#coffsharbour — Public Fediverse posts

Making hostile spaces The dispersal of non consumers

* At an intersection of numerous car parks, retail industry and an amusement industrial complex in Coffs Harbour there is a small green space with benches and birds. People and birds rest there and have their lunch.

Some time ago the amusement & drink giant piped ongoing unpleasant, loud music over the small green island and the abundant car parks.

The intention of the outdoor speakers distributing noise pollution is/was to engage in then 'dispersal' of ‘loitering' non customers.

This loud and repetitive ‘music’ is also known as "aggressive" or "defensive" architecture. This design in mostly public spaces is intended as a form of 'organised abandonment' (Ruth Wilson Gilmore) of the poor and the unhoused.

Often the exclusionary design acoustic ('steady-state spam’) is combined with other anti homeless devices (anti-homeless spikes furniture) which function to keep members of the public out of public spaces.

With increasing inequality, that is non spending consumers, the system is increasingly employing hostile practices. Privately owned public spaces such as walkways, plazas, arcades and small parks have to ensure the safety of their customers and staff. Non-consumers have no place in this scheme.

* "Woolworths has installed outdoor speakers at its Darwin city store to play the supermarket's 'Fresh Food People' jingle on repeat in a bid to deter loitering.” >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-25/darwin-city-woolworths-looping-jingle-anti-social-behaviour/107073330
* "The NSW Police Force is currently running an Australian-first trial in Moree (an area with a high Indigenous population) using rooftop drones to "fight crime" in the area, controlled by people hundreds of kilometres away at Bankstown Airport." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/automation-and-repression-the-two-go-hand-in-hand-daron-acemoglu/107063582
#HostileArchitecture #PublicSpaces #inequality #privatisation #ShoppingCentres #dispersal #FirstNationsPeoples #biopolitics #surveillance #CCTV #PervasiveTechnologies #UAVs #NoisePollution #IndigenousPeoples #DesignApartheid #governance #CoffsHarbour

Slips, trips and fall risks from ubiquitous dogs

In dog-friendly Australia it seems the non-native canine is the most dominant species. They are allowed to roam the (dog-free) beaches, the national parks and (pet-friendly) workplaces, flats, cafes, restaurants etc. If not straying, then they are on long or flexible, extendable leashes stretching across hallways and footpaths.

This trip-and-fall risk is human-unfriendly. The health, safety, and well-being of the bipedal companions is not considered. Pet dogs pose hygiene issues, potential zoonoses and allergy risks. The mental well-being of bite victims and phobia affected can trigger distress.

Foreman, A.M.; Glenn, M.K.; Meade, B.J.; Wirth, O. Dogs in the Workplace: A Review of the Benefits and Potential Challenges. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 498. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14050498
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/5/498

Image: Dog-friendly Coffs Central Shopping Centre, trip and fall hazard for customers

#Dogs #hazards #pets #PublicSpaces #Workplaces #falls #Food #zoonoses #hygiene #CoffsHarbour #cafes #Bellingen #PetRelatedInjuries #hospitalisations #DogFriendly

Court makes landmark decision after illegal logging in NSW state forest
"Trees were illegally felled in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest, north of Dorrigo." >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-01/wild-cattle-creek-state-forest-illegal-logging-court-decision/106514766
#loggingIndustry #FCNSW #harm #crime #Coffsharbour #Dorrigo #NSW #biodiversity #Gumbaynggirr #FirstNationsPeoples

The road to climate action is a 4 lane highway through the biodiversity of the Amazon.

Why Brazil is Building a Mega Highway in the Amazon Forest >>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxWAtUgfp6I

Had a déjà vu feeling here regarding the local Gleniffer Road widening and the Coffs Harbour Bypass Highway.

#FossilFuels #CoalGas #roads #biodiversity #GlenifferRd #PacificHighway #CoffsHarbourBypass #coffs #NSWLogging #forests #destruction #harm #climate #FossilFuels #roads #highways #CoffsHarbour #GlenifferRoad #NSWLogging #biodiversity #wildlife #COP30 #deforestation

Developing Coffs Harbour foreshore will amount to a ‘desecration of the land’, traditional owners say

"We need to have cultural spaces preserved, and no one is listening."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/10/coffs-harbour-foreshore-development-traditional-owners
#CoffsHarbour #NSW #MidNorthCoast #coast #sprawl #JettyForeshore #Gumbaynggirr #IndigenousPeoples #consultation

Remember the Urunga wetlands waste tailings rich in antimony, arsenic, lead and cyanide?

"For five years in the 1960s and 1970s, antimony and other heavy metals leached from an ore processing plant into the melaleuca wetlands. The wetlands used to open up into a moonscape of light grey sand with not a single bit of vegetation."
>>
https://www.crownland.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-07/Urunga-Wetlands-fact-sheet.pdf
https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=SSD-5357%2120190227T035916.488%20GMT

Now they want to go for Wild Cattle Creek 'high-grade and high-tonnage' antimony-gold mining >>
https://www.listcorp.com/asx/tmg/trigg-minerals-limited/news/acquisition-of-globally-significant-antimony-project-3091939.html

A Clarence Catchment Alliance community meeting

is being hosted by the Bellingen Environment Centre,
with Blicks River Guardians and Lock the Gate Nambucca,
from 2pm on Friday May 31 at 16 Cudgery St, Dorrigo.
>>
https://clarencevalleynews.com.au/clarence-catchment-alliance-community-meeting/
#NSW #Dorrigo #Urunga #remediation #CoffsHarbour #mining #antimony #gold #extractivism #harm #WildCattleCreek #WCC #water #contamination #wetlands #rivers #waterways #freshwater #MarineWater #platypus #biodiversity #BellingenShire

Highway expansions and road widening
How America (Australia) Can Break Its Highway Addiction

"After a century of rampant roadbuilding, the U.S. highway network is ubiquitous, dominating the American landscape in bucolic rural settings as well as dense urban ones. Rather than being a tool for mobility, it has become a monument to an auto-centric lifestyle that fouls the air and depletes the public coffers. Neither the country nor the planet can afford to keep expanding it."

"At the federal level, even asking questions about the collective climate impact of highway building appears verboten."
>>
https://slate.com/business/2024/08/construction-traffic-cars-driving-transportation-highway.html
#Sprawl #roads #highways #expansion #cars #automobility #industry #asphalt #Motordom #MobilityDesign #ClimateBreakdown #pollution #NSW #CoffsHarbour #bellingen #GlenifferRoad

Transport systems designed around the car: congestion

“You can’t build your way out of congestion, not in the long term...The standard description is that putting extra lanes on a road is a cure for congestion, in the same way that buying larger pants is a cure for obesity."

“The more capacity you provide, the more people will drive, and it doesn’t get anywhere in the end. Congestion is one of those things that really suggests that we need to invest more in public transport, and we need to take careful thought about how we actually develop new areas, because the more we design and build car dependent areas, the more congestion we’ll have.”
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/08/brisbane-traffic-congestion-ranked-10th-worst-in-world-but-experts-question-black-box-analysis
#roads #congestion #traffic #Bellingen #GlenifferRoad #CoffsHarbour #highways #MobilityDesign

Koala habitat and roads

"A research project to compile the first genome map of koalas across eastern Australia has exposed areas where the species is most at risk.The most surprising results were in coastal pockets of NSW, where koala populations are increasingly hemmed between sprawling coastal communities, and the Pacific Highway."

"Those koala populations are really quite constrained genetically because you've got ocean on one side, highway on another and a town to the north and a town to the south.The fracturing of habitat makes it hard for koalas to mix and diversify the genes of their offspring, putting the species at risk of extinction from environmental shocks, and serious diseases like chlamydia."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-03/koalas-genome-map-university-of-sydney/104647824
#koalas #wildlife #habitat #MidNorthCoast #NSW #roads #cars #sprawl #extinction #GlenifferRoad #Bellingen #CoffsHarbour #PacificHighway

The tyranny of automobility and sprawl

While the Bellingen /Gleniffer area is transitioning from an ‘idyllic tourist town’ into a ‘normal Aussie suburb’ (of Coffs Harbour), road congestion gets everyone stuck in traffic.

Car dependent motorists in their SUVs and bloated oversized trucks demand more and wider roads, larger car parking and a right to pothole-free roads for their 'sports utility vehicles’.

Extreme commuting for the necessaries of life are conducted in big private vehicles powered by fossil fuel. An aggregate of ugly big-box stores (large format retail, Coffs) with hostile giant car parks deliver what consumers desire. These consumption hubs are mostly inaccessible to pedestrians and can be dangerous ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé).

The mobility design of old school traffic engineers responds to the sprawling expansion with more of the same: more roads, wider roads and bypassing the last bypass. They call it ‘upgrades’.

As the latest $2.2 billion highway or forest road ‘upgrade/s’ are blasting their way through the landscape, they are silent about the ‘public bads’: the destroyed biodiversity habitat, the downgraded neighbourhoods, the violence and the polluted biosphere.

The ‘normality’ of automobility, or the 'car in the head' in petromodernity together with regulatory inertia make a transition to alternative land uses, energy systems, mobilities and ways of being a challenge.

#sprawl #suburbia #mobility #cars #roads #JevonsParadox #externalities #automobility #pollution #biodiversity #ClimateExtremes #FossilFuels #Petromodernity #GlenifferRoad #CoffsHarbour #Bellingen #SettlerSociety #liveability

Extraction and violence go hand in hand

How a fight to save the bush became a battlefield

"In Coffs Harbour Local Court the forestry contractors Michael Luigi Vitali and Rodney James Hearfield were found guilty of assaulting Graham and his companion Andre Johnston that afternoon on the road on the Dorrigo Plateaux three and a half years ago. No conviction was recorded."

"What she (Higginson) still believes to have been collusion between police, loggers and the FCNSW reflected a dangerous culture in which protesters are perceived by the government to be suspect automatically, while those who profit from resource extraction were above suspicion."
>>
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/how-a-fight-to-save-the-bush-became-a-battlefield-20240117-p5exxc.html
#FCNSW #violence #loggers #ForestryCorporation #ethics #NativeForests #NSWLogging #CoffsHarbour #GreatKoalaNationalPark #WildCattleCreek #RiotSquad #environmentalists #protests #climate #BiodiversityCrisis

Newry State forest - Anti-logging protest enters second week
Anti-logging protesters near Coffs Harbour, on the New South Wales north coast, say an area being logged in the Newry State forest contains sacred sites and endangered species.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/video/anti-logging-protest-enters-second-week/g6o6mcn7l

'It's killing our songlines' - traditional owners protest against logging
Podcast & transcipt
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/its-killing-our-songlines-traditional-owners-protest-against-logging/4p2pwob17
#Logging #biodiversity #Gumbaynggirr #FirstNationspeople #CoffsHarbour #NewryStateForest #SacredSites #EndangeredSpecies #koalas

"Two men employed by a third party contractor for the Forestry Corporation of New South Wales have pleaded not guilty to charges of assault against two environmentalists on the state's mid north coast. "
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-14/third-party-employees-nsw-forestry-assault-not-guilty-pleas/102479456
#CoffsHarbour #Environmentalists #WildCattleCreek #StateForest #Violence

Doggo's sure have it good in Australia! They can have a surf and swim at the dog-leash-free beach and then a shower with a view. This one at Coffs Harbour, NSW. Was hilarious watching owners drag their dogs through it to get the sand and salt off.

#Australia #Dog #dogs #DogWash #CoffsHarbour #NSW #Shower #Canine #Beach #Pooch #Pooches #PoochFriendly #Pets #Surf #Coast