Burial ground zero: the crisis facing Sydney’s cemeteries

Dr Hannah Gould spoke to the Guardian about the crisis of space affecting Sydney’s cemeteries.

From the article:

Gould compares the situation to climate change.

“It’s a slow moving crisis, and it’s hard to communicate exactly why it’s a problem … until all of a sudden we’ve got a situation where it’s here.”

Culturally, socially and physically “people are being pushed further and further away from the dead”.

“At the end of the day, cemeteries are public infrastructure like libraries and swimming pools, they need to meet the public’s best interests,” Gould says.

“When someone we love dies, the availability of cemetery space becomes really important. But if you don’t have that connection, people don’t think about the rights of the dead. They’re an unknown, anonymous monolith. And we don’t like the idea of giving space to them.”

For more information, read the full story here.