Re-placing Difference: Planning and Street Sex Work in a Gentrifying Area

Abstract

This article provides a critical exploration of the way in which difference is registered in planning work at the local level. It is set within the current claim that Australian cities are increasingly diverse and multicultural and that planners need to develop skills to respond to such diversity (see, for example Sandercock, Australian Planner , 34(2), pp. 90-95, 1997). The article is based on a case study of planning practices related to street prostitution in St Kilda, Melbourne. It highlights some of the contradictions involved in the registering of difference in urban planning and the claims that planning is becoming more sensitive to difference. In particular, the article exposes the discrepancies evident between strategic and procedural planning work, and site-specific planning work, related to difference.

Keywords:

• Planning
• Prostitution
• Difference
• Communicative Planning Theory