Natalie Osborne

Neoliberalism, Mineral Development and Indigenous People: a framework for analysis

Abstract There have been suggestions in recent literature that neoliberalism and globalisation present positive opportunities for Indigenous communities engaging in resource development projects on their traditional lands. This paper will present evidence from preliminary research on the neoliberal restructuring that has endured for those Indigenous communities of Queensland who have engaged with mineral development opportunities. Initial findings indicate that the State has devolved some of its responsibilities to the mining company in relation to Indigenous development and service provision. This paper develops a theoretical and analytical framework to enable an examination of the implications of this voluntary devolution of responsibility for Indigenous development and service provision and questions whether this represents a positive opportunity for Indigenous people in the region.

Intersectionality and kyriarchy: A framework for approaching power and social justice in planning and climate change adaptation

To better understand injustice in our cities, and to understand how vulnerability to impacts of climate change is constructed, scholars have noted that we need to incorporate multiple factors that shape identity and power in our analyses, including race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Less widely acknowledged is the intersectionality of these factors; that specific combinations of factors shape their own social position and thus affect experiences of power, oppression and vulnerability. To address emerging issues like climate change, it is vital to find a way to understand and approach multiple, intersecting axes of identity that shape how impacts will be distributed and experienced. This article introduces intersectionality, a concept for understanding multiple, co-constituting axes of difference and identity, and kyriarchy, a theory of power that describes the power structures intersectionality produces, and offers researchers a fresh way of approaching the interactions of power in planning research and practice.

Managing the challenges of combining mobilities of care and commuting: an Australian perspective

ABSTRACT Women face particular travel challenges when combining commuting with broader caring responsibilities. This policy note considers the issues associated with meeting the transport needs of working women as they navigate their daily ‘mobilities of care’. We extend the concept of ‘mobilities of care’ by combining an intersectional understanding of the transport task with the principles embodied in the child-friendly cities agenda. These are discussed with respect to the provision of public transport services and infrastructure in Australia to illuminate the ways that such an approach could deliver transport benefits to those commuting with young children in their care, most often mothers. We also argue that transport policy, planning and provision must make an explicit connection between intersectional factors such as disability, class, as well as gender, and the substantive impact they can have on women and children’s mobilities and modal choices.

A column of one’s own: putting women on the pages of the RAPI Journal, 1977–1982

ABSTRACT Between 1977 and 1982, the Royal Australian Planning Institute (RAPI) Journal, the forebear of Australian Planner, featured a column dedicated to women and planning. The column, entitled Marion, sought to raise awareness, exchange information and stimulate discussion about issues relating to women and planning. The column highlighted discriminatory employment and planning practices including the absence of women in senior planning positions. It also considered issues associated with planning for women and the impact of planning on women’s lives, particularly from an intersectional and international perspective. A clear link was made between the need for women in planning at all levels to undertake planning for and with women. Grounded in the gains made by the feminist movement, the column championed the unique needs of women in urban design and planning but situated these within the broader social challenges experienced by women around their lack of access to power, resources, education and decision-making. In this article, we use Virginia Woolf’s feminist text, A Room of One’s Own, as a hermeneutical device for reviewing the Marion column, reflecting on the place of women in the pages of the journal of the RAPI Journal and in the planning profession, and documenting its legacy.

It's the Lungfish, Stupid: Knowledge Fights, Activism, and the Science–Policy Interface

Since the post-positivist turn in the 20th century, many scholars and philosophers have argued for the importance of Other Ways Of Knowing – including local, embodied, situated, partial, and indigenous knowledges – in developing a better understanding of the world. This argument has been further stressed by a large subset of scholars working in the fields of geography, policy, planning, natural resource management, and community development, yet in practice, positivism retains its epistemological dominance. Drawing from a case study of a dam proposal at Traveston Crossing, Queensland, Australia, this paper will explore these epistemological tensions from the perspective of those whose first/primary ways of knowing about the issue were marginalised, namely the local activists who opposed the proposal. Using data gathered from document analysis and interviews, the paper will explore how these activists implicitly understood this epistemological marginalisation, how they adopted and employed positivist knowledge and language to further the exposure and credibility of their campaign, how this credibility was mediated by their identities, how they strategically deployed different forms of knowledge at local, national, and international scales, and how their successful navigation of these epistemological tensions was critical to the ultimate success of their campaign.

Advancing an agenda for women in planning: an epilogue

ABSTRACT This paper serves as an epilogue to the Women in Planning special issue of Australian Planner reflecting on the potential for women’s activism and scholarship to promote social and spatial change around what have often been dismissed as irrelevant private or personal matters. This paper highlights the energy and willingness among women planners and those sympathetic to their goals towards seeking and creative positive and transformative change and engagement with issues of gender in planning. It specifically reports on the Women in Planning Symposium, held in Brisbane in 2016, and based on the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Through this case we do not set out to ‘prove’ the impact of feminist approaches to planning or Appreciative Inquiry as applied in this workshop, rather, our goal here is to conclude this special issue by advancing an agenda for women in planning which is transformative, generative and pro-feminist and which has the potential to highlight and address gendered concerns in a productive way. We will reflect on both the findings that Appreciative Inquiry yielded, and on the process itself as a tool for participation and engagement, particularly in a feminist/emancipatory context.

Women in planning in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT An important part of the feminist planning project is to make visible the many and varied contributions of women in planning. However, despite the substantial advances of feminist movements, planning education and practice has yet to consistently understand and address the needs of marginalised groups, particularly women, and has struggled to adopt intersectionality as a fundamental planning concern. This has significant practical and political implications. Spatial and kyriarchal power structures create gendered experiences of the built environment and the planning and provision of infrastructure and services can have significant impacts on women’s safety, quality of life and access to opportunities. This special issue explores the multiple ways that women are the objects and subjects of planning within structures of power. This editorial positions the contributions in this issue by considering the extent to which planning has addressed the needs of women. While we cannot trust that progress in this regard will continue to be linear and cumulative, we find cause, through these contributions, to celebrate both the legacy and the future of women in planning.

Dealing with discomfort: how the unspeakable confounds wicked planning problems

ABSTRACT The idea of ‘wicked’ problems has made a valuable contribution to recognising the complexity and challenges of contemporary planning. However, some wicked policy problems are further complicated by a significant moral, psychological, religious or cultural dimension. This is particularly the case for problems that possess strong elements of abjection and symbolic pollution and high degrees of psychosocial sensitivity. Because this affects the way these problems are framed and discussed they are also characterised by high levels of verbal proscription. As a result, they are not discussed in the rational and emotion-free way that conventional planning demands and can become obscured or inadequately acknowledged in planning processes. This further contributes to their wickedness and intractability. Through paradigmatic urban planning examples, we argue that placing their unspeakable nature at the forefront of enquiry will enable planners to advocate for a more contextually and culturally situated approach to planning, which accommodates both emotional and embodied talk alongside more technical policy contributions. Re-imagining wicked problems in this way has the potential to enhance policy and plan-making and to disrupt norms, expose their contingency, and open new ways of planning for both the unspeakable and the merely wicked.

Building inclusive cities: women's safety and the right to the city / Rethinking feminist interventions into the urban

In 2013, two significant and timely edited volumes on the feminist approaches to urban studies were published: Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban, edited by Linda Peake and Martina Rieker; andBuilding Inclusive Cities, edited by Carolyn Whitzman, Crustal Legacy, Caroline Andrew, Fran Klodawsky, Margaret Shaw and Kalpana Visanath.