Ep 49 Environmental planning | Dr Daniel Jan Martin

Dr Daniel Jan Martin is an award-winning environmental planner and designer working at the intersection of conservation, landscape architecture and urban ecology. As Lecturer and Co-Head of Landscape Architecture at The University of Western Australia, Daniel is helping reshape how we think about cities—not as places separate from nature, but as living systems connected through water, vegetation, wildlife and people.

In this episode of Paramount Importance, Kurt Krispyn speaks with Daniel about why Perth has become one of the world’s most sprawling cities, how poor planning is creating hotter and less liveable suburbs, and why access to trees and nature is becoming an issue of social and climate inequality.

They explore the extraordinary aquifers hidden beneath Perth, the importance of wildlife corridors, the environmental cost of clearing Banksia woodland, and how smaller homes, greater urban density and better-designed neighbourhoods could help address both the housing and biodiversity crises.

Daniel also explains why planners must move beyond rigid boundaries, learn from Noongar knowledge and design cities for ecosystems, communities and generations that may not exist for another century.

Can a growing city provide more housing without destroying the nature that makes it liveable? Daniel believes it can—but only if we begin planning for the future rather than the next development.