Reframing and revising Australia’s planning history and practice

Abstract

Planning in Australia is always occurring on Indigenous lands. However, within the Australian planning canon, our institutions and practices have rarely acknowledged this reality. The lack of historical accuracy in accounts of urban planning histories, and the persistent inattention to the theory and practice of settler-colonialism, has blinded the profession to its complicity with colonial rule and effaced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences. We present in this article a new way of thinking about the history of Australian planning that situates the discipline and practice of planning within Indigenous Australia. This reframing locates the history of planning inside the coexisting geographies and histories that encapsulate the subjugation, survival, resistance, and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. To do so, we analyse the literature and distil key periodizations as represented in the standard planning canon and then contrast them with the histories and geographies of Indigenous peoples to construct a very different periodization of Australian planning historyone that places Indigenous political, social and cultural concerns at the centre of analysis. This reworked periodization, which aligns planning histories with major events in Indigenous history and policy, not only provides a more accurate account of the history of planning in Australia but also provides a framework for thinking about the possibilities of more positive and transformative future relationships between planning and Indigenous peoples in Australia.

Pathways to home ownership in an age of uncertainty

“…This trend is particularly true for houses, as compared with units, a trend that further exacerbates wealth inequality due to the difference in capital appreciation of these property types, which was 6.2 per cent and 4.1 per cent per annum respectively (CoreLogic 2022). Likewise Indigenous Australians face an even larger challenge in securing home ownership in a system that is yet to deal with the colonial legacy of European dispossession of land and property (Blatman-Thomas and Porter 2019;Habibis 2016;Johnson, Porter et al 2017;Read 2000). Both these dimensions are also reflected, and in part driven by, the gendered and racial divisions in employment and therefore incomes.…”

Realising decolonising spaces: relational accountability in research events

“…The catalyst was a conversation at a symposium where the settler-colonial context of Australian cities had been a central topic. Australian urban geography has been remarkably silent on the relationship between settler-colonial orders and urbanisation, making the discipline as culpable in the erasure of Aboriginal law and place as settler-colonial urbanisation itself (Jackson et al, 2018; L. C. Johnson et al, 2017). Fortunately, it did not take too long to become aware of the racialised privilege that enabled proposing such an event.…”

Native title and the politics of rejection: beyond the post‐political binary of consensus and dissensus in urban Aboriginal activism

“…This paper examines how the contemporary phase of settler colonial power continues to undermine Aboriginal sovereignty and foster a contentious politics of rejection among Aboriginal communities. We use a settler colonial lens to show how native title operates as a regime of extinguishment and division rather than recognition (Foley, ; Johnson et al ., ; Wensing & Porter, ) and do so by reference to a highly publicised dispute between opposing positions of the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) and the Nyoongar Tent Embassy (NTE; also spelled Noongar). The NTE is one among a handful of groups that have been critical of how SWALSC has prosecuted Nyoongar native title initiatives, and in particular, it has criticised SWALSC's decision in 2009 to pursue negotiations for an out‐of‐court settlement that would extinguished in perpetuity all native title claims in the south‐west of Western Australia.…”