Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemPlanning's colonial culture: an investigation of the contested process of producing place in (post)colonial Victoria( 2004)Planning, as a form of state action that continually produces and regulates place, was (and remains) central to the colonial project. The particular technologies of place production employed in colonial Victoria made Aboriginal relations with place both invisible and redundant, so that Victorian landscapes could be re/imagined in imperialist terms. Yet the voices of Aboriginal people, always present, are now more widely recognized than ever before and are making challenging claims upon the Australian nation-state, and environmental planning in particular. Those voices claim a unique identity-position for Aboriginal people as the traditional owners of country in Victoria, and the rights that should flow from this recognition. As such, they challenge widely-held assumptions in environmental planning discourse about management objectives and techniques. This thesis investigates the nature of these challenges and the complex and shifting (post)colonial relations that result in two case studies of protected areas in Victoria, Australia - Nyah State Forest and Gariwerd National Park. In Nyah, Aboriginal people are attempting to re-negotiate the application of management tools so that they better reflect the meaning of special places within the Forest. In Gariwerd, Aboriginal people have achieved a significant re-thinking of the park plan of management to more centrally reflect their rights and interests. These challenges question the philosophical assumptions and epistemological premises that underpin the planning canon. They highlight culturally different ontologies and epistemologies and make visible where and how planning remains complicit in the colonial domination of place-production. The thesis finds that Aboriginal people in Nyah and Gariwerd aspire to a more complex (post)colonial politics of difference where their practices, knowledge and rights can be recognized and respected in planning processes. However, because those rights and interests are not formally recognized by the Victorian Government, Aboriginal people remain on the margins of environmental planning and management practices. This is directly achieved by the daily practices of state-based planning which continues to utilize enduring colonial tropes about Aboriginal identity, the authenticity of claims to country, and the legitimate locations within the dominant planning framework where Aboriginal interests can be recognized. The thesis finds, however, that there are opportunities for transforming (post)colonial relations in Nyah and Gariwerd. Achieving those opportunities requires specific strategies to begin a decoIonisation of planning and its culture, in order to more justly attend to Aboriginal rights and aspirations.