Emplaced Displacement and Public Housing Redevelopment: From Physical Displacement to Social, Cultural, and Economic Replacement

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study of the Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney, Australia. In 2015, the state government announced the inner-city estate would be redeveloped to accommodate some affordable/social dwellings (30%) but with the majority of new dwellings being private market housing (70%). Based on ethnographic research conducted with residents of Waterloo between 2010 and 2017, we analyze the Waterloo redevelopment as an example of emplaced displacement. We draw on the work of geographer Doreen Massey and legal scholar Sarah Keenan to understand place as more than physical space, allowing us to conceptualize displacement as something more than simply the movement of people from one physical place to another. We bring to the fore the subjective experience of place, as articulated by public housing tenants, demonstrating that although they remain physically in place, the threat of eviction posed by the redevelopment significantly alters tenants’ spatial, sociocultural, and temporal relationship to place (i.e., the spaces tenants carry with them). The concept of embodied displacement seeks to capture the spatiotemporal diversity of low-income public renters’ experiences of loss of place.

KEYWORDS:

• displacement
• eviction
• renewal
• public housing
• redevelopment
• urban renewal
• racial capitalism

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the residents of Waterloo who agreed to be observed for the ethnographic research that informed this article. Part of the research for the article was funded by a Research Training Program Scholarship, and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute’s (AHURI) Postgraduate Scholarship Top-up funding and AHURI Post-doctoral Award.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This language is from the letter sent to tenants to announce the redevelopment, by the Minister for Social Housing Brad Hazzard, on December 15, 2016.

2. All names have been changed in the analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Wynne

Laura Wynne is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures.

Dallas Rogers

Dallas Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Urbanism at the University of Sydney.