Watch this extraordinary conversation with Tess Lea and Crystal Legacy, two researchers at the forefront of thinking about social policy, its challenges and potential – including the impact on the built environment.

Get started by reading the session description below and watching the trailer with Tess Lea.

preview

1 formal point on completion of the cpd questions.
Refer to the Learning Objectives for Parlour LAB.

pricing details

$45 General
$30 Parlour Collective
$15 Concession

Note: all ticket prices are per person, and cover the cost of running the program. We offer additional group discounts for Parlour Collective practices as follows:

  • 10–19 tickets – 5% additional discount 
  • 20–49 tickets – 10% additional discount
  • 50+ tickets – 15% additional discount

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Democratic design

LAB 33 invites us to consider the impacts – for good and ill – of social policy. What is good social policy? How is this made? What works against it? What does this mean for built environment professionals, and how can we support the development and implementation of good policy? Two outstanding researchers share their analysis, ideas and strategies for action.

Professor Tess Lea is Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Macquarie University. Among many other things, she leads the Housing for Health Research Incubator in partnership with Healthabitat. She is an anthropologist who studies organisational ethnography, policy and bureaucracy, and Indigenous endurance under ongoing settler occupation. Her 2020 book Wild Policy asks “Why is it almost always the case that any benefits from social policy must be arm-wrestled into being?”. In response, Lea offers the concept of policy ecology as a way to understand the dispersed, interconnected nature of social policy, and to offer a means to engage in “critically mindful action”.

Crystal Legacy is an Associate Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne and co-director of the Informal Urbanism Research Hub (InfUr). Her research interests include transport politics, urban conflict, citizen participation, urban governance, infrastructure planning and deliberative democracy. She is currently exploring structural gaslighting in the city, and the ways this impacts communities, city planning and practitioners. Crystal also co-leads a monthly discussion with members of the Progressive Planners Network.

Watch this compelling session with Crystal and Tess in conversation with Rebecca McLaughlan and Katti Williams.

This session was recorded live on 18 October, 2024.