You can watch the forty-fifth Parlour LAB here!
This session looked at how ecological approaches to design, economics, and Indigenous knowledge systems can help build more resilient environments, and how that knowledge might be integrated into planning and decision-making. Alison McFadyen and I were joined by two brilliant speakers: Dr Kamaljit Sangha (Professor of Ecological Economics at Charles Darwin University) and Dr Tegan Hall (Landscape Architect at Urbis).
Here are some of the key things I learned:
What is the difference between nature and biodiversity?
Biodiversity is one part of nature: the diversity of organisms that supports the wider system.
Humans are one species among billions, which helps put us in context rather than at the centre.
There is an economic dimension too. Pollination from biodiversity alone is worth billions of dollars, and there are well documented physical and psychological benefits tied to how much diversity people are exposed to.
What is a wellbeing economy?
A wellbeing economy is one grounded in natural systems rather than separated from them.
Right now, GDP treats spending on health problems as economic growth, while spending on prevention barely registers. What kind of economy do we actually want? Kamal advocates for a wellbeing economy that would instead measure human, social, and natural systems together, and support all three while living in harmony with nature.
Wellbeing is not only a monetary measure. Identity, land, functioning social systems, and freedom all shape it too.
Kamal pointed to Indigenous economies embedded in Country as models worth learning from, and to the idea that "my Country is sick, so I am sick" as a way of expressing that connection.
Australia's ecological footprint is high. If the whole world lived this way, the planet could not sustain it. Somewhere along the way, we need to ask what "enough" actually looks like.
Reading landscapes through time
Tegan's research takes her into swamps, bogs, and deep holes, extracting cores that hold long records of landscape change and the way ecosystems adapt to stress.
She encouraged us to see landscapes as things with memory, always being made and remade, rather than as fixed or binary.
Cities, in her framing, are ecosystems in their own right: places of transition where species adapt to changing conditions, and where humans are far from exceptional.
Long-term histories help us test and challenge assumptions about ecosystem health, and surface hidden memories and ecological drivers of change. The task, as she put it, is to listen better and design less.
Rather than designing finished products, Tegan argued for designing processes, since landscapes never really finish unfolding. Planning for our own obsolescence lets the landscape keep supporting whoever comes after us.
Societal collapse and reciprocity
What holds a society together? Reciprocal relationships between the natural environment, the people we interact with, and the political and economic systems around us.
Weaving nature back into the city, rather than treating it as decoration, builds resilience by tapping into both local and broader-scale systems.
Designing for wellbeing
Green space supports wellbeing in ways that are not complicated: seeing plants and birdlife builds a sense of connection to something living. What matters is having enough social places and parks for people to gather, and gardens with real character rather than mown lawns.
Community gardens help people release stress. Even a nature strip can build a sense of belonging simply through involvement.
Stewardship should be designed into a landscape from the start, with community consultation asking what people actually want from a park and building that into ongoing care. Messier, less manicured landscapes may carry real aesthetic and ecological value.
Native plantings that echo landscapes from elsewhere can help migrant communities feel a sense of nostalgia and belonging, layered carefully into design.
Giving local people a role, even something as small as planting one plant on a nature strip, builds a relationship with place that a mown verge never could.
Key takeaways from the speakers:
Kamal: COLLABORATE. Be the change you want to see, work with like-minded people, start small, and count the collective effort.
Tegan: STAY CURIOUS. Ask why you consider one approach better than another, challenge the profession's assumptions, and challenge your own too. Designers hold real power. Find the guerrilla moves within whatever constraints you are working under, whether policy or otherwise, and push back where you can.
My takeaway? Reciprocity runs both ways. Everyone has a role to play, and everyone is a steward.