manner. Their existence witnesses that Osor had had another important historic phase in its long life.

Abstract:

he renovation of Adriatic towns under Venetian rule included all major urban settlements on the islands in the Quarnero Gulf. The size of Osor, the Roman centre of the Cres-Lošinj group of islands, radically decreased during this period. The scholarship holds that the town of Cres started to grow in the second half of the fifteenth century while Osor fell into disrepair. Apart from the new Renaissance Cathedral, other late Gothic and Renaissance buildings in Osor have never been thoroughly studied, partly because their state of preservation is modest and party because of the deep-seated opinion that the fifteenth century was only an epilogue to Osor’s great past. As a consequence, no basic analysis of local architecture has ever been done and the urban layout of historic Osor is not very well known. The causes of Osor’s demise, on the other hand, are well known. The population was decimated by illness and the town itself was destroyed by wars in the fourteenth century. Furthermore, maritime navigation changed from coastal to that accustomed to the open sea and Osor lost the strategic importance it held when it came to sailing along the Adriatic. The relocation of the local Count to Cres, frequently underlined as one of the key moments in the history of Osor’s decline and dated to 1450, does not seem to be as fateful as the reduced number of its inhabitants and the loss of naval and trading significance. The relocation created a dual government of sorts and a bimunicipal county was established. The historical importance of Osor as a traditional seat of power was paramount to Venice and the town maintained the prestige it had acquired during the Roman period as a town which controlled a large territory. In the mid-fifteenth century Osor was a building site: architectural structures were maintained, repaired and built anew. In the fourteenth century, a Gothic church of St Gaudentius was constructed on the main street and in the first half of the fifteenth century the Town Hall was built on the site of the ancient Roman curia. Until now, it was held that the reason for the construction of the new cathedral was the bisection of Osor which occurred in the mid-fifteenth century when the new fortification walls – with a reduced catchment area –were erected and so excluded the old cathedral from the perimeter. However, the decision to reduce the circumference of the new walls was made only in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, that is, after the foundations for the new cathedral had been laid. This means that the plans drawn up in the second half of the fifteenth century covered a larger area than previouslt thought and that they were done during the pontificate of Bishop Antun Palčić who was originally from Pag and who witnessed first-hand the building of the new town of Pag. A decree of 1581 records the construction of the town walls at Cres and Osor. The new fortification walls of Cres were being built throughout the sixteenth century and so it is likely that the transversal wall at Osor was constructed at the same time as the new walls at Cres, during the sixteenth century. The building of the new wall was not an ambitious feat of fortification construction but a simple encircling of the remodelled town centre. The new wall was just a consequence of urban reorganization and its direction was determined by the pre-existing defence buildings which were utilised and incorporated in the new addition. In the late fifteenth century, the main town square was fully developed and surrounded by the most important public and religious buildings. The Town Hall stood on the south-east corner and the new cathedral was built on the square’s south side. The Episcopal Palace extended along the entire west flank of the square. The Palace’s long and narrow east wing, facing the square, connected the two main wings of the complex. Despite its modest role as nothing more than a link, the east front was the widest part of the Palace and closed the square’s west side, respecting the new, small-scale urban layout of Osor. The north-east corner of the complex is decorated with an engaged colonette topped by a leaf capital. Its counterpart can be found on a building at the opposite side of the square, which was subsequently heavily rebuilt. These corresponding engaged colonettes indicate that the architects wanted to create a meaningful urban space. The north side of the square no longer exists in its original shape. In the mid-fifteenth century, this area was occupied by religious buildings traces of which can be seen in the present-day modest houses. These traces are mostly elements of Gothic decoration and so it can be concluded that this side of the square featured Gothic structures. The analysis of the architecture on the main square demonstrates that it there were consecutive building phases and that the Cathedral was the last building to be built. There was no unifying stylistic concept; the buildings on the square were either Gothic or Renaissance. This does not reduce the importance of this feat of public building because the Episcopal Palace and Osor Cathedral were built at the same time, by the same master builders, for the same patron, the difference being that the former in the Gothic and the latter in the Renaissance style. This, in my opinion, means that the value of the main square at Osor should not be assessed through stylistic unity but by considering the harmonious spatial relationships between its structures, the attention given to their design, their role as public buildings and the balance achieved by adapting the newly built structures to the pre-existing ones. It is well known that the late fifteenth century was the time when traditional Gothic decoration was used alongside new Renaissance forms and so the stylistic inconsistency apparent in Osor’s main square was done in the spirit of time. The remodelling of the town centre lasted for the whole century and the town was also well maintained in the period that followed. Archival records tell us that a grain store was built in the late fifteenth century but nothing is known about its location or appearance. Despite the efforts and large-scale building campaigns of public and religious architecture, the migration of able-bodied people looking for work continued and Osor was gradually transformed into an occasional dwelling place of the nobility and the clergy – a town of the Church and aristocracy. Today, Osor is a town with low-density architecture. The legacy of medieval town building can be seen only in the row of houses that face the main street. They are huddled together and arranged around communal courtyards, which is a characteristic of local medieval town planning on the island of Cres. The most prominent residential building is the palazzetto of the Draža family, an old noble family of Osor. The location of the Draža house and its spatial relationship with the surrounding, more modest houses, implies that it embodied the medieval concept of densely built town blocks dominated by a single aristocratic building. Other aristocratic houses at Osor are more isolated and surrounded by green spaces. These large green areas were once occupied by Roman and medieval houses and insulae. Following the late middle ages, the decaying architectural structures were not repaired but used to create gardens: their perimeter walls were neatly re-arranged and became the dividing walls between different gardens while the spaces they contained were filled with a layer of soil, as archaeological test pits have shown. Apart from large gardens and courtyards, the residential character of Osor as an aristocratic resort is attested by the Latin inscriptions on the building façades but also by the written records about noble families which possessed estates in both Cres and Osor during the period that followed the formation of the bimunicipal county in the fifteenth century. All these events created a set of specific characteristics in Osor during the late fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Its importance as the seat of a commune and a bishop was reflected in the main town square which was planned in the spirit of the Renaissance and according to the redesign of towns under the Venetian rule. The medieval legacy is still evident in the buildings on the main street which are densely huddled around communal courtyards and which centre around dominant aristocratic houses. In contract to them, large gardens and the aforementioned historic circ*mstances indicate that Osor was a residential resort of the local nobility. From the fifteenth century onward, the most frequently recorded features of Osor were its decay and mala aria (bad air). Nevertheless, as late as 1771, Alberto Fortis described it as the only town on the island of Cres to have kept the legacy of its noble past. In addition to the aforementioned Gothic and Renaissance elements of architectural decoration, many more were rebuilt into later houses. They are as frequent as the Roman and early medieval spolia and were reused in the same manner. Their existence witnesses that Osor had had another important historic phase in its long life.

Abstract:

I have decided to launch a campaign against the skyscraper, that hideous, mediocre form of architecture…. Today we only have an empty version of it, only competing in height.— Rem Koolhaas, “Kool Enough for Beijing?”Figure 1: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard in the Air. Cher Coad, 2020.Introduction: An Anomaly within an Anomaly Construction of Beijing’s China Central Television Headquarters (henceforth CCTV Headquarters) began in 2004 and the building was officially completed in 2012. It is a project by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) headed by Rem Koolhaas (1944-), who has been called “the coolest, hippest, and most cutting-edge architect on the planet”(“Rem Koolhaas Biography”). The CCTV Headquarters is a distinctive feature of downtown Beijing and is heavily associated in the Western world with 21st-century China. It is often used as the backdrop for reports from the China correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Bill Birtles. The construction of the CCTV Headquarters, however, was very much an international enterprise. Koolhaas himself is Dutch, and the building was one of the first projects the OMA did outside of America after 9/11. As Koolhaas describes it: we had incredible emphasis on New York for five years, and America for five years, and what we decided to do after September 11 when we realized that, you know, things were going to be different in America: [was] to also orient ourselves eastwards [Koolhaas goes on to describe two projects: the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the CCTV Headquarters]. (Rem Koolhaas Interview) Problematically, Koolhaas claims that the building we created for CCTV could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition. It was also a partnership, not a foreign imposition…. There was a huge Chinese component from the very beginning. We tried to do a building that conveys that it has emerged from the local situation. (Fraioli 117) Our article reinterprets this reading. We suggest that the OMA’s “incredible emphasis” on America—home of the world’s first skyscraper: the Home Insurance Building built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois—pivotally spills over into its engagement with China. The emergence of the CCTV Headquarters “from the local situation”, such as it is, is more in spite of Koolhaas’s stated “hybrid” approach than because of it, for what’s missing from his analysis of the CCTV Headquarters’ provenance is the siheyuan or classical Chinese courtyard house. We will argue that the CCTV Headquarters is an anomaly within an anomaly in contemporary Beijing’s urban landscape, to the extent that it turns the typologies of both the (vertical, American) skyscraper and the (horizontal, Chinese) siheyuan on a 90 degree angle. The important point to make here, however, is that these two anomalous elements of the building are not of the same order. While the anomalous re-configuration of the skyscraper typology is clearly part of Koolhaas’s architectural manifesto, it is against his architectural intentionality that the CCTV Headquarters sustains the typology of the siheyuan. This bespeaks the persistent and perhaps functional presence of traditional Chinese architecture and urbanism in the building. Koolhaas’s building contains both starkly evident and more secretive anomalies. Ironically then, there is a certain truth in Koolhaas’s words, beneath the critique we made of it above as an example of American-dominated, hom*ogenising globalisation. And the significance of the CCTV Headquarters’ hybridity as both skyscraper and siheyuan can be elaborated through Daniel M. Abramson’s thesis that a consideration of unbuilt architecture has the potential to re-open architecture to its historical conditions. Roberto Schwarz argues that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Drawing on Schwarz’s work and Abramson’s, we conclude that the historical presence—as secretive anomaly—of the siheyuan in the CCTV Headquarters suggests that the building’s formal debt to the siheyuan (more so than to the American skyscraper) may continue to unsettle the “specific social relationship” of Chinese to Western society (Schwarz 53). The site of this unsettlement, we suggest, is data. The CCTV Headquarters might well be the most data-rich site in all of China—it is, after all, a monumental television station. Suggestively, this wealth of airborne data is literally enclosed within the aerial “courtyard”, with its classical Chinese form, of the CCTV Headquarters. This could hardly be irrelevant in the context of the geo-politics of globalised data. The “form of data”, to coin a phrase, radiates through all the social consequences of data flow and usage, and here the form of data is entwined with a form always already saturated with social consequence. The secretive architectural anomaly of Koolhaas’s building is thus a heterotopic space within the broader Western engagement with China, so much of which relates to flows and captures of data. The Ubiquitous Siheyuan or Classical Chinese Courtyard House According to Ying Liu and Adenrele Awotona, “the courtyard house, a residential compound with buildings surrounding a courtyard on four (or sometimes three) sides, has been representative of housing patterns for over one thousand years in China” (248). Liu and Awotona state that “courtyard house patterns could be found in many parts of China, but the most typical forms are those located in the Old City in Beijing, the capital of China for over eight hundred years” (252). In their reading, the siheyuan is a peculiarly elastic architectural typology, whose influence is present as much in the Forbidden City as in the humble family home (252). Prima facie then, it is not surprising that it has also secreted itself within the architectural form of Koolhaas’s creation. It is important to note, however, that while the “most typical forms” of the siheyuan are indeed still to be found in Beijing, the courtyard house is an increasingly uncommon sight in the Chinese capital. An article in the China Daily from 2004 refers to the “few remaining siheyuan” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). That said, all is not lost for the siheyuan. Liu and Awotona discuss how the classical form of the courtyard house has been modified to more effectively house current residents in the older parts of Beijing while protecting “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (254). “Basic design principles” (255) of the siheyuan have supported “a transition from the traditional single-household courtyard housing form to a contemporary multi-household courtyard housing form” (254). In this process, approaches of “urban renewal [involving] demolition” and “preservation, renovation and rebuilding” have been taken (255). Donia Zhang extends the work of Liu and Awotona in the elaboration of her thesis that “Chinese-Americans interested in building Chinese-style courtyard houses in America are keen to learn about their architectural heritage” (47). Zhang’s article concludes with an illustration that shows how the siheyuan may be merged with the typical American suburban dwelling (66). The final thing to emphasise about the siheyuan is what Liu and Awotona describe as its “special introverted quality” (249). The form is saturated with social consequence by virtue of its philosophical undergirding. The coincidence of philosophies of Daoism (including feng-shui) and Confucianism in the architecture and spatiality of the classical Chinese courtyard house makes it an exceedingly odd anomaly of passivity and power (250-51). The courtyard itself has a highly charged role in the management of family, social and cultural life, which, we suggest, survives its transposition into novel architectural environments. Figure 2: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking Up at “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. The CCTV Headquarters: A New Type of Skyscraper? Rem Koolhaas is not the only architect to interrogate the standard skyscraper typology. In his essay from 1999, “The Architecture of the Future”, Norman Foster argues that “the world’s increasing ecological crisis” (278) is in part a function of “unchecked urban sprawl” (279). A new type of skyscraper, he suggests, might at least ameliorate the sprawl of our cities: the Millennium Tower that we have proposed in Tokyo takes a traditional horizontal city quarter—housing, shops, restaurants, cinemas, museums, sporting facilities, green spaces and public transport networks—and turns it on its side to create a super-tall building with a multiplicity of uses … . It would create a virtually self-sufficient, fully self-sustaining community in the sky. (279) Koolhaas follows suit, arguing that “the actual point of the skyscraper—to increase worker density—has been lost. Skyscrapers are now only momentary points of high density spaced so far apart that they don’t actually increase density at all” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Foster’s solution to urban sprawl is to make the horizontal (an urban segment) vertical; Koolhaas’s is to make the vertical horizontal: “we’ve [OMA] come up with two types: a very low-rise series of buildings, or a single, condensed hyperbuilding. What we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Interestingly, the “low-rise” type mentioned here brings to mind the siheyuan—textual evidence, perhaps, that the siheyuan is always already a silent fellow traveller of the CCTV Headquarters project. The CCTV Headquarters is, even at over 200 metres tall itself, an anomaly of horizontalism amidst Beijing’s pervasive skyscraper verticality. As Paul Goldberger reports, “some Beijingers have taken to calling it Big Shorts”, which again evokes horizontality. This is its most obvious anomaly, and a somewhat melancholy reminder of “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” now mutilated by skyscrapers (Liu and Awotona 254). In the same gesture, however, with which it lays the skyscraper on its side, Koolhaas’s creation raises into the air the shape of the courtyard of a classical Chinese house. To our knowledge, no one has noticed this before, let alone written about it. It is, to be sure, a genuine courtyard shape—not merely an archway or a bridge with unoccupied space between. Pure building entirely surrounds the vertical courtyard shape formed in the air. Most images of the building provide an orientation that maximises the size of its vertical courtyard. To this extent, the (secret) courtyard shape of the building is hidden in plain sight. It is possible, however, to make the courtyard narrow to a mere slit of space, and finally to nothing, by circumnavigating the building. Certain perspectives on the building can even make it look like a more-or-less ordinary skyscraper. But, as a quick google-image search reveals, such views are rare. What seems to make the building special to people is precisely that part of it that is not building. Furthermore, anyone approaching the CCTV Headquarters with the intention of locating a courtyard typology within its form will be disappointed unless they look to its vertical plane. There is no hint of a courtyard at the base of the building. Figure 3: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 4: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking through the Floor of “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Visiting the CCTV Headquarters: A “Special Introverted Quality?” In January 2020, we visited the CCTV Headquarters, ostensibly as audience members for a recording of a science spectacular show. Towards the end of the recording, we were granted a quick tour of the building. It is rare for foreigners to gain access to the sections of the building we visited. Taking the lift about 40 floors up, we arrived at the cantilever level—known informally as “the overhang”. Glass discs in the floor allow one to walk out over nothingness, looking down on ant-like pedestrians. Looking down like this was also to peer into the vacant “courtyard” of the building—into a structure “turned or pushed inward on itself”, which is the anatomical definition of “introverted” (Oxford Languages Dictionary). Workers in the building evinced no great affection for it, and certainly nothing of our wide-eyed wonder. Somebody said, “it’s just a place to work”. One of this article’s authors, Patrick West, seemed to feel the overhang almost imperceptibly vibrating beneath him. (Still, he has also experienced this sensation in conventional skyscrapers.) We were told the rumour that the building has started to tilt over dangerously. Being high in the air, but also high on the air, with nothing but air beneath us, felt edgy—somehow special—our own little world. Koolhaas promotes the CCTV Headquarters as (in paraphrase) “its own city, its own community” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). This resonated with us on our visit. Conventional skyscrapers fracture any sense of community through their segregated floor-upon-floor verticality; there is never enough room for a little patch of horizontal urbanism to unroll. Within “the overhang”, the CCTV Headquarters felt unlike a standard skyscraper, as if we were in an urban space magically levitated from the streets below. Sure, we had been told by one of the building’s inhabitants that it was “just a place to work”—but compared to the bleak sterility of most skyscraper work places, it wasn’t that sterile. The phrase Liu and Awotona use of the siheyuan comes to mind here, as we recall our experience; somehow, we had been inside a different type of building, one with its own “special introverted quality” (249). Special, that is, in the sense of containing just so much of horizontal urbanism as allows the building to retain its introverted quality as “its own city” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Figure 5: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 6: The CCTV Headquarters—Inside “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. Unbuilt Architecture: The Visionary and the Contingent Within the present that it constitutes, built architecture is surrounded by unbuilt architecture at two interfaces: where the past ends; where the future begins. The soupy mix of urbanism continually spawns myriad architectural possibilities, and any given skyscraper is haunted by all the skyscrapers it might have been. History and the past hang heavily from them. Meanwhile, architectural programme or ambition—such as it is—pulls in the other direction: towards an idealised (if not impossible to practically realise) future. Along these lines, Koolhaas and the OMA are plainly a future-directed, as well as self-aware, architectural unit: at OMA we try to build in the greatest possible tolerance and the least amount of rigidity in terms of embodying one particular moment. We want our buildings to evolve. A building has at least two lives—the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward—and they are never the same. (Fraioli 115) Koolhaas makes the same point even more starkly with regard to the CCTV Headquarters project through his use of the word “prototype”: “what we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). At the same time, however, as the presence of the siheyuan within the architecture of the CCTV Headquarters shows, the work of the OMA cannot escape from the superabundance of history, within which, as Roberto Schwarz claims, “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Supporting our contentions here, Daniel M. Abramson notes that unbuilt architecture implies two sub-categories … the visionary unbuilt, and the contingent … . Visionary schemes invite a forward glance, down one true, vanguard path to a reformed society and discipline. The contingent unbuilts, conversely, invite a backward glance, along multiple routes history might have gone, each with its own likelihood and validity; no privileged truths. (Abramson)Introducing Abramson’s theory to the example of the CCTV Headquarters, the “visionary unbuilt” lines up with Koolhaas’ thesis that the building is a future-directed “prototype”. while the clearest candidate for the “contingent unbuilt”, we suggest, is the siheyuan. Why? Firstly, the siheyuan is hidden in plain sight, within the framing architecture of the CCTV Headquarters; secondly, it is ubiquitous in Beijing urbanism—little wonder then that it turns up, unannounced, in this Beijing building; thirdly, and related to the second point, the two buildings share a “special introverted quality” (Liu and Awotona 249). “The contingent”, in this case, is the anomaly nestled within the much more blatant “visionary” (or futuristic) anomaly—the hyperbuilding to come—of the Beijing-embedded CCTV Headquarters. Koolhaas’s building’s most fascinating anomaly relates, not to any forecast of the future, but to the subtle persistence of the past—its muted quotation of the ancient siheyuan form. Our article is, in part, a response to Abramson’s invitation to “pursue … the consequences of the unbuilt … [and thus] to open architectural history more fully to history”. We have supplemented Abramson’s idea with Schwarz’s suggestion that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). The anomaly of the siheyuan—alongside that of the hyperbuilding—within the CCTV headquarters, opens the building up (paraphrasing Abramson) to a fuller analysis of its historical positioning within Western and Eastern flows of globalisation (or better, as we are about to suggest, of glocalisation). In parallel, its form (paraphrasing Schwarz) abstracts and re-presents this history’s specific social relationships. Figure 7: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard of Data. Cher Coad, 2020.Conclusion: A Courtyard of Data and Tensions of Glocalisation Koolhaas proposes that the CCTV Headquarters was “a partnership, not a foreign imposition” and that the building “emerged from the local situation” (Fraioli 117). To us, this smacks of Pollyanna globalisation. The CCTV Headquarters is, we suggest, more accurately read as an imposition of the American skyscraper typology, albeit in anomalous form. (One might even argue that the building’s horizontal deviation from the vertical norm reinforces that norm.) Still, amidst a thicket of conventionally vertical skyscrapers, the building’s horizontalism does have the anomalous effect of recalling “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (Liu and Awotona 254). Buried within its horizontalism, however, lies a more secretive anomaly in the form of a vertical siheyuan. This anomaly, we contend, motivates a terminological shift from “globalisation” to “glocalisation”, for the latter term better captures the notion of a lack of reconciliation between the “global” and the “local” in the building. Koolhaas’s visionary architectural programme explicitly advances anomaly. The CCTV Headquarters radically reworks the skyscraper typology as the prototype of a hyperbuilding defined by horizontalism. Certainly, such horizontalism recalls the horizontal plane of pre-skyscraper Beijing and, if faintly, that plane’s ubiquitous feature: the classical courtyard house. Simultaneously, however, the siheyuan has a direct if secretive presence within the morphology of the CCTV Headquarters, even as any suggestion of a vertical courtyard is strikingly absent from Koolhaas’s vanguard manifesto. To this extent, the hyperbuilding fits within Abramson’s category of “the visionary unbuilt”, while the siheyuan aligns with Abramson’s “contingent unbuilt” descriptor. The latter is the “might have been” that, largely under the pressure of its ubiquity as Beijing vernacular architecture, “very nearly is”. Drawing on Schwarz’s idea that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships”, we propose that the siheyuan, as anomalous form of the CCTV Headquarters, is a heterotopic space within the hybrid global harmony (to paraphrase Koolhaas) purportedly represented by the building (53). In this space thus formed collides the built-up historical and philosophical social intensity of the classical Chinese courtyard house and the intensities of data flows and captures that help constitute the predominantly capitalist and neo-liberalist “social relationship” of China and the Western world—the world of the skyscraper (Schwarz). Within the siheyuan of the CCTV Headquarters, globalised data is literally enveloped by Daoism and Confucianism; it is saturated with the social consequence of local place. The term “glocalisation” is, we suggest, to be preferred here to “globalisation”, because of how it better reflects such vernacular interruptions to the hegemony of globalised space. Forms delineate social relationships, and data, which both forms and is formed by social relationships, may be formed by architecture as much as anything else within social space. Attention to the unbuilt architectural forms (vanguard and contingent) contained within the CCTV Headquarters reveals layers of anomaly that might, ultimately, point to another form of architecture entirely, in which glocal tensions are not only recognised, but resolved. Here, Abramson’s historical project intersects, in the final analysis, with a worldwide politics. Figure 8: The CCTV Headquarters—A Sound Stage in Action. Cher Coad, 2020. References Abramson, Daniel M. “Stakes of the Unbuilt.” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. 20 July 2020. <http://we-aggregate.org/piece/stakes-of-the-unbuilt>.Foster, N. “The Architecture of the Future.” The Architecture Reader: Essential Writings from Vitruvius to the Present. Ed. A. Krista Sykes. New York: George Braziller, 2007: 276-79. Fraioli, Paul. “The Invention and Reinvention of the City: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas.” Journal of International Affairs 65.2 (Spring/Summer 2012): 113-19. Goldberger, Paul. “Forbidden Cities: Beijing’s Great New Architecture Is a Mixed Blessing for the City.” The New Yorker—The Sky Line. 23 June 2008. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/forbidden-cities>.“Kool Enough for Beijing?” China Daily. 2 March 2004. <https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/02/content_310800.htm>. Liu, Ying, and Adenrele Awotona. “The Traditional Courtyard House in China: Its Formation and Transition.” Evolving Environmental Ideals—Changing Way of Life, Values and Design Practices: IAPS 14 Conference Proceedings. IAPS. Stockholm, Sweden: Royal Institute of Technology, 1996: 248-60. <https://iaps.architexturez.net/system/files/pdf/1202bm1029.content.pdf>.Oxford Languages Dictionary. “Rem Koolhaas Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 20 July 2020. <https://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Koolhaas-Rem.html>. “Rem Koolhaas Interview.” Manufacturing Intellect. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 2003. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW187PwSjY0>.Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York: Verso, 1992. Zhang, Donia. “Classical Courtyard Houses of Beijing: Architecture as Cultural Artifact.” Space and Communication 1.1 (Dec. 2015): 47-68.

Abstract:

Regional development always stimulates urbanization, growing demographic and generating needs of housing. In Kampung Sruni, an urban kampung settlement in Wonosobo Regency, Indonesia, people built new houses on the lands which are the remaining green pockets amidst the settlement. In addition, green space area aimed to maintain ecosystem balance are absent within the new house planning. The challenge of designing green space in built settlement is the availability of land which is many in quantity, scattered and relatively small in size. On the other hand, this kampung has been designated as urban tourism destinations in Wonosobo, promoting people, socio-cultural activities and the green valley landscape setting. This paper offers alternative architectural perspective to design green public space which engages community, culture and urban kampung landscape fabric. Together with inhabitants as local community, strategy to replenish the degrading green spaces was done by creating sustainable design for inhabitant’s current and future need, environment and tourism. Interestingly, beside the main function as green public space, the spatial component arrangement of the designs creates various types of vista offering view of man-made, man-made and nature, and fully nature landscape. Moreover, topography along this green public spaces network would generate observer’s body a motorically spatial experience

Abstract:

Abstract Rapid growth coupled with the prevailing land allocation system in Oman led to a shift from compact dwellings typologies to detached single-family houses, arranged in monofunctional zoning systems that exclusively rely on cars. Due to the sprawled transformation, authorities are unable to provide new neighborhoods with basic infrastructure and attractive open spaces. Consequently, the level of non-communicable diseases is increasing, making urban regeneration programs promoting active lifestyles in built environments a matter of public health. In our research we explore participative-planning strategies to enhance pedestrian activity within existing neighborhoods and regenerate public spaces. We conducted a quantitative survey using a standard walkability scale and physical maps to identify barriers to pedestrian activity. Subsequently, we employed the data to frame culturally sensitive co-creation workshops, gaining in-depth knowledge to guide future redesign proposals. We found that mosques are walking magnets yet engender contrasting views with regard to walkability; finding solutions to the spatial problems could develop them into walkable cores. We also observed that residents were aware of health problems caused by lack of physical activity and how that links with the built environment they inhabit. They were eager to discuss solutions, including alternative governance models, as long as the process was short and produced immediate small interventions with high-level impact on their surroundings. We employed a fine-grained combination of methods to address site-specific challenges. Its quantitative data allows the insertion in a broader discourse and the linkage to a large body of research in walkability. Co-creation workshops, especially city games, proved to be a powerful tool to initiate dialogue on complex spatial negotiation, even in societies where participatory approaches do not have a well-established tradition.

Abstract:

IntroductionTasmania hangs from the map of Australia like a drop in freefall from the substance of the mainland. Often the whole state is mislaid from Australian maps and logos (Reddit). Tasmania has, at least since federation, been considered peripheral—a region seen as isolated, a ‘problem’ economically, politically, and culturally. However, Tasmania not only cleaves to the ‘north island’ of Australia but is also subject to the gravitational pull of an even greater land mass—Antarctica. In this article, we upturn the political conventions of map-making that place both Antarctica and Tasmania in obscure positions at the base of the globe. We show how a changing global climate re-frames Antarctica and the Southern Ocean as key drivers of worldwide environmental shifts. The liquid and solid water between Tasmania and Antarctica is revealed not as a hom*ogenous barrier, but as a dynamic and relational medium linking the Tasmanian archipelago with Antarctica. When Antarctica becomes the focus, the script is flipped: Tasmania is no longer on the edge, but core to a network of gateways into the southern land. The state’s capital of Hobart can from this perspective be understood as an “Antarctic city”, central to the geopolitics, economy, and culture of the frozen continent (Salazar et al.). Viewed from the south, we argue, Tasmania is not a problem, but an opportunity for a form of ecological, cultural, economic, and political sustainability that opens up the southern continent to science, discovery, and imagination.A Centre at the End of the Earth? Tasmania as ParadoxThe islands of Tasmania owe their existence to climate change: a period of warming at the end of the last ice age melted the vast sheets of ice covering the polar regions, causing sea levels to rise by more than one hundred metres (Tasmanian Climate Change Office 8). Eleven thousand years ago, Aboriginal people would have witnessed the rise of what is now called Bass Strait, turning what had been a peninsula into an archipelago, with the large island of Tasmania at its heart. The heterogeneous practices and narratives of Tasmanian regional identity have been shaped by the geography of these islands, and their connection to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Regions, understood as “centres of collective consciousness and sociospatial identities” (Paasi 241) are constantly reproduced and reimagined through place-based social practices and communications over time. As we will show, diverse and contradictory narratives of Tasmanian regionality often co-exist, interacting in complex and sometimes complementary ways. Ecocritical literary scholar C.A. Cranston considers duality to be embedded in the textual construction of Tasmania, writing “it was hell, it was heaven, it was penal, it was paradise” (29). Tasmania is multiply polarised: it is both isolated and connected; close and far away; rich in resources and poor in capital; the socially conservative birthplace of radical green politics (Hay 60). The weather, as if sensing the fine balance of these paradoxes, blows hot and cold at a moment’s notice.Tasmania has wielded extraordinary political influence at times in its history—notably during the settlement of Melbourne in 1835 (Boyce), and during protests against damming the Franklin River in the early 1980s (Mercer). However, twentieth-century historical and political narratives of Tasmania portray the Bass Strait as a barrier, isolating Tasmanians from the mainland (Harwood 61). Sir Bede Callaghan, who headed one of a long line of federal government inquiries into “the Tasmanian problem” (Harwood 106), was clear that Tasmania was a victim of its own geography:the major disability facing the people of Tasmania (although some residents may consider it an advantage) is that Tasmania is an island. Separation from the mainland adversely affects the economy of the State and the general welfare of the people in many ways. (Callaghan 3)This perspective may stem from the fact that Tasmania has maintained the lowest Gross Domestic Product per capita of all states since federation (Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics 9). Socially, economically, and culturally, Tasmania consistently ranks among the worst regions of Australia. Statistical comparisons with other parts of Australia reveal the population’s high unemployment, low wages, poor educational outcomes, and bad health (West 31). The state’s remoteness and isolation from the mainland states and its reliance on federal income have contributed to the whole of Tasmania, including Hobart, being classified as ‘regional’ by the Australian government, in an attempt to promote immigration and economic growth (Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development 1). Tasmania is indeed both regional and remote. However, in this article we argue that, while regionality may be cast as a disadvantage, the island’s remote location is also an asset, particularly when viewed from a far southern perspective (Image 1).Image 1: Antarctica (Orthographic Projection). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Modified Shading of Tasmania and Addition of Captions by H. Nielsen.Connecting Oceans/Collapsing DistanceTasmania and Antarctica have been closely linked in the past—the future archipelago formed a land bridge between Antarctica and northern land masses until the opening of the Tasman Seaway some 32 million years ago (Barker et al.). The far south was tangible to the Indigenous people of the island in the weather blowing in from the Southern Ocean, while the southern lights, or “nuyina”, formed a visible connection (Australia’s new icebreaker vessel is named RSV Nuyina in recognition of these links). In the contemporary Australian imagination, Tasmania tends to be defined by its marine boundaries, the sea around the islands represented as flat, empty space against which to highlight the topography of its landscape and the isolation of its position (Davies et al.). A more relational geographic perspective illuminates the “power of cross-currents and connections” (Stratford et al. 273) across these seascapes. The sea country of Tasmania is multiple and heterogeneous: the rough, shallow waters of the island-scattered Bass Strait flow into the Tasman Sea, where the continental shelf descends toward an abyssal plain studded with volcanic seamounts. To the south, the Southern Ocean provides nutrient-rich upwellings that attract fish and cetacean populations. Tasmania’s coast is a dynamic, liminal space, moving and changing in response to the global currents that are driven by the shifting, calving and melting ice shelves and sheets in Antarctica.Oceans have long been a medium of connection between Tasmania and Antarctica. In the early colonial period, when the seas were the major thoroughfares of the world and inland travel was treacherous and slow, Tasmania’s connection with the Southern Ocean made it a valuable hub for exploration and exploitation of the south. Between 1642 and 1900, early European explorers were followed by British penal colonists, convicts, sealers, and whalers (Kriwoken and Williamson 93). Tasmania was well known to polar explorers, with expeditions led by Jules Dumont d’Urville, James Clark Ross, Roald Amundsen, and Douglas Mawson all transiting through the port of Hobart. Now that the city is no longer a whaling hub, growing populations of cetaceans continue to migrate past the islands on their annual journeys from the tropics, across the Sub-Antarctic Front and Antarctic circumpolar current, and into the south polar region, while southern species such as leopard seals are occasionally seen around Tasmania (Tasmania Parks and Wildlife). Although the water surrounding Tasmania and Antarctica is at times hom*ogenised as a ‘barrier’, rendering these places isolated, the bodies of water that surround both are in fact permeable, and regularly crossed by both humans and marine species. The waters are diverse in their physical characteristics, underlying topography, sea life, and relationships, and serve to connect many different ocean regions, ecosystems, and weather patterns.Views from the Far SouthWhen considered in terms of its relative proximity to Antarctic, rather than its distance from Australia’s political and economic centres, Tasmania’s identity undergoes a significant shift. A sign at co*ckle Creek, in the state’s far south, reminds visitors that they are closer to Antarctica than to Cairns, invoking a discourse of connectedness that collapses the standard ten-day ship voyage to Australia’s closest Antarctic station into a unit comparable with the routinely scheduled 5.5 hour flight to North Queensland. Hobart is the logistical hub for the Australian Antarctic Division and the French Institut Polaire Francais (IPEV), and has hosted Antarctic vessels belonging to the USA, South Korea, and Japan in recent years. From a far southern perspective, Hobart is not a regional Australian capital but a global polar hub. This alters the city’s geographic imaginary not only in a latitudinal sense—from “top down” to “bottom up”—but also a longitudinal one. Via its southward connection to Antarctica, Hobart is also connected east and west to four other recognized gateways: Cape Town in South Africa, Christchurch in New Zealand; Punta Arenas in Chile; and Ushuaia in Argentina (Image 2). The latter cities are considered small by international standards, but play an outsized role in relation to Antarctica.Image 2: H. Nielsen with a Sign Announcing Distances between Antarctic ‘Gateway’ Cities and Antarctica, Ushuaia, Argentina, 2018. Image Credit: Nicki D'Souza.These five cities form what might be called—to adapt geographer Klaus Dodds’ term—a ‘Southern Rim’ around the South Polar region (Dodds Geopolitics). They exist in ambiguous relationship to each other. Although the five cities signed a Statement of Intent in 2009 committing them to collaboration, they continue to compete vigorously for northern hemisphere traffic and the brand identity of the most prominent global gateway. A state government brochure spruiks Hobart, for example, as the “perfect Antarctic Gateway” emphasising its uniqueness and “natural advantages” in this regard (Tasmanian Government, 2016). In practice, the cities are automatically differentiated by their geographic position with respect to Antarctica. Although the ‘ice continent’ is often conceived as one entity, it too has regions, in both scientific and geographical senses (Terauds and Lee; Antonello). Hobart provides access to parts of East Antarctica, where the Australian, French, Japanese, and Chinese programs (among others) have bases; Cape Town is a useful access point for Europeans going to Dronning Maud Land; Christchurch is closest to the Ross Sea region, site of the largest US base; and Punta Arenas and Ushuaia neighbour the Antarctic Peninsula, home to numerous bases as well as a thriving tourist industry.The Antarctic sector is important to the Tasmanian economy, contributing $186 million (AUD) in 2017/18 (Wells; Gutwein; Tasmanian Polar Network). Unsurprisingly, Tasmania’s gateway brand has been actively promoted, with the 2016 Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20 Year Action Plan foregrounding the need to “Build Tasmania’s status as the premier East Antarctic Gateway for science and operations” and the state government releasing a “Tasmanian Antarctic Gateway Strategy” in 2017. The Chinese Antarctic program has been a particular focus: a Memorandum of Understanding focussed on Australia and China’s Antarctic relations includes a “commitment to utilise Australia, including Tasmania, as an Antarctic ‘gateway’.” (Australian Antarctic Division). These efforts towards a closer relationship with China have more recently come under attack as part of a questioning of China’s interests in the region (without, it should be noted, a concomitant questioning of Australia’s own considerable interests) (Baker 9). In these exchanges, a global power and a state of Australia generally classed as regional and peripheral are brought into direct contact via the even more remote Antarctic region. This connection was particularly visible when Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Hobart in 2014, in a visit described as both “strategic” and “incongruous” (Burden). There can be differences in how this relationship is narrated to domestic and international audiences, with issues of sovereignty and international cooperation variously foregrounded, laying the ground for what Dodds terms “awkward Antarctic nationalism” (1).Territory and ConnectionsThe awkwardness comes to a head in Tasmania, where domestic and international views of connections with the far south collide. Australia claims sovereignty over almost 6 million km2 of the Antarctic continent—a claim that in area is “roughly the size of mainland Australia minus Queensland” (Bergin). This geopolitical context elevates the importance of a regional part of Australia: the claims to Antarctic territory (which are recognised only by four other claimant nations) are performed not only in Antarctic localities, where they are made visible “with paraphernalia such as maps, flags, and plaques” (Salazar 55), but also in Tasmania, particularly in Hobart and surrounds. A replica of Mawson’s Huts in central Hobart makes Australia’s historic territorial interests in Antarctica visible an urban setting, foregrounding the figure of Douglas Mawson, the well-known Australian scientist and explorer who led the expeditions that proclaimed Australia’s sovereignty in the region of the continent roughly to its south (Leane et al.). Tasmania is caught in a balancing act, as it fosters international Antarctic connections (such hosting vessels from other national programs), while also playing a key role in administering what is domestically referred to as the Australian Antarctic Territory. The rhetoric of protection can offer common ground: island studies scholar Godfrey Baldacchino notes that as island narratives have moved “away from the perspective of the ‘explorer-discoverer-colonist’” they have been replaced by “the perspective of the ‘custodian-steward-environmentalist’” (49), but reminds readers that a colonising disposition still lurks beneath the surface. It must be remembered that terms such as “stewardship” and “leadership” can undertake sovereignty labour (Dodds “Awkward”), and that Tasmania’s Antarctic connections can be mobilised for a range of purposes. When Environment Minister Greg Hunt proclaimed at a press conference that: “Hobart is the gateway to the Antarctic for the future” (26 Apr. 2016), the remark had meaning within discourses of both sovereignty and economics. Tasmania’s capital was leveraged as a way to position Australia as a leader in the Antarctic arena.From ‘Gateway’ to ‘Antarctic City’While discussion of Antarctic ‘Gateway’ Cities often focuses on the economic and logistical benefit of their Antarctic connections, Hobart’s “gateway” identity, like those of its counterparts, stretches well beyond this, encompassing geological, climatic, historical, political, cultural and scientific links. Even the southerly wind, according to cartoonist Jon Kudelka, “has penguins in it” (Image 3). Hobart residents feel a high level of connection to Antarctica. In 2018, a survey of 300 randomly selected residents of Greater Hobart was conducted under the umbrella of the “Antarctic Cities” Australian Research Council Linkage Project led by Assoc. Prof. Juan Francisco Salazar (and involving all three present authors). Fourteen percent of respondents reported having been involved in an economic activity related to Antarctica, and 36% had attended a cultural event about Antarctica. Connections between the southern continent and Hobart were recognised as important: 71.9% agreed that “people in my city can influence the cultural meanings that shape our relationship to Antarctica”, while 90% agreed or strongly agreed that Hobart should play a significant role as a custodian of Antarctica’s future, and 88.4% agreed or strongly agreed that: “How we treat Antarctica is a test of our approach to ecological sustainability.” Image 3: “The Southerly” Demonstrates How Weather Connects Hobart and Antarctica. Image Credit: Jon Kudelka, Reproduced with Permission.Hobart, like the other gateways, activates these connections in its conscious place-branding. The city is particularly strong as a centre of Antarctic research: signs at the cruise-ship terminal on the waterfront claim that “There are more Antarctic scientists based in Hobart […] than at any other one place on earth, making Hobart a globally significant contributor to our understanding of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.” Researchers are based at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), with several working between institutions. Many Antarctic researchers located elsewhere in the world also have a connection with the place through affiliations and collaborations, leading journalist Jo Chandler to assert that “the breadth and depth of Hobart’s knowledge of ice, water, and the life forms they nurture […] is arguably unrivalled anywhere in the world” (86).Hobart also plays a significant role in Antarctica’s governance, as the site of the secretariats for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), and as host of the Antarctic Consultative Treaty Meetings on more than one occasion (1986, 2012). The cultural domain is active, with Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) featuring a permanent exhibit, “Islands to Ice”, emphasising the ocean as connecting the two places; the Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum aiming (among other things) to “highlight Hobart as the gateway to the Antarctic continent for the Asia Pacific region”; and a biennial Australian Antarctic Festival drawing over twenty thousand visitors, about a sixth of them from interstate or overseas (Hingley). Antarctic links are evident in the city’s natural and built environment: the dolerite columns of Mt Wellington, the statue of the Tasmanian Antarctic explorer Louis Bernacchi on the waterfront, and the wharfs that regularly accommodate icebreakers such as the Aurora Australis and the Astrolabe. Antarctica is figured as a southern neighbour; as historian Tom Griffiths puts it, Tasmanians “grow up with Antarctica breathing down their necks” (5). As an Antarctic City, Hobart mediates access to Antarctica both physically and in the cultural imaginary.Perhaps in recognition of the diverse ways in which a region or a city might be connected to Antarctica, researchers have recently been suggesting critical approaches to the ‘gateway’ label. C. Michael Hall points to a fuzziness in the way the term is applied, noting that it has drifted from its initial definition (drawn from economic geography) as denoting an access and supply point to a hinterland that produces a certain level of economic benefits. While Hall looks to keep the term robustly defined to avoid empty “local boosterism” (272–73), Gabriela Roldan aims to move the concept “beyond its function as an entry and exit door”, arguing that, among other things, the local community should be actively engaged in the Antarctic region (57). Leane, examining the representation of Hobart as a gateway in historical travel texts, concurs that “ingress and egress” are insufficient descriptors of Tasmania’s relationship with Antarctica, suggesting that at least discursively the island is positioned as “part of an Antarctic rim, itself sharing qualities of the polar region” (45). The ARC Linkage Project described above, supported by the Hobart City Council, the State Government and the University of Tasmania, as well as other national and international partners, aims to foster the idea of the Hobart and its counterparts as ‘Antarctic cities’ whose citizens act as custodians for the South Polar region, with a genuine concern for and investment in its future.Near and Far: Local Perspectives A changing climate may once again herald a shift in the identity of the Tasmanian islands. Recognition of the central role of Antarctica in regulating the global climate has generated scientific and political re-evaluation of the region. Antarctica is not only the planet’s largest heat sink but is the engine of global water currents and wind patterns that drive weather patterns and biodiversity across the world (Convey et al. 543). For example, Tas van Ommen’s research into Antarctic glaciology shows the tangible connection between increased snowfall in coastal East Antarctica and patterns of drought southwest Western Australia (van Ommen and Morgan). Hobart has become a global centre of marine and Antarctic science, bringing investment and development to the city. As the global climate heats up, Tasmania—thanks to its low latitude and southerly weather patterns—is one of the few regions in Australia likely to remain temperate. This is already leading to migration from the mainland that is impacting house prices and rental availability (Johnston; Landers 1). The region’s future is therefore closely entangled with its proximity to the far south. Salazar writes that “we cannot continue to think of Antarctica as the end of the Earth” (67). Shifting Antarctica into focus also brings Tasmania in from the margins. As an Antarctic city, Hobart assumes a privileged positioned on the global stage. This allows the city to present itself as central to international research efforts—in contrast to domestic views of the place as a small regional capital. The city inhabits dual identities; it is both on the periphery of Australian concerns and at the centre of Antarctic activity. Tasmania, then, is not in freefall, but rather at the forefront of a push to recognise Antarctica as entangled with its neighbours to the north.AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by the Australian Research Council under LP160100210.ReferencesAntonello, Alessandro. “Finding Place in Antarctica.” Antarctica and the Humanities. Eds. Peder Roberts, Lize-Marie van der Watt, and Adrian Howkins. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 181–204.Australian Government. 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Abstract:

Special Care Notice This article contains images of deceased people that might cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers. Introduction Like many cities, Perth was founded on wetlands that have been integral to its history and culture (Seddon 226–32). However, in order to promote a settlement agenda, early mapmakers sought to erase the city’s wetlands from cartographic depictions (Giblett, Cities). Since the colonial era, inner-Perth’s swamps and lakes have been drained, filled, significantly reduced in size, or otherwise reclaimed for urban expansion (Bekle). Not only have the swamps and lakes physically disappeared, the memories of their presence and influence on the city’s development over time are also largely forgotten. What was the site of Perth, specifically its wetlands, like before British settlement? In 2014, an interdisciplinary team at Edith Cowan University developed a digital visualisation process to re-imagine Perth prior to colonisation. This was based on early maps of the Swan River Colony and a range of archival information. The images depicted the city’s topography, hydrology, and vegetation and became the centerpiece of a physical exhibition entitled Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands and a virtual exhibition hosted by the Western Australian Museum. Alongside historic maps, paintings, photographs, and writings, the visual reconstruction of Perth aimed to foster appreciation of the pre-settlement environment—the homeland of the Whadjuck Nyoongar, or Bibbulmun, people (Carter and Nutter). The exhibition included the narrative of Fanny Balbuk, a Nyoongar woman who voiced her indignation over the “usurping of her beloved home ground” (Bates, The Passing 69) by flouting property lines and walking through private residences to reach places of cultural significance. Beginning with Balbuk’s story and the digital tracing of her walking route through colonial Perth, this article discusses the project in the context of contemporary pressures on the city’s extant wetlands. The re-imagining of Perth through historically, culturally, and geographically-grounded digital visualisation approaches can inspire the conservation of its wetlands heritage. Balbuk’s Walk through the City For many who grew up in Perth, Fanny Balbuk’s perambulations have achieved legendary status in the collective cultural imagination. In his memoir, David Whish-Wilson mentions Balbuk’s defiant walks and the lighting up of the city for astronaut John Glenn in 1962 as the two stories that had the most impact on his Perth childhood. From Gordon Stephenson House, Whish-Wilson visualises her journey in his mind’s eye, past Government House on St Georges Terrace (the main thoroughfare through the city centre), then north on Barrack Street towards the railway station, the site of Lake Kingsford where Balbuk once gathered bush tucker (4). He considers the footpaths “beneath the geometric frame of the modern city […] worn smooth over millennia that snake up through the sheoak and marri woodland and into the city’s heart” (Whish-Wilson 4). Balbuk’s story embodies the intertwined culture and nature of Perth—a city of wetlands. Born in 1840 on Heirisson Island, Balbuk (also known as Yooreel) (Figure 1) had ancestral bonds to the urban landscape. According to Daisy Bates, writing in the early 1900s, the Nyoongar term Matagarup, or “leg deep,” denotes the passage of shallow water near Heirisson Island where Balbuk would have forded the Swan River (“Oldest” 16). Yoonderup was recorded as the Nyoongar name for Heirisson Island (Bates, “Oldest” 16) and the birthplace of Balbuk’s mother (Bates, “Aboriginal”). In the suburb of Shenton Park near present-day Lake Jualbup, her father bequeathed to her a red ochre (or wilgi) pit that she guarded fervently throughout her life (Bates, “Aboriginal”).Figure 1. Group of Aboriginal Women at Perth, including Fanny Balbuk (far right) (c. 1900). Image Credit: State Library of Western Australia (Image Number: 44c). Balbuk’s grandparents were culturally linked to the site. At his favourite camp beside the freshwater spring near Kings Park on Mounts Bay Road, her grandfather witnessed the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Irwin, cousin of James Stirling (Bates, “Fanny”). In 1879, colonial entrepreneurs established the Swan Brewery at this significant locale (Welborn). Her grandmother’s gravesite later became Government House (Bates, “Fanny”) and she protested vociferously outside “the stone gates guarded by a sentry [that] enclosed her grandmother’s burial ground” (Bates, The Passing 70). Balbuk’s other grandmother was buried beneath Bishop’s Grove, the residence of the city’s first archibishop, now Terrace Hotel (Bates, “Aboriginal”). Historian Bob Reece observes that Balbuk was “the last full-descent woman of Kar’gatta (Karrakatta), the Bibbulmun name for the Mount Eliza [Kings Park] area of Perth” (134). According to accounts drawn from Bates, her home ground traversed the area between Heirisson Island and Perth’s north-western limits. In Kings Park, one of her relatives was buried near a large, hollow tree used by Nyoongar people like a cistern to capture water and which later became the site of the Queen Victoria Statue (Bates, “Aboriginal”). On the slopes of Mount Eliza, the highest point of Kings Park, at the western end of St Georges Terrace, she harvested plant foods, including zamia fruits (Macrozamia riedlei) (Bates, “Fanny”). Fanny Balbuk’s knowledge contributed to the native title claim lodged by Nyoongar people in 2006 as Bennell v. State of Western Australia—the first of its kind to acknowledge Aboriginal land rights in a capital city and part of the larger Single Nyoongar Claim (South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council et al.). Perth’s colonial administration perceived the city’s wetlands as impediments to progress and as insalubrious environments to be eradicated through reclamation practices. For Balbuk and other Nyoongar people, however, wetlands were “nourishing terrains” (Rose) that afforded sustenance seasonally and meaning perpetually (O’Connor, Quartermaine, and Bodney). Mary Graham, a Kombu-merri elder from Queensland, articulates the connection between land and culture, “because land is sacred and must be looked after, the relation between people and land becomes the template for society and social relations. Therefore all meaning comes from land.” Traditional, embodied reliance on Perth’s wetlands is evident in Bates’ documentation. For instance, Boojoormeup was a “big swamp full of all kinds of food, now turned into Palmerston and Lake streets” (Bates, “Aboriginal”). Considering her cultural values, Balbuk’s determination to maintain pathways through the increasingly colonial Perth environment is unsurprising (Figure 2). From Heirisson Island: a straight track had led to the place where once she had gathered jilgies [crayfish] and vegetable food with the women, in the swamp where Perth railway station now stands. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence-palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms. (Bates, The Passing 70) One obstacle was Hooper’s Fence, which Balbuk broke repeatedly on her trips to areas between Kings Park and the railway station (Bates, “Hooper’s”). Her tenacious commitment to walking ancestral routes signifies the friction between settlement infrastructure and traditional Nyoongar livelihood during an era of rapid change. Figure 2. Determination of Fanny Balbuk’s Journey between Yoonderup (Heirisson Island) and Lake Kingsford, traversing what is now the central business district of Perth on the Swan River (2014). Image background prepared by Dimitri Fotev. Track interpolation by Jeff Murray. Project Background and Approach Inspired by Fanny Balbuk’s story, Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands began as an Australian response to the Mannahatta Project. Founded in 1999, that project used spatial analysis techniques and mapping software to visualise New York’s urbanised Manhattan Island—or Mannahatta as it was called by indigenous people—in the early 1600s (Sanderson). Based on research into the island’s original biogeography and the ecological practices of Native Americans, Mannahatta enabled the public to “peel back” the city’s strata, revealing the original composition of the New York site. The layers of visuals included rich details about the island’s landforms, water systems, and vegetation. Mannahatta compelled Rod Giblett, a cultural researcher at Edith Cowan University, to develop an analogous model for visualising Perth circa 1829. The idea attracted support from the City of Perth, Landgate, and the University. Using stories, artefacts, and maps, the team—comprising a cartographer, designer, three-dimensional modelling expert, and historical researchers—set out to generate visualisations of the landscape at the time of British colonisation. Nyoongar elder Noel Nannup approved culturally sensitive material and contributed his perspective on Aboriginal content to include in the exhibition. The initiative’s context remains pressing. In many ways, Perth has become a template for development in the metropolitan area (Weller). While not unusual for a capital, the rate of transformation is perhaps unexpected in a city less than 200 years old (Forster). There also remains a persistent view of existing wetlands as obstructions to progress that, once removed, are soon forgotten (Urban Bushland Council). Digital visualisation can contribute to appreciating environments prior to colonisation but also to re-imagining possibilities for future human interactions with land, water, and space. Despite the rapid pace of change, many Perth area residents have memories of wetlands lost during their lifetimes (for example, Giblett, Forrestdale). However, as the clearing and drainage of the inner city occurred early in settlement, recollections of urban wetlands exist exclusively in historical records. In 1935, a local correspondent using the name “Sandgroper” reminisced about swamps, connecting them to Perth’s colonial heritage: But the Swamps were very real in fact, and in name in the [eighteen-] Nineties, and the Perth of my youth cannot be visualised without them. They were, of course, drying up apace, but they were swamps for all that, and they linked us directly with the earliest days of the Colony when our great-grandparents had founded this City of Perth on a sort of hog's-back, of which Hay-street was the ridge, and from which a succession of streamlets ran down its southern slope to the river, while land locked to the north of it lay a series of lakes which have long since been filled to and built over so that the only evidence that they have ever existed lies in the original street plans of Perth prepared by Roe and Hillman in the early eighteen-thirties. A salient consequence of the loss of ecological memory is the tendency to repeat the miscues of the past, especially the blatant disregard for natural and cultural heritage, as suburbanisation engulfs the area. While the swamps of inner Perth remain only in the names of streets, existing wetlands in the metropolitan area are still being threatened, as the Roe Highway (Roe 8) Campaign demonstrates. To re-imagine Perth’s lost landscape, we used several colonial survey maps to plot the location of the original lakes and swamps. At this time, a series of interconnecting waterbodies, known as the Perth Great Lakes, spread across the north of the city (Bekle and Gentilli). This phase required the earliest cartographic sources (Figure 3) because, by 1855, city maps no longer depicted wetlands. We synthesised contextual information, such as well depths, geological and botanical maps, settlers’ accounts, Nyoongar oral histories, and colonial-era artists’ impressions, to produce renderings of Perth. This diverse collection of primary and secondary materials served as the basis for creating new images of the city. Team member Jeff Murray interpolated Balbuk’s route using historical mappings and accounts, topographical data, court records, and cartographic common sense. He determined that Balbuk would have camped on the high ground of the southern part of Lake Kingsford rather than the more inundated northern part (Figure 2). Furthermore, she would have followed a reasonably direct course north of St Georges Terrace (contrary to David Whish-Wilson’s imaginings) because she was barred from Government House for protesting. This easier route would have also avoided the springs and gullies that appear on early maps of Perth. Figure 3. Townsite of Perth in Western Australia by Colonial Draftsman A. Hillman and John Septimus Roe (1838). This map of Perth depicts the wetlands that existed overlaid by the geomentric grid of the new city. Image Credit: State Library of Western Australia (Image Number: BA1961/14). Additionally, we produced an animated display based on aerial photographs to show the historical extent of change. Prompted by the build up to World War II, the earliest aerial photography of Perth dates from the late 1930s (Dixon 148–54). As “Sandgroper” noted, by this time, most of the urban wetlands had been drained or substantially modified. The animation revealed considerable alterations to the formerly swampy Swan River shoreline. Most prominent was the transformation of the Matagarup shallows across the Swan River, originally consisting of small islands. Now traversed by a causeway, this area was transformed into a single island, Heirisson—the general site of Balbuk’s birth. The animation and accompanying materials (maps, images, and writings) enabled viewers to apprehend the changes in real time and to imagine what the city was once like. Re-imagining Perth’s Urban Heart The physical environment of inner Perth includes virtually no trace of its wetland origins. Consequently, we considered whether a representation of Perth, as it existed previously, could enhance public understanding of natural heritage and thereby increase its value. For this reason, interpretive materials were exhibited centrally at Perth Town Hall. Built partly by convicts between 1867 and 1870, the venue is close to the site of the 1829 Foundation of Perth, depicted in George Pitt Morrison’s painting. Balbuk’s grandfather “camped somewhere in the city of Perth, not far from the Town Hall” (Bates, “Fanny”). The building lies one block from the site of the railway station on the site of Lake Kingsford, the subsistence grounds of Balbuk and her forebears: The old swamp which is now the Perth railway yards had been a favourite jilgi ground; a spring near the Town Hall had been a camping place of Maiago […] and others of her fathers' folk; and all around and about city and suburbs she had gathered roots and fished for crayfish in the days gone by. (Bates, “Derelicts” 55) Beginning in 1848, the draining of Lake Kingsford reached completion during the construction of the Town Hall. While the swamps of the city were not appreciated by many residents, some organisations, such as the Perth Town Trust, vigorously opposed the reclamation of the lake, alluding to its hydrological role: That, the soil being sand, it is not to be supposed that Lake Kingsford has in itself any material effect on the wells of Perth; but that, from this same reason of the sandy soil, it would be impossible to keep the lake dry without, by so doing, withdrawing the water from at least the adjacent parts of the townsite to the same depth. (Independent Journal of Politics and News 3) At the time of our exhibition, the Lake Kingsford site was again being reworked to sink the railway line and build Yagan Square, a public space named after a colonial-era Nyoongar leader. The project required specialised construction techniques due to the high water table—the remnants of the lake. People travelling to the exhibition by train in October 2014 could have seen the lake reasserting itself in partly-filled depressions, flush with winter rain (Figure 4).Figure 4. Rise of the Repressed (2014). Water Rising in the former site of Lake Kingsford/Irwin during construction, corner of Roe and Fitzgerald Streets, Northbridge, WA. Image Credit: Nandi Chinna (2014). The exhibition was situated in the Town Hall’s enclosed undercroft designed for markets and more recently for shops. While some visited after peering curiously through the glass walls of the undercroft, others hailed from local and state government organisations. Guest comments applauded the alternative view of Perth we presented. The content invited the public to re-imagine Perth as a city of wetlands that were both environmentally and culturally important. A display panel described how the city’s infrastructure presented a hindrance for Balbuk as she attempted to negotiate the once-familiar route between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford (Figure 2). Perth’s growth “restricted Balbuk’s wanderings; towns, trains, and farms came through her ‘line of march’; old landmarks were thus swept away, and year after year saw her less confident of the locality of one-time familiar spots” (Bates, “Fanny”). Conserving Wetlands: From Re-Claiming to Re-Valuing? Imagination, for philosopher Roger Scruton, involves “thinking of, and attending to, a present object (by thinking of it, or perceiving it, in terms of something absent)” (155). According to Scruton, the feelings aroused through imagination can prompt creative, transformative experiences. While environmental conservation tends to rely on data-driven empirical approaches, it appeals to imagination less commonly. We have found, however, that attending to the present object (the city) in terms of something absent (its wetlands) through evocative visual material can complement traditional conservation agendas focused on habitats and species. The actual extent of wetlands loss in the Swan Coastal Plain—the flat and sandy region extending from Jurien Bay south to Cape Naturaliste, including Perth—is contested. However, estimates suggest that 80 per cent of wetlands have been lost, with remaining habitats threatened by climate change, suburban development, agriculture, and industry (Department of Environment and Conservation). As with the swamps and lakes of the inner city, many regional wetlands were cleared, drained, or filled before they could be properly documented. Additionally, the seasonal fluctuations of swampy places have never been easily translatable to two-dimensional records. As Giblett notes, the creation of cartographic representations and the assignment of English names were attempts to fix the dynamic boundaries of wetlands, at least in the minds of settlers and administrators (Postmodern 72–73). Moreover, European colonists found the Western Australian landscape, including its wetlands, generally discomfiting. In a letter from 1833, metaphors failed George Fletcher Moore, the effusive colonial commentator, “I cannot compare these swamps to any marshes with which you are familiar” (220). The intermediate nature of wetlands—as neither land nor lake—is perhaps one reason for their cultural marginalisation (Giblett, Postmodern 39). The conviction that unsanitary, miasmic wetlands should be converted to more useful purposes largely prevailed (Giblett, Black 105–22). Felicity Morel-EdnieBrown’s research into land ownership records in colonial Perth demonstrated that town lots on swampland were often preferred. By layering records using geographic information systems (GIS), she revealed modifications to town plans to accommodate swampland frontages. The decline of wetlands in the region appears to have been driven initially by their exploitation for water and later for fertile soil. Northern market gardens supplied the needs of the early city. It is likely that the depletion of Nyoongar bush foods predated the flourishing of these gardens (Carter and Nutter). Engaging with the history of Perth’s swamps raises questions about the appreciation of wetlands today. In an era where numerous conservation strategies and alternatives have been developed (for example, Bobbink et al. 93–220), the exploitation of wetlands in service to population growth persists. On Perth’s north side, wetlands have long been subdued by controlling their water levels and landscaping their boundaries, as the suburban examples of Lake Monger and Hyde Park (formerly Third Swamp Reserve) reveal. Largely unmodified wetlands, such as Forrestdale Lake, exist south of Perth, but they too are in danger (Giblett, Black Swan). The Beeliar Wetlands near the suburb of Bibra Lake comprise an interconnected series of lakes and swamps that are vulnerable to a highway extension project first proposed in the 1950s. Just as the Perth Town Trust debated Lake Kingsford’s draining, local councils and the public are fiercely contesting the construction of the Roe Highway, which will bisect Beeliar Wetlands, destroying Roe Swamp (Chinna). The conservation value of wetlands still struggles to compete with traffic planning underpinned by a modernist ideology that associates cars and freeways with progress (Gregory). Outside of archives, the debate about Lake Kingsford is almost entirely forgotten and its physical presence has been erased. Despite the magnitude of loss, re-imagining the city’s swamplands, in the way that we have, calls attention to past indiscretions while invigorating future possibilities. We hope that the re-imagining of Perth’s wetlands stimulates public respect for ancestral tracks and songlines like Balbuk’s. Despite the accretions of settler history and colonial discourse, songlines endure as a fundamental cultural heritage. Nyoongar elder Noel Nannup states, “as people, if we can get out there on our songlines, even though there may be farms or roads overlaying them, fences, whatever it is that might impede us from travelling directly upon them, if we can get close proximity, we can still keep our culture alive. That is why it is so important for us to have our songlines.” Just as Fanny Balbuk plied her songlines between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford, the traditional custodians of Beeliar and other wetlands around Perth walk the landscape as an act of resistance and solidarity, keeping the stories of place alive. Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge Rod Giblett (ECU), Nandi Chinna (ECU), Susanna Iuliano (ECU), Jeff Murray (Kareff Consulting), Dimitri Fotev (City of Perth), and Brendan McAtee (Landgate) for their contributions to this project. The authors also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands upon which this paper was researched and written. References Bates, Daisy. “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native.” The Western Mail 1 Jun. 1907: 45.———. “Oldest Perth: The Days before the White Men Won.” The Western Mail 25 Dec. 1909: 16–17.———. “Derelicts: The Passing of the Bibbulmun.” The Western Mail 25 Dec. 1924: 55–56. ———. “Aboriginal Perth.” The Western Mail 4 Jul. 1929: 70.———. “Hooper’s Fence: A Query.” The Western Mail 18 Apr. 1935: 9.———. The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent among the Natives of Australia. London: John Murray, 1966.Bekle, Hugo. “The Wetlands Lost: Drainage of the Perth Lake Systems.” Western Geographer 5.1–2 (1981): 21–41.Bekle, Hugo, and Joseph Gentilli. “History of the Perth Lakes.” Early Days 10.5 (1993): 442–60.Bobbink, Roland, Boudewijn Beltman, Jos Verhoeven, and Dennis Whigham, eds. Wetlands: Functioning, Biodiversity Conservation, and Restoration. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006. Carter, Bevan, and Lynda Nutter. Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850. Guildford: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005.Chinna, Nandi. “Swamp.” Griffith Review 47 (2015). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹https://griffithreview.com/articles/swamp›.Department of Environment and Conservation. Geomorphic Wetlands Swan Coastal Plain Dataset. Perth: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2008.Dixon, Robert. Photography, Early Cinema, and Colonial Modernity: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments. London: Anthem Press, 2011. Forster, Clive. Australian Cities: Continuity and Change. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996. ———. Forrestdale: People and Place. Bassendean: Access Press, 2006.———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect, 2013.———. Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Chapter 2.Graham, Mary. “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November-2008/graham.html›.Gregory, Jenny. “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning.” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66.Independent Journal of Politics and News. “Perth Town Trust.” The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News 8 Jul. 1848: 2–3.Moore, George Fletcher. Extracts from the Letters of George Fletcher Moore. Ed. Martin Doyle. London: Orr and Smith, 1834.Morel-EdnieBrown, Felicity. “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge.” Social Science Computer Review 27 (2009): 390–419. Nannup, Noel. Songlines with Dr Noel Nannup. Dir. Faculty of Regional Professional Studies, Edith Cowan University (2015). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹https://vimeo.com/129198094›. (Quoted material transcribed from 3.08–3.39 of the video.) O’Connor, Rory, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney. Report on an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region. Perth: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989.Reece, Bob. “‘Killing with Kindness’: Daisy Bates and New Norcia.” Aboriginal History 32 (2008): 128–45.Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.Sanderson, Eric. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009.Sandgroper. “Gilgies: The Swamps of Perth.” The West Australian 4 May 1935: 7.Scruton, Roger. Art and Imagination. London: Methuen, 1974.Seddon, George. Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Melbourne: Bloomings Books, 2004.South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council and John Host with Chris Owen. “It’s Still in My Heart, This is My Country:” The Single Noongar Claim History. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 2009.Urban Bushland Council. “Bushland Issues.” 2015. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.bushlandperth.org.au/bushland-issues›.Welborn, Suzanne. Swan: The History of a Brewery. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 1987.Weller, Richard. Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Whish-Wilson, David. Perth. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2013.

Abstract:

Kangatarianism is the rather inelegant word coined in the first decade of the twenty-first century to describe an omnivorous diet in which the only meat consumed is that of the kangaroo. First published in the media in 2010 (Barone; Zukerman), the term circulated in Australian environmental and academic circles including the Global Animal conference at the University of Wollongong in July 2011 where I first heard it from members of the Think Tank for Kangaroos (THINKK) group. By June 2017, it had gained enough attention to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s Australian word of the month (following on from May’s “smashed avo,” another Australian food innovation), but it took the Nine Network reality television series Love Island Australia to raise kangatarian to trending status on social media (Oxford UP). During the first episode, aired in late May 2018, Justin, a concreter and fashion model from Melbourne, declared himself to have previously been a kangatarian as he chatted with fellow contestant, Millie. Vet nurse and animal lover Millie appeared to be shocked by his revelation but was tentatively accepting when Justin explained what kangatarian meant, and justified his choice on the grounds that kangaroo are not farmed. In the social media response, it was clear that eating only the meat of kangaroos as an ethical choice was an entirely new concept to many viewers, with one tweet stating “Kangatarian isn’t a thing”, while others variously labelled the diet brutal, intriguing, or quintessentially Australian (see #kangatarian on Twitter).There is a well developed literature around the arguments for and against eating kangaroo, and why settler Australians tend to be so reluctant to do so (see for example, Probyn; Cawthorn and Hoffman). Here, I will concentrate on the role that ethics play in this food choice by examining how the adoption of kangatarianism can be understood as a bargain struck to help to manage grief in the Anthropocene, and the limitations of that bargain. As Lesley Head has argued, we are living in a time of loss and of grieving, when much that has been taken for granted is becoming unstable, and “we must imagine that drastic changes to everyday life are in the offing” (313). Applying the classic (and contested) model of five stages of grief, first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying in 1969, much of the population of the western world seems to be now experiencing denial, her first stage of loss, while those in the most vulnerable environments have moved on to anger with developed countries for destructive actions in the past and inaction in the present. The next stages (or states) of grieving—bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are likely to be manifested, although not in any predictable sequence, as the grief over current and future losses continues (Haslam).The great expansion of food restrictive diets in the Anthropocene can be interpreted as part of this bargaining state of grieving as individuals attempt to respond to the imperative to reduce their environmental impact but also to limit the degree of change to their own diet required to do so. Meat has long been identified as a key component of an individual’s environmental footprint. From Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 Diet for a Small Planet through the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 report Livestock’s Long Shadow to the 2019 report of the EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the advice has been consistent: meat consumption should be minimised in, if not eradicated from, the human diet. The EAT–Lancet Commission Report quantified this to less than 28 grams (just under one ounce) of beef, lamb or pork per day (12, 25). For many this would be keenly felt, in terms of how meals are constructed, the sensory experiences associated with eating meat and perceptions of well-being but meat is offered up as a sacrifice to bring about the return of the beloved healthy planet.Rather than accept the advice to cut out meat entirely, those seeking to bargain with the Anthropocene also find other options. This has given rise to a suite of foodways based around restricting meat intake in volume or type. Reducing the amount of commercially produced beef, lamb and pork eaten is one approach, while substituting a meat the production of which has a smaller environmental footprint, most commonly chicken or fish, is another. For those willing to make deeper changes, the meat of free living animals, especially those which are killed accidentally on the roads or for deliberately for environmental management purposes, is another option. Further along this spectrum are the novel protein sources suggested in the Lancet report, including insects, blue-green algae and laboratory-cultured meats.Kangatarianism is another form of this bargain, and is backed by at least half a century of advocacy. The Australian Conservation Foundation made calls to reduce the numbers of other livestock and begin a sustainable harvest of kangaroo for food in 1970 when the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption was still illegal across the country (Conservation of Kangaroos). The idea was repeated by biologist Gordon Grigg in the late 1980s (Jackson and Vernes 173), and again in the Garnaut Climate Change Review in 2008 (547–48). Kangaroo meat is high in protein and iron, low in fat, and high in healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, and, as these authors showed, has a smaller environmental footprint than beef, lamb, or pork. Kangaroo require less water than cattle, sheep or pigs, and no land is cleared to grow feed for them or give them space to graze. Their paws cause less erosion and compaction of soil than do the hooves of common livestock. They eat less fodder than ruminants and their digestive processes result in lower emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane and less solid waste.As Justin of Love Island was aware, kangaroo are not farmed in the sense of being deliberately bred, fed, confined, or treated with hormones, drugs or chemicals, which also adds to their lighter impact on the environment. However, some pastoralists argue that because they cannot prevent kangaroos from accessing the food, water, shelter, and protection from predators they provide for their livestock, they do effectively farm them, although they receive no income from sales of kangaroo meat. This type of light touch farming of kangaroos has a very long history in Australia going back to the continent’s first peopling some 60,000 years ago. Kangaroos were so important to Aboriginal people that a wide range of environments were manipulated to produce their favoured habitats of open grasslands edged by sheltering trees. As Bill Gammage demonstrated, fire was used as a tool to preserve and extend grassy areas, to encourage regrowth which would attract kangaroos and to drive the animals from one patch to another or towards hunters waiting with spears (passim, for example, 58, 72, 76, 93). Gammage and Bruce Pascoe agree that this was a form of animal husbandry in which the kangaroos were drawn to the areas prepared for them for the young grass or, more forcefully, physically directed using nets, brush fences or stone walls. Burnt ground served to contain the animals in place of fencing, and regular harvesting kept numbers from rising to levels which would place pressure on other species (Gammage 79, 281–86; Pascoe 42–43). Contemporary advocates of eating kangaroo have promoted the idea that they should be deliberately co-produced with other livestock instead of being killed to preserve feed and water for sheep and cattle (Ellicott; Wilson 39). Substituting kangaroo for the meat of more environmentally damaging animals would facilitate a reduction in the numbers of cattle and sheep, lessening the harm they do.Most proponents have assumed that their audience is current meat eaters who would substitute kangaroo for the meat of other more environmentally costly animals, but kangatarianism can also emerge from vegetarianism. Wendy Zukerman, who wrote about kangaroo hunting for New Scientist in 2010, was motivated to conduct the research because she was considering becoming an early adopter of kangatarianism as the least environmentally taxing way to counter the longterm anaemia she had developed as a vegetarian. In 2018, George Wilson, honorary professor in the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society called for vegetarians to become kangatarians as a means of boosting overall consumption of kangaroo for environmental and economic benefits to rural Australia (39).Given these persuasive environmental arguments, it might be expected that many people would have perceived eating kangaroo instead of other meat as a favourable bargain and taken up the call to become kangatarian. Certainly, there has been widespread interest in trying kangaroo meat. In 1997, only five years after the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption had been legalised in most states (South Australia did so in 1980), 51% of 500 people surveyed in five capital cities said they had tried kangaroo. However, it had not become a meat of choice with very few found to eat it more than three times a year (Des Purtell and Associates iv). Just over a decade later, a study by Ampt and Owen found an increase to 58% of 1599 Australians surveyed across the country who had tried kangaroo but just 4.7% eating it at least monthly (14). Bryce Appleby, in his study of kangaroo consumption in the home based on interviews with 28 residents of Wollongong in 2010, specifically noted the absence of kangatarians—then a very new concept. A study of 261 Sydney university students in 2014 found that half had tried kangaroo meat and 10% continued to eat it with any regularity. Only two respondents identified themselves as kangatarian (Grant 14–15). Kangaroo meat advocate Michael Archer declared in 2017 that “there’s an awful lot of very, very smart vegetarians [who] have opted for semi vegetarianism and they’re calling themselves ‘kangatarians’, as they’re quite happy to eat kangaroo meat”, but unless there had been a significant change in a few years, the surveys did not bear out his assertion (154).The ethical calculations around eating kangaroo are complicated by factors beyond the strictly environmental. One Tweeter advised Justin: “‘I’m a kangatarian’ isn’t a pickup line, mate”, and certainly the reception of his declaration could have been very cool, especially as it was delivered to a self declared animal warrior (N’Tash Aha). All of the studies of beliefs and practices around the eating of kangaroo have noted a significant minority of Australians who would not consider eating kangaroo based on issues of animal welfare and animal rights. The 1997 study found that 11% were opposed to the idea of eating kangaroo, while in Grant’s 2014 study, 15% were ethically opposed to eating kangaroo meat (Des Purtell and Associates iv; Grant 14–15). Animal ethics complicate the bargains calculated principally on environmental grounds.These ethical concerns work across several registers. One is around the flesh and blood kangaroo as a charismatic native animal unique to Australia and which Australians have an obligation to respect and nurture. Sheep, cattle and pigs have been subject to longterm propaganda campaigns which entrench the idea that they are unattractive and unintelligent, and veil their transition to meat behind euphemistic language and abattoir walls, making it easier to eat them. Kangaroos are still seen as resourceful and graceful animals, and no linguistic tricks shield consumers from the knowledge that it is a roo on their plate. A proposal in 2009 to market a “coat of arms” emu and kangaroo-flavoured potato chip brought complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau that this was disrespectful to these native animals, although the flavours were to be simulated and the product vegetarian (Black). Coexisting with this high regard to kangaroos is its antithesis. That is, a valuation of them informed by their designation as a pest in the pastoral industry, and the use of the carcasses of those killed to feed dogs and other companion animals. Appleby identified a visceral, disgust response to the idea of eating kangaroo in many of his informants, including both vegetarians who would not consider eating kangaroo because of their commitment to a plant-based diet, and at least one omnivore who would prefer to give up all meat rather than eat kangaroo. While diametrically opposed, the end point of both positions is that kangaroo meat should not be eaten.A second animal ethics stance relates to the imagined kangaroo, a cultural construct which for most urban Australians is much more present in their lives and likely to shape their actions than the living animals. It is behind the rejection of eating an animal which holds such an iconic place in Australian culture: to the dexter on the 1912 national coat of arms; hopping through the Hundred Acre Wood as Kanga and Roo in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh children’s books from the 1920s and the Disney movies later made from them; as a boy’s best friend as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in a fondly remembered 1970s television series; and high in the sky on QANTAS planes. The anthropomorphising of kangaroos permitted the spectacle of the boxing kangaroo from the late nineteenth century. By framing natural kangaroo behaviours as boxing, these exhibitions encouraged an ambiguous understanding of kangaroos as human-like, moving them further from the category of food (Golder and Kirkby). Australian government bodies used this idea of the kangaroo to support food exports to Britain, with kangaroos as cooks or diners rather than ingredients. The Kangaroo Kookery Book of 1932 (see fig. 1 below) portrayed kangaroos as a nuclear family in a suburban kitchen and another official campaign supporting sales of Australian produce in Britain in the 1950s featured a Disney-inspired kangaroo eating apples and chops washed down with wine (“Kangaroo to Be ‘Food Salesman’”). This imagining of kangaroos as human-like has persisted, leading to the opinion expressed in a 2008 focus group, that consuming kangaroo amounted to “‘eating an icon’ … Although they are pests they are still human nature … these are native animals, people and I believe that is a form of cannibalism!” (Ampt and Owen 26). Figure 1: Rather than promoting the eating of kangaroos, the portrayal of kangaroos as a modern suburban family in the Kangaroo Kookery Book (1932) made it unthinkable. (Source: Kangaroo Kookery Book, Director of Australian Trade Publicity, Australia House, London, 1932.)The third layer of ethical objection on the ground of animal welfare is more specific, being directed to the method of killing the kangaroos which become food. Kangaroos are perhaps the only native animals for which state governments set quotas for commercial harvest, on the grounds that they compete with livestock for pasturage and water. In most jurisdictions, commercially harvested kangaroo carcasses can be processed for human consumption, and they are the ones which ultimately appear in supermarket display cases.Kangaroos are killed by professional shooters at night using swivelling spotlights mounted on their vehicles to locate and daze the animals. While clean head shots are the ideal and regulations state that animals should be killed when at rest and without causing “undue agonal struggle”, this is not always achieved and some animals do suffer prolonged deaths (NSW Code of Practice for Kangaroo Meat for Human Consumption). By regulation, the young of any female kangaroo must be killed along with her. While averting a slow death by neglect, this is considered cruel and wasteful. The hunt has drawn international criticism, including from Greenpeace which organised campaigns against the sale of kangaroo meat in Europe in the 1980s, and Viva! which was successful in securing the withdrawal of kangaroo from sale in British supermarkets (“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised”). These arguments circulate and influence opinion within Australia.A final animal ethics issue is that what is actually behind the push for greater use of kangaroo meat is not concern for the environment or animal welfare but the quest to turn a profit from these animals. The Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia, formed in 1970 to represent those who dealt in the marsupials’ meat, fur and skins, has been a vocal advocate of eating kangaroo and a sponsor of market research into how it can be made more appealing to the market. The Association argued in 1971 that commercial harvest was part of the intelligent conservation of the kangaroo. They sought minimum size regulations to prevent overharvesting and protect their livelihoods (“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation”). The Association’s current website makes the claim that wild harvested “Australian kangaroo meat is among the healthiest, tastiest and most sustainable red meats in the world” (Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia). That this is intended to initiate a new and less controlled branch of the meat industry for the benefit of hunters and processors, rather than foster a shift from sheep or cattle to kangaroos which might serve farmers and the environment, is the opinion of Dr. Louise Boronyak, of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney (Boyle 19).Concerns such as these have meant that kangaroo is most consumed where it is least familiar, with most of the meat for human consumption recovered from culled animals being exported to Europe and Asia. Russia has been the largest export market. There, kangaroo meat is made less strange by blending it with other meats and traditional spices to make processed meats, avoiding objections to its appearance and uncertainty around preparation. With only a low profile as a novelty animal in Russia, there are fewer sentimental concerns about consuming kangaroo, although the additional food miles undermine its environmental credentials. The variable acceptability of kangaroo in more distant markets speaks to the role of culture in determining how patterns of eating are formed and can be shifted, or, as Elspeth Probyn phrased it “how natural entities are transformed into commodities within a context of globalisation and local communities”, underlining the impossibility of any straightforward ethics of eating kangaroo (33, 35).Kangatarianism is a neologism which makes the eating of kangaroo meat something it has not been in the past, a voluntary restriction based on environmental ethics. These environmental benefits are well founded and eating kangaroo can be understood as an Anthropocenic bargain struck to allow the continuation of the consumption of red meat while reducing one’s environmental footprint. Although superficially attractive, the numbers entering into this bargain remain small because environmental ethics cannot be disentangled from animal ethics. The anthropomorphising of the kangaroo and its use as a national symbol coexist with its categorisation as a pest and use of its meat as food for companion animals. Both understandings of kangaroos made their meat uneatable for many Australians. Paired with concerns over how kangaroos are killed and the commercialisation of a native species, kangaroo meat has a very mixed reception despite decades of advocacy for eating its meat in favour of that of more harmed and more harmful introduced species. Given these constraints, kangatarianism is unlikely to become widespread and indeed it should be viewed as at best a temporary exigency. As the climate warms and rainfall becomes more erratic, even animals which have evolved to suit Australian conditions will come under increasing pressure, and humans will need to reach Kübler-Ross’ final state of grief: acceptance. In this case, this would mean acceptance that our needs cannot be placed ahead of those of other animals.ReferencesAmpt, Peter, and Kate Owen. Consumer Attitudes to Kangaroo Meat Products. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 2008.Appleby, Bryce. “Skippy the ‘Green’ Kangaroo: Identifying Resistances to Eating Kangaroo in the Home in a Context of Climate Change.” BSc Hons, U of Wollongong, 2010 <http://ro.uow.edu.au/thsci/103>.Archer, Michael. “Zoology on the Table: Plenary Session 4.” Australian Zoologist 39, 1 (2017): 154–60.“Assn. Backs Kangaroo Conservation.” The Beverley Times 26 Feb. 1971: 3. 22 Feb. 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article202738733>.Barone, Tayissa. “Kangatarians Jump the Divide.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 Feb. 2010. 13 Apr. 2019 <https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/kangatarians-jump-the-divide-20100209-gdtvd8.html>.Black, Rosemary. “Some Australians Angry over Idea for Kangaroo and Emu-Flavored Potato Chips.” New York Daily News 4 Dec. 2009. 5 Feb. 2019 <https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/australians-angry-idea-kangaroo-emu-flavored-potato-chips-article-1.431865>.Boyle, Rhianna. “Eating Skippy.” Big Issue Australia 578 11-24 Jan. 2019: 16–19.Cawthorn, Donna-Mareè, and Louwrens C. Hoffman. “Controversial Cuisine: A Global Account of the Demand, Supply and Acceptance of ‘Unconventional’ and ‘Exotic’ Meats.” Meat Science 120 (2016): 26–7.Conservation of Kangaroos. Melbourne: Australian Conservation Foundation, 1970.Des Purtell and Associates. Improving Consumer Perceptions of Kangaroo Products: A Survey and Report. Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 1997.Ellicott, John. “Little Pay Incentive for Shooters to Join Kangaroo Meat Industry.” The Land 15 Mar. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://www.theland.com.au/story/5285265/top-roo-shooter-says-harvesting-is-a-low-paid-job/>.Garnaut, Ross. Garnaut Climate Change Review. 2008. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.garnautreview.org.au/index.htm>.Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012.Golder, Hilary, and Diane Kirkby. “Mrs. Mayne and Her Boxing Kangaroo: A Married Woman Tests Her Property Rights in Colonial New South Wales.” Law and History Review 21.3 (2003): 585–605.Grant, Elisabeth. “Sustainable Kangaroo Harvesting: Perceptions and Consumption of Kangaroo Meat among University Students in New South Wales.” Independent Study Project (ISP). U of NSW, 2014. <https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1755>.Haslam, Nick. “The Five Stages of Grief Don’t Come in Fixed Steps – Everyone Feels Differently.” The Conversation 22 Oct. 2018. 28 Mar. 2019 <https://theconversation.com/the-five-stages-of-grief-dont-come-in-fixed-steps-everyone-feels-differently-96111>.Head, Lesley. “The Anthropoceans.” Geographical Research 53.3 (2015): 313–20.Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia. Kangaroo Meat. 26 Feb. 2019 <http://www.kangarooindustry.com/products/meat/>.“Kangaroo Meat Sales Criticised.” The Canberra Times 13 Sep. 1984: 14. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article136915919>.“Kangaroo to Be Food ‘Salesman.’” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 2 Dec. 1954. 22 Feb 2019 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134089767>.Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and their own Families. New York: Touchstone, 1997.Jackson, Stephen, and Karl Vernes. 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Abstract:

Image 1: A Little Free Library. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.IntroductionLittle Free Libraries give people a reason to stop and exchange things they love: books. It seemed like a really good way to build a sense of community.Dannette Lank, Little Free Library steward, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, 2013 (Rumage)Against a backdrop of stagnant literacy rates and enduring perceptions of urban decay and the decline of communities in cities (NCES, “Average Literacy”; NCES, “Average Prose”; Putnam 25; Skogan 8), legions of Little Free Libraries (LFLs) have sprung up across the United States between 2009 and the present. LFLs are small, often homemade structures housing books and other physical media for passersby to choose a book to take or leave a book to share with others. People have installed the structures in front of homes, schools, libraries, churches, fire and police stations, community gardens, and in public parks. There are currently 50,000 LFLs around the world, most of which are in the continental United States (Aldrich, “Big”). LFLs encompass building in multiple senses of the term; LFLs are literally tiny buildings to house books and people use the structures for building neighbourhood social capital. The organisation behind the movement cites “building community” as one of its three core missions (Little Free Library). Rowan Moore, theorising humans’ reasons for building, argues desire and emotion are central (16). The LFL movement provides evidence for this claim: stewards erect LFLs based on hope for increased literacy and a desire to build community through their altruistic actions. This article investigates how LFLs build urban community and explores barriers to the endeavour, specifically municipal building and right of way ordinances used in attempts to eradicate the structures. It also examines local responses to these municipal actions and potential challenges to traditional public libraries brought about by LFLs, primarily the decrease of visits to public libraries and the use of LFLs to argue for defunding of publicly provided library services. The work argues that LFLs build community in some places but may threaten other community services. This article employs qualitative content analysis of 261 stewards’ comments about their registered LFLs on the organisation’s website drawn from the two largest cities in a Midwestern state and an interview with an LFL steward in a village in the same state to analyse how LFLs build community. The two cities, located in the state where the LFL movement began, provide a cross section of innovators, early adopters, and late adopters of the book exchanges, determined by their registered charter numbers. Press coverage and municipal documents from six cities across the US gathered through a snowball sample provide data about municipal challenges to LFLs. Blog posts penned by practising librarians furnish some opinions about the movement. This research, while not a representative sample, identifies common themes and issues around LFLs and provides a basis for future research.The act of building and curating an LFL is a representation of shared beliefs about literacy, community, and altruism. Establishing an LFL is an act of civic participation. As Nico Carpentier notes, while some civic participation is macro, carried out at the level of the nation, other participation is micro, conducted in “the spheres of school, family, workplace, church, and community” (17). Ruth H. Landman investigates voluntary activities in the city, including community gardening, and community bakeries, and argues that the people associated with these projects find themselves in a “denser web of relations” than previously (2). Gretchen M. Herrmann argues that neighbourhood garage sales, although fleeting events, build an enduring sense of community amongst participants (189). Ray Oldenburg contends that people create associational webs in what he calls “great good places”; third spaces separate from home and work (20-21). Little Free Libraries and Community BuildingEmotion plays a central role in the decision to become an LFL steward, the person who establishes and maintains the LFL. People recount their desire to build a sense of community and share their love of reading with neighbours (Charter 4684; Charter 8212; Charter 9437; Charter 9705; Charter 16561). One steward in the study reported, “I love books and I want to be able to help foster that love in our neighbourhood as well” (Charter 4369). Image 2: A Little Free Library, bench, water fountain, and dog’s water bowl for passersby to enjoy. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.Relationships and emotional ties are central to some people’s decisions to have an LFL. The LFL website catalogues many instances of memorial LFLs, tributes to librarians, teachers, and avid readers. Indeed, the first Little Free Library, built by Todd Bol in 2009, was a tribute to his late mother, a teacher who loved reading (“Our History”). In the two city study area, ten LFLs are memorials, allowing bereaved families to pass on a loved one’s penchant for sharing books and reading (Charter 1235; Charter 1309; Charter 4604; Charter 6219; Charter 6542; Charter 6954; Charter 10326; Charter 16734; Charter 24481; Charter 30369). In some cases, urban neighbours come together to build, erect, and stock LFLs. One steward wrote: “Those of us who live in this friendly neighborhood collaborated to design[,] build and paint a bungalow themed library” to match the houses in the neighbourhood (Charter 2532). Another noted: “Our neighbor across the street is a skilled woodworker, and offered to build the library for us if we would install it in our yard and maintain it. What a deal!” (Charter 18677). Community organisations also install and maintain LFLs, including 21 in the study population (e.g. Charter 31822; Charter 27155).Stewards report increased communication with neighbours due to their LFLs. A steward noted: “We celebrated the library’s launch on a Saturday morning with neighbors of all ages. We love sitting on our front porch and catching up with the people who stop to check out the books” (Charter 9673). Another exclaimed:within 24 hours, before I had time to paint it, my Little Free Library took on a life of its own. All of a sudden there were lots of books in it and people stopping by. I wondered where these books came from as I had not put any in there. Little kids in the neighborhood are all excited about it and I have met neighbors that I had never seen before. This is going to be fun! (Charter 15981)LFLs build community through social interaction and collaboration. This occurs when neighbours come together to build, install, and fill the structures. The structures also open avenues for conversation between neighbours who had no connection previously. Like Herrmann’s neighbourhood garage sales, LFLs create and maintain social ties between neighbours and link them by the books they share. Additionally, when neighbours gather and communicate at the LFL structure, they create a transitory third space for “informal public life”, where people can casually interact at a nearby location (Oldenburg 14, 288).Building Barriers, Creating CommunityThe erection of an LFL in an urban neighbourhood is not, however, always a welcome sight. The news analysis found that LFLs most often come to the attention of municipal authorities via citizen complaints, which lead to investigations and enforcement of ordinances. In Kansas, a neighbour called an LFL an “eyesore” and an “illegal detached structure” (Tapper). In Wisconsin, well-meaning future stewards contacted their village authorities to ask about rules, inadvertently setting off a six-month ban on LFLs (Stingl; Rumage). Resulting from complaints and inquiries, municipalities regulated, and in one case banned, LFLs, thus building barriers to citizens’ desires to foster community and share books with neighbours.Municipal governments use two major areas of established code to remove or prohibit LFLs: ordinances banning unapproved structures in residents’ yards and those concerned with obstructions to right of ways when stewards locate the LFLs between the public sidewalk and street.In the first instance, municipal ordinances prohibit either front yard or detached structures. Controversies over these ordinances and LFLs erupted in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, in 2012; Leawood, Kansas, in 2014; Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2015; and Dallas, Texas, in 2015. The Village of Whitefish Bay banned LFLs due to an ordinance prohibiting “front yard structures,” including mailboxes (Sanburn; Stingl). In Leawood, the city council argued that an LFL, owned by a nine-year-old boy, violated an ordinance that forbade the construction of any detached structures without city council permission. In Shreveport, the stewards of an LFL received a cease and desist letter from city council for having an “accessory structure” in the front yard (LaCasse; Burris) and Dallas officials knocked on a steward’s front door, informing her of a similar breach (Kellogg).In the second instance, some urban municipalities argued that LFLs are obstructions that block right of ways. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the public works director noted that the city “uses the area between the sidewalk and the street for snow storage in the winter, light poles, mailboxes, things like that.” The director continued: “And I imagine these little libraries are meant to congregate people like a water cooler, but we don’t want people hanging around near the road by the curb” (Heady). Both Lincoln in 2014 and Los Angeles (LA), California, in 2015, cited LFLs for obstructions. In Lincoln, the city notified the Southminster United Methodist Church that their LFL, located between the public sidewalk and street, violated a municipal ordinance (Sanburn). In LA, the Bureau of Street Services notified actor Peter Cook that his LFL, situated in the right of way, was an “obstruction” that Cook had to remove or the city would levy a fine (Moss). The city agreed at a hearing to consider a “revocable permit” for Cook’s LFL, but later denied its issuance (Condes).Stewards who found themselves in violation of municipal ordinances were able to harness emotion and build outrage over limits to individuals’ ability to erect LFLs. In Kansas, the stewards created a Facebook page, Spencer’s Little Free Library, which received over 31,000 likes and messages of support. One comment left on the page reads: “The public outcry will force those lame city officials to change their minds about it. Leave it to the stupid government to rain on everybody’s parade” (“Good”). Children’s author Daniel Handler sent a letter to the nine-year-old steward, writing as Lemony Snicket, “fighting against librarians is immoral and useless in the face of brave and noble readers such as yourself” (Spencer’s). Indeed, the young steward gave a successful speech to city hall arguing that the body should allow the structures because “‘lots of people in the neighborhood used the library and the books were always changing. I think it’s good for Leawood’” (Bauman). Other local LFL supporters also attended council and spoke in favour of the structures (Harper). In LA, Cook’s neighbours started a petition that gathered over 100 signatures, where people left comments including, “No to bullies!” (Lopez). Additionally, neighbours gathered to discuss the issue (Dana). In Shreveport, neighbours left stacks of books in their front yards, without a structure housing them due to the code banning accessory structures. One noted, “I’m basically telling the [Metropolitan Planning Commission] to go sod off” (Friedersdorf; Moss). LFL proponents reacted with frustration and anger at the perceived over-reach of the government toward harmless LFLs. In addition to the actions of neighbours and supporters, the national and local press commented on the municipal constraints. The LFL movement has benefitted from a significant amount of positive press in its formative years, a press willing to publicise and criticise municipal actions to thwart LFL development. Stewards’ struggles against municipal bureaucracies building barriers to LFLs makes prime fodder for the news media. Herbert J. Gans argues an enduring value in American news is “the preservation of the freedom of the individual against the encroachments of nation and society” (50). The juxtaposition of well-meaning LFL stewards against municipal councils and committees provided a compelling opportunity to illustrate this value.National media outlets, including Time (Sanburn), Christian Science Monitor (LaCasse), and The Atlantic, drew attention to the issue. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf critically noted:I wish I was writing this to merely extol this trend [of community building via LFLs]. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things. (Friedersdorf, n.p.)Other columnists mirrored this sentiment. Writing in the LA Times, one commentator sarcastically wrote that city officials were “cracking down on one of the country’s biggest problems: small community libraries where residents share books” (Schaub). Journalists argued this was government overreach on non-issues rather than tackling larger community problems, such as income inequality, homelessness, and aging infrastructure (Solomon; Schaub). The protests and negative press coverage led to, in the case of the municipalities with front yard and detached structure ordinances, détente between stewards and councils as the latter passed amendments permitting and regulating LFLs. Whitefish Bay, Leawood, and Shreveport amended ordinances to allow for LFLs, but also to regulate them (Everson; Topil; Siegel). Ordinances about LFLs restricted their number on city blocks, placement on private property, size and height, as well as required registration with the municipality in some cases. Lincoln officials allowed the church to relocate the LFL from the right of way to church property and waived the $500 fine for the obstruction violation (Sanburn). In addition to the amendments, the protests also led to civic participation and community building including presentations to city council, a petition, and symbolic acts of defiance. Through this protest, neighbours create communities—networks of people working toward a common goal. This aspect of community building around LFLs was unintentional but it brought people together nevertheless.Building a Challenge to Traditional Libraries?LFL marketing and communication staff member Margaret Aldrich suggests in The Little Free Library Book that LFLs are successful because they are “gratifyingly doable” projects that can be accomplished by an individual (16). It is this ease of building, erecting, and maintaining LFLs that builds concern as their proliferation could challenge aspects of library service, such as public funding and patron visits. Some professional librarians are in favour of the LFLs and are stewards themselves (Charter 121; Charter 2608; Charter 9702; Charter 41074; Rumage). Others envision great opportunities for collaboration between traditional libraries and LFLs, including the library publicising LFLs and encouraging their construction as well as using LFLs to serve areas without, or far from, a public library (Svehla; Shumaker). While lauding efforts to build community, some professional librarians question the nomenclature used by the movement. They argue the phrase Little Free Libraries is inaccurate as libraries are much more than random collections of books. Instead, critics contend, the LFL structures are closer to book swaps and exchanges than actual libraries, which offer a range of services such as Internet access, digital materials, community meeting spaces, and workshops and programming on a variety of topics (American Library Association; Annoyed Librarian). One university reference and instruction librarian worries about “the general public’s perception and lumping together of little free libraries and actual ‘real’ public libraries” (Hardenbrook). By way of illustration, he imagines someone asking, “‘why do we need our tax money to go to something that can be done for FREE?’” (Hardenbrook). Librarians holding this perspective fear the movement might add to a trend of neoliberalism, limiting or ending public funding for libraries, as politicians believe that the localised, individual solutions can replace publicly funded library services. This is a trend toward what James Ferguson calls “responsibilized” citizens, those “deployed to produce governmentalized results that do not depend on direct state intervention” (172). In other countries, this shift has already begun. In the United Kingdom (UK), governments are devolving formerly public services onto community groups and volunteers. Lindsay Findlay-King, Geoff Nichols, Deborah Forbes, and Gordon Macfadyen trace the impacts of the 2012 Localism Act in the UK, which caused “sport and library asset transfers” (12) to community and volunteer groups who were then responsible for service provision and, potentially, facility maintenance as well. Rather than being in charge of a “doable” LFL, community groups and volunteers become the operators of much larger facilities. Recent efforts in the US to privatise library services as governments attempt to cut budgets and streamline services (Streitfeld) ground this fear. Image 3: “Take a Book, Share a Book,” a Little Free Library motto. Image credit: Nadine Kozak. LFLs might have real consequences for public libraries. Another potential unintended consequence of the LFLs is decreasing visits to public libraries, which could provide officials seeking to defund them with evidence that they are no longer relevant or necessary. One LFL steward and avid reader remarked that she had not used her local public library since 2014 because “I was using the Little Free Libraries” (Steward). Academics and librarians must conduct more research to determine what impact, if any, LFLs are having on visits to traditional public libraries. ConclusionLittle Free Libraries across the United States, and increasingly in other countries, have generated discussion, promoted collaboration between neighbours, and led to sharing. In other words, they have built communities. This was the intended consequence of the LFL movement. There, however, has also been unplanned community building in response to municipal threats to the structures due to right of way, safety, and planning ordinances. The more threatening concern is not the municipal ordinances used to block LFL development, but rather the trend of privatisation of publicly provided services. While people are celebrating the community built by the LFLs, caution must be exercised lest central institutions of the public and community, traditional public libraries, be lost. Academics and communities ought to consider not just impact on their local community at the street level, but also wider structural concerns so that communities can foster many “great good places”—the Little Free Libraries and traditional public libraries as well.ReferencesAldrich, Margaret. “Big Milestone for Little Free Library: 50,000 Libraries Worldwide.” Little Free Library. 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