Contrary to the POST COVID SNAP BACK THEORY the status quo is not ‘the normal’ we need to be aspiring towards. It is in fact as dead as a Dodo. That class of thinking has been turned on its head and in reality, it is an unsustainable myth that casts a very dark shadow over 21st Century cultural realities and placemaking.
The ‘civic planners’ educated in the 20th Century and who stopped thinking the day they graduated, or the day they got their first paid work, and still cling to what was ‘normal and acceptable’ are now redundant and surplus to requirement. The curtain fell on testing 'critical thinking' and it is time to rest upon one's laurels and gather fruit from the money tree.
With encroaching climate change, and the prospect of international serial pandemics, what was imagined as ‘normal’ has already passed much to the chagrin of the ‘relaxed and comfortable’ civic planners. That 'normal' is in tatters and there is a real need for a paradigm shift.
However, there is a NEW NORMAL that is achievable, and:
• It has been costed; and
• In the face of the climate change that is upon us it is worth the effort; and
• Importantly, the required work towards a NEW NORMAL has actually started.
If precedence is required, well Melbourne as a ‘place’ interested in 21st Century ‘placemaking and cultural landscaping’ and the city is taking the first foundation steps towards establishing a NEW NORMAL.
In fact, the Melbournian movers and shakers have found precedences for their aspirations internationally – simply because they searched for them. However, more to the point, there is a network of thinkers there who are actually taking the first steps forward.
More than that they are able to articulate a vision for a NEW NORMAL while the status quoists stand by shaking their heads wondering what isa in it for them ... well nothing really.
Let’s imagine the redundant rusted on NORMALISTS, the status quoist, for what they are, self-serving ‘cultural road blocks’. They are ‘functionaries and bureaucratic underlings’ who find saying NO to change, and loudly, less threatening. That is so albeit that those who pay their salaries and who are increasingly seeking change in order to meet new challenges and hopefully looking towards a NEW NORMAL – a sustainable future.
That old, old adage that goes “if it is too hot in the kitchen get out of it” ideally to fulfil a new/another usefulness in another paradigm. For some that is going to be very hard work but so be it. If you are surplus to requirement perhaps there is place for you to spend your time well away ’real world enterprises’. Whatever, their level of ‘value judgement’ and ‘deemed authority’ needs to be at the very least put to one side – at best totally displaced and disrupted.
Regional cities such as Launceston could well reach out and seek to be a part of the change towards a NEW NORMAL that must be. An early and eminently achievable project is END LANDFILL and reimagine 'waste centres' as resource recovery centres. Nonetheless, on the evidence, there is a bureaucratic disinclination to do any such a thing – .
Currently in Launceston, buildings that will impact NEGATIVELY on the community and the ecology within which they are sited are not only being approved, they are being lauded.
Mindblowingly, in Launceston 'right now' there is a bridge under construction that apparently is unlikely to meet even 20th Century engineering standards. It seems that:
• It may well fail any credible safety tests; and
• That is being built under the gaze of the city’s civic planners and engineers; and
• That it has the potential to cost ratepayers more than they can really afford.
Sadly, it appears that the project has got to this stage without adequate ‘civic supervision’ but more importantly it is potentially yet another impost on the community that just cannot afford it. If this is the OLD NORMAL it is the result of redundant civic process antithetic accountability and transparency.
Likewise, there are other ‘developments’ being flagged that are not only potential ‘multidimensional civic abominations’ and if realised would impact heavily upon the ecology in ways that ultimately cost future communities seeking a NEW NORMAL, an affordable ‘normal’, a sustainable ‘normal’, to the extent that they will need to be deconstructed/reconstructed one way or another.
An achievable future based upon the exploitation of inexhaustible and renewable resources is within reach. However, it is being put out of reach by underperforming 'civic managers' unable, unwilling or ill equiped to aspire towards a NEW NORMAL while the status quo persist and pays them well.
What is actually needed now is the intellectual wherewithal to take those all important ‘first steps’. SEE: https://www.normalise.it/the-full-story
LISTEN HERE TO AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CONCEPT
No comments:
Post a Comment