Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemBeyond the post-political: is public participation in Australian cities at a turning point?(Wiley, 2018-11-01)Abstract This special section builds on Planning the Post‐Political City—Part 1 to examine if and how planning is showing signs of a post‐democratic turn taking place in Australian cities. In Part 1, we presented a collection of papers examining Australia as a post‐political landscape, exploring the new ways in which Australian publics are resisting dominant neoliberal practices and logics of growth and, in doing so, are intervening in decision‐making practices to assert new forms of power and participation. In Part 2, we show how participatory practices continue to evolve. We use this brief editorial to ask a foundational question: have those implicated in the governance and management of Australian cities embarked on a post‐democratic path? As they are presented with new exclusionary and managerial governance systems, the public's participation suggests at the very least that post‐political and post‐democratic conditions are neither immutable nor inevitable. However, more democratic forms of governance rely on a rich array of activist types and approaches requiring greater institutional support in order to challenge Australia's post‐political condition.
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ItemPlanning the post-political city: exploring public participation in the contemporary Australian city(WILEY, 2018-05)Abstract This special section examines the possibility of meaningful debate and contestation over urban decisions and futures in politically constrained contexts. In doing so, it moves with the post‐political times: critically examining the proliferation of deliberative mechanisms; identifying the informal assemblages of diverse actors taking on new roles in urban socio‐spatial justice; and illuminating the spaces where informal and formal planning processes meet. These questions are particularly pertinent for understanding the processes shaping Australian cities and public participation today.
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ItemThe post-politics of transport: establishing a new meeting ground for transport politics(John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 2017)This paper brings together two disparate but critical bodies of literature about contemporary citizen participation in the Australian city: transport politics and post‐politics. The argument is advanced that state and citizen actor relations—as they exist in the governance and management of Australian urban transport—have taken on characteristics of post‐politics. By conceiving of citizen participation in this manner, new ways of understanding it are generated and it is possible to appreciate how such participation is shaped by state actors both across time and in response to the politicisation of transport proposals. The paper illustrates the extent to which citizen engagement has become a new focal point in transport politics, particularly given citizens' capacities to politicise proposals and transport trajectories. It achieves such ends by drawing upon key‐informant interviews conducted between 2013 and 2016 with public transport advocates, select resident groups, and local and state level planning officials from Melbourne, Australia.
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ItemBeyond the post-political: Exploring the relational and situated dynamics of consensus and conflict in planning(SAGE Publications, 2019-08-01)This Special Issue explores the problematique of the consensus and conflict binary that has emerged in the critical analysis of the post-political urban condition. Focusing on the interstitial spaces existing between consensus and conflict reveals a more relational dynamic that positions consensus and conflict as co-constitutive and continuously being shaped by the performance of politics by state and non-state actors. Critiques of the post-political tend to fail to engage with the conditions that lead to citizen actors acting in political ways beyond the formal processes of planning and decision-making, or when consensus or conflict is used by oppressive politics to produce exclusion and reproduce inequality. In addition to introducing the five papers appearing in this special issue, in this opening editorial, we argue the need to cast attention towards the new expressions of political participation generated by different citizen actors. Critically engaging with these varied expressions may reveal new ways of conceptualising participation that can create new informal spaces where injustices and inequalities are voiced and the structures and hegemonies created are exposed.
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ItemConsensus planning in transport: The case of Vancouver's transportation plebiscite(Elsevier, 2019-02-01)In 2015, a plebiscite was held on a new source of funding to support the expansion of the transit network in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver. Thus, in a region that has achieved admirable results over several decades through a strategic planning system based on a consensus model, civic leaders were forced to step outside this model to argue the case for a 0.5% increase to a local goods and service tax. This pitted a ‘no new tax’ grouping against a Better Transit and Transportation Coalition which brought supporters from across the community including from business, the unions, the environmental sector and students in support of the ‘yes’ case and the package of works crafted by consensus among municipal leaders. In this paper, we draw on in-depth key informant interviews with transportation and land use planners, municipal politicians and individuals involved in the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns built around the 2015 transport plebiscite. We show how the plebiscite was framed and how a critical component of Vancouver’s planning ethos – consensus decision-making – catalysed the formation of the coalition of ‘yes’ campaign supporters. Despite its defeat, this coalition remained persistent and unified in their support for the development of a new funding stream and for the continued expansion of transit infrastructure across the Lower Mainland. The paper draws lessons from the transit plebiscite and how its outcome highlight the unique role that consensus planning can play in achieving progressive outcomes to politically vexing questions in transport planning in Vancouver and elsewhere.
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ItemInfrastructure planning: in a state of panic?(Routledge, 2017-01-02)Infrastructure is routinely framed in contemporary urban policy as a vehicle to grow the economy through the creation of jobs. In periods of economic downturn and when ongoing fiscal uncertainty ensues, governments may look to the construction and maintenance of social and public infrastructure such as social housing and public transport. Cities and communities that have endured infrastructure deficits in the past may become the beneficiaries of adjusted national and state-level policy to support economic prosperity through expedient infrastructure implementation programs. Yet in the post-GFC policy environment urban infrastructure has recentred the role of infrastructure in driving urban economic recovery in terms of economic prosperity. Drawing from the state of exception literature, I call on the notion of urgency to explore infrastructure planning as it manifests at the juncture between strategic planning and implementation. This paper will contribute to the critical urban planning literature by examining how infrastructure prioritisation and implementation is shaped through a characterisation of urgency which subverts the relationship between urban infrastructure planning, implementation and planning process.
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ItemPlanning the driverless city(TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2019-01-02)
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ItemInvestigating the knowledge interface between stakeholder engagement and plan-making(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2010-11)The ‘ideal deliberative procedure’ provides structure to the process of stakeholder deliberation, yet creates a tension with the formal processes of strategic plan-making. This paper examines process design by drawing upon communicative planning theory, and the rational comprehensive model and deliberative democracy literature. In the context of metropolitan strategic spatial plan-making, the aim of this paper is to examine how the knowledge interface between the process of stakeholder engagement and the process of plan-making enables or inhibits implementation of the plan. A retrospective study examining the development of two metropolitan strategic spatial plans: Greater Perth's the Network City plan and Greater Vancouver's the Livable Region Strategic Plan is provided. It is revealed that the engagement of the planners, the public and the politicians occurs within formal stakeholder engagement ‘events’ positioned at different stages of the plan-making process. This paper reveals that the deliberation among the professional planners and the politicians at the process design stage steers the plan-making process in a manner that retains its legitimacy and creates a more implementable plan.