Seven years on from its inception by urban dynamo Isabella Cawthorn as a ‘talking stick’ for the capital city, the urbanista phenomenon known as Talk Wellington is folding up its awning.

In those seven years the tallies of city-making material has tallied up:

Near-to-500+ posts that have, as Isabella has succinctly summarised, “illuminat(ed) something interesting about our urban places with data, poetry, argument, personal stories, analysis, polemics, kids’ drawings, musings, tools, exhortations and sass. And, crucially, encouraging illuminated readers to act on it – which has been a distinguishing feature of Talk Wellington relative to other (much smarter) platforms like The Kākā, Newsroom et al”.
Plus “all the social-media-pointing, to direct people to innumerable other folks’ work that said it better, or more entertainingly, or with better visuals. And all the social media doing ‘just your regular reminders’ – because apparently we all need regular reminders about things like induced demand, or that it’s good for residential developments to design for community, or for reduced runoff, or that a kid hit by a car is a lot less hurt if car’s doing 30 kph than 50kph … etc etc”.
Plus “the interminable good-faith explaining and engaging on the issues, in the disintegrating spheres of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin (plus the occasional guffaw and occasional mute/block)”.
Plus “a tailor-made, special email written fresh every few weeks with previews of all the posts, plus special features about events, initiatives and actions likely to inspire and fill people’s cups for good city stuff”.

To read more instructional and provocative insights you can go to Isabella’s farewell to Talk Wellington in full at So long, and thanks for all the fish – Talk Wellington out

URBAN ADVOCACY IN ACTION: IT TAKES ALL OF US

As a sidenote Aotearoa New Zealand is fortunate to have an active cross-section of instigators of fully-fledged urban korero, and hubs of urban advocacy, including (to name a few):

Greater Auckland (the 2015 successor to a blog started in 2008)
Living Streets Aotearoa
Cycling Action Network
Greater Ōtautahi
Women in Urbanism

These feeders of urban ‘brain food’ also extend to Auckland Conversations, NZIA City Talks and Christchurch Conversations/ Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making – supported by organisations as diverse as UDF Aotearoa, professional institutes, private sector players, local government and central government agencies.

Collectivism notwithstanding, the tempo set is often due to stand-out individuals. Think two Patricks (Reynolds, Morgan) for instance, but only one, indefatigable Isabella Cawthorn.

[NOTE TO READERS: If you have a candidate for a ‘Shout Out’ (an organisation or individual) let us know by email to media@urbandesignforum.org.nz]

FROM TALK WELLINGTON TO URBANERDS

The playing of the last post for Talk Wellington this month was typically low-key from the undersung Isabella – pictured here at the latest Urbanerds gathering at the Waitoa establishment on Victoria Street in Pōneke Wellington.

Isabella’s reflections out to followers of Talk Wellington on 4 September recognised that “it’s been a great run” for Talk Wellington. She made a special shout out to the original gangster crew who worked on Talk Wellington, coupled with a tribute “to the advisors, informers, explainers, pointer-outers, steerers, experts of all kinds, who helped me – a novice – get something useful to the public about your expert fields”.

Isabella: “Insight about towns and cities invariably demands both multi-disciplinarity and narrow deep expertise. I am an urbanist Swiss army knife, a multidisciplinary nerd haunted by the fact that my little hacksaw, screwdriver and bottle-opener are feeble, basic versions of the dedicated, specialist tools. So thanks, all of you for your help with exciting and activating regular people. Love you nerds!”.

Lastly it was the latent power of urban civics, and a frail media info-structure, that gave Isabella the impetus to set up Talk Wellington. Over the years she learned, directly and indirectly, that because of something on Talk Wellington people have:

made their first ever formal submission on anything
made their first-ever submission in person (with their kid too!)
initiated a conversation at playgroup about safer local streets
run an event to start a play street movement in their suburb
talked to their local shopkeepers about retail custom and parking
found a crew so “trying to make things better feels less hard and more fun now”
organised an outing (several in fact)
spoken to their councillor or MP for the first time
just been so buzzed about something that they’ve enthused to strangers about it on the bus!

“And then what happened?” we often hear from people after reading one of our posts.

Talk Wellington symbolised an advancement of the kaupapa of a more informed and engaged citizenry as a force for good urban change. It has been a notable gap filler. The rakau is being passed on, in part now, to the gathering known as Urbanerds – an in-person, interactive, real-time complementary forum that Isabella continues to help co-host, and that is spreading around the motu. In Wellington too the emergence of consistent gusts of Windbaggery from The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus, bodes well for intelligently informed civic debate.

The Talk Wellington site will stay live on the web, because as Isabella says, “so many challenges and opportunities for our towns seem quite enduring – this stuff is going to be useful for quite some time!” For an indication of the volume and ‘Isa-bellised’ variety of Talk Wellington, a readymade index has been compiled here by a fan who hopes it may be used for a study project some time in the future.

________________________________
RIP Talk Wellington – 2017 – 4/9/2024