The new student precinct at the University of Melbourne marks what is becoming overwhelmingly clear about Australia’s university model: prestige and outward appearance count for more than the quality of education for students, and certainly takes precedence over ensuring fair and secure conditions for those who work in these institutions. It is therefore not so much the aesthetic or design of the building itself, but that it reflects something more pernicious that lies at the heart of higher education: a hollowing out of the system.

Driven by the Merri-Bek City Council and local community groups such as Friends of Merri Creek, the restoration of the Merri Creek has been wildly successful. To walk down the track is to feel like you’ve stumbled into a completely different city. One would hardly recognise this place as the runoff hub of Melbourne’s industrialised north, a deathly quiet place that stank of something unnatural just two generations ago.

Moving from the Empire of Cartographers and back to Melbourne, Monkey Grip in hand, I walk down streets coextensive with a novel that can only chart what they are and yet can never coincide with their reality. To walk down Easey Street is now never just a walk down Easey Street: for it’s possible that, somewhere in the tarmac under the pinkish-yellow sky, a scrap of writing on which Nora rides her bike might be seen.

The Secret Life of Us did away with decades of self-conscious representations of Australia as an alienating, unpleasant and quite frankly embarrassing place to spend one’s twenties. Instead, posited a city where its new generation of inhabitants feel comfortable. For many young viewers, the show reflected real life—unmagnified, unfiltered and uncynical.

It’s not a radical notion that pubs deserve special protection, and there’s never been a better opportunity for a test case about placing meaningful heritage protections on a pub than this threat to the John Curtin Hotel. If the Labor Party is serious about never letting another Corkman Hotel disgrace happen, then this is the time to reset the planning laws in a way that serves the strong community sentiment to protect pubs for their cultural function, as well as their architecture.

For over 40,000 years, the Yarra has been actively cared for by the people of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung nations. These communities are still today fighting for the river.

Last March, a handful of prominent Melbourne nightclubs were called out for hosting events with all-male lineups. It’s a tale as old as time itself, but it’s also 2021. This shouldn’t be happening.

In 2016, the Economist’s Global Liveability Index ranked Melbourne the world’s ‘Most Liveable City’ for the sixth year in a row. That same year, I spent my first two semesters of tertiary education at Melbourne’s premier university, living in a cramped twenty-four person share-house in the inner-city.

Alongside a desire for broader social change, counterculturalists longed for community and connection with like-minded people in ways that challenged traditional forms of social sustenance and conventional lifestyles. This history is still alive in how we imagine and experience the urban space today.