Neoliberal privatisation? Remapping the public and the private in Sydney's masterplanned residential estates

The analysis of neoliberalism has become a key point of departure in critical urban studies and political geography. Its application in theorising new forms of residential environments is no exception. Common interest developments, gated communities and, in the Australian case, masterplanned residential estates (MPREs) are cast as vehicles of neoliberalist privatisation, extending private property rights and embedding market logics and neoliberal modes of privatised governance. This paper is a critical theoretical and empirical engagement with the interpretation of these residential developments as iconic expressions of urban neoliberalisation. We bring poststructuralist thinking on neoliberalism as an assemblage of diverse practices and projects together with poststructuralist conceptions of the public and private as contextual and enacted political constructions, to provide an alternative analytic—an analytic of assemblage—for investigating putative pathways of neoliberal privatisation. We suggest the purchase of this extended framework through an exploration of MPRE development by Sydney's largest MPRE developer. In this framework, MPREs become contingent productions in which multiple and overdetermined projects, practices and paradigms of governance are at work including, amongst others, social sustainability and interventionism. Rather than producing neoliberal privatisation, we explore how MPRE developments involve the complex constitution of new forms of public and private that exceed coding as neoliberal. We conclude that the framework engaged with here can enable productive advances for urban theorising. Its emphasis on practice, enactment, multiplicity and assemblage can resist a tendency to reify urban neoliberalism and nurture the development of new conceptions and discourses of urban governance less bound to the neoliberal imaginary.     

Planning for Culture in Urban Australia

This paper offers a selective overview and assessment of cultural planning in urban Australia from the perspective of a cultural geographer. It is argued that in theory cultural planning adopts a fluid and broad definition of culture similar to that used by contemporary cultural geographers. In practice, however, a narrow, material definition of culture is found in cultural plans, and the relations between cultural practices and place are construed unidimensionally.     

FEMININITY, PLACE AND COMMODITIES: A RETAIL CASE STUDY

Recent accounts of the significance of consumption and commodities in the constitution of femininity have stressed the fluidity of consumption practices and the indeterminacy of their meaning for the oppression of women. The role of place in the construction of femininity has not been considered in these accounts, and as such uni-dimensional portraits of the consumption-femininity nexus have prevailed. In this article I offer an alternative place-based account of the construction of femininity through consumption, demonstrating the constitution of gendered relations of consumption in place. In so doing, some of the contradictions in the consumption-femininity nexus are highlighted. Using a case study of one facet of consumption - retailing - I demonstrate the importance of place and context in the construction of femininity through consumption, in three substantive ways. First, the selling of commodities by retail institutions entails the creation of place. Second, the construction of femininity - shopping as an important component of domestic labor and shopping as feminine, is part of this creation of place. Third, this environment and the process of shopping influence the meaning of commodities and associated constructions of femininity.     

The Constitution and Democracy in Victoria: Westminster on Trial

This article provides a broad overview and critical appraisal of the major changes to the role and rationale of government and public administration in Victoria brought about by the Kennett Liberal‐National Coalition government (1992–99). It does so in order to revisit and highlight the fading relevance and viability of the Westminster system of 'responsible government' in the constitutional systems of the States. We show how the Victorian Constitution provides very few restraints upon a government seeking to undermine civil and political rights, weaken the Opposition, marginalise contestatory institutions and restrict information. Against the Westminster system, we defend a republican constitutional arrangement that is able to maintain the contestability of public power. To this end, we suggest a range of workable reforms designed to strengthen democracy and to improve the accountability of public power, particularly that of the political executive.     

(Ad)dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand: Clothing,fashion, subjectivities and spatialities

The article examines the ways in which pregnant women in the West use clothing as a means of constructing a range of complex and seemingly contradictory gendered subjectivities in public spaces. The article draws on interview data collected from 19 first-time pregnant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. These women were asked about maternity wear, body image, fashion, activities they had continued, reduced or stopped during pregnancy, and the places/spaces they occupied during pregnancy. The article focuses on four different ‘looks’ and subjectivities that pregnant women in this research tried on: the thrifty, self-sacrificing mother to be; the sexy, proud pregnant woman; the growing woman who fears her body will be read as fat; and the pregnant professional. For first time pregnant women making the transition to motherhood clothing the body can be a complex act. What women wear during pregnancy speaks volumes about their subjectivities—what they reveal, what they conceal, what images they create, for whom and where.

Este artículo examina las maneras en que mujeres embarazadas en el Oriente utilizan ropas como medio de construir una gama de complejo y evidentemente contradictorio subjetividades de género en espacios públicos. Este artículo emplea información se dedujo de 19 entrevistas de mujeres se embarazan por primera vez en la ciudad de Hamilton, Nueva Zelanda. Se preguntaron estas mujeres sobre ropas maternidades; sus imágenes de cuerpos; moda; las actividades normales ellas han continuado, reducido o detenido; y los lugares/espacios ellas ocuparon durante sus embarazos. Este artículo enfoca las 4 ‘apariencias’ diferentes y los subjetividades que las mujeres embarazadas en esta investigación se han probado: la económica, abnegada, futura madre; la sexy, orgullosa mujer embarazada; la mujer engordada que tiene miedo de que su cuerpo se interpretaría como gordo; y la profesional embarazada. Para las mujeres embarazadas por primera vez y que hacen la transición a la ropa de maternidad, el cuerpo pueda ser un acto complejo. Lo que llevan las mujeres durante sus embarazos habla fuerte de sus subjetividades—lo que revelan, lo que ocultan, cuales imágenes crean, para quien y por donde.