We seem to be so caught up in the day-to-day of avoiding or dealing with the coronavirus, so it’s refreshing to know that some people are thinking of a future way beyond that.
In this week’s podcast, Sue Williams revisits a story about an ambitious vision for a brand new city planned for the area near the new airport at Badgerys Creek.
If the architects and planners have their way, it will be self-sustaining in energy and water and will even grow enough food to export to other areas.
Is it a pipe dream? The architects have been building communities in the deserts of the Gulf states so they know a bit about making the most of a hostile environment.
But, asks Jimmy, how does that stack up against the cheap, cheerless and quick-fix options favoured by our politicians?
Owners unite … by Zoom
Also in this podcast, we talk to Karen Stiles, the energetic executive officer of the Owners Corporation Network about how that key organisation is coping with the challenge of building a community of communities when coronavirus is trying to keep us all at home.
The answer lies in technology, she says, and to prove it, they had a very successful seminar on how to keep the short-term letting wolves from the door, which OCN members (exclusively) can now download from their website.
It was also Karen who inspired the name of this week’s podcast – wolves and mung beans, but you’ll have to listen to discover how (and we don’t mean the coyotes in California that Sue mentions).
But seriously, over the past 18 years OCN has grown into a significant and well-respected organisation which has won itself a seat at the table when policy-makers are deciding the shape of our futures in strata.
You’ll realise why when Karen outlines her vision for the future of this organisation.
Forced out
Then, Jimmy relates the alarming tale of a woman who discovered there were 10 apartments in her building that had been let, short term, to people self-isolating after having been found to be at risk from coronavirus.
Health experts advised her to get out of the apartment block for her own safety’s sake. But it raises the question – who thinks the best way to isolate is to go into an apartment block where hundreds of people live (apart from the parasites and predators of the short-term letting industry)?
And Sue’s “Hey Martha” is all about an old Temperance Hall, converted into luxury apartments … with a wine cellar.
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