Contesting imaginaries in the Australian city: Urban planning, public storytelling and the implications for climate change

Abstract

In Australia, environmental degradation goes hand in hand with exclusionary and mono-vocal tactics of place-making. This article argues that dominant cultural imaginaries inform material and discursive practices of place-making with significant consequence for diverse, inclusive and climate change-responsive urban environments. Urban planning in the modern global city commonly deploys imaginaries in line with neoliberal logics, and this article takes a particular interest in the impact of this on Indigenous Australians, whose original dispossession connects through to current Indigenous urban experiences of exclusion which are set to intensify in the face of increasing climate change. The article explores what urban resilience means in this context, focusing on a case study of urban development in Port Adelaide, South Australia, and broadens the question of dispossession through the forces of global capital to potentially all of humanity in the Anthropocene.