Enacting planning borders: consolidation and resistance in Ku-ring-gai, Sydney

Abstract

Focusing on the Ku-ring-gai Local Government Area in Sydney, we explore the tensions that play out across borders, which are enacted between state planning strategies, local governments and communities, and the claims that each make in relation to the right to define the city. We use the term ‘bordering’ to describe contested politics that are characterised by the struggle to define and inscribe authority, democracy, legitimacy and local specificity. In particular, we trace bordering processes between: (1) enacting planning authority through Local Environmental Plans; and (2) legal and expert engagements with planning processes and instruments. The performance of planning borders at Ku-ring-gai enacted different imaginations of place, struggles over authority between citizens and experts and highlighted the messy context of imposing blunt planning instruments on particular localities.

Keywords:

• planning borders
• NIMBY
• resistance
• Ku-ring-gai
• local environmental plans
• land and environment court

Notes

1. SEPP53 – State Environmental Planning Policy No. 53 – Metropolitan Residential Development was responsible for managing dual-occupancy developments in locations without an approved LEP and Residential Strategy.

2. Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, 1979.

3. Friends of Turramurra Inc v Minister for Planning [2011] NSWLEC 128.

4. Friends of Turramurra Inc v Minister for Planning [2011] NSWLEC 128.

5. Forty-six public submissions were received.