Justifying exclusion: The politics of public space and the dispute over access to McIvers ladies' baths,Sydney

McIvers Baths is an ocean pool in the Sydney beach of Coogee which is open to women and children only. In December 1992, a male resident of Coogee lodged a formal legal complaint of 'discrimination on the grounds of sex' with the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales. Over the next three years, a coalition of activists and institutions campaigned successfully to oppose this complaint and maintain the exclusion of men from McIvers. In this article, the author considers some of the implications of this dispute for contemporary debates over the meaning of urban public space. Drawing on recent re-theorisations of urban public space and the political public sphere, the author suggests that the problematisation of exclusion in critical urban analysis should not necessarily take the form of opposition to exclusion per se. Rather, exclusions should be interrogated with respect to processes through which they are politically justified, thus enabling critical theorists to distinguish between different kinds of exclusion. The article offers some reflections on the dispute over McIvers as a way of thinking through some of the conditions in which certain forms of exclusion might be compatible with a democratic 'right to the city'.     

Justice and Injustice in the City

Following a recent growth of interest in questions of justice and the city, this paper considers how the work of contemporary critical urbanists compares with earlier accounts of urban justice and injustice. Our purpose in making this comparison is to consider how scholars concerned with justice and injustice in the city might better articulate the conceptual relationship between justice‐thinking and (in)justice‐documenting in their writings about the contemporary planned city. Using a selection of influential texts as evidence, our comparative commentary on past and present approaches focuses on three issues we think are crucial to this relationship. First, with the rise of analyses of the politics of difference, concepts of justice stressing procedure, process, and the hearing of multiple voices have come to the fore recently, especially in urban planning. Second, contemporary writers about geographies of justice have queried the value of using pre‐formulated, philosophical justice norms to judge outcomes and processes in particular contexts, seeing justice, rather, as intuited in the enactment of social conflicts and practices in those actual situations. Third, questions about the spatiality of justice and injustice have been aired recently asking whether justice and injustice have primarily a social rather than a spatial ontology. The conclusion of our evaluative review is that similar issues are being named and investigated now as were four decades ago, in investigations of justice and injustice in cities, but that concerted debates about theory and epistemology have elaborated the conceptual focus of discussion. We call for grounded investigations of enactments of justice as well as of injustice.     

Air Services at Australian Cities: Change and Inertia 2005–2010

This research analyses international and domestic air services in Australia during a six year period, 2005–2010. We place air services into their urban context by relating them to city‐based measures such as population, tourism, and producer services employment among other measures. The research takes a supply‐side approach in an assessment of international and domestic capacity at major Australian airports from the perspective of the number of seats, the nature of links, and competition. Multiple linkage analysis and the concept of effective competitors allow us to explore this perspective at greater depth. Our findings show substantial changes in international patterns, specifically favouring Melbourne, Perth, and Gold Coast. In contrast, the domestic scene is characterised by little change, an outcome we link to the underlying stability in the settlement system and the location of some major economic activities. While the results are related to our measures of urban characteristics, some special region‐specific aspects are also at work. Finally, in both the international and domestic cases we find evidence of greater airline diversity which may benefit consumers.