My name is Sidh and I’m the Senior Lecturer here [Melbourne University] in Landscape and Architecture.

 

What are your current projects at the moment?

 

There’s multiple ongoing projects, life as an academic, it’s pretty… I wouldn’t say messy. It’s really three different jobs. You’re teaching, you’re researching and you’re doing lots of administration. But I have sabbatical this semester, thankfully. I can focus on things like informal urbanism and the intensification of cities and how it manifests in various cultures—and also, the notion of cultural conservation of flux versus cultural flux, usually on more an urban context but you know,

cultural landscape phenomenon so, it’s a totality. Everything can be evidence at any scale and so it's not necessarily the way things look it’s also the changes through time and the agents of change... you know, the conflicts the negotiations between agents and negotiations does not have to be formal or direct and most of them they’re the informal ones are more interesting.

 

So in terms of your article 'When a suburb's turn comes for Gentrification,' what is it that led you to that piece?

 

Well, it’s really a very long interest in Footscray. Because as a student, many people will know that this is the value for money place in terms of very good food for an affordable price and, you know, it’s not too far from the city. So, in my student days, or doing a master and PhD here—you’re quite dirt poor really. So if you don’t cook, well then the next best thing is going to Footscray for Indian or Vietnamese... well even the northwestern Chinese cuisine, you know. So it’s always been a fascinating place in that sense because it’s different and it’s just in the inner suburb but it feels like an island onto itself because—one can say—that its the last place that was under pressure from development and gentrification. Because during that time of course you know, Richmond was once the place to go for exploration to migrant culture. But now it’s totally another place —yes know you, bits and pieces of Vietnamese urban culture that manifests in Richmond but generally, it has lost what it once was.

 

Especially in Richmond, there is such an evident disparity of wealth.

 

Yeah, so in a way, Footscray was in this time capsule for so many years and whether it's an accidental thing, on the other side of the Maribyrnong river... again, it might be another river divide, where traditionally Melbourne has north and south of the Yarra but now it’s also east and west of the Maribyrnong perhaps. But again, that is changing fast and due to it’s proximity to the CBD, it was bound to happen

 

I think fast is a keyword too, because in the past few months we’ve seen lots of dialogue on incidents like 8bit having its windows smashed in, 'hipsters get lost' graffiti, and in many of these articles that I’m reading, there is a hesitancy to use the word gentrification. Can you comment on why you think that might be?

 

Yeah, I wonder why too, and maybe there’s a question for you there as well in terms of which groups of gentrification we are talking about. If we are talking about the real estate people, domain, they really embrace it because it is their bread and butter and they are part of the phenomenon, you know they are the ones who support it an even perpetuate it, in direct collusion with developers. They are the ones who are painting new pictures and a new image 

 

'Footscray, it’s not so bad anymore...'

 

'It’s not so bad anymore', yeah. And you know in that sense they are very influential in the way that cities develop. 

 

Well in terms of Domain, there are all these articles popping up about the first home buyers, I’ve seen a couple that are reasons why you should move to Footscray. what do you think are the reasons many first home buyers have made that move?

 

Well, for many it’s probably too late because the prices have already gone way up

 

Yeah, it went up 16% in two years I believe. 

 

Yeah, maybe three or four years you can still get something for mid-400s... and so maybe the last train might have passed already which is why now apartments are the thing.

 

Okay so that is how it works, we have all these first home buyers flock and then housing prices rise, so then the next move is apartments.

 

Yes.

 

So that explains the ‘apartment boom’, in that 1350 local units were approved by the council in 2015, and that is 10 times the amount approved two years ago. 

 

That’s massive.

 

Yeah, that’s huge right?

 

It is. 

 

And could that ever be quantified as normal, or is that intense?

 

I would say intense, by the standards of any Australian suburb. That type of change is quite intense.

 

What does that do structurally in terms of the actual face of Footscray? What does that mean?

 

It means that it’s going to change into something else totally, like every other suburb before it that has once been considered former slums, from your Carlton—a few decades ago—to your Fitzroy’s and your Collingwood and your Richmond and that’s right in front of my eyes markets. So it’s going to drastically change, the demographics will totally change. It will be a very different group of people with very different lifestyles and demands who might originally come for the attractions that it has and that’s often the case. And you can often troll St Kilda, Aukland street into this group, this pattern of change and transformation and so the local—in Footscray’s case, it’s cultures, because I also said in the article that in terms of being the place where migrants establish their foothold, it’s probably one of the most successful suburbs because it has absorbed more than one wave. Most other places will take in one group and then through time it saturates and changes but Footscray has been absorbing four, five, different, distinct groups, and has been able to actually put them together, and very successful one might say. Despite, of course, social-economic frictions. But generally... And that’s probably because it provides the path of least resistance in terms of lower rents, which makes it quite easier for migrants to establish an economic foothold and because you know it’s quite well known in many studies they are, by nature, quite entrepreneurial. Anyone who chooses to move their whole family into a very different place, by nature they are already risk takers in a sense. It’s just that not many suburbs provide the fertile ground. Especially today. If we wind back some years… but that said some far-flung suburbs will suddenly become that new place. Like a few years ago Springvale was such a big place in terms of South-east Asian communities and there was Dandenong and that was the centre of multiple Afghan groups, you know, your Sunshine, your Broadmeadows where Europeans and Kurds have settled. In mainstream media, it may give those places a reputation that is undesirable to the dominant culture, but I think it’s sort of an outsiders judgement. So if you live there, if you are apart of it, it’s not as bad as we think and sometimes that statistic doesn’t really reveal that story, it doesn’t tell its success story. Yes, of course, if you strictly measure everything by SES then you know, ok, Broadmeadows, they are very poor, they are dirt poor, but you know, it doesn’t say anything about the businesses that are established by migrants that actually thrive there. 

 

And the progression too.

 

And the support network that they able to form.

 

And the communities that are out there as well. And in Broadmeadows especially as well, for the Sudanese community there.

 

Yes, you would only realise it if you, go there. You’re making that quick judgement and again, you know that's where the media and journalism have a lot of influence in painting certain suburbs a certain way in just 600 words or less.

 

And yeah so many articles are talking about this idea of Footscray as it’s not as rough as it used to be, which leads me to another thing I’m really curious about, and I’m not sure if you can answer this but I would love to hear what you think about it. With all these people moving in, this wave of ‘hipsters’ and these younger families, do you think that they are actually aware of what they represent to Footscray when they move there?

 

That’s a hard question. Because I would go back to the path of least resistance, its very much why around two decades ago some parts of Flinders lane is known to be an artists colony and that's because rent was very cheap back then and so they are able to come in and appropriate the place and make it to their image or vision. So, in a way, because of this, because of Footscray, it’s proximity and relatively cheap rent compared to any place in the inner suburb, you know, it’s proximity. I think hipsters, they see it as accessible... so they can come in and re-write this part, and make it to their image which you know, is not any different from what migrants from Ethiopia, Sudan, India... they come in and make things to their image as well. Of course, they won’t achieve that but they will achieve degrees of familiarisation, you know. 

 

So do you think, then perhaps, is it possible for Footscray, for this hipster culture—for want of a better word—to peacefully coexist or does it, by its nature, override the culture that is already in Footscray?

 

The pattern that is usually observed elsewhere is that it will override. And mainly because they will be pushing rents up and a certain level the original, previous waves of settlers will find that unaffordable and be pushed out.

 

Well that leads me to my next question: do we have to be passive? Which is the question you posed in your article whilst we observe what takes place in Footscray, in your opinion? 

 

I think we should not be passive. I think we should advocate for it because in a way, perhaps we are not realising enough that it’s a very successful model of multiculturalism and when I say multiculturalism, it’s not as a policy, not as a top-down formal policy. It’s a bottom-up negotiation and appropriation and mixing and matching and manifesting pieces of their own but also adapting local practices and it’s very successful. And perhaps it should be a model that can be investigated, interrogated, researched, studied and in fact possibly formalised into policy 

 

On I guess like, preserving?

 

Or whether we can have rent control instead of just letting the market dictate everything and see enough value in such a model.

 

I guess that comes down to your proposal with Little Saigon Market and how it should have the same restoration and protection as Queen Victoria Market. Is that just something you came up with in doing your research? 

 

Yeah, and in my teaching and one of our sites is Queen Victoria Market itself. The investments that are put into QVM, it’s massive. And again it’s about value as well so there’s value in it, in terms of, okay, this is a traditional market, which is located in the CBD where the rents and price of land is probably some of the highest in Australia, so the pressure is massive and clearly if nothing is done to protect it then it will disappear.

 

Apartment blocks?

 

And if not apartment blocks, the various big supermarkets.

 

Imagine a Woolworths being there.

 

A Woolworths, the ALDI’s, the Costcos… So they way QVM is addressing this, they are treating that practice, this traditional market of small businesses and stalls and family owners, highly multicultural, as if its a very precious asset that is worth spending hundreds and millions to protect. 

 

So then… why not…

 

So then, why not Footscray? I would say they won’t have to invest anything near what they have put into QVM. 

 

To protect it of course. 

 

Saigon market is gone, they say, okay they will create some sort of market on the ground floor but it is never going to be the same and, Footscray market, which is the main one, it’s also quite tenuous in its existence because it’s only owned by one person, it’s not owned by a council like QVM is. But I can’t imagine it being as expensive as QVM. If the government would like to buy it, lease it for a very long term, just to keep it going because in a way, these markets are sort of the, what we call, the 'heartbeat' of the place—the food culture evolves around these markets, whether its the Vietnamese food culture or Indian, Chinese, horn of African.

 

And so then in terms of the people who are moving in, and this whole idea of not being passive—what do the people moving into Footscray need to know and what do they need to be conscious off in decision making. Of course there’s supporting local businesses, but is there anything else you could think of more than that?

 

I think it’s also about realising that this is an important contribution or contributions—this is not just you know survival, it’s also culture, even if they’re not conscious of it—just like anyone inside it’s an everyday thing - you’re sort of in a fish tank, it’s people like us from the outside the see something very distinctive and unique that has gone on and it think its that realisation which can make help a big difference and it’s what the traders at QVM have - they know. They know that this is a tradition that goes back over 130 or 40 years and they are proud of it and they are very cohesive as a group in that sense and proactive and I’m not sure if there’s such a group in Footscray that advocates for oldies and maybe that is one thing that is needed as well. I’m also not sure whether it Footscray’s own success of bringing quite disparate groups together is also its weak point. 

 

Right, in that so many people are attracted to it.

 

Yeah, in that it’s harder to be cohesive. Because they don’t necessarily share a language and culture and as we can see, they actually appropriate different areas of suburb itself.

 

I was going to ask about that Melb 2030 planning scheme you mentioned in the article because they did list five other suburbs for their “focus planning and investment,” being Boxhill, Dandenong, Broadmeadows, Frankston and Ringwood. You’ve kind of answered my question because whilst these suburbs, they do have lots of different Migrant backgrounds there, none of them is on the same scale of diversity. I mean, nowhere else is - Footscray, it’s got the most languages, I think 135…

 

Yeah, it’s amazing.

 

There’s nowhere else like it. So I guess, these other places on the plan, would they be under a similar sort of threat would you say? You used the word ’inevitable’ in your article. Do you think, change similar to what we are seeing in Footscray is inevitable in these places as well?

 

Oh yes. And I would say they have already changed. Significantly. Because the nature of each of these centres is quite different as well, whether it's their history, their urbanisation which is how their physical attributes have evolved through the years and their history, migrants history as well. For example, Box Hill is probably now one of the most expensive suburbs in the middle, mainly because it’s a very different socio-economic group that comes in. We talk about middle and upper part—used to be people from Hong Kong. Usually they are wealthy and its probably the most global of these five central activity districts you would have heard of developers that are from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, mainly Mainland China lately, and you know, they have apartment development that it’s not sold to locals, it’s sold to aspiring families overseas, who would like their children to have access to cleaner air, education. So, I would say it’s quite a different ball game there and it will look more homogeneous and yet it’s not because it’s actually quite multiple Chinese in a sense. And maybe to be aware of that you might have to know at least one of these Chinese dialects to realise.

 

They’re not speaking the same language?

 

Yeah exactly. But in a way, because of this designation, and because there’s a lot of money that has gone into it, we can probably say these five suburbs are… that this is, from the point of view of the government, that this is government lead gentrification. This is planned gentrification, which is the developer lead. Which is the more common model for the rest of the city. So a lot of money has gone into improving the public realm. If you go to Lonsdale Street in Dandenong you will see this is probably one of the most expensive streets in development ever you know it’s so well designed, so well built. And all these key ingredients for gentrification is there because a lot of money has gone into building schools, new schools, which is one of the key ingredients in terms of attracting aspiring families. But yes, this is government lead. 

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