Mall's problems will not be answered by a 'silver bullet' solution

Shepparton's Maude St Mall.

Answers to what ails Shepparton’s Maude St Mall are not to be found in a silver bullet solution.

No one thing will unravel the mosaic of matters that demand a whole of community response; a cocktail of measures must be implemented to confront the evolving dilemmas of the 21^st Century and so see the mall become a sustainable and bustling social space.

Answers proffered by many consider the mall in isolation and so looked at and applied through that prism they might have some immediate positive impact, but no long-term value.

To take the mall so out of context is unfair both to it and the greater Shepparton community.

An architect friend, who was not talking about the mall, said his contemporaries failed when they simply drew lines around projects and created something that misunderstood its social context, had no sympathy its environment and so did not “talk” with its surrounds.

The mall should not be considered in isolation, rather as is an integral part of Greater Shepparton and by implication the wider world.

Everything and every idea around which the 20^th Century was built is changing, those ideas are slipping away, and fast.

Now it gets tough. Energy scarcity; changes to our weather systems and different social and commercial wants and needs will force a fresh way of living upon us; the city needs densification for as oil become prohibitively expensive, to find, extract and buy, transport will become human powered (cycling, walking) and public rather than private; an increasingly hot city is going to need green oases, such as the beginnings of what have now in our mall; business is morphing from market driven capitalism to a peer-to-peer collaborative process that will need near zero-cost social spaces such the mall where people can gather, share and participate in their community.

A recent discussion in Brisbane about the proliferation of enclosed shopping centres throughout Australia, and around the world, brought praise for what they are, but it was pointed out that although entry was free, they effectively barred low-income people for they had little value beyond shopping, that is spending money.

Deepening the confusion, the much lauded private shopping centres are just that; they are private and so are generally out of bounds to public gatherings that are not about adding to the centre’s growth and profit-based agenda.

Malls, such as that in Shepparton, have a different dynamic in that they are public, they are not enclosed and are wonderful places for the social milieu that is the springboard for the richness that is community.

Shepparton needs to preserve and protect its pedestrian mall; expand and build on what exists; create active pedestrian links to the city’s railway station in preparation for a dearth of energy; look “up-river”, consider how the world is changing and where Shepparton needs to be in 2050.

The council of the City of Greater Shepparton, to its credit has looked “up-river” through its Commercial Activity Centres Strategy, but has failed to understand that the Shepparton of the 21^st Century cannot be built from the ideas of last century.

Searching for Shepparton's 'Big Idea'

Age is about wisdom, but for youth, it is fertility.

And, it is from the latter that a local group is hoping this year to source the Goulburn Valley’s next “Big Idea”, from youthful minds, teeming with innovative thoughts.

Shepparton’s Slap Tomorrow is working with the city’s Lighthouse Project, several senior local secondary education people and representatives of the  City of Greater Shepparton to set up “Big Ideas, 2016”.

Big Ideas 2016 is about encouraging young people to think about and explore concepts that could successfully and safely take the Goulburn Valley, and all the communities in it, safely deep into the 21st Century.

A Big Idea working group has agreed to further explore the project in the hope of launching it early in the new school year to engage students and teachers and encourage them to discuss what big idea they would like to explore.

The student initiated Big Ideas would need to be unique, or significantly different from what exists giving them legitimacy for the Goulburn Valley urgently needs fresh ideas; ideas that break free sclerotic 20th Century thinking; ideas that are environmentally, socially and economically innovative and responsible.

Discussions about the Big Idea project have been energetic and wide-ranging, but the essence of what is imagined blends beautifully with the calls for ideas and innovation from Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

Those appeals from the PM will reverberate with hollowness unless Mr Turnbull and his government can legislate equally innovatively to ensure that any revolutionary thoughts from such concepts as Big Ideas 2016 don’t die in their embryotic state, but are energised by State support.

Success for most of the 20th Century’s great innovations and companies, including Apple, can be traced to work done within government research organizations.

Discussing the need for State involvement to apply the innovation needed to address climate change, the author of “The Entrepreneurial State” Mariana Mazzucato said: “…we are again in the need of an active State that takes on the high uncertainty of its early stages, which the business sector fears.”

Early discussions imagine the students, and their ideas, would be guided by an acknowledged entrepreneurial mentor who could play a role in ensuring the resultant big ideas actually implemented.

But more is needed for without demonstrable and vigorous State support, most any idea, regardless of its ultimate societal value, struggles to make it through what is known as the “valley of death” – that time from infancy to commercial maturity.

The possibility of Shepparton being a centre of excellence has frequently been discussed by some and now with Big Ideas 2016 as the focus, maybe we can imagine a better way, blending what already exists to innovate our way, driven by the fertile minds of our youth, to an even greater, Greater Shepparton.

A 'good bloke' who helped me become a local

One’s public acceptance as a local is measured in many ways; personally it arrives when you attend a funeral of someone who is unquestionably a local.

The late Chris McPherson -
a 'good bloke' who
always 'had your back'.

That sense of being a local arrived sometime late in the 1980s when I was standing talking with friends after the funeral of a fellow I had got to know quite well since arriving in Shepparton earlier in the decade.

Suddenly I felt as if I was a local, far short of the 25 years many deem as the qualifying period to acquire such an attribution.

Well, sadly the death last week of another friend again reinforced my awareness of being a local.

This time however, it is different as not only was Chris McPherson my friend, he had given me work, he was my boss, or more correctly an integral part of the McPherson Family for whom I worked for many decades.

Chris was, in colloquial terms, “a good bloke”, someone who always “had your back” and although he may have been uncomfortable about things you said or did, he always stood beside you, helping fend off the critics.

Having been the Editor of this newspaper for more than 15 years, familiarity with Chris’s unflinching loyalty, his tireless enthusiasm and ceaseless endeavour for the success of the McPherson Media Group was evident every day.

Chris and I were fundamentally different people with seemingly incompatible values and although that may have created a publically never seen fissure in our relationship, it actually generated a strange productive energy between us that produced a vital balance.

Success in business for Chris, hinged on a certain relentless drive for profit and growth, which saw him painted as a rather ruthless businessman, a portrayal that did him a disservice, as he was actually a soft and gentle man.

At least twice, while praising the group’s staff for the role they had played in the overall success of the company, he became so emotional that he was unable to continue and his brother Ross took over.

Chris was known for many things, among them his love of the outdoors, but his notoriety as a local took an unprecedented leap when he became the driver of the Big Blokes Lunch to support prostate cancer.

Chris’s honesty while speaking at one of those events about his diagnosis and living with the disease was so powerful and moving that many ranked his address as among the best they had ever heard. Some people were reduced to tears.

Tragedy in one’s life frequently evokes honesty and openness that defies publically known and understood personal traits and that was the case when Chris talked about his prostate cancer.

Yes, Chris was a good bloke, he always stood with me through the ructions of running a newspaper and it is with great pride I claim he was a friend, a local friend.

Success of city activity centres depends on behaviour change

Ambitions to reshape Shepparton’s activity centres with awareness of social, economic and environmental matters should be applauded, but success hinges on our willingness to change our behaviours.

Ideas that prevailed and worked in the 20^th Century are not appropriate as conditions that once ensured their success no longer exist.

Growth is a slippery term and takes its meaning from the prism through which it is viewed and it can either be based on capitalist/consumerist ideology or the enhancement of qualities and activities that underpin a resilient community equal to the unfolding rigours of the coming decades.

The City of Greater Shepparton has used professional help to draw up plan for its “Commercial Activity Centres Strategy” and now it wants people who live here to comment about what is proposed.

Courage and bravery are not words commonly associated with planning ideas or proposals, but both must be evident just to pick up this blizzard of words and then to contemplate reading it.

I fear that as with many similar reports, it will quickly find its way to the bottom drawer and not only physically disappear, but quickly drop off councillors’ consciousness.

What is happening here is a microcosm of matters bigger than us and to re-shape Shepparton without acknowledging what the wider-world is wrestling with signifies sclerotic thinking; thinking unable to accept such things as climate change.

The former Australian of the Year, chair of the Federal Government disbanded Climate Commission, scientist, and author, Tim Flannery said recently when launching his new book, “Atmosphere of Hope” that the world will surpass the two degree guardrail nations have agreed to.

The two degree guardrail above pre-industrial temperatures was considered humanity’s only hope of protecting the “Goldilocks-like” conditions in which we have prospered, but that will soon be a memory as at less than just one degree increase, earth’s disturbed climate has brought an end to understandable seasonal conditions.

And so as we plan and shape the Shepparton of tomorrow it would be irresponsible to pretend our climate wasn’t changing, that we are going to replicate the energy-rich wonders of the 20^th Century or that the ancient soils of the Goulburn Valley are going to continue their bountiful production.

Figures in the wordy and daunting Essential Economics report can be unsettling, but become even more fearful if interpreted and applied without acknowledgement of those realities Flannery and other like him say will be integral to our lives within a decade or so.

So rather than allowing geographical sprawl of the city accentuating ever-expanding infrastructure, we should be planning for and building a city with increased density that makes walking and cycling not only possible but preferable, the emphasis should be on public transit, and an activity centre, wherever it is, should be as self-reliant as possible.

The military/industrial complex celebrates as militarization of society is very near complete

The militarization of society nears completion.

Police officers all around the world look
increasingly like armed soldiers.

And, it seems, the only thing that can "rescue" us from this ugly realization is climate change.

That, however, is demonstrably false for rather than turn to collaboration and co-operation that will enable us to avoid the worst of what a disrupted climate will bring, our first resort will be the only thing we know, confrontation and violence.

That is exampled by many things, among them the increasing armed forces-like appearance of those responsible for ensuring we adhere to the rather simple laws of a civil society.

People of all stripes from all parts of the world have said, with facts being the only provocation, climate change is the greatest security threat that humanity has ever faced, worse even than the two great conflagrations of the 20th Century that killed millions and dislocated the lives of even more.

Climate change has been on and off the agenda, political and otherwise, for some 50 years and yet nothing has effectively been done rather, we procrastinate and prevaricate and some find comfort in arguments that the science is not yet conclusive.

Behaviours remain largely untouched and the peace of mind of most is not disturbed even though clear evidence illustrates that this century, certainly the latter decades are going to be difficult, if not impossible.

The contradictions are astounding; climate change is the greatest physical threat humanity has ever faced and yet many, closeted in their modern-day comforts, argue the change is not human-induced.

It clearly is, but climate change is frequently denied, considered someone else’s problem simply awaiting a technological solution and although it advances slowly, that’s in human terms, but with lightning speed geologically, and beyond inexplicable changes (to the ordinary man) to our weather, nothing appears to be happening.

Bill Kelly (right) and Juris Greste at the launch of
Bill art exhibition at Melbourne's MARS Gallery.

Terrorism in its many forms is clearly more visible and unlike climate change, has an identifiable enemy and living lives soaked in violence, we know how to respond as exampled by Great Britain’s reaction to what is presently happening in Syria – a day of lively discussion in England’s parliament resulted in a decision to bomb the terrorists and just six hours later English bombs were reigning down on supposed terrorist buildings, not doubt killing many innocent people as well.

As mentioned earlier climate change has been an “off and on” discussion for some 50 years and no one has yet done anything near as decisive as bombing.

Addressing climate change demands something quite different and just a few weeks ago Nathalia’s Peace, one of the world’s great peace advocates, claimed that peace is the primary avenue through which climate change can be addressed.

Peace, he said, is about caring, co-operation and collaboration and not about the destruction epitomized by the militarization of our society; violence manifesting itself as a dangerously disrupted climate system.

Incongruous court building will disrupt village-like atmosphere

C

alling Shepparton a “village” maybe considered blasphemous.

However, a village is nothing but a conglomeration of people and the supporting infrastructure upon which they depend for daily living, and that is pretty much what Shepparton is.

An artist's impression of Shepparton's
proposed new courthouse - it will be
rather incongruous in the city's
village-like atmosphere.

It just so happens that more people have decided to settle in Shepparton than in any other nearby urban area and so grasping at whatever it is that will boost egos our village is now labelled a “city”.

Does that make any difference? Officially probably, but if we dare take it too literally, it can distort our understanding of what is and isn’t important in our village.

All urban areas have a heart and Shepparton’s has historically been the central business district presently centred on the Maude St Mall and its immediate surrounds.

Commerciality has driven a retail diaspora resulting in the creation of major shopping centres on the city’s fringes, effectively driving a dagger through the city’s heart.

Wounded, the city limps on, hindered by an administration which sees solutions through a dated 20^th Century prism that allows only visions reliant upon ideas built around a fossil fuel-based economy.

Shepparton, and those who live here, need and deserve better; they deserve innovative, bold and adventurous planning that will ready the village for a future in which water reliability will be threatened and its fellow “lifeblood”, oil will also be increasingly scarce becoming largely the province of the few.

Our village once had a human-scale, evolving from times when energy was scarce in that it was mostly human and animal, but then progress came along and in just few decades we were being whisked around the Goulburn Valley in steam trains and motor vehicles initiating the social erosion that continues today.

Our communities have become socially shredded as the insisted individualism of the corporatized world drives aspirational wedges between us as we pursue various goals bringing on a perceived and practical inequality.

A manifestation of that inequality, the collapse of values that bind a community, is the plan to build an incongruous court house in the heart of our village that is clearly out of step with the human-scale of its surrounds.

Member for Shepparton, Suzanna Sheed, herself a lawyer, correctly points out that the building will be more than somewhere to dispense the law for it will also be the focus for a host of social services processes that are presently sprinkled throughout the city.

That being the case, what is proposed appears to be a distorted effort to contain blustering egos within a limited footprint and so the building has gone up rather than out, disrupting and destroying Shepparton’s beautiful low-rise skyline.

The preservation of Shepparton’s village-like atmosphere is too important to sacrifice to such economic callousness and so rather than the proposed glass-like shrine to vanity, we should be acquiring more property and building a low-rise complex that reflects the human-scale of our village.  

Yes, it's time to 'scare the horses'

I

t’s time to “scare the horses”.

A more than a decade of reading about and listening to some of the world’s best minds and understanding the damage you and I, and our fellows are doing and have done to earth’s atmosphere, the constant, although subtle, message has been not to scare the horses.

Yes, It's time to scare the horses.

Okay, but what does that mean?

The facts about climate change, indisputable and illustrated beyond debate by the world’s scientific community, are so contrary to life that to articulate them, as we must if we are to emerge intact from this dilemma, would freeze people into inaction.

Many have warned of that freeze, along with caveat that many “lectured” to about their behaviour, re-double their resistance, become angry,  even more remote from reason and so increasingly determined to adhere to behaviours that are worsening our troubles and align themselves, emotionally and physically, with values contrary to what the world needs.

Circumstances that manifested themselves in two world wars most certainly scared the horses and although the responses were varied, people, although frightened, unsure and uncertain, broadly and generally responded with a commitment that saw sweeping transformations in behaviour preparing communities around the world for the privations, destruction, costs and deaths of war.

Climate change demands an even more disciplined approach, but unlike a war there is no obvious adversary and so while some are scared and confused, a small, but powerful and massively influential minority whose power and influence rest in maintenance of the status quo, continue to laud what exists and encourage more of the same.

As convincing and as populist as their arguments might sound, they are false and beyond that, what is proposed for United Nations climate talks in Paris later this year can be shown as insufficient to put the world on a path to repair.

Preparations for war illustrated the amazing innovative, inventive and can do nature of people and within that their adaptability, which has taken humans to the top of the food chain, as we stood together to confront a common enemy.

Having a clear understanding of who and where the enemy was simplified affairs as it gave people a focus; somewhere and something upon which to vent their frustrations, fears and anger.

Climate change is a more complex, convoluted and wicked problem as the enemy is “us”, making it difficult and confusing, and somewhat impossible, to be angry with yourself and along with that put yourself, your family and friends, and in fact the whole of society of which you are an active part, in the “enemy” category.

So rather than bolt about like scared horses and be angry and irrational, we need to understand and accept we were wrong, we made a mistake and although time is scarce, we need to bond on a war-like footing, make bold decisions, take equally bold actions and make the great escape.