WARNING: Boring Town Planning Stuff

Play time is officially over.

This week is the first week of classes and boy has it been stressful! Well no, not stressful. I never get stressed. Maybe more-so 'worried' but I'm totally mendokusai* about it all.

The general gist of it is that the classes I had picked in Australia don't actually exist here, thanks to the department not updating their course schedules and website from two years ago. So I couldn't do the Urban Studies program and now need to look for new subjects, taught in English - ugh. I went along to the Urban Studies program anyway, just to check it out and see if I could work out something with the coorodinator. I must say, I'm glad I did because it was one of the best lectures I have ever been to on Urban Planning (despite it running from 10am to 5pm)!

We had a guest speaker for the week, Geoffrey Payne, who is a renown planner from Britain. Geoff has worked in several developing countries of the world and is particularly interested in dealing with Urban Planning in a market economy - something which I think I've barely touched on in my whole time at QUT. So for me this was extremely fascinating. He was very driven on changing our market from being not only an economic market but gradually into one which also depends on social value. The first lecture was focused on slum improvement and social housing which was absolutely riveting.

Herr Payne

Something that stuck out to me, for all you town planners out there, was something that this girl from Peru said during class. I scribbled it into my book; "Informal housing, or what we call slums, are actually a solution to the problem". It took me a good few seconds to actually work out what this meant, but when I did, it struck a chord. Man, she's right! We shouldn't be trying to "improve slums" as such, you need to look at the deep rooted problems that in fact cause people to create these slums in the first place - e.g. opportunities of the city, better access to services, infrastructure, etc.

Not a problem, it is a solution.

It kinda made me think about our 'Affordable Housing' strategies in Brisbane, and I think the majority of you guys would agree with me that what Government is doing at the moment, whilst it is something and 'better than nothing', is insufficient and ultimately ineffective in alleviating our housing 'crisis'. I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is "Why are houses so unaffordable in our cities?" and fix from there. There's no use in providing more and more "affordable homes" when in the end, it is the market that will control, and always control, the choice and cost of housing in our cities. But of course, changing the market is considerably more difficult than the task of constructing new apartment buildings. On top of that, you want to make sure that you minimise market distortion as much as possible as that then would adversely create a non-competitive market. Made for good conversation.

In terms of social housing in a market economy, discussions were had on figuring out a system in which you could minimise opportunity for abuse, essentially maximising social outcomes. For a practical and simple explanation, if you have a system where people have the chance to wrought it, they will. And trying to figure out ways (even simple ways) on how to close these holes up are a lot more difficult than anyone of us had thought! Generally, most options and policies will always have unintended outcomes - think, Kevin Rudd's $900 hand out.

Anyway on less geeky stuff, I feel like I need to mention just how STUPID I felt in class! A few (very very few) examples:

• "Globalisation was best discussed by Joe Bloggs' book released early 2000, you guys must all know Joe Bloggs, well he discussed.."

Nope, don't know him.

• "For example, the UN's Habitat Agenda of 1996, you guys have all heard of that right? Well this agenda.."

Nope, have no clue.

• "This is best shown in the concept of land pooling and land readjustments, and even RFPs, no need to go into what thats about you would all know.."

Nope, what is it?

• "This would generally include the Mandatory Social Components which I know you guys have heard so much about.."

Nope, please explain.

• "The best option would be to have Companies limited by Guarantee which everyone has heard of I'm assuming.."

Nope, you assume wrong.

Ahh boy, such is life. And QUT's standard of teaching.

*A Japanese word I always use. It means "can't be f***ed", or "what a pain in the ass".