Kate Shaw

Dr. Kate Shaw (b. 1961, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian academic, planning activist and commentator, currently serving as a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Shaw is notable for her work in connection with the protection of local cultural diversity and alternative sub-cultures. Dr. Shaw's engagement with these concerns has encompassed community activism and education, media contributions and academic publications as well as teaching and researching at RMIT University and The University of Melbourne.

Amongst other things, Dr. Shaw is notable for her high-profile involvement in the 'Save the Espy' campaign in the late 1990s and early 2000s, formally known as The Esplanade Alliance. The Esplanade Hotel in the inner Melbourne suburb of St Kilda is an iconic venue famous for its nurturance of a wide variety of Australian rock and alternative music acts. The site on which the hotel stands was purchased in 1997 by developer Becton who proposed to build a high-rise upmarket apartment complex to take advantage of the extremely good views across Port Phillip Bay and back to the Melbourne central city area. Apart from the debate about the merits of such a tall building in an otherwise relatively low-rise area, the concern of local residents and the music community was that even if the hotel itself was allowed to remain, the venue would soon be forced to stop hosting live music due to complaints from the residents of the new apartment tower, as has been the case in many other gentrifying suburbs, such as Fitzroy. The campaign was successful in reducing the height of the tower significantly and ensuring that key aspects of the hotels layout were retained to enable its survival as a live music venue.

Dr. Shaw's doctoral thesis was titled 'Room to move : the politics of protecting the place of alternative culture' and uses a number of case studies from European and Australian cities to investigate the range of policies that have been used to protect alternative culture in neighbourhoods subject to gentrification.

References

* [http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_3644.html Aesop Prize 2006]
* [http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/04/1177788399027.html Adam Morton, The Age, 5/5/07 - Foreign students living on edge of society]
* [http://www.coverbands.com.au/Articles/ViewArticle.asp?ID=64&Title=IF%20YOU%20VALUE%20LIVE%20MUSIC,%20PLEASE%20READ! If you value live music, please read!]
* [http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:jkk0j88HLfIJ:home.vicnet.net.au/~espall/news/2004.htm+kate+shaw+espy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=au The Esplanade Alliance]

Selected Publications

* Porter, L. and Shaw, K. (Eds)(2008) Whose Urban Renaissance? An international comparison of urban regeneration strategies, London: Routledge (ISBN 978-0-415-45682-1)
* Long, C., Shaw, K. and Merlo, C. (Eds)(2005) Suburban fantasies : Melbourne unmasked, Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing (ISBN 174097090X)
* Shaw, K (Ed)(1998) Planning practice 1998 : the best and worst examples of city planning and development, North Melbourne, Vic. : People's Committee for Melbourne (ISBN 0958571708)

External links

* [http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff/shaw.html Kate Shaw's staff webpage at The University of Melbourne]