Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMobility justice and accessible public transport networks for people with intellectual disability(TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022-04-03)
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ItemBetween virtue and profession: Theorising the rise of professionalised public participation practitioners(SAGE Publications, 2022-06-09)Participatory planning practice is changing in response to the rise of specially trained public participation practitioners who intersect with but are also distinct from planners. These practitioners are increasingly being professionalised through new standards of competence defined by their industry bodies. The implications of this are not well accounted for in empirical studies of participatory planning, nor in the theoretical literature that seeks to understand both the potential and problems of more deliberative approaches to urban decision-making. In this paper, we revisit the sociological literature on the professions and use it to critically interrogate an observed tension between the 'virtues' of public participation (justice, equity and democracy) and efforts to consolidate public participation practice into a distinct profession that interacts with but also sits outside of professional planning.
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ItemDeal-making, elite networks and public-private hybridisation: More-than-neoliberal urban governance(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2022-02-08)In this commentary, we argue that augmented concepts and research methods are needed to comprehend hybrid urban governance reconfigurations that benefit market actors but eschew competition in favour of deal-making between elite state and private actors. Fuelled by financialisation and in response to planning conflict are regulatory reforms that legitimise opaque alliances in service of infrastructure and urban development projects. From a specific city (Sydney, Australia) we draw upon one such reform – Unsolicited Proposals – to point to a broader landscape of hybrid urban governance, its reconfigurations of power and potential effect on cities. Whereas neoliberal governance promotes competition and views the state and private sectors as distinct, hybrid urban governance leverages state monopoly power and abjures market competition, instead endorsing high-level public–private coordination, technical and financial expertise and confidential deal-making over major urban projects. We scrutinise how Unsolicited Proposals normalise this approach. Commercial-in-confidence protection and absent tender processes authorise a narrow constellation of influential private and public actors to preconfigure outcomes without oversight. Such reforms, we argue, consolidate elite socio-spatial power, jeopardise city function and amplify corruption vulnerabilities. To theorise hybrid urban governance at the intersection of neoliberalism and Asia-Pacific state-capitalism, we offer the concepts of coercive monopoly (where market entry is closed, without opportunity to compete) and de jure collusion (where regulation reforms codify informal alliances among elites connected across government and corporate and consultancy worlds). We call for urban scholarship to pay closer attention to public–private hybridisation in governance, scrutinising regulatory mechanisms that consecrate deal-making and undermine the public interest.
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ItemDe-politicising and re-politicising transport infrastructure futures(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2022-11)The planning for future transport and its infrastructure is deeply political. Yet, how we understand re-politicisation, and what those efforts tell us about what is political in the planning for future cities, remains under explored. One lens through which to explore these acts is to consider the role of urban coalitions in drawing attention to the dominant politics of planning and setting the ground for the re-politicisation of transport infrastructure futures. Drawing on the work of post-foundational scholars Mouffe and Rancière, this paper examines the interplay between de-politicisation and re-politicisation and how two urban coalitions negotiated this landscape in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area during a sustained period of contestation surrounding the proposal of new transport infrastructure. Through this analysis, this paper draws on in-depth interviews with coalition members, transport planners, politicians and engaged citizens to illustrate how these urban coalitions produced a ‘collective will’ and a struggle towards a ‘consensus cure’ in their re-politicising actions. This paper reveals how coalition-led re-politicisation establishes the grounds for the politics to shift on contested future transport proposals and offers insight into the incremental and oftentimes incomplete ways re-politicisation nurtures transformational change.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe case for 'public' transport in the age of automated mobility(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2022-09)This paper highlights the extent to which a future mobility system dominated by Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) poses profound challenges to the ‘publicness’ of the transport and mobility systems of many cities. This is evident at different policy levels: the regulatory posture of governments, changing notions of the contributions of mobility to wider ‘public value’, and the underpinning shared experiences of urban life and citizenship or civitas. There is relatively little discussion of how widespread automation might reduce the ‘publicness’ of transport systems in terms of the range of mobility opportunities they offer, how changing patterns of mobility across neighbourhoods and social groups will contribute to urban restructuring, and the implications of this for public value and the character or civitas of cities. In particular, we note how the huge expansion in mobility choices made possible by CAVs might lead to circumstances in which the outcome of individuals exercising that choice is to change the nature of urban mobility profoundly. We identify a number of key challenges that policy makers will need to address in managing the introduction of CAVs in their cities, and how using the lens of ‘publicness’ might help them do so.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTransforming Transport Planning in the Post-Political Era(Routledge, 2021-10-12)
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ItemInfrastructure in times of exception: Unravelling the discourses, governance reforms and politics in 'Building Back Better' from COVID-19(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2022-11)In seeking to counter adverse economic impacts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments quickly announced major infrastructure stimulus packages alongside a series of governance reforms to speed delivery. Despite significant differences between political, institutional and policy contexts of countries, clear trends emerged, most notably discourses of promise promoting the possibilities of state-led infrastructure allied to reforms to expedite delivery. Using case studies of Australia, Aotearoa-New Zealand and the UK, we draw upon theories of postpolitics and states of exception to explain how these approaches comprise a form of infrastructuralism that both elevates the criticality of infrastructure at the same time as depoliticising infrastructure planning. We argue that the promises of Building Back Better did not constitute the radical rupture from earlier practices initially promised and that in future crises we need to resist the closure of political space that typically accompanies emergency measures and ask ‘what infrastructure, for whom and where?’
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ItemChallenges for Government as Facilitator and Umpire of Innovation in Urban Transport: The View from Australia(Emerald Publishing Limited, 2020-01-01)New economies based on emerging technologies for shared mobility and autonomous vehicles will shape future urban transport systems, but their potential impacts are uncertain. Internationally, government agencies face difficult challenges to effectively plan and regulate the deployment of these technologies for the common good, whilst simultaneously encouraging innovation. Being both a facilitator and an umpire is not an easy task. This chapter draws on a series of interviews with public and private-sector actors in urban transport in Australia. Unsurprisingly, all private-sector respondents had significant concerns for the sustainability of their business in the emerging mobility markets, but it was generally acknowledged that without government support and partnership, a lack of structure and clarity could lead to natural monopolies with negative consequences for competition and the public good. Strong and clear government regulation is seen to be necessary to allow the sector to reach its maximum potential and have positive ramifications for both the public and the private good - outcome not always seen as compatible. Public-sector interviewees generally recognised that much of the necessary innovation was being shaped by the market, and that there had been a considerable loss of skills over decades from the state because of neo-liberal policies. So, some doubted the ability of the state to shape developments using currently available planning and public policy methods and feared that it would be difficult to regulate emergent markets to prevent monopolies emerging. On the other hand, some argued that many firms are looking to government for frameworks in which businesses can operate successfully by setting conditions in which risks could be managed. This chapter discusses these issues, seeking to guide research agendas and to foster further debate. The evidence gained from these in-depth interviews helps focus attention on which forms of regulation might be required by industry. It also raises questions about the capacity of government agencies to effectively manage these complex transitions.