https://heraldonlinejournal.com/2024/06/14/just-over-the-horizon/
The articles above inspired me to to meld the two premises in the articles together in the post below. A lunch time read for anyone interested. :)
Australians are a nation of travellers, it’s been said that at any one time during the year there are over a million Australians abroad. It’s worth noting that it’s not said that a good chunk of that cohort are in Bali, our go-to destination of tropical delights!
But what are we doing when abroad? True many spend precious, and too fleeting, moments with distant families, but many are also touring a destination they may have no or minimal familial connection with. I think I have an answer, not the answer, just an answer. And this answer contains an insight into how today we are failing to design and build our own cities to capture the imagination. Bear with me, i’m gona be pulling some long bows on this one.
“Don’t feel bad about bingeing TV. Humans have binged stories for thousands of years.” An article offered by Darius von Guttner Sporzynski from Australian Catholic University this week on The Conversation website is a short exploration of the consumption of storytelling.
D. Sporzynski wastes no time dispelling the negative connotations around bingeing. Instead offering an anthropic historical record of the “human desire to be completely immersed in a story.” He lauds bingeing as an act of unrestrained and excessive indulgence. Using examples as far ranging as Palawa Aboriginal (Tassie) oral stories that could refer to events 12,000 years in our pasts to theatre, television, or the moral panics brought on by serialised literature.
Of course, from a certain point of view touring a destination could then also be regarded as a form of bingeing. Certainly experiences in my pre-poll of one, (me), bear out the “unrestrained and excessive indulgence” of touring a destination, my trips to Paris were deluxe all those years ago, thank you for asking. ;) Instead of a piece of art, or literature, or even beer, I suggest we can binge on a destination, in fact why not indulge on whole cities.
Australia might not have fully bingeable cities like Paris or New York, Sydney comes closest (maybe even is), plenty of places around the country have flashes in the pan but fall a little short at the moment. Maybe it’s simply due to our country being reasonably young, but I think part of it is the buildings we’re constructing in this era. Even the ones where we’re trying, for example One Barangaroo, (that big tall new one in Sydney), it’s nice, but i’m not sure it adds a great deal to the feel or life of Sydney.
In Western Australia if there’s a single destination that has the potential to be bingeable it’s Fremantle. Roel Loopers’ Fremantle Herald article, Just Over the Horizon, tells us the city of Fremantle is “embarking on a spatial vision City Plan to shape the future…”
In the article R.Loopers laments sameness, and demands diversity in type, form and use of the buildings developers should be forced to build in the city of Fremantle, stating “level 2 looks the same as level 12, etc and that needs to change.”
He offers suggestions like high rises surrounded by townhouses, single function buildings broken up by different facades, he even suggests the historic Fremantle prison becoming part/neighbouring a mixed use development along with the football field.
It is right to demand this of developers in our cities, especially in those places around our country like Fremantle or Sydney who have the potential to create a touring destination, that, in its discovery and excitement can be a dopamine hit that demolishes the dopamine hits of the latest tv series. But a bingeable city isn’t accidentally created, it is demanded and loved.
D.Sporzynski describes “humans desire to escape from reality and engage emotionally with stories.” I say that is what our one million travellers abroad are doing. They are engaging emotionally with far off cities like Paris, London, Tokyo, and of course even our beloved Bali. As D.Sporzynski says, we are developing the 17th and 18th century enlightenment ideal of a critical view of the world through our experiences abroad, but we should take the opportunity now and use our foresight to make our cities bingeable destinations. Sorry developers, concrete and glass boxes aren’t enough.
By Gorgritch_umie_killa