Halloween – it's kinda spooky

Manly Council is attempting to facilitate 'community' top down. The chosen event this time is Halloween. “Make your Street Spookier” goes the postcard-blurb. We should engage in a “creepy” orgy of consuming and line the streets with debris (plastics): “fake cobwebs, bats" etc., streamers and sugar/coloured lollies and spend big on costumes. Strange ideas for a council that purports minimising waste and has a sustainability statement. The promise is that the road will be closed, but no mention is made where the many spectators will park and what the increased traffic hazard means for wildlife and adjoining streets capes.

Halloween has its origin in the agricultural rites of death and renewal for a new sustainable year. Part of the produce had to be sacrificed to the land spirits and shared within the community. Dark forces had to be soothed with gifts and bonfires held darkness and death at bay. This renewal festival has long been co-opted and commercialised to flog off (mainly plastic) merchandise. Australia has just recently hopped on to this bandwagon.
The are a lot of spooky skeletons in the Australian closet. The plastic bats, spiders, owls, crows, skeletons, the cats, werewolves, haunted houses and zombies might be contemporary props to ward off the the inevitable hot dry future created by mischief-making adults. The horror is ususally projected onto the living native spiders and bats etc - till the ritual spray or habitat destruction puts an end to the spook. The defense mechanism must lay the blame on a sacrificial being, to heal the denial, the anxious state of being. Halloween is a welcomed purging as well as an economic healer now.

Children are very anxious about the future. A world without water and food , but permanent engulfing “bonfires” does not fuel much optimism. Responsible elders not looking after our only common home make the decisions to heat it up unbearable for all, make the sea rise and melt the ice. Daily, many members of this common household have to go forever. The land, waterways and air are used as rubbish tips and all loose their health. Degraded land and toxic landscapes are part of the inheritance. This 'house of horrors' might well be less inhabitable than what their parents inherited and squandered. The disruptive nature of economic and ecological inter generational equity is creepy. Apart from these many “natural disasters” of a turbulent future, children go through horror scenarios of neglect and child abuse in Australia. Irresponsible use of cars, guns and dogs also sacrifices many young lives. Haunted human relationships propagate in a spooky Zombie culture. It is bewitched how young people are denied independence and maybe a future too.

Till then, put on the big magical denial party and celebrate...
Images: 1. Children at Manly Beach, 2 & 3 Street art Berlin

Noisy suburbs made unlivable

Housing is inadequate for the ubiquitous noise emissions. Law and enforcement lags behind. No usabilitiy, loss of value - unsustainability

The living and mobility architecture of Australia has not kept pace in the last few decades with the dissipation of ubiquitous (noisy) technology. With the majority still living in a petrol fuelled sub-urban sprawl along the coasts, housing quality gives in to quantity. The emerging higher density housing also has no quality indicators regarding standards and insulation.

Within the range of 'can do' is the proliferation of static and mobile mechanization and technology. Living areas are THE industrial space as such. Large Footprint mansions are constantly rebuilt, not to achieve a passive house, but to house-flip and cash in. Hence the building noise and the associated pollution never stops. The McMansions are filled up with gear & gadgets. Most are electricity or petrol powered and run in a space of seemingly endless energy. Machines the size of European smart-cars heat or cool the entire bunkers humming 24/7. The three-tonne hummers make numerous trips a day to get the 250 ml of something from the corner shop and leave an even hotter world behind. Large screen T.V.s seem to take up the entire wall and are running from dawn to dusk. Loud amplified music is generously shared with the block. The remaining Earth around the property is regularly attacked with numerous noisy petrol gadgets.

Defying the existing laws, most of these noise polluting acts are freely committed at any hour. Many of the ubiquitous machines emit low frequency noise - these unrecognised vibrations are detrimental to the well-being of life. The law and the enforcing bodies have yet to recognise that living in an industrial site and being subjected to 'domestic noise' has serious health effects, e.g. productivity and loss of habitable 'real estate'.

Commercial establishments attract customers by 'throbbing their body', rather than catering to the ear. As this process continues into the early morning hours, it also happens to throb the value and usability of the neighbouring flats (downwards).

In the absence of contemporary dwellings, law, effective enforcement and acoustic personal responsibility, one can buy 'peace & quiet' from the 'noise cancellation industry'. One can simply build a bunker, screening out 'domestic' industrial noise, transportation and (re)-construction noise. The market is sure to benefit from the arms-race of building out noise pollution. It is easier to leave behind uninhabitable urban areas, than regulate noise from 'convenient' machinery.
Acoustic domestic terror
Noisy 'Gardening'
WHO Noise guidlines
Manly Council
EPA