Planning for Sex in the City: urban governance, planning and the placement of sex industry premises in inner Sydney

Abstract

Much recent scholarship on sexuality and urban spaces has focused on forms of urban governance. Within this literature an emerging body of work has begun to highlight how formal urban planning processes and regulations are increasingly used as mechanisms to govern sexuality within later 20th century Western cities, particularly through the placement of sex industry premises. This paper contributes to this literature through a case study of the emergence of gay bathhouses in land-use planning process within inner Sydney during this period. It highlights how the placement of these businesses within Sydney depends on a broad range of shifting and competing discourses on how sex industry premises impact upon the amenity of the city, its neighbourhoods and land uses—that is, their secondary impacts, cumulative effects, and contribution to urban ordering. On one hand, planning processes reveal ideas about how these establishments contaminate and pollute neighbourhoods and sensitive land uses such as schools or churches. On the other, there are also emerging arguments that sex industry premises such as gay bathhouses can improve the health and lifestyle opportunities for specific communities and residents within particular city environs. I argue that these latter positive discourses have guided the placement of gay bathhouses within the planning of Sydney over the last few decades.

Keywords:

• Urban governance
• urban planning
• sex industry premises
• order
• secondary impact

Notes

1. In recently developed planning instruments in Sydney, sex industry premises now include brothels (massage, escort agencies), safe house brothels for street-based sex workers, and sex-on-premises venues (gay bathhouses, swingers clubs, bondage and discipline parlours) (COS 2006, p. 4).

2. The development application process during the latter 20th century was a requirement under the State planning law of NSW—Local Government (Town and Country Planning) (Amendment) Act 1945 (NSW); Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW).

3. Documents were sourced from the archives of the COS and SSCC relating to development applications for gay saunas. Four hundred and fifty-eight files were retrieved from both councils. They contained development applications, building applications and special files.

4. The list of interviews, classified by the dominant role played in the development application processes, is as follows. Proprietors—O'Donnel 2000; Coussens 2000; Stone 2000; Russell 2000. Local councillors—Johnston 2000; Malone 2001. Local council officers—Bates 2000; Parkinson 2001; Stirling 2001; Thomas 2001. Representatives of non-government organisations—Harvey 2001.