Wild Cities
We live in wild cities. Four new books argue the conditions exist for regeneration, but need to be seeded and nurtured, and our wounded, darkest places brought to surface to be healed.
Join in the discussion on Planning Wild Cities: Human-Nature Relationships in the Urban Age (Wendy Steele), Wild Policy: Indigeneity and the Unruly Politics of Intervention (Tess Lea), People Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (Ashley Dawson) and Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture (Hélène Frichot).
Together with care, we must change our cities.
About the speakers
Wendy Steele is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban Research (CUR) at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her research focuses on the nature of wild cities in climate change with current projects on quiet activism, urban futures, climate justice and the need to re-politicize sustainability as a transformative agenda for cities and communities. Planning Wild Cities critically engages with the contemporary challenges and opportunities of wild cities in a climate of change.
Tess Lea is an anthropologist who specialises in the cultural life of policy. Her fundamental interest is with issues of (dys)function: how it occurs and to what, whom and how it is ascribed. Her work introduces new ways of thinking about policy as something that can be acted upon, but also shapes our everyday environments in chaotic and unequal ways. Wild Policy argues policies are not about undoing the big causes of enduring inequality, and do not ameliorate harms terribly well either—without yielding all hope.
Ashley Dawson is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. His fields of specialization are cultural studies, environmental humanities, postcolonial studies and climate justice. People’s Power provides a persuasive critique of a market-led transition to renewable energy.
Hélène Frichot is Professor of Architecture and Philosophy, and Director of the Bachelor of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning University of Melbourne, Australia. She is an architectural theorist and philosopher, writer and critic. Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture argues that we must work with the dirt to develop an ethics of care and maintenance for our precarious environment-worlds.
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All attendees please note, due to coronavirus restrictions Bookshop by Uro's capacity is limited to 25 people. Please be mindful of others . If you cannot make it on the day or change your mind, please get in contact with the organisers.
This event is part of the Melbourne Art Book Fair.