What comes to mind when you hear “urban planning”?
Roads, rail, and other infrastructure? Probably services, parks, and public spaces too.
You might think about some of Sydney’s issues, like urban heat in the west, or unethical real estate developers.
You probably didn’t think of urban planning as a weapon of dispossession — a seemingly rational tool used to exclude peoples and consolidate land for hundreds of years. This isn’t a historical artefact to be looked back on and dissected; the lasting impacts and continued practice of this planning-dispossession synthesis can be easily observed in the outcomes of Indigenous people across the country.
Planning has, and still does, refuse to engage with Indigenous people meaningfully, excluding disempowered groups generally. It routinely fails to examine its own biases and Western foundations that perpetuate cycles of exclusion and segregation. This is why an advisory body that could recommend, inform, and challenge the status quo of our planning firms and departments would unlock a new path towards reconciliation.
Urban and regional planning plays a far more significant role in our lives than many people give it credit for. Superficially, it implements interventions to make commutes easier and ensuring things like pedestrian safety, but this process also shapes who lives around us — and perhaps more importantly, who doesn’t — and has the ability to mould attitudes for the better and create opportunity. One could make the case that less social and racial segregation across Sydney’s postcodes could lead to less of a white and rich bubble in areas like the Eastern suburbs that no doubt fuels xenophobia. Additional bus stops or train lines, or improved housing density, coupled with lower housing costs, could bring people closer to services, jobs, education, and recreation, providing a helping hand to lift communities and individuals from disadvantage.
However, conventional planning in Australia (and all settler-colonial states) has also served to intentionally enforce the worldview of the invader. David Aviles, a University of Sydney teacher and PhD graduate in the Political Economy Department, told Honi that we can see this in the “fundamental ontological difference” in how Indigenous cultures view land management compared to Western practices.
“When you have the dispossession [of land], by means of the appropriation of [it], you transform land into a commodity,” he commented, “and the way you do that is by having a particular ideology — that nature is outside of society, something we can manage … by that you transform land into a resource.”
Dr Aviles argued that “a critical concept in private property is that you have to have a limit, a border — this is owned by somebody, therefore you need to have a physical expression of ownership.” And once Indigenous peoples were expelled from an area “by any means,” this came in the form of the frontier of fences that began to roll across the Sydney basin — physical expressions of who belonged and who didn’t.
The establishment of even more immovable and permanent symbols of the Empire further consolidated, disrupted, and reorganised land. This came in the form of banks (which confirmed a new system of economics), roads (which allowed settlers and soldiers to expand their reach), post offices (which shared information about agriculture prices, land, and personal correspondence to the rest of the Empire), and so much more. Whilst the creation of these services and infrastructure can often seem like a very apolitical project, it served to remake Indigenous land through the eyes of the British invaders.
However, no matter how violent the massacres, the complete erasure and removal of First Nations communities was never fully actualised in cities. This shows the important distinction between dispossession and displacement. The need for healthcare, employment, education, and other services meant that living within or travelling to cities for brief periods of time was and is fairly commonplace. These permanent and transient populations were and are often pushed to the city limits or to the undesirable parts of the city.
In response to this realisation that the total elimination of Indigenous people was impossible, colonial cities created innocently named Boundary Streets, which served as racial borders over which First Nations peoples could not cross or had restricted access. Additionally, now those explicit policies have fallen away, we see the clearing out of Indigenous people from the remaining cultural strongholds within urban parts of Sydney. Redfern, Waterloo, and Darlington have been gradually gentrified as white flight reverses and wealthy people move back to the city, with developers attempting to replace a legacy of political and social struggle with student housing and expensive cafes.
Dr Aviles told Honi that “these days [dispossession] is through the changing of the tools. We have planning tools that are no less based on the idea of land as a resource … you have different names, but it is more or less the same.” We can see similar examples from Townsville’s Flinders Street redevelopment, in which the removal of a homeless Indigenous community was leaked as one of the primary aims of the project. Therefore, while the explicitly racist urban policies have mostly fallen away, the same aims of the past policies still exist, silently implied.
This begs the question of what is to be done. If urban planning has operated hand-in-glove with systemic dispossession and oppression during our colonial past and present, what does the future hold? How do we correct the path we’ve been on for so long?
In an interview with Honi, Dunghutti woman and CEO of the consultancy firm Murawin, Carol Vale, said that one of the biggest issues that needs to be resolved is that “traditional cultural landscapes are being ignored.” She argued that, when planning, if you engage with “the land, water, and sky Country … you would have to take into consideration what is there, what should be there, and what needs to be there.”
Through this Country-centred approach to planning, Vale commented that “you will create spaces where Aboriginal people can go and practice culture [which will] encompass their physical, spiritual, and emotional needs.” This is key, she said, to addressing the disadvantage evident within Indigenous communities, by making stories, songlines, and other cultural aspects accessible and embedded into the way areas are planned.
She also mentioned that by planning with Country we can create sustainable development by considering First Nations values, such as respect and reciprocity. “The risks and hazards coming from [climate change] have come about because Country was not … and has not been managed in the way that it should be,” drawing on the example of major cities, such as Brisbane and other smaller settlements, being built on floodplains. Arguing against the colonial notion of “cutting everything down and redevelop[ing],” Vale stressed that the values of only taking what is needed from the environment, and equally giving back, will be key to a sustainable and more equal future.
One method to achieve this is through claiming a limited section of Crown land using the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act and using the Aboriginal Land Planning Framework to develop it. However, CEO of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MetroLALC), Nathan Moran, argues that “members of Parliament at local, state, and Commonwealth levels [have] been playing politics with the reality of our land.” He said that on the sites that the MetroLALC have successfully claimed, local councils have been extremely resistant to proposed redevelopment and have opposed it even before the public exhibition began.
In the face of what Moran described as “institutionalised racism [and] common racism,” he called for the “unlocking” of the land they’ve claimed. Currently, MetroLALC holds a considerable portfolio of land, but are unable to use it to “address our poverty, our needs”. He commented that he “believe[s the land councils in NSW and the Northern Territory] are the most empowered Aboriginal legislative system[s] in the country,” but the state governments are “picking and choosing” when to listen to it.
“I’ve got a feeling that if they actually just commit to letting land councils pursue the development of the land they’ve got, we may actually be able to start making a really strong headway into all those indicators — good outcomes of life, for health and wellbeing, providing housing that will allow for education which leads to potential employment … without this, we’re trapped in poverty.”
When asked about the upcoming referendum and how it could shape the planning system to more meaningfully incorporate First Nations needs, Carol Vale told Honi that “the states are responsible … for planning, with a [potential] state-based Voice … supporting the unique positions of clan groups within a particular state.” She argued that by having a state Voice one level of government closer to communities — divided as federal, state, and local — it will provide more tailored assistance, especially when considering “what works for New South Wales … being much more urbanised … will not work for the Northern Territory.”
Moran characterised the functions of the local land councils across Australia as something resembling a Voice, with the heart of the issue being that the NSW government fails to properly engage with them and listen to their advice. They both agreed, however, that the success of the federal Voice to Parliament referendum would be “very key”, as Moran described, in deciding the future of planning with Country.
He commented that “the only people that the state listens to is the Commonwealth,” arguing that if a cultural change could happen so far up in the system, this would put pressure on the state and local governments to listen to the advice and needs of Indigenous communities. Moran mentioned that he feels “ignored” by the local councils in which the MetroLALC owns land, and having a constitutionally enshrined Voice could allow him with the pathways to resolve grievances with the state government.
“Deep, deep work is needed to address the disadvantage being faced by Indigenous Australians,” Vale commented, “that’s why it needs to be locked into the constitution — so it can’t be changed on a whim by incoming governments.” She said that strong national leadership, in the form of a federal referendum win, would enable “state and regional perspectives to be developed in line with that national drive.”
This referendum is Australia’s chance to reconcile with centuries of oppressive planning practices. White invaders arrived in Sydney Cove and imposed their understanding of land, presenting the dispossession and consolidation of land as an apolitical project — the seemingly natural course of civilising an untamed land. The continuation of these biases and the ramifications of past atrocities are still deeply felt across New South Wales, with the establishment of a federal Voice to Parliament being a very important first step in the right direction towards closing the gap.
So, on October 14, when you and millions of Australians head to polling booths to decide this future with a simple yes or no, think about the land beneath your feet, think about who was cleared away to make space for your house or apartment, think about the silent ideologies which drive urban planning to be an oppressive force in modern Australia.
If Australia decides no, planning professionals could be doomed to perpetuate the cycle of dispossession that began when white colonisers reimagined what the Australian continent should be.
