You know, as an architect, I didn't quite realize I was going to chase somebody around Fed Square

who was dressed up in an apple costume shouting, juice the apple, juice, juice the apple.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast that is increasingly worried about how tech companies are moving into public space and our cities and are trying to capture those and make

profit from them.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today I'm speaking with Tanya Davich.

She's an architect,

activist, and researcher who serves as the president of citizens for Melbourne, a public space advocacy

group, and is a director of Uplah, an architecture firm based in Melbourne. We have a fantastic

conversation today where we talk about the campaign that Tanya was involved in to stop the Apple

store that was planned for a central public space in Melbourne, how it was ultimately stopped,

and how these plans for town squares, as Apple calls them, do not align with what a public space

should really be. If you like our conversation, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and share it with

any friends or colleagues that you think would find it interesting. And if you want to support

the work that I put into making this podcast, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us

and become a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy our conversation. Tanya, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk to you because you were

involved in this campaign that took place a few years ago, but it's still going on in some way to

oppose this Apple store that was proposed for a key public space in Melbourne called Federation Square

and also sort of building a vision for what the future of this public space could be.

So I wanted to start by asking you when this Apple store was proposed for Federation Square in

December 2017, just a few days before Christmas. What was your reaction to that when it was announced?

Well, I was absolutely devastated by the announcement.

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