Shaping Cities for our Future
A collection of essays exploring cities, sustainability and connection, drawn from the Griffith Review archive.
Attendees of the 2023 Asia Pacific Cities Summit & Mayors Forum can claim a complimentary 1-year digital subscription to Griffith Review by entering the code 2023APCS at checkout.
Worlds of play
IMAGINE A PARK made out of candy, with bridges featuring water cannons that shoot water onto kayakers below. Imagine huge climbing walls from which you can jump onto giant trampolines,…
Gifts across space and time
A speak/listen trade will always include things that have never been thought or said before as well as the word gifts I wish to give. When things like this appear in a trade, don’t worry – it doesn’t mean I am making things up or holding information back. I’m not ripping you off! It is a sign there is respect in the speak/listen relationship. It is proof the relationship is alive, growing, and we are learning together. This happens a lot when people meet to talk about culture and cultural things.
The tyranny of closeness
I REMEMBER ENTERING Krakow for the first time, in 1995. I’d arrived at the train station via Paris, Berlin, Prague and Budapest – cities where I’d stayed for various periods, looking…
Squats, squares and city plans
WALKING ALONG BERLIN’S River Spree one hot summer’s day in 2019, I happened upon a little garden. It was fenced, but a welcome sign sat at the open gate, along with…
Off the plan
IT’S EARLY 2017, and the first lists of the most unaffordable housing in the world have dropped. Oh boy. I’ve been waiting for this since the great smashed-avocado-versus-home-deposit showdown of…
The tale of two cities
IN JANUARY 2016 in the holiday atmosphere that envelops Melbourne – remember the Australian Open and Australia Day long weekend? – thoughts about the city’s future seem remote and unimportant. After all…
Hail hydrogen
I’M SITTING IN the passenger seat of a Hyundai Nexo on a tree-studded Canberra street. It’s stopped to reverse into a parking spot, but no one is driving – an ultra-luxury…
Recovering a narrative of place
At the conclusion of the project, a group of young global citizens, many of them labelled ‘disadvantaged’, many of them previously silent or ignored, shared a common belief, one as simple and yet complex as the difficulties we face in dealing with one of the great challenges of our time. The students agreed that we must listen to those who have lived with Country for thousands of years without killing it, and in order to live with a healthy planet we need to tell stories of our experience with it, and our love for it.
Fluid cities create
WHAT MAKES A city culturally dynamic? What makes a city the sort of place that people want to visit, move to and explore? What makes a city the sort of…