Donna Houston

The Work of Performativity: Staging Social Justice at the University of Southern California

In this paper we offer an alternative reading of the role of performativity and everyday forms of resistance in current geographic literature. We make a case for thinking about performativity as a form of embodied dialectical praxis via a discussion of the ways in which performativity has been recently understood in geography. Turning to the tradition of Marxist revolutionary theater, we argue for the continued importance of thinking about the power of performativity as a socially transformative, imaginative, and collective political engagement that works simultaneously as a space of social critique and as a space for creating social change. We illustrate our point by examining two different performative strategies employed by food service workers at the University of Southern California in their struggle for a fair work contract and justice on the job.

Planning the climate-just city

Issues of urban equity have long been linked to urban planning. Yet in practice the quest for the ‘just city’, defined in terms of democracy, diversity, difference and sustainability, has proven to be highly problematic. Drawing on examples from the Australian urban context, we argue that the imperative of climate change adds urgency to the longstanding equity agenda of planning in cities. In our normative quest for the climate-just city we offer a conceptual and analytical framework for integrating the principles of climate justice and equity into urban planning thinking and practice.

Crisis and resilience: Cultural methodologies for environmental sustainability and justice

In a recent article in Cultural Studies Review Deborah Bird Rose asks the question: ‘what if the angel of history were a dog’? In her answering narrative, Rose concludes that ‘she is howling’ (Rose 2006, 67). The angel of history was first conjured by Walter Benjamin (1968) in his famous essay on historical materialism as a figure standing in silent witness to the everyday catastrophes of capitalist modernity. Piling up at the angel’s feet is the debris of historical progress, which is an accumulative archive of consequences, subaltern memories and suppressed alternatives. While Benjamin’s angel neither howls (nor acts), it does stand at a threshold between devastation and remembered possibilities. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Benjamin’s angel has reappeared as a figure that is both tragic and hopeful, as a poignant reminder of the ‘wildly changed’ world that we currently inhabit (Solnit 2004, 6). This changing world is one marked by the lived reality of environmental crisis, spurred on in the present by unsustainable industrial and land use practices on a global scale. So if the angel of history is a dog, as Rose evocatively suggests: she is witness to a catastrophe that has the very potential to unmake ‘the world of life’ (2006, 77). Indeed, for Rose, it is this destructive unmaking of life and perhaps our collective potential to recuperate ethical and sustaining relationships with non-human nature to which the ‘ecological humanities’ must respond. This special section of Continuum focuses on the following question: what is the role of cultural studies within the current context of environmental sustainability? The past several years have seen a surge of popular and scientific environmentalisms sharpened by media coverage on catastrophic weather, climate change, super viruses and water scarcity. The publication of the Stern and IPCC reports addressing the ecological and economic impacts of global warming and climate change, along with a spate of Hollywood films ranging from Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Alphonso Cuaron’s apocalyptic Children of Men, to singing penguins in Happy Feet have marked a substantial shift in popular imageries about the irrevocable impress of present systems of economic and industrial development on the planet’s ecosystems (Lewis 2007). Yet, rather predictably, this ‘Hollywoodization’ of climate change and environmental disaster, coupled with the balance of scientific opinion on its likely effects has also led to much political, cultural and media debate as to whether we are ‘getting the right message’ about the current and future state of the global environment. Chief among these concerns in

Make kin, not cities! Multispecies entanglements and ‘becoming-world’ in planning theory:

Much planning theory has been undergirded by an ontological exceptionalism of humans. Yet, city planning does not sit outside of the eco-social realities co-producing the Anthropocene. Urban planners and scholars, therefore, need to think carefully and critically about who speaks for (and with) the nonhuman in place making. In this article, we identify two fruitful directions for planning theory to better engage with the imbricated nature of humans and nonhumans is recognised as characteristic of the Anthropocene – multispecies entanglements and becoming-world. Drawing on the more-than-human literature in urban and cultural geography and the environmental humanities, we consider how these terms offer new possibilities for productively rethinking the ontological exceptionalism of humans in planning theory. We critically explore how planning theory might develop inclusive, ethical relationships that can nurture possibilities for multispecies flourishing in diverse urban futures, the futures that are increasingly recognised as co-produced by nonhuman agents in the context of climate variability and change. This, we argue, is critical for developing climate-adaptive planning tools and narratives for the creation of socially and environmentally just multispecies cities.

Enacting planning borders: consolidation and resistance in Ku-ring-gai, Sydney

Focusing on the Ku-ring-gai Local Government Area in Sydney, we explore the tensions that play out across borders, which are enacted between state planning strategies, local governments and communities, and the claims that each make in relation to the right to define the city. We use the term ‘bordering’ to describe contested politics that are characterised by the struggle to define and inscribe authority, democracy, legitimacy and local specificity. In particular, we trace bordering processes between: (1) enacting planning authority through Local Environmental Plans; and (2) legal and expert engagements with planning processes and instruments. The performance of planning borders at Ku-ring-gai enacted different imaginations of place, struggles over authority between citizens and experts and highlighted the messy context of imposing blunt planning instruments on particular localities.

Geographic contributions to institutional curriculum reform in Australia: the challenge of embedding field-based learning

Abstract In the context of continuing pressures from managerialist and neoliberal drivers of university reform in Australia, Macquarie University’s recent undergraduate curriculum innovation, based on “People,” “Planet,” and “Participation,” has resulted in the embedding and integration of experiential learning in its curriculum and institutional framework. Such an approach challenges academic and administrative staff, students, and partners in industry, the community and public sector settings, to engage and collaborate across significant boundaries. This article outlines the scope and nature of the curriculum reform, then considers the way geographers have both shaped and responded to the opportunities it created. In so doing, it proposes a number of challenges and recommendations for geographers who might seek to extend their longstanding commitment to field-based learning through similar reforms. In this regard, the discipline of geography and its tendency to engage with the “field” can offer much in fostering deeply transformative learning.

Environmental equity/justice

How do we connect the processes of collective public decision-making with complex biophysical systems? In Australia, the answer seems to be ‘not very well’. The full magnitude of human impact in post-colonial Australia is only just now beginning to be properly understood. In key areas such as land, water, energy and air we have embraced a pattern of development that is increasingly being recognised as ‘unsustainable’ (Low 2010). We have built our cities on flood plains, yet have cleared many water catchments of vegetation, so that in times of heavy rain there are few barriers stopping down-stream flooding (see chapter 7). We also consume vast amounts of water, yet we inhabit one of the driest continents on Earth. We have developed suburbs on prime agricultural land, but wonder why food security has become an issue. We mine for coal seam gas through fracking ancient rocks near precious aquifers with little understanding of the cumulative environmental risks involved. In short, we do not seem to have learned from the lessons offered by history or the experiences of other countries. Is there something wrong with our decision-making systems?Find the secret to improve the quality of life by reading this australian environmental planning challenges and future prospects. This is a kind of book that you need now. Besides, it can be your favorite book to read after having this book. Do you ask why? Well, this is a book that has different characteristic with others. You may not need to know who the author is, how well-known the work is. As wise word, never judge the words from who speaks, but make the words as your good value to your life.Australia is in the midst of an ongoing housing crisis. Swelling urban populations have seen a marked decline in housing affordability in recent decades. The traditional ‘housing solution’ has been to build cheap housing on the urban fringe. But rising infrastructure costs, automobile dependence, habitat and biodiversity loss, social alienation and health problems make that approach less viable. The alternative of accommodating populations at increasing housing densities in city centres has resulted in declining access to green space, fewer play-spaces for children, increasing noise, social polarisation, jobs/skills mismatches, plus questionable environmental performance. Densification has done little to redress the affordability crisis (see chapter 15). Global environmental problems such as climate change are demanding a rethink of housing design, to reduce resource use and make housing more resilient to environmental change. This chapter offers an environmental planning perspective on Australian housing crisis, in its historical and current form.At the heart of environmental planning is an ethic of care. This ethic challenges planners to nurture and sustain the biogeochemical systems on which all life depends, working to prevent harm to both human and non-human populations. Environmental planning in Australia has traditionally been concerned about making the lives of people better (see chapter 3). In its early days, this was achieved primarily by focusing on developing and implementing standards for housing, infrastructure and services, and separating polluting land uses from residential areas. Early environmental planning also included efforts to site urban development away from hazardous places, for example away from flood-prone land or areas susceptible to erosion. Since the late 1960s, Australian environmental planners have tended to focus on avoiding harm to natural environments rather than on specifically promoting human health and wellbeing. Yet these two tasks are inseparable. Human health depends upon ecologically robust ecosystems and the services they provide. Planners have recently begun to recognise this interdependence, especially in the field of healthy cities (see chapter 15).Defining appropriate boundaries for planning and management purposes has always been tricky. Regional boundaries are usually defined by the variables under study (e.g. vegetation, soils, transport) and sometimes by external factors, such as the availability of data or political jurisdictions, which may configure boundaries (Tiebout 1964). US planning scholar John Friedmann (1964) has shown how economic development transcends boundaries, and how different regional boundaries are necessary at different stages of development, to achieve efficient planning. When the region is ill-defined though, planning may not achieve its goals (Friedmann 1964; Simmonds 1997). Are there unique kinds of regional boundaries that environmental planners need to define and manage? How does this affect planning practice?In Australia, each state or territory has its own planning and development control legislation, although there are many similarities between the jurisdictions. Rather than attempt to compare and contrast the fine details of the law in each jurisdiction, this chapter draws on some of the underlying themes that pervade planning law throughout Australia. In particular, it examines how three traditional legal doctrines – the separation of powers; the rule of law; and the sanctity of private property rights – have influenced the development of planning law. A selection of case law from different states is used to illustrate how these traditional pillars of legal reasoning have influenced, and continue to influence, the day-to-day administration of planning and development control in Australia. Understanding role of law within Australian planning systems is essential for environmental planners to be able to implement their proposals for protecting and managing biogeochemical systems and processes.

Suburban Toxicity: A Political Ecology of Asbestos in Australian Cities

This paper explores the toxic legacy of asbestos in Australian suburbs and cities. During the post-war period, Australia had one of the highest per capita rates of asbestos use in the developed world. As a consequence of this indiscriminate use, Australia also has one of the highest rates of asbestos dust disease in the world. Drawing on feminist approaches to urban political ecology (UPE) and the materialities of waste, we trace the entanglement of asbestos within the everyday spaces of homes and suburbs and through urban governance structures and processes of urban regeneration. We argue that UPE provides an important framework for putting asbestos stories and practices in the city together. UPE highlights the relational entanglements and injustices of asbestos, which render it as matter that circulates through bodies, homes, infrastructures, working-class histories and suburban imaginaries. This approach challenges the construction of asbestos in terms of its hazardous obsolescence and resituates it as complex matter that continues to be lived with and practiced.

Junk into urban heritage: the Neon Boneyard, Las Vegas

This short photographic essay is a reflection on the practice of cultural geography in places that are in the process of becoming historically significant. My focus is on a visit I made to the Neon Boneyard in Las Vegas in 2004, where I photographed signs collected from demolished casinos, bars and hotels as part of a research project on waste, decay and cultural memory in Nevada. While I initially explored the site to glean memory-work for my doctoral thesis on high-level nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, in another life before graduate school, I worked as a cultural heritage consultant in Australia. In making active connections between signs and meanings in-the-present, I wondered if sites such as the Neon Boneyard offer a different approach to practicing heritage in places. The text that accompanies the photographs is a reflection on the relationship between public art, junk and the practices of urban heritage.