The Nanny named State!

On a recent holiday in Europe, I found myself having the same thought over and over again: “this would not be allowed to happen in Australia”.

Enter the Nanny State, a term of British origin that conveys the view that a government or its policies are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. The term “nanny state” likens government to the role that a nanny has in child rearing (Wikipedia).

The more I think about it the more it bothers me. Helmet laws, footpath width regulations, liquor laws, handrail requirements, alfresco dining permits, rubbish collection, house design, lighting etc. etc. etc! The level to which we Australians over regulate things is quite frankly astounding, and it is holding our cities back.

I have always felt a little hemmed in by Australian law and cultural norms but recently visiting France and Italy acted as a stark reminder that so much of what the world loves about Europe (it’s worth noting that France is the world’s most popular tourist destination) is actually illegal in Australia. Even though lots of us (planning and design circles particularly) want to, we simply can’t replicate key facets of the vibrant and exciting places found in great European cities because of our overly restrictive laws.

Plyscrapers: Skyscrapers getting back to their roots

Terrible heading I know but stick with me here.

In the past 100 years, the use of wood has generally been limited to light timber framing, generally no more than three to six stories high — structurally, the practical limit for that type of construction. But in the past 10 to 15 years, the development of new heavy timber products — cross laminated timber (CLT), glued laminated wood (glulam), and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) — has opened the door to taller and bigger buildings with wood as the primary building material.

Creating glitches in the matrix: Engaging and Playful Smart Cities

At a time where technology aims to remove all the friction from our daily lives, guiding us to exactly where we want to be, Playable Cities aim to interrupt this utilitarian efficiency with a touch of creativity and ludic intervention. From Stockholm’s Piano Staircase to Lisbon’s dancing traffic signals, there is a global trend of introducing playfulness into cities.

The Playable Cities movement is a creative response to the highly functional and structured urban environment. A situation that the Smarter City movement threatens to exacerbate. It’s by no chance that films such as the 1920’s Metropolis or the more recent film, LEGO present cities as machines and their inhabitants as workers. People in cities are often completely absorbed in getting from one place to another. It’s not called rush hour because people are going for a stroll.