A landscape architect invites me to speak to his students in a class—the Politics of Public Space. The idea of landscape architecture sounds like a peculiar contradiction, not dissimilar to the concept of legislating nature, something that should live above the law—but still, I agree to participate. We meet in a new building and don’t talk about trees. His students are eager to discuss ideas of gender and race in the built environment as we critique a new building on Swanston Street. Cities are large and unruly, and we struggle to retrofit them into the latest thematic buzzwords, but the students move eagerly through the building trying to assess its impact on our humanity. It meets most of our criteria appallingly, despite its architectural form and porousness, distinctive of inner-city Melbourne. From some angles you can almost see the trees that grow along Swanston, the city’s spine. But their presence is like wallpaper, decorative but not cultural or nourishing.

The landscape architect moves us into a small tutorial room for the second half of class. I’m asked to lead a discussion on the ARM Portrait building of William Barak and I begin by reading an essay referencing Linda Kennedy. Kennedy conveyed the irony of a blak figure in the built form with menacing honesty. Her words cut into my own internal flux: that it is bewildering to be an urban planner of Ballardong Noongar descent living on another mob’s country. But a spark or gut feeling tells me to keep pushing within these professional borderlines even as they oppress. And, if I don’t suffocate in the process, then dismantling the borders which both restrict and determine livelihood will seem worth it. I’m aware that this is difficult terrain as the landscape architect catches me on the intersection, questioning why I work in land use policy and not art or academia. Part of the answer is that I see different struggles in these industries that are equally damaging. And I am more interested in border crossing, spilling into these disciplines at night, leaving an imprint then returning to my desk in the 37-storey building in the morning. Moving across borders is dangerous but claiming one spot has never felt comfortable, either.

We keep talking about the space between buildings and the ones contained in textbooks, like there’s a real difference. Another guest speaker asks if I’m frustrated by the industry’s obsession with preserving “heritage” buildings in spaces like Fed Square while birthing trees are at risk of vanishing. The answer is horrifyingly visible in the Australian landscape where terra nullius quietly persists, where western architecture is revered and western trees—those clean British Oakes and Elm trees which line St Kilda Rd Boulevard—are not threated by tunnels. Cultural ignorance seeps into the industry. But while it is easy to critique, I still see change at the juncture of art, activism, architecture, academia and policy, even if the concept of meaningful co-existence seems distant and challenging.

Working in the mechanics of a foreign operating system and trying to manipulate the law from within is overwhelming. But I see trees growing in urban areas and understand that they were here before the western law that attempts to protect them. Trees are visible through the windows of packed trains crammed with office workers. And in the language of Lisa Bellear’s Beautiful Yuroke Red River Gum and Jeanine Leane’s Bride Over the River Memory. Trees grow in unlikely places beyond planning strategies, urban design theory, legislation, tech revolutions, environmental activism, and art. They speak to each other through complex root structures beneath city streets. When we draw lines across our own professional borders, new messages emerge and the possibility of something different grows.