Geographies of Publicity and Privacy: Residential Activism in Sydney in the 1970s

K Anderson and J M Jacobs
Additional contact information
K Anderson: Department of Geography and Oceanography, University College, University of New South Wales, Canberra, NSW 2600, Australia
J M Jacobs: Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia

Environment and Planning A, 1999, vol. 31, issue 6, 1017-1030

Abstract: In Australian cities in the early 1970s certain sections of the trade union movement banned work on inner-city construction projects considered detrimental to the urban environment: trade union ‘black bans’ were transformed into so-called ‘Green Bans’. Associated with the union action was a ground swell of resident opposition to demolition and redevelopment. There has been much documentation of this important moment in Australian history: Green Bans have been celebrated as a class-based urban social movement and as the birth of environmentalism in Australia. We begin the process of critically reevaluating Sydney's Green Bans, drawing on feminist-inspired reworkings of publicity and privacy. In this cultural geography of the Green Bans we argue that resident participation restructured the very terms of democracy and, along with this, a range of citizens' rights. This reading shows that the categories ‘private’ and ‘public’ are far from fixed: they are sociospatial categories that take a multitude of forms and configurations in time, in process, across space.

Date: 1999
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a311017 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:6:p:1017-1030

DOI: 10.1068/a311017

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().