Property, politics and power : a history of city planning in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney since 1900

This thesis looks at the process of city planning in Australia in its political, historical, social and intellectual context. It begins by outlining the redistributive possibilities of city planning (Introduction) and then proceeds to analyse why, in practice, these possibilities have not been realised. Chapters 1 and 5 explore the extent to which the intentions of planners themselves have been 'reformist' at different times and on what understanding of society (or social theory) these intentions have been based. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 look at efforts to introduce planning as a function of government in three Australian cities between the turn of the century and the second world war and examine the nature of the opposition. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 look at planning in practice since the second world war and explore the conflicts between planning intentions and political realities. Has planning in practice reinforced or tended to ameliorate inequalities between rich and poor? Which groups benefit most from the metropolitan planning schemes now in operation in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney? Chapter 9 summarises the most important obstacles, particularly the private ownership of property, in the way of a more redistributive approach to city planning and assesses the likelihood of future change

Zombie multiculturalism meets liberative difference:Searching for a new discourse of diversity

This paper grapples with an unresolved tension – twenty-first century Britain is indelibly multicultural and yet diversity is increasingly depicted as a threat to social cohesion. A society characterised by superdiverse cities where some suggest that ‘multiculturalism has failed’. On the basis of an analysis of three dominant theoretical and ideological discourses – community cohesion, multiculturalism and interculturalism – it will be argued that there is an urgent need to forge a new understanding of diversity that can counter the zombie discourse that characterises current debates about diversity in Britain. Difference will be framed as a potential source of mutual liberation, not a problem seeking a solution. It will be argued that a critical engagement with political theology can help us to fashion a new discourse of diversity that is characterised by a hermeneutics of liberative difference, which can help to defeat the zombies sucking the life out of diverse Britain. Publisher Statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Culture and Religion on 20th February 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14755610.2017.128710

Villages and Urbanization

In this article comments by politician Boris Johnson and economist Edward Glaeser exemplify narratives of global urbanization that portray rural villages as redundant and perpetuate outdated notions of urban–rural division. Simultaneously, traditional urban–rural dialectics are distorted by divisive new urban projects like gated communities styled as villages. This paper argues for development models that acknowledge the vital environmental and economic roles played by rural villages, and opposes artificially created “villages” in cities. In so doing, alternative readings of rurality and villages by Rem Koolhaas, Brazilian land reformers, Mahatma Gandhi, and critics of contemporary Indian literature and urbanism are considered

The Impact of Advocacy Organizations on Low-Income Housing Policy in U.S. Cities

Financial support for affordable housing competes with many other municipal priorities. This work seeks to explain the variation in support for affordable housing among U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more. Using multivariate statistical analysis, this research investigates political explanations for the level of city expenditures on housing and community with a particular interest in the influence of housing advocacy organizations (AOs). Data for the model were gathered from secondary sources, including the U.S. Census and the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Among other results, the analysis indicates that, on average, the political maturity of AOs has a statistically significant, positive effect on local housing and community development expenditures