People VPELA Committee 2020-21 new member profiles

The VPELA Committee welcomed three new members in the November 2020 elections: Mark Sheppard, Ellen Tarensenko, and Mia Zar. Here are short profiles.

Mark Sheppard, kinetica

Mark grew up in suburban Auckland, New Zealand, from which he escaped to the big smoke (London) as soon as he’d finished his architecture degree. After completing post-grad studies in urban design, he worked for David Lock Associates in the New Town of Milton Keynes (although he couldn’t bring himself to return to suburbia, so continued living in London). David and others taught him all about master planning and urban regeneration.

In London, he fell in love with the convenience and vibrancy of properly urban environments. He also fell in love with an Australian, which was lucky since he couldn’t afford to bring up a family in London but thought that returning to NZ would be a backward move.

So, having got the big OE thing out of his system (for now …), Mark settled in an inner suburb of Melbourne, where he could still enjoy the benefits of compact living but with better weather. He grew a planning and urban design consultancy (originally David Lock Associates, now kinetica), which has somehow survived. At the same time, he grew three kids whom he has so far failed to evict from the house.

Since hanging out his shingle in Australia, Mark has worked on a weird and wonderful range of urban renewal and growth projects for public and private sector clients all across the country (and, yes, back in NZ). After a while, he discovered that he could successfully argue that black is white, so lawyers snapped him up for expert evidence too (joke!)

Mark has an independent streak that belies his diminutive size. He has always felt a desire to challenge the status quo, if only to provoke debate and fresh thinking. One of his favourite things is applying ideas from other subjects to stimulate new approaches to urban design and development, and sharing his thoughts via articles, talks, the occasional book and even a computer game! (He is currently exploring how concepts of evolutionary and disruptive change, elasticity and redundancy, friction and complexity might inform a new, more targeted way of controlling development that maximises the emergence of innovative and diverse built form outcomes.)

Mark is passionate about shining a light on the planning elephant-in-the-room that is middle-ring Melbourne, and in particular the unrealised potential it offers to address the big issues of housing affordability, sustainability, resilience, social inclusion and health, if we can just get over our obsession with neighbourhood character. Mark is a founding member of the Victorian chapter of Suburban Alliance, which aims to raise the level of debate about suburban issues.

He also enjoys helping to cultivate the careers of his younger colleagues.

When he is not thinking about cities, Mark scrapes the ’cello in a symphony orchestra, meddles in the development of the local high school, produces dodgy oil paintings of dead forebears, and dreams of being able to travel to overseas cities again.

Ellen Tarasenko, Herbert Smith Freehills

Ellen is a planning and environment lawyer with 12 years’ experience acting for a range of developer clients. Over that time, she can honestly say she’s been exposed to a lot of things ‘planning and environment’ – from mega towers and major transport projects to 2-lot subdivisions, and everything in between.

Career highlights include undertaking a site inspection in the client’s helicopter, seeing a project all the way through from an application to Council and refusal, to a win at the Court of Appeal, and all the learnings and laughs with the late and great Phil Bisset, which she deeply treasures. Lowlights include faceplanting in the middle of a VCAT hearing – she went to stand up but her foot had fallen asleep.

By far the best thing Ellen says she has done for her career was to move to London for 2 years. She worked in the planning team at a large UK law firm and did a lot of (the equivalent of) section 173 agreements, which are used very differently in the UK. The concept of affordable housing was completely new to her at the time, but it became a particular interest. Ellen informed her UK colleagues that, in Victoria, developers would be able to tell Councils to nick-off if they tried to impose a 30% affordable housing requirement or cap their profits at 20%, as is common with UK planning approvals. When she returned to Melbourne in 2017, there was a bill in Parliament to introduce principles of affordable housing in the PE Act. Ellen believes we are making slow progress in changing hearts and minds and while it is getting there, we still have a long way to go in the area of affordable and social housing.

She and her husband, Leigh, love to travel. While 2020 put a dampener on that, they have had 3 mini-trips to regional Victoria, plus a trip to Tasmania, since Christmas. Ellen is eagerly waiting for travel bubbles to open and is creating a pipeline of booked restaurants and events to keep her busy in the meantime.

Mia Zar, Tract

Mia hails from Perth, W.A. where she had no idea that planning existed until she was working as a receptionist at architecture firm Jones Coulter Young (JCY), where she was constantly overhearing colleagues complaining about “bloody planners” thwarting their grand visions.

After a few weeks of Friday night drinks, it became clear that these “bloody planners” had a great deal of power, being tasked with developing the framework within which architects and developers carried out their work and therefore having a real opportunity to influence environmental and social outcomes (or so it seemed to a naïve 18 year old!).

Mia began her urban planning studies at Curtin University in Perth whilst working in the CEO’s office at the East Perth Redevelopment Authority, gaining insight into urban renewal and placemaking (and the operation of quasi-government bodies!).

In 2009 (?), Mia moved to Melbourne and transferred to RMIT and (ever the multitasker) undertook a semester exchange at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada as a way of fitting in a decent overseas trip whilst knocking off the last of her studies.

Her time at Ryerson fuelled Mia’s interest in social policy and affordable housing, with the redevelopment of Regent Park underway at the time (a 280,000sqm social housing public-private partnership project), and an eye-opening course in homelessness which highlighted policy failings and discriminatory practices which are also evident in Australia.

Back in Melbourne, Mia began her planning career in local government; spending time at the cities of Banyule, Moreland and Melbourne before moving to Ratio Consultants where she was inspired by the willingness of the company to speak out publicly on issues impacting both the industry and society more broadly. After 5 years with Ratio Mia accepted an Associate role at Tract Consultants where she is working across a diverse range of projects including the Queen Victoria Market, CBD towers, a couple of schools, two museums and everything in between.

Mia uses her role as a consultant to gently nudge her clients towards more environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes. She is passionate about increasing the diversity of voices which shape our built environment and has tutored at RMIT in Professional Practice and Ethics, and mentors students and recent graduates.

Outside of the office Mia loves travelling (particularly within Australia), learning about Australia’s aboriginal history and traditional land management practices, reading (anything!) and spending time with her partner, son and cat. Living in an apartment on the edge of the city, she is proof that families do live in apartments and can talk at length about the trade off between space and location.

She bought a violin during lockdown #1 to encourage her son to keep up on his practice but is yet to play it.