What, I wonder, do the people of Greater Shepparton consider to be progress?
Should the question be put to all nearly 70,000 people who call the area home, the answers would be complex, varied and, I’m sure, reflect the individual respondent’s existing economic and social standing.
It was Brooklyn-born psychologist and the founder of the school of thought known as humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow, who developed the ‘hierarchy of needs’.
The US thinker had distilled aspects of our lives upon which our thriving, or ability to grow and become contributing members of our community, was dependent.
He displayed those needs as a pyramid and at the peak was self-actualisation, followed by esteem, then love and belonging, safety and finally, physiological matters.
Writing on the Blanchet House website, Natalie Conway said: “What do people need to reach their full potential and thrive? In the case of someone experiencing homelessness, they first need to have their most basic human needs met reliably every day.
“According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, human beings’ physiological needs for food, water, clothing, shelter and sleep must be satisfied in order for them to address more complex needs like mental and physical health, relationships, sobriety, long-term housing, and employment.”
Anecdotal research about what people considered progress to be for Shepparton surprised me, but left me a little confused.
A caveat is that I generally asked those who move in my circles and so that, undoubtedly, would bias the sample.
However, some who were not of my ilk, so to speak, were quizzed and for them progress seemed to be about the general betterment of Greater Shepparton.
That, of course, is fine, except that the matter is wholly subjective and so we have to make judgments about what is ‘better’ and how we best get there.
Some said progress for them was a city with a powerful sense of community, better education that went from pre-school to tertiary, and a comprehensive health system that ensured care from paediatrics through to old age care.
Some wanted to see significant tree cover throughout the city, and there was profound support for a better public transport system, both within the city and inter-city.
Among some there was a call for a study of the city’s geographic boundaries, with limits on urban areas, forcing a better understanding of using infill for new homes, along with low-rise buildings rather than endlessly creating new estates on former farmlands.
Of course, whatever it is that we consider to be progress has to fall with the confines of the climate emergency and the net-zero 2030 target set by Greater Shepparton City Council.
Thoughts about progress tumbled around as I read The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, which was a compilation of pieces from around the world by climate scientists, activists and other thinkers concerned about global warming.
The chapter written by one of the leading climate scientists in the UK, Kevin Anderson, who is a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and deputy director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, grabbed my attention.
Although not discussing progress as such, he wrote that mitigation aligned with 1.5 to 2°C of warming was an issue of major structural change.
“It means improving the fabric of our homes, rapidly expanding public transport, developing a massive programme of electrification, changing town planning, rolling out e-bikes in cities and shared electric vehicles in the rural environment. All this could be win-win for the majority within our nations,” he said.
“Our cities and urban environments could again be built around people rather than two-tonne metal boxes. High-quality, secure jobs would emerge. Children would be safe to cycle and the air would be better for their lungs.”
A friend visited Switzerland during a recent trip overseas (I wished him safe travels, but he is aware that I don’t approve of international flights) and while in the city of Zermatt, he was intrigued to see that combustion-powered vehicle were not allowed in the centre of the city.
People had to park about 5km away from the city centre and then take an electric train-like shuttle to the heart of the town.
All transport in the central areas was electric.
The idea of ‘park and ride’ or ‘drop off and shuttle’ had been suggested by Shepparton’s Slap Tomorrow as a means to resolve the traffic congestion issues around the then new Greater Shepparton Secondary College.
Students would be dropped off at designated points remote from the school and then taken to the Hawdon St college in shuttle buses.
My friend, who is a rail enthusiast, travelled a lot by train in Switzerland and noted that our so-called ‘new’ trains running between Shepparton and Melbourne were ancient compared to the all-electric trains that took him from St Moritz to Zermatt. The electricity for the trains came exclusively from hydro power.
What’s happened in Zermatt, Switzerland, could be applied here in Shepparton, with some modifications, but it would demand bold, courageous and creative thinking, and decision making, and that is the essence of progress.