Urban Renewal and Public Participation in Sydney: Unpacking Social Media Strategies and Use for Contesting Consensus

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the politics of contestation and resistance attempted to influence a government initiated urban renewal project. The declaration of the site as state significant and the subsequent formal consultation activities are positioned as post-political efforts by planning and development agencies to limit antagonistic politics and secure consensus. However, conflict appeared through a community group who opposed the planning process and its intended outcomes. Central to this resistance was the use of a symposium, main-stream and social media, Twitter in particular. This paper provides a post-political analysis to provide insights into resistance strategies mobilised bycommunity groups.

本文探讨对抗和抵制的政治如何影响政府主导的城市改造计划。政府宣布涉事地点为国家重点保护区，随后进行了正式的咨询活动。这些都是规划和开发部门采取的后政治措施，以减少对立，保证共识。然而矛盾还是通过一个反对规划过程及其预期结果的社区团体爆发了。这种抵制活动的核心是利用研讨会、主流媒体和社交媒体，特别是推特。本文对此进行后政治分析，以理解社区团体动员起来的抵制策略。

KEYWORDS:

• Public participation
• post-political
• urban renewal
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At the time of fieldwork, project planning and development UrbanGrowth NSW was a single agency. However, in mid-2017 the NSW Government reassigned UrbanGrowth NSW’s projects into three separate agencies. UrbanGrowth NSW’s is now responsible for managing the development of five Growth Centres in metropolitan Sydney. Landcom is focused on unlocking surplus or underutilised government-owned sites or large institutional land holdings in metropolitan Sydney, particularly in greenfield areas. The Hunter Development Corporation is tasked with the Revitalising Newcastle project (Ruming 2018a).