THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

by

Gregory Young

MA (Syd), Dip Urb Studs (Macq), MPHA, MPIA

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty of the Built Environment

University of

THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Abstract

THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Culture is expanding and has greater weight and explanatory potential in our culturalised age. Following the earlier literature of the ‘’, is now perceived as ubiquitous in , the economy, and theory, and with the capacity to intervene on itself. Further, it may be seen to characterise both the nature and the progressive potential of a range of contemporary social and intellectual technologies such as planning, education, health, and organisational development.

While this general process of ‘culturalisation’ proceeds apace, the capacity of culture to act as an organising idea and category for sectors such as planning is still largely underdeveloped, most particularly in planning itself. A new Culturised Model for planning that is reflexive and ethical is proposed. Differentiated from the trend to culturalisation and its association with commodification, ‘culturisation’ has true sustainable and transformational potential.

The thesis consists of three main parts – each of three chapters - with a substantial scene- setting Introduction and a Conclusion. Part One examines culture and planning, Part Two develops a new Culturised Model for planning, and Part Three illustrates the Model.

In Part One the grounds of culturisation are prepared by: 1) describing our culturalised age; 2) developing a new positionality for planning; 3) presenting a critical analysis of neomodern and postmodern planning theory; and 4) outlining an original history of culture and planning in the 20 th and 21 st centuries.

In Part Two a practical Culturised Model for planning is developed, based on the three elements of 1) principles for culture; 2) a planner’s ‘literacy trinity’; and 3) a methodology.

i THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Model employs an integrated concept of culture and an integrated approach to research, and is applicable to the full spectrum of planning forms, scales and purposes.

In Part Three the Culturised Model is illustrated in principle through a range of global examples, and in specific terms, for two major Australian places. The first study illustrates culture and urban and regional planning for metropolitan , NSW, at four nested geographical scales. The second illustrates strategic planning in its aspatial form for the Port Arthur Historic Site, in Tasmania, a major international convict heritage site proposed for UNESCO World Heritage listing.

The thesis represents an original multi-dimensional synthesis on culture and planning. It also presents a ‘breakthrough’ paradigm for the sustainable integration of culture in planning, previously only foreshadowed in the planning literature, and developed in randomised practices internationally.

ii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract i

Acknowledgements v

Abbreviations vi

Tables viii

Figures ix

Preface xi

INTRODUCTION

1. Framing Culture: Framing Planning 1

PART ONE CULTURE AND PLANNING

Preamble 39

2. A Culturalised Age 40

3. Planning Theory and Culture 55

4. Planning History and Cultural Concepts 75

iii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

PART TWO A CULTURISED MODEL FOR PLANNING

Preamble 107

5. Developing the Culturised Model 108

6. Planning Literacies for Culture 137

7. The Model’s Methodology 153

PART THREE ILLUSTRATING THE MODEL

Preamble 165

8. The Culturised Model in Principle 166

9. Urban and Regional Planning in Sydney 196

10. Strategic Planning and the Port Arthur Historic Site 242

CONCLUSION

11. Drawing Together 271

Bibliography 278

iv THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank my supervisors, Associate Professor Susan Thompson and Associate Professor Robert Freestone of the Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE), University of New South Wales. Their intellectual and academic rigour, and advice on knowledge issues and discourse were important to my work at every stage, as was their cheerful support.

I also put on record the initial encouragement I received to undertake the thesis from four individuals: Ms Amanda Lohrey, Dr. Glen Searle, Emeritus Professor Helen Armstrong, and the late Dr Kay Daniels.

During the three-year preparation and writing of the thesis the seminars and events organised by Dr Kevin Dunn, as Convenor of the Urban and Regional Studies Research Group, proved useful to my research. Dr Catherine de Lorenzo was unstinting in her assistance as Director of Postgraduate Students, FBE.

Lastly, the camaraderie of a culturally diverse group of fellow postgraduate students was a memorable and enlivening ingredient during the period of my research. This was so, even as events such as the Bali Bombing and the War in Iraq drew close to home, particularly for a number of international colleagues.

v THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Abbreviations

ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics AHC Australian Heritage Commission AIF Australian Infantry Force AML and F Australian Mutual Life and Finance ANC African National Congress ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations ATC Australian Commission BLF Builders Labourers’ Federation CBD Central Business District CES Commonwealth Employment Service CSR Colonial Sugar Refinery DASETT Department of Arts, Sport, Environment, Tourism and Territories DCP Development Control Plan DOCA Department of Communications and EU European Union FBE Faculty of the Built Environment GIS Geographical Information System GML Godden Mackay Logan GPO General Post Office ICOMOS International Council on Monuments and Sites IDC Inter-Departmental Committee LEP Local Environmental Plan NGOs Non Government Organisations NPWS National Parks and Wildlife Service NSW New South Wales OECD Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development PAHS Port Arthur Historic Site PAHSMA Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority

vi THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

RAHS Royal Australian Historical Society RAIA Royal Australian Institute of Architects REP Regional Environmental Plan SBS Special Broandcasting Service SHFA Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority SHFT Sydney Harbour Federation Trust UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation WCC World Commission on Culture

vii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Tables

Table 1. Lefebvre’s ‘Trialectics of Being’ – An Ontology of Culture. Source: Author following Lefebvre. 23

Table 2. Integrated Culture in Philosophy, Disciplines and the Everyday. Source: Author. 25

Table 3. Inputs to Culturised Model. Source: Author. 126

Table 4. Principles for Culture. Source: Author. 135

Table 5. A Planner’s Literacy Trinity. Source: Author. 144

Table 6. Structure of the Culturised Model. Source: Author. 154

Table 7. Integrated Culture. Source: Author. 157

Table 8. Integrated Research. Source: Author. 161

Table 9. Planning Scales and Types. Source: Author. 193

Table 10. Sydney Areas, Geographical Scales, and Planning Types. Source: Author. 198

viii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figures

Figure 1. Culture and Urban and Regional Planning. Source: Author. 20

Figure 2. Culture and Strategic Planning. Source: Author. 21

Figure 3. Culturisation Methodology. Source: Author. 163

Figure 4. Metropolis by Rosalie Gascoigne. Source: Edwards, D. (1997) Rosalie Gascoigne. Material as Landscape, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. 201

Figure 5. Installation Concept for Mosaic or Mural in Apartment Block at Bullecourt Place. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: GML. 202

Figure 6. ‘Migrants Arriving in Sydney, 1966’. Photo by David Moore. Source: Moore, D. (1993). Sydney Harbour, Chapter and Verse, Sydney. 203

Figure 7. Map of Sydney Showing the Harbour, Pyrmont-Ultimo and Bullecourt Place, 2005. Source: Jack Barton, Sydney. 209

Figure 8. ‘Sydney Harbour from 20,00 feet, 1992’. Photo by David Moore. Source: Moore, D. (1993). Sydney Harbour, Chapter and Verse, Sydney. 211

ix THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 9. Sketch from Pyrmont Pieces Project, 1992. Source: Fitzgerald, S. and Golder, H. (1994). Pyrmont and Ultimo under Siege, Sydney: Hale and Iremonger. 223

Figure 10. An Archaeological Palimpsest. Remains of former yard structures preserved beneath the concrete floors of the 1925 Woolstore, Ultimo. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: GML. 224

Figure 11. AIF near Bullecourt. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: GML. 226

Figure 12. Map showing Port Arthur and the Tasman Peninsula. Source: PAHSMA. 245

Figure 13. Filming For the Term of his Natural Life at Port Arthur. Source: Archives Office of Tasmania. 257

Figure 14. Photo of separate booth for worship, Port Arthur Church. Source: Archives Office of NSW. 264

Figure 15. The ‘Convict Sublime’ - Port Arthur Landscape. Source: PAHSMA. 266

x THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Preface

FRAMING SELF

This doctorate is the result of two cumulative aspects of my experience as a professional planner in , through the 1980s and 1990s. These were firstly, a sense of frustration with the inability of planning to mirror social and environmental needs and to produce innovation and secondly, my belief that the insurgent claims of culture could form the basis for introducing greater integrity into contemporary planning.

Throughout these two decades I observed planning practice both formally and informally in the government and private sectors, in Australia and internationally. As the first historian employed in that capacity by the New South Wales (NSW) government and as one of the first public employees in Australia to combine the professions of historian, planner and public environmental advocate, I gained privileged insight into the nature and operations of planning. Again, in the same period, I was in the perhaps unique position of being able to accumulate experience through employment with each of the three tiers of Australian government both as a member of staff and as a commercial consultant. As well, I served as a private consultant to commercial clients. Added to this experience, were cumulative study tours, a six-month attachment to the International Centre Cities on Water, Venice, Italy and research into planning and culture undertaken in Europe, the USA and Asia. This helped to develop a more diverse and searching perspective than would otherwise be possible, and enabled me to observe culture as it emerged from the shadows of planning in all of its complex diversity. This was happening at the same time as culture was more and more interlaced with the expansion of the cultural economy and produced in postmodern, post-industrial and postcolonial circumstances that favoured networks and knowledge, values, place and history. Yet, in government and the private sector these trends were reflected unevenly in spatial and strategic planning, and sometimes escaped recognition.

xi THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

At the same time, throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Australia and the , a major political shift was occurring away from government to governance. This trend favoured a greater role for government as a developer through regional strategic planning and partnerships with private companies and non-government organizations (NGOs). The consequences of both the social expansion of culture and the rescaling of governance only served to produce in me a heightened sense of lost opportunity. This was because culture in its new context rarely played the defining or shaping role it could offer the special development opportunities that accompanied the rescaling process. More indefinably, the neo-liberal re-structuring of left planning without an ethical rationale. All at sea in various settings of commercial or instrumental venality planning didn’t bother to reflect on fundamental ethics in the , for example, in which the legal profession did.

Yet, my experience in developing planning policy in the NSW Government throughout the 1980s and as a private consultant to the Australia Government in the 1990s indicated that it was possible to implement major planning and policy innovations with important new strategic cultural content. Sustaining such initiatives was another matter. The stop-start nature of the policy process and the ‘partisan’ linkages perceived to dwell between initiatives and the profile of a specific administration, minister, or functionary usually ensured that new initiatives - especially when considered successful - were often not pursued. In addition, it seemed foolish to ignore the growing world-wide unsettling in planning in its theory and in new social demands based on the claims of gender, indigenousness, ethnicity, socio-economic difference, sexual preference and disability. Moreover, at the international level Australian planning approaches such as cultural mapping, and heritage philosophy and methodology, were being utilised in planning to accommodate these trends. In lectures I gave in Italy, , and Papua New on cultural mapping as a planning tool I was astonished by the receptiveness of the responses.

Yet, in overall terms a strong planning rationale was clearly required to challenge the constraints mentioned and to frame and bring to public and professional attention those

xii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

planning innovations and opportunities based on culture that were being variously recognised around the globe. Culture could then start the climb that the concept of sustainability had made to its formal conceptual recognition at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The Conference was known informally as the ‘Earth Summit’ and adopted three key agreements including Agenda 21, a comprehensive program of global action for sustainable development that recognises the determinative role of culture.

I grew to believe that my experience in developing a range of influential planning initiatives in a number of culture-based sectors – heritage studies, strategies and a cultural mapping methodology all subsequently modelled in Australia and internationally – could serve as the practical and intellectual basis to assist in creating a cultural model for planning. Such a model would also be relevant for other social sectors such as education and health. This model would include the cultural positioning I have come to brand as the ‘culturisation’ of planning. My earlier experiences relevant to this opportunity included development of the NSW system of heritage studies in the early 1980s (Young, 1984), preparation of the first NSW Cultural Tourism Strategy in 1991 (Young, 1991) and joint development and co-authorship of the Australian Commonwealth’s cultural mapping model, published in 1995 as Mapping Culture - A Guide to Cultural and Economic Development in (Clark, Sutherland, and Young, 1995). All of these planning innovations received substantial recognition, but were frequently foreshortened or pursued without the rigour or coherence of the original vision. Successful innovations remained at the mercy of more dominant forces such as the lack of a bi-partisan political approach to strategic cultural issues, bureaucratic comfort with the ad hoc in Australia’s pseudo-strategic culture and a national operating environment uncomfortable with intellectual aspirations.

Grounded myself within a background of family cultural inquiry, and a fine, critical secondary and tertiary education in the small Australian state of Tasmania, I was not prepared to accept the diminishing mentality of the ‘lucky country’, a phrase first used of

xiii THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Australia in irony (Horne, 1971). Within my own minority , I grew up with the moral and cultural seriousness of the Bloomsbury thinkers and their belief in human intimacy and diversity for inspiration. Like others of my Australian generation I roamed the world and remained egalitarian. Personally, I continued to intellectual attainment, and maintained both social optimism and a sense of awe for the inspiration of culture.

By the last decades of the twentieth century it was clear to me that a new planning paradigm running with the grain of culture and not against it was needed. ‘Alternative geographies’ (Short, 2000) and diverse ways of seeing and knowing that didn’t lead to the ‘tacit silencing of other knowledges’ (Soja, 1996: 80) could contribute to such a paradigm. It would also need to be holistic and inter-disciplinary, not repudiate theory and be relevant in an inter-sectoral way. I felt from experience that such a paradigm would best be embedded in a flexible model with methodological procedures that could be refined over time and adapted to varied cultural, administrative and geographical circumstances. I am also convinced that a model of this kind and its underlying principles needs to be published and tested in government and private sector projects and in spatial and strategic planning contexts.

I hope that the ideas and the Culturised Model outlined in this thesis will make a contribution to culturising planning, for that more inclusive cultural democracy and more creative new economy that lies beyond the simple cultural optimisation of planning research and systems. In this respect, I should like to explore the prospects for a more accessible format for the ideas and the Model contained in the thesis. Such a model could then perhaps take its place alongside the improving vision of many of the early planners of the last tumultuous century.

xiv THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

INTRODUCTION

FRAMING CULTURE: FRAMING PLANNING

This thesis is an examination of the contemporary relationship between planning and culture. It proposes an outline of a potential and more beneficial relationship for the future. It is argued that the relationship between planning and culture in its current form stands in need of renewal and transformation and that the strategic and systematic introduction of richer and more meaningful concepts and approaches to culture, have the potential to re- invigorate planning.

In today’s circumstances planning is perceived as in the throes of a paralysing identity crisis – it fails to move forward, yet cannot go back – and has responded with only limited vision to the challenges of culture. In contrast, culture exhibits heightened diversity and dynamism. It has been re-contextualised from without as societies continue to transform themselves, and re-conceptualised from within, following the emergence of new theories, concepts and approaches. Ironically, whereas culture expands, diversifies and hybridises, planning is shrinking in political, ethical and perceptual terms. Neo-liberal economic and social re-structuring has restricted planning’s room to manoeuvre, while the state’s demands for planning legitimation have grown as the role of the media increases globally. In its weakened state, planning is often left with no other option but to toy with the residues of planning modernism whose shaken assumptions and physical fixations are poorly adapted to an era that has taken such a profound turn to culture. The challenge for planning then is to re-connect with a broader social role and to re-assert an imaginative and critical posture.

The re-positioning of planning in relation to culture is an issue of some urgency because the restructuring that began towards the end of the last century precipitated cultural transformations that have major implications for the conduct and credibility of planning. In

1 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the urban context cities of difference have emerged with dynamics produced by four demographic and socio-cultural forces, identified by Sandercock as ‘international migration, the discourse of postcolonialism, the resurgence of indigenous , and the rise of organised civil society’ (Sandercock, 2003: 13). The challenges posed for planning by considerations of gender and sexuality and global resistance to the erosion of valued communities and places, are also aspects of this transformation previously identified by Sandercock (1998). This is the world described by David Harvey as existing in a ‘condition of postmodernity’ (1990). Yet aspects of the modern world, as well as pre- modern vestiges, continue to survive within the one context. The cutting-edge of this world, however, is represented by three trends. First, there is the manner in which ‘Culture refers to Culture’ (Castells, 1998: 477) and in which ‘knowledge intervenes upon knowledge itself’ (Castells, 1989, 10). This results in the increasing exploration, elaboration and expansion of culture. Second, there is the manner in which culture becomes more of a commodity and, third, the process whereby commodities themselves acquire greater cultural and symbolic content (Scott, 2000). These trends lie at the centre of the exploding cultural and information economies and are the reason why we are able to say that culture is expanding. Finally, it needs to be recognised in philosophical terms that in our age ‘Human existence depends more than ever on the achievements we distinguish as knowledge’ (Allen, 2004: 262).

How planning may envision these trends as opportunities for renewal by identifying and utilising deeper levels of culture in its processes then becomes the rationale for this thesis, along with the central goal of developing a new paradigm and model to improve the grasp and reach of planning in a manner that is entirely practical.

Further, in this section, I state the key issues that impinge on such an undertaking for planning, and describe the role of a new positionality for culture. To facilitate these goals, the scope of planning and its diverse terminologies are defined. Similarly, the scope and contents of culture, and its ontology are canvassed. Relevant aspects of the debate over modernity and postmodernity are then discussed from the points of view of planning

2 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

theory, and planning practice. A preferred position on the debate is adopted. The basic sources of theory for the thesis and their synthesis in this work are mentioned, followed by an assessment of the thesis’s contribution to knowledge. The Introduction concludes with an outline of the structure of the thesis.

Issues Statement

While the postmodern world spins in new and startling directions planning is under attack from almost every social, political and ideological direction and struggles to keep faith with its founding inspiration for human betterment. In the nineteenth century planning’s inspiration for human betterment was grounded in its recognition of the condition of the urban working class (Mc Auslan, 1980). Planning today operates in a radically different cultural, social, economic, and ecological environment. While in this world the approaches, techniques and perspective of planning may have changed its mission for human betterment has not. Yet, planning is divided from within along theoretical lines and is under attack from many of its potential constituencies. The values represented in these conflicts are wide-ranging. They include political ideologies of the left and right, the fundamentalisms of deep ecology and free market rationalism and the rival schools of planning theory and modern and postmodern planning approaches. The range of these forces engenders scepticism about the viability of any consistent approach to planning reform. Similarly, on another level, there is no single theory of culture and planning to assist in addressing these dilemmas. This situation is analogous perhaps to the relationship between power and built form as described by Kim Dovey who argues that:

There can be no single theory of power and built form. But there is an imperative to articulate the multiple connections of power to built form, both programmatic and discursive. While I make no claim to resolve the question… this question must be kept alive (Dovey, 1999: 50).

Rather than lamenting the absence of a theoretical ‘silver bullet’, Dovey substitutes an agenda of exploring and articulating the multiple connections of power to built form. Further, his optimism insists on the intellectual and moral necessity of keeping the

3 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

fundamental questions alive. In a parallel sense, there is an imperative to explore and articulate the multiple and dynamic relationships between broad cultural phenomena and planning practices. This is critical if planning and its incorporation of culture is to begin to reflect the true dynamism of culture. This includes not only cultural, social and economic developments, but also what is often not perceived – the dimension of ecological maintenance and manipulation.

The current accommodation of culture in planning is fragmented and superficial. At every level, in spatial and strategic planning culture is addressed in a conceptually limited, ad hoc and often opportunistic fashion. These superficial and manipulative approaches bring cultural inauthenticity to the fore. While the tendency to inauthenticity is sometimes a byword in urban marketing, and in strategic planning for key areas such as heritage and tourism, it characterises much of planning. Lamentably, this can include cultural planning and planning for the arts, particularly in terms of ‘the growing attention paid to the cultural economy and the commodification of the arts as urban cultural assets’ (Evans, 2001: 16).

This brings to the fore the issue of ‘culturalisation’, a trend combining the growth of the cultural economy and the development of the complex qualities of an era ‘in which economic and organisational life has become increasingly “culturalised”’ (du Gay, P. and Pryke, M., 2000: 6). In an era such as this, marketing, advertising, the arts, film and media are increasingly culturalised. Planning follows this trend especially in sectors such as development, tourism and heritage, where cultural forms and cultural content are increasingly included and commodified in the process.

In addition to superficial approaches and the commodification of culture in planning, other issues impact on the extent and quality of cultural incorporation. Culture is subtle and complex in nature, its concepts are fluid and abstract, and there is a lack of understanding of suitable techniques and approaches for accessing and incorporating detailed and qualitative cultural knowledge in planning. This is because culture expresses like nothing else the connective in life. For this reason, Raymond Williams’ attempt to grasp all of

4 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

culture and its detailed parts was made ‘against the frame of the forms’ (Bennett, 1998: 54). This principle therefore, applies as much to the arts, as to governance, and the numerous forms of planning.

How then is this connective integration to occur, especially as no single theory is available to mobilise the transformation? Further, no single theory would ever be likely to account for the complexity of postmodern society. Yet, I would argue that an integrated concept of culture and an integrated approach to research can be elaborated to assist in synthesising culture in planning, and to better explore and articulate the relationships between planning, society and the environment. A position of integration would be based on a comprehensive concept of culture and a plural approach to theory. An integrated view of culture could supplant the often narrow, selective and non-inclusive concepts of culture that lead to blinkered planning. A position of pluralism in respect of theory would draw in culture through a multiplicity of conceptual and methodological approaches. Integrated culture would be captured through a process of integrated research as the basis for retrieving the lost opportunities that all too often define contemporary planning. This is at a time when more diverse, ethical and meaningful opportunities for the inclusion of culture in planning are essential. The complexity of this task is however daunting and few systematic approaches to assist planners are in the offering. Even so, successful cultural approaches to planning do exist, although they are geographically and historically scattered and exist mainly in the form of ad hoc or piecemeal innovations. In addition, the work of numerous planning theoreticians from both the neo-modern and postmodern wings of planning theory, contain innumerable insights and relevant observations that are not followed up. The value of this corpus of international work is not typically captured for planning as it is perceived as unrelated to everyday planning or as incapable of being integrated in professional practice. A general cultural approach, operational concepts and a cultural model for planning are required to fill the current vacuum in day-to-day planning.

A research enterprise of this kind is a radical undertaking and raises key questions. For example, how may culture be defined and made graspable for the planner given culture’s

5 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

many forms and emergent realities? How may cultural theory and planning theory in their oppositional diversities be harnessed for planning? How is it possible to develop a workable system to increase the authentic integration of culture in planning with potential benefits to planning independent of a single theoretical or political perspective? And would such a system produce beneficial outcomes in planning regardless of the value conflicts of a postmodern world of ? These questions I propose to answer in the affirmative by defining a role for culture in both spatial and strategic planning that has the potential to transform societies and their economies. It may also have lessons for other planning, and research and development in related sectors, such as education, health, governance, and the creative industries.

Culturisation and Planning

The perspective the thesis adopts in relation to the activity of planning is a positive one. In this respect Gleeson’s comments on planning are important. Planning, he writes:

is too valuable and too important to the contemporary globalised world, with its increasingly voracious markets, to be left insensate and on the sidelines of change. It must regain a sense of purpose, with reference to the new challenges and new agendas that are remaking its rationale and reframing and enlarging its potential contribution (Gleeson, 2003: 30).

I would add that the practice of planning is too venerable in its history of positive social and economic engagement to be left to contemporary political cooption or class-based culture and mindsets within the planning profession. In the face of this reality the argument has been made that planning should be re-modernised or re-enlightened by returning to the universal values of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and its ‘unfinished’ project (Beck, 1997; Gleeson, 2000). Re-enlightenment, however, is poorly adapted to a postmodern age of culture and remains for me, at least, a curiously ahistorical and quixotic undertaking in an age of diversity. Further, it is an age that follows the very century that gave birth to total war, genocide and postmodernism. Alternatively, the approach of this thesis is to propose the ‘culturisation’ of planning, rather than its re-

6 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

enlightenment. Culturisation is the preferred strategy as it reflects the needs of a subtle age of culture that depends on the imperative of cultural interpretation. I define culturisation, as the systematic research and ethical and reflexive integration of historical and contemporary cultural knowledge, theory, and interpretation in spatial and strategic planning processes. It is distinguished from ‘culturalisation’ which is more often a commodified expression of contemporary trends and opportunities. It is market-driven and can bypass accepted national and international standards in relation to culture that are laid down and are evolving through international agreements, law, and governance.

Culturisation is, I believe, a new basis for positioning ‘in the informational mode of development (in which) the source of productivity lies in the quality of knowledge’ (Castells, 1989: 10). However, within the context of an expanding and hybrid culture that enlarges itself like ripples on a pond, a return to Enlightenment values or the monolithic perspective of modernism is unlikely to assist planning to regain its spirit or virtue. Whatever enlightenment may come, and however incrementally, is more likely to be the product of a heightened and ‘educated’ empathy for culture, diversity and incommensurability.

Therefore, this thesis is written to champion planning as a desirable practice, and to propose the renewal of planning with culture, using the approach and techniques of a mature culturisation. At the same time, it is recognised that ‘To write for something is also, and at the same time, to write against something else’ (Bennett, 1998: 1). In this respect, the inhibitory emphases of residual planning modernism are dealt with as they come into focus, alongside the more positive and proliferating opportunities offered to planning through culture. The key contextualising proposition of the thesis is that culture in an age of interpretation and information is the world’s leading intellectual resource. As a theme this is woven through the text and applied to planning from a range of perspectives that dramatise a world of emerging opportunities. Culture’s global role as the new fulcrum for societies, environments and economies is the basis of an unprecedented opportunity for planning. This is advocated by agencies of the United Nations, advisers to such bodies, and

7 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

numerous theorists and commentators (Soja 1993; WCC 1996; Sandercock 1998, 2003; Scott 2000;). An emphasis on culture and its strategic importance to planning, however, brings into the open a range of key questions in relation to the nature of culture, its distinctive operations and specific opportunities in the contemporary world. For example, what are the more authoritative and integrated concepts of culture the thesis seeks to mobilise and how is their transformative potential to be realised in planning? Additionally, what are the forms, scales and levels of planning under discussion and how do these diverse planning forms and modalities interrelate, in what are, after all, complex social and economic fields?

Positionality

My task at this stage, however, is to propose a strategic and philosophical overview for the thesis. One of the most usefully suggestive approaches to such an overview is provided by a searching reflection contained in the work of the important urban theorist David Harvey. In his essay ‘Social Justice, Postmodernism and the City’ (2003), Harvey considers two seminal books he wrote nearly twenty years apart, Social Justice and the City from 1979 and The Condition of Postmodernity, published in 1989. His two far-reaching goals in the essay are to examine how we might now think about urban problems and ‘how by virtue of such thinking we can better position ourselves with respect to solutions’ (Harvey, 2003: 101). He concludes that:

The question of positionality is … fundamental to all debates about how to create infrastructures and urban environments for living and working in the twenty-first century (Harvey, 2003: 101).

The issue of positionality is in a profound sense the crux of this thesis. The point of view adopted is that culture is the key to the problematic of positionality raised by Harvey. A planning positionality focussed on solutions must be grounded in culture. And the thesis is not alone in so asserting - the same recognition has emerged globally. It is the formal position of key organs of global governance and of international NGOs. For example, the World Commission on Culture (WCC), the key adviser on culture to the United Nations

8 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), expresses the view that culture is the foundation of all strategic planning for development. The WCC argues that:

When culture is understood as the basis of development … the very notion of has to be considerably broadened. Any policy for development must be profoundly sensitive to and inspired by culture itself…. (Gordon and Mundy, 2001: 5).

The Commission’s understanding of this approach – utilising culture as the inspiration for development policy – is broad in nature. What this indicates is that in a quite conscious fashion our age is beginning to define itself in terms of culture and that the location, articulation and integration of culture in social technologies is now a dominant concern. This phenomenon represents a trend that is as much a key to the renewal of planning, as it is important to effective practice in other sectors. The WCC nominates a broad spectrum of interrelated areas as beneficiaries of culture, including education, health, the environment and organisational development. This will occur through a more thoroughgoing and sensitive approach to culture, based on planning and research, and development. One of the themes of this thesis is the striking opportunity cultural positioning offers planning to increase integration within and between planning at multiple scales and in different forms. By this means, more coherent and authentic levels of integration can be achieved between culture and planning. Culture’s capacity to express the connective and to transcend the frame of the forms has only begun to be taken up in practice following the slow process of its intellectual recognition. At the same time, culture is interrogative, has the capacity to ‘talk back’, and can serve as the basis for re-defining social inclusion.

I argue in conjunction with the views of the internationalist organisations that the integration of culture into practical planning is perhaps the most important challenge in existence for planning today, and into the foreseeable future. This potential spans the full spectrum of planning forms, scales and purposes and represents the gravitational centre for planning reform. The intellectual introduction of the whole of culture into planning considerations is the key to the new positionality posited by Harvey. As related earlier, I

9 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

describe this process as the ‘culturisation’ of planning, and it is in contrast to the trend to ‘culturalisation’.

The vision of culturised planning synthesises a number of considerations and influences. Firstly, these include an inclusive and integrated concept of culture based on the work of Williams and Lefebvre and cultural principles espoused by key international governance bodies and their policy documents. To this is added cumulative lessons drawn from global achievements in integrating culture into planning. Further, insights gathered from the main schools of planning theory, the of culture and commentaries from significant planning educators are included. A case for the plural engagement of theory is developed and illustrated as essential to the culturisation of planning, along with the cultural literacies necessary to negotiate the social, professional, ethical and political intricacies of a culturalised age.

The reason why culture is recognised as playing this role, particularly at such a specific juncture in history, is also an important interrelated issue. The answers to these questions provide part of the key to understanding how culture has changed in the way it now operates and in the way it is experienced. Credible responses to these issues also help to explain the new world of opportunities that the resource of culture offers for planning transformation. For example, in accounting for this change the geographer Henri Lefebvre offers valuable clues. Lefebvre wrote in the last chapter of his celebrated work The Production of Space that: ‘Today our concern must be with space on a world scale …as well as with all the spaces subsidiary to it, at every possible level’ (Lefebvre, 1992: 412). This vision of interconnectedness also directly relates both to the operation of culture and of strategic and spatial planning, and is a key aspect of their new positionality. What I am asserting here is the need to consider culture on a world scale and at every spatial scale subsidiary to it. Culture may be considered both in terms of its role in the constitution of the spatial and planning scales themselves, and in terms of its potential connective powers. Harvey alludes to this connective power when he suggests in his own terms that ‘connecting the sentiments of the (Communist) Manifesto with those expressed in the (UN)

10 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Declaration of Human Rights provides one way to link discourses about globalisation with those of the body’ (Harvey, 2000: 18). This connects discourses at the largest scale through to those of the body, the smallest and most fundamental scale of all.

While Harvey recognises the fact that spatial scales are culturally produced, he points out that they are ‘… systemic products of changing technologies, modes of human organization or political struggle’ (Harvey 2000: 55) rather than being immutable or completely natural, as they often intuitively appear to be. Harvey argues that Human beings have typically produced a nested hierarchy of spatial scales within which to organise their activities and understand the world. Households, communities and nations are obvious examples of contemporary organisational forms that exist at different scales. We immediately intuit in today’s world that matters look differently when analysed at global, continental, national, regional, local or household/personal scales. Yet we also know that what happens at one scale cannot be understood outside of the nested relationships that exist across a hierarchy of scales – personal behaviours (e.g. driving cars) produce (when aggregated) local and regional affects that culminate in continent-wide problems of, say, acid deposition or global warming (Harvey, 2000: 55).

According to Harvey it is from a dynamic interaction between ecological and so-called ‘natural process’ scalars ‘… that human beings produce and instantiate their own scales for pursuing their own goals and organising their collective behaviours’ (Harvey, 2000: 55). For example, he illustrates this by referring to the formation of the European Union that has transformed a ‘natural’ territoriality from one scale to another (Harvey, 2000: 55). Harvey links the dialectic between the more resistant ‘natural scalars’ and those humans produce for their own goals with the concept of uneven political development. He argues that the solution to development of this kind:

entails a fusion of these two elements of changing scales and the production of geographical differences. We need to think, therefore, about differentiations, interactions, and relations across and within scales. A common error of both analytical understanding and political action arises because we all too often lock ourselves into one and only one scale of thinking, treating the difference at that scale as the fundamental line of political cleavage. This is, I submit, one of the most pervasive errors to arise from all the globalisation talk to which we are now

11 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

exposed. It erroneously holds that everything is fundamentally determined at the global scale (Harvey, 2000: 77).

For my part, I argue that a positionality based on culture and its holistic and connective power, is the key means to re-connect planning scales and planning types, as Harvey recommends. Similarly, it is the means to re-value local culture and to assert lost planning synergies that result from narrow views of culture and limited research practice. In Part Three I illustrate the planning gain to be derived from the connectivity of culture when considering differentiations, interactions, and relations across and within scales, and in terms of the relations between urban and regional planning and strategic planning in its aspatial forms.

Such an approach may also prove to be the answer to the numerous attacks on planning ranging from communities, ideologues, planning theorists, economists, ecologists and pragmatists. At a political level, Harvey acknowledges what he describes as ‘ideological embarrassment’ - following Unger - that has resulted from:

the history of politics these last hundred years: its tendency to move merely in repetitive cycles, swinging backwards and forwards between laissez-faire and state interventionism without, it seems, finding any way to break out of this binary opposition to turn a spinning wheel of stasis into a spiral of human development (Harvey, 2003: 111).

This bleak view, which is perhaps in itself unnecessarily binary, nevertheless reflects the social frustration of many theorists with the lack of a circuit-breaker in politics or in planning. Contemporary trends in planning such as the New Urbanism, or neo-modern and postmodern elaborations in planning theory have not had the transforming impact that may have been hoped for over time. Against this, the proposed new positionality of culture may represent the circuit breaker that is needed for the renewal of planning in a culturalised information age characterised by dynamic levels of difference. No other contending candidate has so far appeared on the horizon with the possible capacity ‘…to turn a spinning wheel of stasis into a spiral of human development’ (Harvey, 2003: 111).

12 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Scope and terminology of planning

In this thesis I consider planning from a broad perspective and in multiple senses. Planning is an omnibus phenomenon and ranges in scale from the local to the global. This spectrum traverses a spatial continuum from the area of a small site, through to a precinct, neighbourhood, suburb, town, region and nation state. Planning’s global spatial dimension is reflected through the existence and operation of international agreements, for example, in relation to World Heritage Sites, fisheries zones and the dispersed wildlife habitats of migratory species.

Planning is considered across a broad spectrum of practices, in terms of a diversity of modes and formats, according to multiple geographical scales and at varied organisational and administrative levels. The opportunities that culture offers planning in a contemporary context mirror this progression in scale. These opportunities can be explored in a comprehensive and logical fashion. I say comprehensive and logical because the levels of connectedness and the interrelationships that characterise , societies and the economies in a global world demand an over-arching approach that goes beyond the traditional boundaries and assumptions concerning the scope and content of planning. At the same time this thesis discusses the traditional preoccupations of planning and conventional planning forms in a focussed way within the new cultural, social and intellectual frame. Both approaches are necessary however to deal with new forms of experience, new paradigms and new issues confronting planning in a postmodern and post- industrial age, and the new opportunities that are tied to it.

Defining planning has complications, however, in terms of different planning and issues of nomenclature. For example the theorist of collaborative planning Patsy Healey (1997) divides planning into spatial and environmental forms whereas the planning educator Clara Greed (2000) refers to the two main forms of planning as spatial and aspatial. On another axis planning in the United Kingdom is known traditionally as Town and Country Planning whereas in the it is referred to as Urban and Regional

13 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Planning. In New South Wales, the State Government paradigm of environmental planning has replaced the earlier philosophy and nomenclature of town and country planning derived from Britain. In the English context Greed (2000) singles out the town and country planning system that has been responsible for controlling the development of land and property over the last fifty years. Within this system she argues that urban and rural issues are inseparable and are additionally over-arched by world-wide environmental concerns. Greed observes that in the United Kingdom so-called ‘Town and Country Planning’ is governed by numerous Acts of Parliament with the same name, but that ‘planning is more than physical land use control, it incorporates economic, social, environmental, architectural and political dimensions, at local, regional, and national levels’ (Greed, 2000: 1). The emphasis has shifted from ‘controlling land uses and developments themselves, to seeking to influence the aspatial (non-physical processes) such as the economic, social and political forces that determine the spatial (physical) end product of the built environment’ (Greed, 2000: 2). In this context planning is less about ‘land use topics or design policies … (and) should be seen as a ‘process’, or a ‘methodology’ … of urban governance’ (Thomas, in Greed, 2000: 2). This is an environment in which the planner works in inter- disciplinary teams aiming to coordinate and integrate inputs across the range of government interests, communities and businesses. This process is a strategic one.

This sample of differences in planning perspective and terminology indicates that planning terms need to be defined for the thesis. They also need to be defined in as fundamental a fashion as possible in sympathy with the broad approach to planning that is adopted here. A broad approach also allows the power of culture in relation to planning to be clearly understood in multiple contexts and to be introduced into planning practice as efficiently as possible. Here, the importance of culture for all recognisable planning becomes an issue. Planning needs to be considered in the broadest of terms so that the true value of culture is manifest across a range of planning types, particularly those forms of planning that are not normally considered together or as possessing any inherent relationship. Culture in its comprehensive dimensions, and through integrated research, however, has the power to join up, flow through and animate otherwise logically separate types of planning.

14 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Let us first examine the definitions of planning. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1968) gives one of the simplest and most fundamental usages of the word ‘plan’ as referring to a ‘drawing’ or ‘map’ of some kind (OUP, 1968: 1514). But a plan is also ‘A scheme of action, project, design; the way in which it is proposed to carry out some proceeding (and in the) weakened sense: Method, way of proceeding. 1706’ (OUP, 1968: 1514). This concept of a ‘method’ or ‘way of proceeding’ endures and is perhaps fundamental to all planning.

In the first sense noted above, that of a ‘drawing’ or ‘map’ of some kind, spatial plans usually consist of, or are accompanied by, a map or drawing. In particular this is usually the case with a statutory spatial plan or instrument of whatever kind. A plan in the second sense, that of the way in which it is proposed to carry out some proceeding, or in the weakened sense ‘a method or way of proceeding’, correlates with the orderly prescription normally embodied in a strategy.

The origins of spatial planning at least are as old as the city itself, as cities have been planned throughout history. The ancient Greeks had strict by-laws for the developers and occupiers of the city to prevent fire and to protect air and water quality. Roman generals carried city plans with them on wars of conquest throughout the empire, spreading the visible culture of a square, gridded city on a cruciform layout (Bell and Bell, 1972: 10). This tradition of relating planning to the urban product and its historical morphology is a powerful and useful one in education and training and continues up to and embraces the post-industrial city. Healey however, points out that the culture of planning in the last century has much more to do with the impact of the Enlightenment. As she writes:

the culture of planning as it has evolved in the last century is rooted in a much broader philosophical and social transformation, the intellectual sea-change which we now label in the history of Western thought as the ‘Enlightenment’ (Healey, 1997: 8).

The Enlightenment produced a mix of positive and negative consequences. Its emphasis on instrumental rationality and individual freedom was not always sympathetic to the

15 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

irreducible presence of culture and values, and the psychic consequences of the increasing rationality of consciousness were also criticised. The allied modern project of industrial development and limitless economic growth resulted in pollution and environmental damage. The complexity of the Enlightenment program as it developed in the nineteenth century saw planning emerge as a response to the management of space and society within the nation state (Healey, 1997). Planning as it emerged in this context was designed to minimise social and environmental externalities and to cope with the volatility of the market economy.

What then are the defining elements of planning as practised in most developed countries? A distinction first needs to be made between planning within an urban and regional or environmental planning system and other forms of planning. Planning within such systems includes strategic planning. However, strategic planning exists outside these systems in sectors strongly related to them, such as heritage, tourism, urban marketing, urban governance and so on. Strategic planning also exists at the broad level of governance and as corporate strategic planning in the private sector. Strategic planning in organisations has developed in isolated terms from strategic spatial or urban and regional planning. There are many overlaps between strategic planning within urban and regional planning systems and elsewhere. The value in establishing the commonalities between planning of different kinds lies in releasing the transformational perception that culture links the forms of planning through common themes and cultural content. The importance of this recognition is that it can in a systematic fashion be used to unlock new synergies, interactivity and dynamism between planning at different geographical scales, and planning that occurs in different social and economic sectors.

16 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Gleeson argues that urban and regional planning ‘…anticipates and manages the spatial consequences of economic and social activity and environmental change’ (Gleeson, 2003: 25). He argues that such planning takes three principal forms in most developed countries:

1. Development control centring on the regulation of land uses and built environments at the local scale; 2. Assessment of environmental and social impacts of proposed development activity at the local and regional scales; and 3. Strategic planning involves the coordination of public and private investment and of government regulation within particular spatial frames (Gleeson, 2003: 25).

It can be seen that strategic planning within this context and in other sectors shares a concern with the future and a proactive nature that is essentially different from the processes of development control and environmental and social impact assessment. Urban and regional planning is devoted to controlling the use and development of land and property, whereas strategic planning is more proactive and designed to promote the orderly achievement of spatial or non-spatial objectives.

Culture runs through planning at all urban and regional planning scales and determines the integrity of much strategic planning. In a straightforward sense this is illustrated by the role of culture in informing the environmental scanning process that constitutes a key part of many strategic planning exercises and in developing the ‘strengths’, ‘weaknesses’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘threats’ of a ‘SWOT’ analysis. In these mixed planning techniques, cultural themes, cultural diversity and historical connections underlie and can ‘join up’ disconnected spatial scales and bind the integrity of a strategic plan. In the same fashion, increased, more resonant and relevant levels of cultural information, themes and concepts may be introduced into most planning. Spatial planning may be enriched by culture at any level of the spatial planning spectrum. This ranges from a small area of land such as a suburban allotment, or an allotment in a Central Business District (CBD), through to the level of a precinct, a neighbourhood, a suburb, a town or an entire metropolitan region. Further, not only is culture implicated at every planning scale, but also it is an interrelated culture that is in question. This culture is the aggregate of the local expressions of

17 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

geography, history and society and is the multiplication of communities in their environmental and historical dimensions. This global reality of culture applies to spatial planning irrespective of local planning arrangements and to strategic planning as it utilises similar techniques and approaches in developed and developing countries. Thus through culture, the land history of even a small allotment is connected to the wider pattern of the city or metropolis, and ultimately through to a potential international dimension. This is what Harvey’s describes in his terms as the ‘continuity of spatial relations (that is) both practically and rhetorically a fundamental fact of life’ (Harvey, 2000: 14). In my view, the smallest allotment of land shares a binding integument of history, culture and ecology with the surrounding land, a connectivity that is often artificially divided by planning systems and/or planning activity at different scales. As a result the connectivity of culture can be lost resulting in planning that limits the potential to include diverse communities and conservation outcomes as well as the cultural economy and levels of urban marketing that have greater cultural authority and legitimacy. As Harvey reminds us ‘…geographical differences are much more than mere historical-geographical legacies. They are perpetually being reproduced, sustained, undermined, and reconfigured by political- economic and socio-ecological processes occurring in the present’ (Harvey, 2000: 77).

Non-spatial strategic planning for developing and managing sectoral issues such as tourism, heritage, and urban marketing, are also beneficiaries of greater cultural content. In particular, the relationship between strategic planning for major heritage sites and the regions and countries in which they are located is in fact a quite direct one. It is also symbolic, as it suggests the parallel relationship that prevails in all places between urban and regional planning and urban and regional culture. This relationship exists because all geographical regions, and socio-economic patterns are grounded in culture, and because major heritage sites will always reflect shared cultural themes to a greater or lesser degree. Cultural themes and related cultural content will overlap between the two and exist in a condition of dialogue.

18 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This is a transformational truth. It is also being deepened by important shifts that are occurring in the relationship between local and metropolitan areas relative to their national and global contexts. Harvey describes these changes in the following way:

the changing powers of local and metropolitan governments in relationship to nation states and global forces (I think of everything from inter-urban competition for multi-national investment and ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ to the Agenda 21 element of the Rio agreements which mandated a whole series of local government actions to contain global warming) has been one significant way in which a particular scale of human organization has enhanced its role in the last twenty years (Harvey, 2000: 77).

In overall terms these changes have favoured the development of strategic planning as an appropriate tool or response to further their realisation. This trend includes the growth of local and metropolitan place and destination marketing responsibilities, powers and practices. Yet in current circumstances these tendencies most often operate without appropriate or integrated links with cultural institutions, such as major heritage sites, or without a concerted approach between the various scales and tiers of government and the private sector. In this context strategic planning, as a neutral vehicle, may lack an appropriate cultural connectivity to community and public institutional planning objectives. Strategic marketing, in its turn, may in fact lend itself to introducing or furthering cultural stereotypes and cultural clichés and the commodification of culture. It follows from this that the strategic planning and strategic marketing of major heritage sites has significant implications for the representation, utilisation and perception of local, metropolitan and national culture, and for place and destination marketing in cumulative terms. Following a perspective such as this, a culturally positive process of unlocking new synergies, interactivity and dynamism within planning can begin, regardless of geographical scale, or social or economic sector. This is becoming a more potent issue as culture-based competition between metropolitan regions around the globe and within the domestic state increases. At the same time, tourism perpetuates its position as the world’s biggest industry. Strategic planning and strategic marketing are later examined for one of Australia’s most important heritage sites to demonstrate the opportunities for greater

19 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

mutual connectivity and increased creativity between urban and regional planning and the strategic planning and marketing of major heritage sites. Strategic planning in other contexts, such as organisational planning and governance that does not possess a connection to place is not discussed in any detail, although as I have suggested earlier the model also has implications for these sectors that I hope to demonstrate outside these pages.

Radical as these propositions may initially appear, it is only by seeing beyond the statutory planning boundaries that underlying cultural themes, issues and information can be mobilised, joining up what is normally divided in statutory and other planning processes. This is illustrated in the following two figures (Figures 1 and 2) that express the relationship of culture and urban and regional planning and culture and strategic planning in abstract terms. The illustrations can be considered as ‘ideal types’. Further, the reality the figures express is a global one. It applies to spatial planning irrespective of local planning arrangements and to strategic planning as it utilises similar techniques and approaches in developed and developing countries.

Figure 1. Culture and Urban and Regional Planning

Source: Author

20 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 2. Culture and Strategic Planning

Source: Author

The scope of culture

The concept of culture I introduce in the thesis is defined in relation to the conceptual evolution of the term since the late nineteenth century in general. In particular I examine the period following the Second World War, culminating in what is labelled in the social sciences as the ‘cultural turn’ (Chaney, 1994). Thus the concept of culture developed in the thesis is based on the doctrine of contemporary . This is an omnibus conception of culture that conceives culture in all-embracing terms, to mean ‘the “way of life” of an entire society’ including ‘codes of manners, dress, language, rituals, norms of behaviour and systems of beliefs’ (Jary and Jary, 1991: 138). This holistic view of culture includes historical and contemporary culture, tangible and intangible forms of culture and ‘ways-of- life’. I also suggest that the culture of our times operates in a new fashion and is experienced differently. This situation presents new challenges and opportunities to planning and its positionality. As the thesis unfolds key facets of culture are introduced as well as the remarkable power of the concept of culturalism to introduce a beneficial conceptual integration that promotes new levels of practical connectedness in planning and related sectors.

21 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The insurgent claims of culture stand out in an information age that has replaced and re- formatted the industrial age with a new emphasis on knowledge. Such knowledge is being articulated and managed amid communities of unprecedented cultural and social diversity. In this way the needs of our age are increasingly defined by culture and in turn, this can serve as the basis for re-inventing planning practices. Culture is positioned at the heart of the post-colonial, post-industrial and postmodern world. It is the contemporary way ‘in’. Culture is the portal to a more effective engagement with the issues of social diversity, ethnic and artistic hybridity, social and economic development and the creation and management of information and new knowledge. This renders the tasks of locating, articulating and engaging cultural meanings as the dominant issue of our era, presenting challenges and opportunities that exist perhaps on such a scale for the first time in history.

Establishing the scope of culture is also at the same time asserting a definition of culture. This truth is easily made apparent by considering the debate over the extent to which the so-called natural environment can be said to exist in today’s world. For example, a sceptic such as Manuel Castells denies the existence of a natural world altogether in an age of culture. While I note the debate over the extent to which natural heritage can be said to exist on a culturalised planet, I do not take a definitive position on the issue in this thesis. However, it is clear to me that so-called ‘natural heritage’ and natural areas do represent a form of culture. They are part of the ‘human footprint’, an area of more than eighty per cent of the planet’s land surface, on which humanity – according to accepted science - has a direct influence (Smith, 2002: 5).

This position also has a practical and logical advantage in terms of the Culturised Model for planning I will later outline. Planning deals with natural areas and natural heritage within urban and regional areas and frequently in their capacity as ‘protected’ areas. Protected areas, such as national parks, are created by cultural action and legal and planning regulation and are subject to the same forces, such as vandalism and tourism, as other areas of the human footprint. Further, the fate of natural areas depends on cultural knowledge and cultural action if conservation is to be achieved. The inclusion of such areas as part of

22 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

a culturalised planning process also encourages more responsive and integrated planning. This is the key utilitarian relationship to be considered from a planning perspective. This approach is consistent with the perspective on community action for sustainability spelled out in Agenda 21 of the ‘Earth Summit’ (UNCED, 1992), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. However, beyond the more than eighty per cent of the planet’s surface that forms the human footprint, the existence of ‘natural heritage’ still remains something of a ‘Castellsian’ anomaly on a culturalised planet. Apart from the direct effects of the human footprint none of the globe has escaped the indirect impact of culture through the effects of pollution and global warming. For example, outer space is now colonised with cultural infrastructure and cultural detritus to the extent that pollution creates problems for further exploration and possible use.

An Ontology of Culture

Clearly, an ontology of culture needs to be asserted as a first step before culture can be defined in accessible terms able to facilitate its thoroughgoing inclusion and utilisation in planning. In this area I draw on the theory and definitions introduced in the work of the French geographer Henri Lefebvre and add important emphases developed in the culturalist writing of Raymond Williams and Clifford Geertz. Lefebvre (1992) outlines a ‘trialectics of being’ based on ‘spatiality’, ‘historicality’ and ‘sociality’ (illustrated in Table 1), or more familiarly, ‘space’, ‘time’ and ‘society’.

Table 1. Lefebvre’s ‘Trialectics of Being’ – An Ontology of Culture

Spatiality Historicality Sociality

Space Time Society

Source: Author, after Lefebvre 1992.

23 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Lefebvre’s ontological trialectic is ‘a statement of what the world must be like for us to have knowledge of it’ (Soja, 1996: 70) and applies ‘at all levels of knowledge formation, from ontology to epistemology, theory building, empirical analysis, and social practice’ (Soja, 1996: 71). The system proposes that thinking trialectically overcomes the historical over-privileging of ‘historicality’ and ‘sociality’, as against a trialectical understanding that includes ‘spatiality’ as an equal part of the dynamic. In other words space, history and society, or in rough disciplinary terms, geography, history and sociology are all necessary aspects of life and culture. The orientation provided by the triple dialectics of history, geography and sociology is a powerful and effective approach to culture. Lefebvre’s work is not only a description of the world and human existence but is a means to improve the terms of our practical understanding and acquisition of knowledge about life. In fairly inimitably terms Soja describes Lefebvre’s ontological re-structuring as a process that:

re-centres knowledge formation first around the long-submerged and subordinated spatiality of existential being and becoming, and then in the spatialisation of historicality and sociality in theory-formation, empirical analysis, critical inquiry, and social practice. This far-reaching spatialisation, I believe, was Lefebvre’s primary intent in The Production of Space. As he persistently demonstrated, such knowledge is not obtained in permanent constructions confidently built around formalised and closed epistemologies, but through an endless series of theoretical and practical approximations, a critical and inquisitive nomadism in which the journeying to new ground never ceases (Soja, 1996: 81-82).

I add to this the complementary emphases of Raymond Williams and mention Clifford Geertz. Williams’ view of culture as ‘a whole way of life’ (1966) and Geertz’s (1973) understanding of the continuous need to interpret culture promote the same goal. Williams’ views are integrated in order to develop a practical and accessible approach to all culture for planners, educators and other professional practitioners. Lefebvre’s ontological categories are consistent with the related categories of culture that I develop and operationalise for planning in later parts of the thesis. The relationship between Lefebvre’s ‘trialectics of culture’, the categories of culture as reflected in disciplines and in more everyday language are illustrated in Table 2.

24 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 2. Integrated Culture in Philosophy, Disciplines and the Everyday

Space Time Society

Geography History Sociology

Society/ Environment Intangible Heritage Ways-of-Life

Source: Author

Each category of culture may be considered in its contemporary manifestation and in its manifestation in history. For example, the geography and environments of previous centuries and millennia were different comprising earlier cultural landscapes and probably different climates. History also has its own history in terms of past approaches to historiography and previous concepts and practices in history, or influential cosmologies as they existed before historical recording. Societies and ways-of-life in the past have been as diverse as is practically imaginable.

Under the comprehensive, integrated culture I espouse, it is also true to say that each category of culture may have a particular relevance for a specific planning type and offer its own special insights. However, despite this, when considered together the categories constitute a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. The categories are holistic and interpretive, and reflect the core disciplines of geography, history and sociology. The categories of ‘Geography and the Environment’, ‘History and Intangible Heritage’ and ‘Society and Ways-of-Life’ can each make a valuable contribution to planning when intellectually incorporated. For example, understanding geography and environment is important for regional planning, master planning and design, and for sustainability as is demonstrated for example in the important Australian work of regional ecological history

25 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Discovering Monaro, A Study of Man’s Impact on His Environment by Hancock (1972). History and intangible heritage are important as evidence of the past for conservation and for demonstrating past ways of life and the diversity and fluidity of cultural values and cultural practices over time. Social understanding and ‘ways-of-life’ are the core of all regional planning, and for social, cultural and development planning.

The value of this multiplicity of understanding and the very richness of the crossovers need, I believe, to be captured for planning. This is especially relevant to the cultural and information economy as an age in which culture has come to intervene on itself. A new culture-based approach to planning is possible utilising relevant, contemporary and useable cultural concepts and approaches to enliven planning. This is necessary because while culture is increasingly prominent in many areas of research it is insufficiently mobilised or researched as a key, organising idea with genuine transformative potential. As an organising category culture has the power to promote the consideration of cultural values and relationships, and issues such as cultural diversity and hybridity in all of their manifestations. This enables culture to express and develop its inherent connectivity and to transcend Williams’ arbitrary ‘frame of the forms’.

Similarly, a useable and fully contemporary perspective on culture will assist planning to regain energy and legitimacy in the eyes of culturally diverse, culturally aware and sometimes divided communities. Further, culture may be used to examine limitations of vision and to re-negotiate social inclusion in planning. For example, while Guari Viswanathan writes of a bias in Williams’ method ‘that consistently and exclusively studies the formation of metropolitan culture from within its own boundaries’ (Viswanathan in Bennett, 1998: 50), the postcolonial theorist Edward Said drew on Williams’ ideas about culture. He used these ideas to illuminate repression under colonialism and its ideological veiling in metropolitan discourses such as fiction and history. In this spirit, writers in and from the former colonies of the European colonial powers in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have engaged in a process of ‘writing back’, using the modern disciplinary tools of the West.

26 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

At the same time cultural disquiet is universal and there is a restless postmodern and postcolonial search for cultural understanding and connection, paralleled by knowledge of the fragility of ecological webs of life. In respect of this unsettling, John Rennie Short argues that ‘… in geography we now know where everything is’ (Short, 2000: 1) but that locational accuracy has come at the expense of cosmological understanding and sensitivity to the environment (Short, 2000).

Before outlining the theoretical context for the use and integration of culture in planning I propose to address the broader contextual issues of modernity and what has been called the ‘condition of postmodernity’ (Harvey, 1990). Here again, as with the concept of culture and the concept of planning, it is necessary to introduce these term through a process of definition and clarification.

Modernity and Postmodernity

Debate over the nature and importance of modernity and postmodernity has flared for some decades. The critique of modernity stretches back to criticism of the dangers inherent in intellectualisation and rationality voiced in the work of Max Weber and the Frankfurt School in Germany in the early twentieth century. As historical perspective accumulates into the twenty-first century more complex approaches to the debate are opening up that accommodate concepts of different social and economic stages present in the global pattern and in individual societies. I develop and elaborate a preferred vision of postmodernity that positions the thesis in relation to the diversity of cultural theory and planning theory.

In terms of planning, contemporary responses to the widespread recognition of the significance and implications of modernity have ranged from impassioned pleas for a postmodern planning praxis to deal with the consequences of the modernist inferno (Sandercock, 1998), to calls for the re-enlightenment of planning by re-introducing its critical founding values rooted in the European Enlightenment (Beck, 1997; Gleeson, 2000). Cultural theory and planning theory are at one however in arguing that modernism was a project based on the Enlightenment developing from the eighteenth century onwards.

27 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

It was a joint program combining faith in the paramount benefits of Western reason, science, technology, values and ‘civilisation’, and generated the rival philosophical credos of Marxism and positivism. Both of these rival doctrines are now in retreat.

Postmodernity on the other hand is a less settled idea and its accounts are more controversial. To start with there are fundamentally separate views of its historical and cultural reality and some commentators deny its existence in any terms. Smart (1993) explores some of these distinctions and offers a judicious approach that maintains that the term has utility. He starts by acknowledging that from one point of view postmodernity is already over, describing a recent historical period of neo-liberal economic policies from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s that generated disillusionment with the prospects for radical political strategy. As a matter of current concern, in which postmodernity is a contemporary social, cultural and political condition - a form of life – Smart distinguishes three possibilities (1993). Firstly, there is postmodernity considered as a kind of high modernity - modernity in a nascent or ‘High Renaissance’ state. Secondly, there is postmodernity understood as a more modest late modernity – like the late Renaissance – with postmodernity coming to terms with its limitations. Thirdly, there is postmodernity existing as a form of life beyond modernity – a possible social future – yet to be realised after humanity extricates itself from modernity. This last category equates with Giddens’ general view of postmodernity as a reconstitution of utopian thought. Giddens looks to a world order not based on scarcity, and militarisation, but on multilayered democratic participation and humanised technology (Giddens, 1990).

Smart does not accept that postmodernity is reducible to evolving modernity and argues that a concept of postmodernity is necessary to understand today’s world. The postmodern should not escape critical analyses but it does help us identify aspects of what we encounter and experience and their difficulties. To the existence of difficulties, I would add the presence of opportunities, especially in the realm of planning. Postmodernity helps us focus on the qualities of our age of radical difference and on its threats and opportunities in relation to good planning. In this spirit it is worth quoting the view of the postmodern

28 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

urbanist Edward Soja who argues that the term postmodern when used to describe the postmodern city does not mean that the modern city has disappeared. Rather the issue is one of the relative presence of postmodern and modern elements together, within the same city, and understanding the ways in which these elements interact with one another in particular places (Soja, 1993; 1996). I take this perspective from an avant-garde urbanist as a cue to introduce a broader view of postmodernity. On this view, the postmodern describes the sum total of profound changes in global economies and cultures. These form an interlocked pattern that encompasses features such as the internationalisation of trade, investment and telecommunications, the growth of flexible accumulation, the emergence of a post-colonial critique of the developed world and the steady growth of multicultural influences in the world’s major cities. In urban terms this dialectical pattern engenders opposing forces and trends, for example gigantism and localism in culture and environment. Gigantism is expressed in vast shopping malls and entertainment complexes and localism in a renewed emphasis on the intricacies of heritage fabric and the texture of countryside, suburbs, and downtown areas. Further, the postmodern city is not so much redeveloped as re-conceptualised and repackaged, so that most future development will be an infill and an overlay on the cultural spaces of the pre-existing .

Apart from the theoretical and cultural rationale for the use of the term postmodern as defined, there exist strong practical and pragmatic reason for using the term. By flagging the existence of radical difference the term forces us to consider the social and economic opportunities represented by new phenomena and facilitates our capacity to develop new ways of doing things.

Under the postmodern frame I believe we may capitalise on new opportunities springing from the information economy, and the expansion in culture, diversity and hybridity.

29 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sources of Theoretical Synthesis

This thesis introduces a number of writers and theorists, as well as key concepts and approaches, from different perspectives and sectors. These encompass the sectors of cultural theory, planning theory and cultural and historical ideas in urbanism. In terms of the theory of culture, the work of the cultural theorist Raymond Williams is highlighted. The ontology of culture is based on Williams and on the theory of Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre’s ‘trialectics of being’ stand out here in providing an ontological basis for culture. Lefebvre’s ‘ontological restructuring’ fits with Raymond Williams anthropological concept of culture as ‘a whole way of life’. These concepts are related to other theorists describing the operation of culture in an age of radical difference.

The writings of Manuel Castells and Frederick Jameson’s strong support for the re- contextualisation of culture in an information age are utilised. The importance of the interpretation of culture draws on Clifford Geertz and loosely the work of semiotics.

In terms of planning theory contemporary planning theory has polarised. This polarisation resolves itself into two fundamental wings that I describe as the neo-modern and the postmodern, which draw on the broader neo-modern and postmodern traditions. Jurgen Habermas and Patsy Healey represent the neo-modern polarity and Leonie Sandercock and others such as Edward Soja and Phillip Allmendinger form the more postmodern wing. A position of theoretical pluralism is adopted in order to capture the insights of both schools for a renewed planning and as best able to reflect the character of the complex nature of the world I describe. More practical work from planning experience emphasising the value of history and creativity is canvassed in the work of Dolores Hayden and Charles Landry.

Contribution to Knowledge

The contribution to knowledge of this research lies in three main areas – the conceptual, the strategic and the methodological. The thesis introduces an integrated vision for culture and

30 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

for research, a concept of culturised planning and a Culturised Model to promote this. The Culturised Model also represents - in the spirit of Lefebvre - a new ‘theoretical and practical approximation’ (Soja, 1996: 82) to re-centre knowledge. It is so positioned as to promote at a practical level - in Soja’s epic earlier terms for Lefebvre - a ‘critical and inquisitive nomadism in which the journeying to new ground never ceases’ (Soja, 1996: 82).

In terms of a conceptual contribution to knowledge the thesis conceptualises culture in a comprehensive and multi-dimensional fashion that links the ontology of Lefebvre trialectics with the cultural theory of Raymond Williams. The contemporary and historical and tangible and intangible dimensions and components of culture are made manifest. It also demonstrates the value of integrated research to planning based on a plural utilisation of theory that is nowadays inevitable. Planning is also conceptualised in a holistic fashion that allows spatial and strategic planning to share the same cultural discourse and the same potential for re-animation. A broader and holistic view of the vehicle of planning and of culture permits the power of postmodern culture to flow between planning forms, scales and levels.

In terms of a strategic contribution to knowledge the thesis contains a new and unique Culturised Model for incorporating culture in planning. The Culturised Model contains ontologically powerful and yet practically graspable definitions for integrated culture, robust principles for cultural identification and understanding and a methodology based on integrated research that draws on a plural infusion of theory. The model will assist in linking spatial planning at different geographical scales. It also links spatial and strategic planning in a new fashion and establishes connectivity between planning for diverse purposes.

In terms of a methodological contribution to knowledge the thesis contains a Culturised Model that is a first in proposing and linking integrated culture and integrated research for planning. It has the important capability to do this for both spatial and strategic planning.

31 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

It contains a user-friendly methodology for the culturisation of planning on a hands-on basis. It builds on a cumulative history of innovations including international charters and agreements expressing important cultural principles from the United Nations in the late 1940s up until the philosophy of the WCC expressed in Our Creative Diversity (1996). Australian approaches include:

• a holistic philosophy for conservation and heritage in NSW in the 1980s, that included heritage studies • The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (1999), • NSW cultural tourism in the 1990s, • cultural mapping, • multicultural approaches to the interpretation and management of culture, and • the Four Pillars of Sustainability (Hawkes, 2004).

The concept of culturising planning proposed in this thesis is deeply normative, in the spirit of Raymond Williams’ concept of culture as a way of life. It also pays homage to Williams’ belief in the unitary power of the connective as against the fragmentation caused by ‘the frame of the forms’. In this case the imperative is to think and strategise against the frame of the planning forms.

Yet again, as Williams in his prescience proposed so long ago, we need to consider

the theory of culture as a theory of relations between elements in a whole way of life. We need also, in these terms, to examine the idea of an expanding culture, and its detailed processes. For we live in an expanding culture, yet we spend most of our energy regretting the fact, rather than seeking to understand its nature and conditions’ (Williams, 1966: 12).

While under modernism with its universal cultural values interpretation was less viable, this situation has been reversed under postmodernity. A world of cultural differences and a plurality of values requires continual interpretation and re-interpretation. Within this the relations between migrant communities, indigenous minorities and the dominant cultures

32 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

are in a state of permanent negotiation. Indigenous, migrant, and gay and lesbian communities have created new spaces and cultures on the postmodern and postcolonial stage and present new challenges to planners for the development of communicative planning practices and in securing human and . The WCC argues that cultural policy must become a key component of development and their strategy for this is to promote creativity and participation. The qualities of our era built on information and on cultural diversity cry out for the re-positioning of planning. In this thesis, from this intellectual standpoint, concepts, principles, and techniques relevant to the renewal of planning are developed more in line with the grain of our current age. This position in regard to culture is then distilled into a practical Culturised Mode for the culturisation of planning. The Culturised Model is intended to play a practical role in relation to that ‘optimism of the will’ (West, 1990: 175) the communicative theorist Jurgen Habermas believed was necessary to achieve political and social improvements. The positioning of this optimism around culture is highly credible as the affective and heartfelt qualities of culture are perhaps less susceptible to the manipulations of mediated politics. Gleeson has argued (2003: 30) that planning really will be ‘relevant’ when it can explain the difference it makes. I would argue further that planning really will be ‘credible’ when it can explain the difference culture makes. A model that facilitates the inclusion of culture in planning will increase planning’s credibility and promote the exercise of a Habermasian optimism in planning and in the creation of our future ‘spaces of hope’ (Harvey, 2000).

Thesis Structure

This thesis consists of three main parts in addition to this introductory chapter whose function is to ‘position’ the full work, and a summary conclusion. Each of the three parts consists of three chapters.

33 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Part One

Part One of the thesis examines the place of culture in society today alongside contemporary planning theory in its many variants. It also examines the relationship between culture and planning as it has emerged in particular since the Second World War and, more generally, from the period of the late nineteenth century up until today. This period overall saw the birth of planning within the context of modern industrial society and its ultimate challenge from post-industrial and post-colonial developments. The new opportunities for planning represented by the growth of information technology and the network society and neo-modern and postmodern planning theory are outlined as relevant to planning’s quest to comprehend and respond to contemporary experience.

Chapter One, ‘A Culturalised Age’, examines the emergence of the ‘cultural turn’ and its origins in the key socio-cultural changes since the Second World War and the growth of information technology and the network society.

Chapter Two, ‘Planning Theory and Culture’, is a critical examination of the development and relevance of neo-modern and postmodern planning theory.

Chapter Three, ‘Planning History and Cultural Concepts’, explores the relationship between culture and planning in the twentieth century and the development of early innovations in the growth of a more holistic and inclusive planning, described principally for the state of New South Wales, Australia, under the aegis of the postmodern, the post-industrial and the post-colonial.

Part Two

Part Two outlines a Culturised Model for planning. This consists of developed principles for culture, a planner’s ‘literacy trinity’, and a systematic methodology for the culturisation of planning.

34 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Chapter Five, ‘Developing the Model’, outlines the basis of the approach to integrated culture and integrated research. Key principles for culture are then synthesised from a range of theoretical and prescriptive writing in relation to planning. The unifying principles for culture and its context support the overall framework of integrated culture and integrated research and promote the capture of culture in planning. Planning theory is also introduced in this chapter because of its relevance and insights for culture and planning. Frequently isolated from the realm of planning practice, the richness of planning theory is demonstrated, to suggest its value for planning with culture.

In Chapter Six, ‘Planning Literacies for Culture’, three key literacies for planners are outlined and described as a planner’s ‘literacy trinity’. They are synthesised from a range of theoretical and prescriptive planning writings and related suggestions for literacies developed in the planning literature.

In Chapter Seven, ‘The Model’s Methodology’, a practical methodology for integrating culture in planning is outlined. This methodology is a user-friendly template for planning and distils in one place a practical system to facilitate planning with culture. The methodology includes integrated culture and a process for integrated research. Integrated culture and integrated research are each divided into three categories to facilitate cultural inclusion in planning. The typology of integrated culture divides the slippery world of culture into graspable categories, and the integrated research process provides a method to ‘scan’ the world of potential research for all relevant materials. Together they serve as heuristic or ‘short hand’ tool and ‘power’ the methodology.

I believe the Culturised Model has a dual value - it facilitates cultural integration in planning practice while raising awareness of its associated need and opportunities. A broader and foundational cultural perspective and rigorous culturally based approaches as indicated in the Model have the potential to achieve a transformation in planning’s perspective based on cultural knowledge and on cultural reflection in individuals, communities and organizations.

35 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Part Three

Part Three illustrates the Culturised Model in application, both in principle for all planning and in detailed terms for urban and regional planning and strategic planning. The examples and the two case studies illustrated have been chosen specifically to illustrate the structure of the Model, to highlight its potential range, effectiveness and power, and that of each of its components.

The first case study is that of urban and regional planning in Sydney, NSW, Australia and the second is strategic planning at the Port Arthur Historic Site (PAHS) in Tasmania. The first of these is selected as a culturally diverse global - or sub-global - city that presents all of the challenges to urban and regional planning that a Culturised Model will need to address in any foreseeable place.

The second, the PAHS, is a major international heritage site that is important in modern history and global tourism and that characterises the same issues and needs in relation to strategic planning as occur at most such sites globally. As such, both examples go to the heart of basic planning challenges, either in creating the culturally sustainable cosmopolis of the future, or in developing deeper and more reflexive and inclusive interpretation in the burgeoning cultural and information sector.

Chapter Eight, ‘The Culturised Model in Principle’, shows in abstract terms the value and power of culture for urban and regional planning at all scales and for aspatial planning.

In Chapters Nine, ‘Urban and Regional Planning in Sydney’ the Model is applied in selective terms to the specific culture of Sydney at four, nested spatial scales.

In Chapter Ten, ‘Strategic Planning and the Port Arthur Historic Site’, the Model is applied to the culture, opportunities and strategic planning at one of Australia’s largest heritage sites.

36 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The thesis is completed with a short conclusion, entitled ‘Drawing Together’, that summarises the ground covered. It also lists some of the characteristics of culturised and non-culturised planning.

37 PART ONE

CULTURE AND PLANNING

THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

PREAMBLE

This part sets the sociological, theoretical and historical scene for the thesis. In the first chapter ‘A Culturalised Age’, the distinctive qualities of such an age are outlined. Culture and culturalism are defined as the theme of this era and based on its potentiality new threats and opportunities are suggested for society as well as planning. In the second chapter planning theory is critically outlined and divided into the two main types, neo-modern planning theory and postmodern planning theory. A position of plural theory embracing both types is then described as the way forward. This approach draws on the strengths of integrating theoretical differences for the enrichment of planning in specific circumstances and in terms of defined opportunities. The third chapter ‘Planning History and Cultural Concepts’ illustrates the historical relationship between culture and planning for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The two centuries are divided into key overlapping periods and perspectives. In this context, contemporary planning is illustrated in terms of three elements, postmodern culture, postcolonial and minority cultures and post- industrialism and the cultural economy.

39 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER TWO

A CULTURALISED AGE

This chapter outlines the character, and the threats and opportunities, which define a culturalised age. The birth of such an age is bound up with the disparate social and economic trends and stages that underlie our global experience of postmodernity. From sociology to political economy, cultural theory to planning theory the voices of commentators and scholars are in unison (Jameson, 1984; Smart 1993; Soja 1993, 1996; Castells, 1998) pinpointing the existence and operation of a culturalised age. I define a culturalised age as one saturated by culture, in which knowledge takes priority and explores itself. In Castells’ view the Information Age has replaced the industrial mode of development as one in which the source of productivity lies in the quality of knowledge. In replacing energy as the source of productivity, knowledge and information work through expanding themselves. This is the context in which culture, the interpretation of culture, and the trends to culturalisation, become the defining qualities of our age.

I also describe how this culturalised age came into being, its specific qualities and the nature of the opportunities and threats it presents specifically to planning. In such an age planning is in a more dynamic and fluid state and has an expanding role and possibilities. For example, spatial and strategic planning is becoming more interdependent. Cultural knowledges and cultural themes are integral to this new inter-relationship and the pattern of interconnectedness. Similarly, under late global capitalism planning plays many, flexible roles with potentially opposed outcomes. For example, good environmental and social planning may assist in transcending diversity in terms of theoretical, philosophical and religious positions. Alternatively, and on the other extreme, opportunistic tourism or place planning and marketing strategies may serve to reinforce the cultural re-constitution of the community as yet another brand. This pattern consists of the social appropriation of culture to develop planning and landscape themes and marketing tags to promote the consumption of a standardised product. While often symptomatic of tourism planning and marketing the

40 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

situation mirrors a broader pattern of . A culturalised age is in short a two-edged sword; it can bring communities closer together or it can operate to commodify culture.

What follows is a description of the historical forces behind a culturalised age, an outline of the theory of culturalism, and a description of an integrated approach to culture that reflects the theory of culturalism. The new importance of historical culture is also described, both for diverse postmodern and postcolonial communities and as the basis of my ‘Archive of Possibilities’. Finally, and related to these themes, the opportunities for creative and optimistic cultural explanations are mentioned and are central to the work of planning.

Historical Nodes

The historical forces on which this extraordinary culturalised age is positioned are described by Leonie Sandercock. She identifies the explosive socio-cultural forces from the late twentieth-century that continue to shape our cities and regions These forces made new and powerful demands on governance in all of its aspects including planning and their implications for planning remain only marginally resolved. Sandercock (1998) groups these forces around three historical nodes: the age of migration; the age of postcolonialism and indigenous ; and the rise of civil society based on a new cultural politics of difference. Despite the prominence of the trends Sandercock describes, she identifies a world now mainly shaped by the consolidation of the global capitalist economy underpinned by information technology and the ‘network society’ identified by Castells (1998). Castells describes the world in which the new information economy has replaced the old industrial economy in the following way:

In the industrial mode of development, the source of increasing surplus lies in the introduction of new energy sources and in the quality of the use of such energy. In the informational mode of development ...the source of productivity lies in the quality of knowledge, the other intermediary element in the relationship between labour and the means of production. What is specific to the informational mode of development is that here knowledge intervenes upon knowledge itself in order to generate higher productivity... (it) mobilises the generation of new knowledge as

41 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the key source of productivity through its impact on the other elements of the production process and on their relationships (Castells, 1989: 10).

It is the argument of this thesis however that both sets of trends have come to express and depend on culture and that they do this in a new and dynamic way. Whether through the social expression of expanding cultural diversity - ever splintering along new axes - or through the culturalised nature of post-industrial capitalist production and the network society, culture has come to the fore. The social and economic restructuring that has been taking place since the late twentieth century has pushed the phenomenon of culture into the forefront of life and consciousness. Culture is now intimately and equally bound up with each of Sandercock’s three forces as well as with the spread of global capitalism and the information and network society. This universal dominance of culture, which was already widely accepted by the closing decades of the twentieth century, has now swept most before it.

The theme of culture generated the majority of debate in the social sciences towards the end of last century. In the disciplines of sociology, , anthropology and philosophy culture was recognised as shaping our thought, our imagination and our behaviour. And this understanding also rippled through the world of social and business punditry where a ‘Second Renaissance of Culture’ was identified as a global ‘megatrend’ (Naisbitt, 1982). During the late twentieth century sociologists referred in a quite matter-of-fact fashion to ‘the cultural turn’ (Chaney, 2004). By this they meant the special focus on everyday experience through which societies sought to express their ‘sense of meaning, value and significance’ (Chaney, 2004: 2). As well as emphasising the subjectivity and immediacy of everyday experience, the theme of culture characterised wider realities at the political and economic level, including the convergence of the economic and cultural spheres. The global vision of culture that took hold at that time integrated in one concept the interrelated nature of all cultural phenomena. Packed into the one concept were the ideas of ‘ways-of- life’ and of intangible or ‘living culture’ as well as the tangible elements of and the concept of the environment as a cultural landscape. This powerful, integrative vision gathers in a single holistic perspective everyday social experience, the world of the

42 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

arts and sciences, values, norms and beliefs, history, and the ‘natural’ environment. This comprehensiveness parallelled the shift in knowledge towards a multi- disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspective, away from an emphasis on a single discipline. This reflects the more open dynamic of a culturalised age.

Culture and Culturalism

Culturalism is the doctrine that culture is everything. It is an omnibus conception of culture and evolved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in today’s more complex and full-blown version. I examine culturalism especially in relation to the opportunities it opens up for a more developed synthesis in planning of what I describe as integrated culture.

The concept of culturalism is usefully fleshed out in numerous definitions of culture in a range of explanatory texts (Chaney, 1994) and in numerous dictionaries of the social and behavioural sciences. In one important dictionary of this kind, culture is typically described as ‘the “way of life” of an entire society’ including ‘codes of manners, dress, language, rituals, norms of behaviour and systems of beliefs’ (Jary and Jary, 1991: 138). But the contemporary concept of culture depends on more than the idea of a ‘way of life’. It includes another key idea, that of cultural reflexivity, which describes the ways in which human beings both act on culture and culture acts back. Humanity develops new cultural expressions, forms and meanings because of its capacity to be reflexive. People constantly examine their own practices and alter them, and in fact, their ‘identities are no longer based just on external factors but are constructed by a constant reflection on, and a working and reworking of, their own biographies’ (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 2000: 292).

The combination of a dynamic and systemic ‘way-of-life’ and reflexivity under the organising vision of culturalism is important because it enables us to see the working dynamics of culture in which we are immersed and to engage them. The concept helps us to express and interpret what are some of the key cultural trends of our times – which is

43 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

why understanding based on culturalism dominates , the media and academic publication in key areas such as anthropology and sociology. Many social and cultural trends would be less explicable and harder to deal with in the absence of a concept of culture based on something other than culturalism. Instead, experience as wide-ranging as the growth of social diversity, the importance of cultural symbolism, the renewed valuing of everyday experience, and the increased cultural hybridity in communities, cultural practices and the arts and sciences, are all bound in with the one understanding.

The word culture then in its flexibility helps us to capture all of the trends and influences I mention. This is a similar appeal the word offered to leading British cultural theorists in the late 1950s and early 1960s such as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and members of Birmingham University’s pioneering Centre for . Together these theorists of culture sought to describe changes in the ‘whole way-of-life’ and ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1966) that had been forever altered in the post-war world. The British work prepared the ground for more radical accounts of culture that emerged in the decades following the 1960s and 1970s highlighting for example cultural diversity and cultural symbolism. But the history and contemporary expressions of ways of life - including working class culture - and structures of feeling remain powerful modes for cultural understanding today. This is so when considering minority, ethnic, youth or popular culture as well as so-called mainstream expressions of culture that are fast losing their monolithic quality. Yet, both early and late accounts based on culturalism neglect historical culture in its full dimensions and the importance of historical culture is now rising within the overall pattern of contemporary culturalism.

Integrated Culture

Integrated culture is the term I use to describe culture in its contemporary and historical dimensions and in its tangible and intangible forms. It is a holistic approach to culture and includes the everyday as well as the humanistic use of the term to indicate the high productions of mind and art. Everyday life and the category of the everyday are defining

44 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

aspects of contemporary culture. This importance stems in part from the key argument that the everyday escapes the totalisations of reason and philosophy. For example in the early Soviet tradition theorists such as Leon Trotsky ‘recognised in familiar daily life the possibility for constant renewal and difference, what Benjamin, later, building upon this productivist understanding, grasped as its “mystery”’ (Harootunian, 2001: 164).

I outline an integrated concept of culture to ensure that all of culture and hence its potentialities are recognised in planning. This approach parallels Lefebvre’s ontology of culture that was intended as a re-balancing to bring forward the importance of spatiality in his cultural triad of spatiality, historicality and sociality. Each element of the trialectic is part of a cultural whole that functions in the following way:

The three moments of the ontological trialectic thus contain each other; they can not successfully be understood in isolation or epistemologically privileged separately, although they are all too frequently studied and conceptualised in this way, in compartmentalised disciplines and discourses. (Soja, 1996: 72).

Under the terms of the integrated approach to culture that I propose the interrelationships and dynamics of culture that go to its modern and contemporary heart are unmistakable. Further, in order to develop a simple and practical heuristic for culture for use in planning I break the whole of integrated culture down into three accessible categories that mirror Lefebvre’s conceptual triad. These are ‘Geography and the Environment’ for spatiality, ‘History and Intangible Heritage’ for historicality, and ‘Society and Ways-of-Life’ for sociality. In this typology ‘Geography and the Environment’ includes cultural landscapes, natural features and areas and ecological systems, ‘History and Intangible Heritage’ includes ways of life, the environment, and material heritage and patterns of ecology in history and ‘Society and Ways-of-Life’ accommodates the everyday, lifestyles, cultural practices and the arts and sciences.

This categorisation enables the key components of culture to be grasped for everyday purposes and in relation to the major emphases relevant to planning. Culture, nevertheless, is also defined in a more nebulous sense under the concept described as culturalism.

45 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Culturalism is consistent with the approach and categories of culture I outline and with Lefebvre’s trialectics. Both Lefebvre’s dialectics and my own categories of culture sit under the more diffuse idea of culturalism that is the key overall organising idea for culture in a culturalised age.

A Culturalised Age

In a culturalised age such as ours culture is diffused across societies and around the globe in much the same way as power is diffused globally while continuing to work at the micro- level of society made famous in the writings of Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1980). In fact, a famous description by Alain Touraine of the operation of power could also be applied to culture, for both power and culture are disseminated ‘in mass production, in financial flows, in lifestyles, in the hospital, in the school, in television, in images, in messages, (and) in technologies’ (Touraine in Booher and Innes, 2002: 221). And power and culture are paradoxically everywhere and nowhere at one and the same time. This expansion of culture that has taken place since the late twentieth century has been the subject of substantial theoretical work and has generated major, differentiated accounts (Soja, 1993, 1996; Chaney, 1994; Castells, 1998; Scott, 2000). Nevertheless most explanations of culture in a culturalised age tend to share core features and to overlap in numerous ways. The key ideas usually focus on aspects of globalisation and its impacts. These include the growing social diversity in everyday experience, the rise of indigenous, feminist and minority rights, the proliferation of media and semiotic power, and the expansion in the consumption of cultural products of every kind. The last phenomenon it is usually maintained is accelerating and is ‘especially evident in a number of giant cities representing the flagships of a new global capitalist cultural economy’ (Scott, 2000: 3).

From a broader and more radical perspective Manuel Castells argues in The Information Society that humanity has entered a new stage. In this stage, culture has superseded nature and humanity has entered a purely cultural pattern of social interaction and social organisation produced by the convergence of historical evolution and technological change

46 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

(Castells, 1998: 477). Indeed, in Castells’ new cultural reality, ‘nature’ is preserved only as a cultural form. Castells describes the new Information Age thus:

our species has reached the level of knowledge and social organisation that will allow us to live in a predominantly social world. It is the beginning of a new existence, and indeed the beginning of a new age, the information age, marked by the autonomy of culture vis-à-vis the material base of our existence (Castells, 1998: 477-478).

The global condition Castells describes of a new information age marked by the autonomy of culture is conducive to the spread of culture. In this way it can be seen that culture now envelops and contextualises all institutions and practices, including what were once considered resistant sectors such as economics and politics (du Gay and Pryke, 2000).

In addition to the spread of culture and its invasion of previously resistant sectors there is a remarkable and quite striking new development. It lies in the intensified reflexivity of culture. Culture’s inherent capacity for renewal through self-reflection has dramatically evolved into a more active and searching phase. Reflexivity and also its importance are heightened as never before. This trend finds expression through a process best described as cultural involution. By cultural involution I mean the fashion in which postmodern themes and interests such as the changes in societies and values described by Sandercock as well as the economic needs of post-industrial societies are together bound up with and folded through the psyches, histories and exploding diversity of contemporaneity. Moreover, the phenomenon of cultural involution has specific relevance to planning and development, a sector that seeks to locate new knowledge and values differentiated in the unique local qualities of regions. This knowledge is to be found in the complex character of places, and their histories, sustaining ecologies, and biodiversity as these are all linked to actual ‘ways- of-life’.

One of the first observers to crystallise these systemic changes in culture was Frederic Jameson. In a famous essay dating from 1984, Jameson noted a fundamental change in the

47 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

perception of culture and in its operation. Outlining a pattern that has become steadily more recognisable since that time, Jameson argued that:

we are witnessing a prodigious expansion of culture throughout the social realm, to the point at which everything in our social life – from economic value and state power to practices and to the very structure of the psyche itself – can be said to have become ‘cultural’ in some original and yet untheorised sense (Jameson, 1984: 87).

This expansive, overall shift in culture I am outlining is best described as a shift towards culture itself and is characterised at a more direct experiential level by new forms of culture and new cultural affects that began to burgeon from about the 1970s. Within the ambit of the new cultural reality increasingly hybrid ways-of-life, and new social and artistic values and practices came into creative interplay as communities experienced social diversity at home and internationally and were exposed to the diversity of historical culture at the local and global levels. The concept of the everyday emerged as a key idea and occupies a central position in contemporary accounts of the new culture. Seen as the hinge of life, the everyday includes the messy practicalities and intimacies of lived social experience and phenomenological time as it is experienced differently from the passage of history. It also includes the rich interplay between considerations of everyday culture, the creative processes themselves and the imaginative and intellectual possibilities of historical and traditional cultures in the local and global contexts.

Historical Culture

Historical culture and traditional culture is a key dynamic in the contemporary cultural equation. Although this is recognised by a diversity of writers (Young, 1988; Hayden, 1995; Landry, 2000) it is not generally accorded the same level of recognition, as is the value of the everyday.

My argument here is that as societies, economies and ecologies become more culturalised – more subject to culture - historical culture emerges as a powerful kind of orientation and as

48 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

a key resource for shaping the future. And historical culture - defined as material culture, memories and histories – as with cultural and social diversity is of direct importance for planning in all its forms and modes. In fact perhaps, because we live in an era of cultural symbolism in which culture is readily available for political and commercial manipulation the cultural moorings provided by our cultural heritage, memories and histories are of even greater social importance. Historical culture not only has a central importance for all culture within the culturalist frame but is also a site of direct cultural resistance to manipulation and appropriation. Historical culture also has a traditional importance for planning but one that is subject to the significant transformations I later describe.

As a key dynamic in the contemporary cultural equation, historical culture is critical to spatial planning. The nexus between planning and third dimensional space in the form of land, landscape, property and artefacts is strong and obvious. This is normally understood in the case of heritage planning and indeed histories, values, and the attachments to place of indigenous, multicultural and minority communities are being increasingly integrated in heritage conservation, at least in Australia, the USA and Canada. The value of historical culture to other planning such as development planning and master planning, tourism and interpretation planning and planning for sustainability is less recognised. The equivalent value holistic culture holds for the constitution of more aspatial forms of planning, such as social planning or cultural planning in the form of community cultural development is surprisingly underdeveloped. Historical culture matters so much, of course, because no integrated concept of culture is possible without it, and it has the potential to answer many of the social needs neglected in planning. Notable exceptions to this pattern that exist at the strategic level are to be found in the work of Dolores Hayden and her activist Los Angelino community organization Power of Place, and the Australian community cultural mapping model, both explored in Part Two.

49 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Archive of Possibilities

I believe this situation with regard to culture must and will change in tandem with the growth of the perception that the entire repertoire of humanity’s artistic, social and ecological experience, whether recent or remote, is available to develop and inspire the new in our Information Age. This global trend will be reflected in planning as in other social technologies and industries. At a positive level the integration of the beliefs, stories, practices, arts, cultural and ecological solutions and defeats of the past are already forming the basis of today’s burgeoning hybridity in the arts and sciences and new technologies such as those in the digital realm.

Charles Landry lists the imaginative re-combination of the old and the new as one of the key areas of focus for the next wave of change in the new economy that will require quantum leaps in understanding, especially in areas where problems appear intractable or interconnected (Landry, 2000). Landry argues with great suggestiveness that:

Re-connecting the past with the present and re-presenting it in the future reveals untold assets. History is a huge undervalued resource and recombining the old and new can trigger untold solutions by imaginatively linking ideas, traditions, materials used, institutions and structures created (Landry, 2000: 270-271).

In addition to re-connecting with the historical past I would add natural history and speculation about the evolution of the galaxy as other layers that inform the new in the arts and sciences. This is the world Castells describes of a purely cultural pattern of social interaction and social organisation, not seen before in history. In this world I believe humanity is positioned at the interface of what I have dubbed the Archive of Possibilities. The vastness of this new cultural pattern is at once symbolised and accelerated by the digital revolution that enables the collective storage, comparison, splicing and synthesis of many knowledges. This is a world of such diversity and contingency that it resembles the realm of fiction and cinema where it often finds its ‘voice’ in imaginative description and symbolism. David Harvey notes that the focus in culture has shifted to recognising and accommodating the implications of cultural diversity and humanity’s new fluid, plural and

50 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

multi-dimensional identities – identities that change according to situation. Harvey describes a preoccupation with place, hybridity, irony and diversity that is manifest in the works of postcolonial and postmodern writers, painters and filmmakers. He cites examples of writers including Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Marquez, and Jorge Luis Borges, who portray these themes and have a fascination with the bonds that exist between character and place (Harvey, 1990). In particular, I would single out the stories of Jose Luis Borges, that are complex, imaginative cultural fusions in every sense. In Borges’ world of metaphor and symbol, the writer’s imagination takes cultural inspiration from exploring the diverse theatres of poetry, memory and history, the maps of cartography, metaphysics and belief and the creative processes themselves. This is a perfect metaphor for both Castells’ world and that of postmodern geography where culture can be said to refer to culture and where on an imaginative level all things have the potentiality to refer to each other.

Threats and Opportunities of a Culturalised Age

The positive and negative potentialities in cultural representation are magnified by the freewheeling world of postmodern cultural exchange and consumption. The heightened processes of cultural involution I describe in operation in the postmodern world carry with them not only liberating possibilities based on the practices and politics of organizations such as Power of Place or policy prescriptions for urban creativity as in the work of Charles Landry, but also the negative implications inherent in the culture of an omnivorous Information Age. At the same time in an age of cultural diversity the progress in multicultural societies - however halting - to an embracing all of the strands of cultural diversity is the only real alternative to social fracturing along the fault lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality. This is the context in which Sandercock in Cosmopolis II announces as her ‘self-declared social project for the mongrel cities of the 21 st century’ (Sandercock, 2003: 100). Despite this the ethical requirements of cultural diversity in one world are counter posed to the economic pressure to expand the markets for culturalised consumption. At the heart of the new social planning and planning for cultural development lies the need for the creation of

51 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

culturised planning tools that promote ethical and reflexive planning and inclusiveness. Later, I outline a Culturised Model to promote this.

Social and legislative support for the acceptance of difference and diversity may be furthered by the social development, use and exchange of culturised knowledge. Although little recognised, innovative planning may develop and hone the social tools required to move beyond tolerance and the inert acceptance of diversity. Further, in the free-flowing world of contemporary culture, cultural appropriation will remain, without an ongoing multicultural dialogue. Such a dialogue can also develop an intercultural dynamic based on empathy and on the acknowledgement of the right of others to have their culture respected. Philosophically and practically today new qualities are required. These qualities call for ‘more than the acceptance of diversity and coexistence’ but also ‘the legitimacy of the other’s interests and the other’s right to have such interests respected and, if possible, gratified’ (Bauman, 1992: xxi-xxii).

Important as a framework of law is in protecting the right to cultural diversity, the promotion of dialogue and the gratification of diverse cultural interests go beyond such a framework. It is a function of a healthy, communicating society prepared to explore its past, warts and all, and its diversity. In Australia, cultural mapping projects undertaken according to ethical methodologies that recognise cultural diversity, and protect cultural rights, confidentiality and the ownership of intellectual property, have proved useful. In an ethical context, hidden or repressed histories or minority cultural practices are more likely to come to the fore to the attention of a wider community, to promote cultural sharing and social healing.

In this context, the United Nations and its agencies have embodied the principles of culture and the perspective of developmental improvement in a broad spectrum of international agreements including human rights, health, heritage, ecology, the law and justice. These principles stem from the optimistic international humanism of the period after the Second World War. However, while these principles are ultimately based on those embodied in the

52 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), they are tempered and expanded by more than half a century of practical experience. The experience of the United Nations with global cultural diversity has accumulated at the level of local development projects and in the crafting of international charters and declarations. Over the decades, the experience of UNESCO has crystallised into the contemporary perspective that culture is foundational in the process of all development and planning for development. What this means is that the new possibilities for planning and other social technologies, will unfold and be expressed through the structure and shape of an ever more dynamic culture that works through and explores its own self.

Conclusion

Culture today is widely recognised - perhaps, for the first time in history - as the key theme of a continuing era. This is an era with indeterminate and dynamic possibilities for the future, in which culture is viewed as the most important way of understanding human difference. Other historical explanations of difference based on geography, race, or genetics, have been superseded as central to discourse. Culture’s quantum leap has been made possible because cultural explanations have the capacity to account for the importance of learning and lived experience at the local level. Humanity is free to recognise the changeable and malleable nature of human individuals and their lives, in contrast to explanations that serve to undermine cultural autonomy.

Further, class-based theories of hegemony and of social determinism have less credibility in the face of a postmodern context and its assumptions. Chaney sees the problem with such theories as residing in the fact that ‘they try to close off the process of the production of meaning. Such theories cannot allow the free play of irony or reflexivity in cultural discourse’ (Chaney, 1994: 48). Cultural explanations are part of an optimistic and dynamic discourse in which growth and change in life has the potential to be more powerful than loss. In a world that has seen the renewal of religious fundamentalism even the potency of the ‘clash of cultures’ argument is positioned in terms of a discourse that is dynamic and

53 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

capable of engagement. Such explanations chime with planning which is an optimistic discourse, at least where societies have continued to believe in their capacity to create an alternative future. For planning depends, like so much else, on the power of hope.

54 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER THREE

PLANNING THEORY AND CULTURE

the language of the modern period relegated culture to a sector of social life, rather than recognising the cultural embedding of all social life. The challenge now is to recognise the cultural situatedness of our knowledge and action and to work out ways of living in a multi-cultural world (Healey, 1997: 65).

In this chapter I argue that planning theory has failed to address the issue of culture at a time when culture is both the most likely source of planning renewal and the world’s most important intellectual resource. Planning theory has remained alarmingly diffuse and unfocused in relation to the ‘cultural turn’ (Chaney, 1994) played out in societies, economies and ecologies around the globe. Despite this I argue that the same body of theory offers indispensable insights for a culturised approach to planning in tandem with an integrated vision of culture. The benefits of planning theory need to be captured for a more culturised planning and I argue that they are best accessed through a plural approach to theory, rather than being confined to the views of a single thinker or tradition, or one or other of the main schools of planning theory. I follow Allmendinger (2001) in dividing planning theory into two main schools, the postmodern and the neo-modern. I then scrutinise each of the two schools for their respective strengths and weaknesses. While the neo-modern school primarily consists of communicative and collaborative theory it includes other theories such as the pragmatic. However postmodern and neo-modern theories are together the main pillars of the bipolar context of planning theory.

The culturised approach to planning I propose draws on planning theory eclectically but it does so through the lenses and practices of a new stage of culturalised existence that has come into being in the Information Age (Castells, 1998). In this broad context the options of the interpretive vision of the postmodern gaze and the communicative and pragmatic emphases of the neo-modern each possess a distinctive relevance for planning. Each school

55 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

addresses culture in different ways and offers in turn useful possibilities for the culturisation of planning.

For its own part, planning theory itself needs to consider culture in a more meaningful fashion and to engage culture in empirical, contemporary and historical terms. It also needs to research and expand theoretical insights relevant to culturalism, because the culturisation of planning would benefit all planning regardless of its scale or form. Greater culturisation would increase planning’s connectivity to communities, promote undervalued histories, environments and ecologies, and develop a practical awareness of the nature and broader creative potentialities of a culturalised age (WCC, 1996; Landry, 2000; Scott, 2000).

Planning Theory

While planning theory is polarised around the two main schools each school consists of many nuances of theory and sub-theory and their discourse is frequently at odds. While the polar categories are stretched to contain the kaleidoscope of planning theory nevertheless the most important positions fall mainly on one or other side of the divide. In addition there are loosely neo-modern theories that espouse the concept of ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1997), and ‘reflexive modernisation’ and the re-enlightenment of planning (Gleeson, 2000), that fall a little outside each of the two main schools of planning theory. In spite of this they are more strongly connected to the neo-modern tradition, where I include them. Both the postmodern and neo-modern schools have a specific relevance for the broader purpose of culturising planning and neither approach should be allowed to stand on its own or relevant insights will be lost for planning and culture. For this reason I contend that a plural approach to planning theory is the most appropriate for the cultural reconstruction of planning as a discipline. The case for a theoretical pluralism of this kind is a complex one – neither obvious nor transparent – and I will begin my argument with this. Planning practice today is being developed – where it relates to theory at all – through a process of the random infusion of new theory that rises and falls on the cyclical tide of fashion. There is in operation an ‘eclectic “pick and mix” basis to theory development and planning

56 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

practice’ (Allmendinger, 2002a: 84), a situation that is best seen ‘as relating to issues, time and space in a linear and non-linear manner’ (Allmendinger, 2002a: 84). The phenomenon of the ‘pick and mix’ approach to theory development and planning practice is understandable because ‘Unlike other areas of the social sciences such as economics or other professions including medicine planning has no endogenous body of theory’ (Allmendiger, 2002a: 6). In the specific case of planning culturisation, however, I hope to indicate a strong rationale for the benefits of plural theory. This is because planning operates in dramatically diverse empirical circumstances. A plurality of theory is necessary to garner qualitatively different insights and to match the diversity of cultural, social, political, economic and ecological factors that exist at any level around the globe. In other words, local geography and the specifics of place are crucial matters for culture and represent different opportunities for theory. In a postmodern context it can be seen that different ‘evolutionary’ stages, economic phases and social patterns go together to make up a local reality. Or, in Raymond Williams’ conceptualisation the ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ in culture co-exist differentially according to geographical circumstances (Williams, 1966). I believe a multiplicity of theory is called for to account for this. In recent writing David Harvey makes a related point in relation to his construction of ‘class struggle’: We have then to recognise the geographical dimension and grounding for class struggle. As Raymond Williams suggests, politics is always embedded in ‘ways of life’ and ‘structures of feeling’ peculiar to places and communities. The universalism to which socialism aspires has, therefore, to be built by negotiation between different place-specific demands, concerns and aspirations. (Harvey, 2000: 55).

Culture is, of course, no more nor no less than this - ‘ways-of-life’ and ‘structures of feeling’ that are peculiar to places and communities. And it is surely the case that the processes of exploring, interpreting, and exchanging this culture can be assisted by the creative use of multiple theory.

57 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Culture and Planning Theory

In considering the relationship between culture and planning theory it is first worth noting that the isolation of planning theory from planning practice is itself a major topic in planning. From the neo-modern side of planning theory, collaborative and pragmatic planning approaches espouse good communication and planning practicality as a goal. On the other wing, the school of postmodern planning theory is commonly perceived to stand at a further distance from any considered relevance to planning practice (Allmendinger, 2001; Gleeson, 2000). Further, postmodern cultural theory and historical social theory are in a number of their manifestations sceptical about the very role, value and possibilities for planning per se. For example, although a declared sponsor of postmodern planning, Allmendinger suggests that it could be argued ‘that postmodernism precludes planning at all’ (Allmendinger, 2002a: 86). Postmodernism variously asserts the contingent, incommensurable and chaotic nature of cultural phenomena seemingly blunting the possibility for meaningful planning at all, while neo-modern communicative views see the culture of the lifeworld as threatened or undermined by instrumental rationality. Yet the majority of planning theory, as against most forms of planning practice, frequently scopes a considered role for culture, in particular as a corrective to the unreconstructed survival of planning modernism. This is so in the work of Sandercock (1998) who attacks what she describes as the ‘inferno’ of the modernist planning paradigm while at the same time examining the practices of insurgent culture. The cultural rhetoric of most planning theory, however, is more aspirational than practical, and bears little relationship to a systematic approach to the development of a more culturised planning. While writers and thinkers from both postmodern and neo-modern theoretical axes freely acknowledge the reality of accelerating cultural diversity and the fragmentation of contemporary communities, their analyses begin to taper off at this point. In a culture-saturated world however this is the point at which things become interesting. From here on, the opportunities to further unlock culture for the broader benefit of planning begin to accrue. Before this occurs, however, analytical work, and analytical interpretation will need to take place to permit culture to be released, or unlocked. As a prerequisite to the development of culturised planning the

58 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

theory of planning will first need to focus on the implications of an integrated concept of culture and on planning in its many forms, or modalities, and at multiple scales. A multi- dimensional concept and definition of culture is a necessity. This is because culture in a culturised age is relevant to planning along its historical and contemporary axes and in its tangible and intangible forms. Plural theory is required to meet the ever-more complex and sophisticated range of contemporary planning needs and opportunities. Only the amplitude of theoretical pluralism has the capability to ‘touch all the bases’, in terms of reflecting both the global cultural turn and the opportunities for culturisation perceived as a diversity of contemporary social, economic and ecological needs. Planning’s opportunities encompass wide cultural disparities in both the developed and developing worlds and between the relative ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ time of remote rural communities and wired metropolitan regions.

Planning however, lacks a holistic and flexible cultural perspective to integrate these different aspects, forms and manifestations of culture, and from its inception planning theory abandons the key synergies that the import of culture could bring. Ironically, it fails to articulate an integrative and transformative cultural vision at a time when the exploding culture of our information age is increasingly exploring and re-inventing the possibilities of its own identity and cannot be ignored.

Postmodern Planning

Postmodern planning theory is generally alert to culture and sensitive to the themes of change and transformation in a global and recognisably culturalised age. Yet postmodern theory has not generated noteworthy proposals or measures to enable planning to refocus on cultural considerations in a practical fashion. Critics are often at a loss to perceive how postmodern planning theory translates into a practical activity such as planning. Further, they sometimes argue that postmodernism has not provided a framework that could be applied meaningfully at the social scale to cities, regions and nations (Gleeson, 2000).

59 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

I believe that neither of the above criticisms, either in relation to the thematic focus of postmodern planning approaches, or the lack of a master framework for planning, is at all fatal to a postmodern approach to planning. I also endorse a postmodern approach under the aegis of a theoretical pluralism that includes neo-modern planning as a valid approach in its own right. In Part Two of this thesis ‘A Model for Planning with Culture’, these issues are addressed and in Part Three I illustrate how postmodern theory may be captured and integrated into planning.

Postmodern Planning Frameworks

Postmodern approaches are relevant in their own right on at least two distinct levels one of which is argued by Allmendinger. He distinguishes between a postmodern framework for planning and postmodern forms of planning and it is the planning context of Europe and developed countries that he has in mind. He considers a postmodern framework for planning a viable option but remains sceptical about postmodern forms of planning. Within a postmodern framework for planning he argues (2001) that planning diversity could be expanded with some communities and areas continuing to opt for more traditional approaches closer to modernism and a base in regulation. In an important sense this reflects the underlying sociological and cultural reality described by Edward Soja who sees a world in which elements of the modern and postmodern coexist in different configurations in cities around the globe (Soja, 1993). Such an approach sidesteps Gleeson’s argument that postmodernism has not provided a framework that could be applied meaningfully at the social scale to cities, regions and nations. Gleeson has in mind, I think, a consistent framework – or template - while Allmendinger’s framework consists of an arrangement of qualitatively different variations in approach based on the diversity of communities and their preferences. The corollary to Gleeson’s criticism of the lack of a socio-spatial framework for cities, regions and nations is perhaps the emphasis elsewhere in his writing on the importance of a resurrected faith in universal Enlightenment values, in order to re- enlighten planning (Gleeson, 2000). This approach may serve to blunt an appreciation of the indirect and subtle fashion in which postmodern theories make themselves felt.

60 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

A postmodern approach would be based on diversity, reflecting the unique differences in the social, historical, environmental and ecological circumstances of any one place. The specific culture of any area or region would be the basis for determining planning responses and emphases as well as the over-arching identity themes and messages that function culturally as a factor in regional competitiveness. Postmodern geography, as described by Edward Soja, suggests a path here as it strives to ‘…break out from the temporal prison house of language and the similarly carceral historicism of conventional critical theory to make room for the insights of interpretive , a spatial hermeneutic’ (Soja, 1993: 1-2). This also fits with the increased levels of cultural reflexivity and interpretation that are the concomitants of a networked Information Age. They are essential requirements in generating a more humane and culturised planning focussed on cultural diversity and distinctiveness.

Soja’s approach is criticised by Allmendinger and I will consider this argument in detail as it is important to differentiate why and how various postmodern approaches are important to planning. Allmendinger, although himself postmodern in approach, begins by defining what he describes as ‘Lyotard’s trap’ into which he claims Soja has fallen. ‘Lyotard’s trap’ is ‘enforcing diversity as a basis for postmodern planning’ (Allmendinger, 2001: 168).

Allmendinger argues as follows:

Enforcing diversity is not postmodern in the strictest sense as a number of his (Soja’s) critics have pointed out (if the postmodern is to remain at a largely theoretical or analytical level) but is perhaps a necessity if it is to move into the realms of praxis necessary for a discipline such as planning. If we take it as a necessity, then enforcing themes rather than processes or structures provides an unsatisfactory basis for postmodern planning. This is because it represents a new master-narrative to replace older ones found in more modern approaches. It would also fail however because it is too vague and does not address the ‘meat’ of planning where such a concern would need to be located – in the processes and structures as well in themes and attitudes (planning doctrine). If a practical postmodern planning is to tackle these issues …then an emphasis on process and structure needs to accompany an emphasis on themes (Allmendinger, 2001: 168- 169).

61 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

I believe the essential issue with this position is a failure to consider how postmodern approaches are already reflected and applied in planning. This integration is achieved through positioning perspectives and themes that are included - often in a partial and unselfconscious fashion - in the processes of preparing and reviewing statutory planning documents. They are absorbed and constitute aspects of the strategic vision, goals, objectives, priorities, heads of consideration and suchlike of plans at all levels. Postmodern approaches breathe cultural and social relevance and new theoretical understanding and imagination into planning processes and documents. They enliven planning and further the process - already well in train – of freeing it from a decultured heritage of modernism and an over-emphasis on instrumental technicalities.

I also believe Allmendinger’s account misconstrues the nature and operation of diversity in global societies. In democratic cultures diversity is not so much enforced as enacted and its merits respected – a process that lies at the heart of such societies. In fact much of the character of contemporary democratic practice is defined in this way. In addition, postmodern knowledge and postmodern approaches encompass much more than considerations of diversity. In chapter seven I outline a model for integrated research designed to ensure that postmodern approaches in their multiplicity are formally considered in planning rather than through the uneven and random fashion in which this occurs at present.

Postmodern Planning Techniques

My goal is to systematise the consideration of postmodern planning theory for planning inclusion so that the paucity of postmodern planning techniques no longer represents such a practical barrier to planning diversity being embraced to keep pace with the impacts of postmodern cultural and economic trends. Allmendinger argues that postmodern social theory has proved too abstract to have developed many new planning tools and has few concrete and then only limited examples of postmodern planning techniques to offer. I do not believe that this is the case and certainly need not remain so with the use and further

62 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

development of culturised planning techniques and pluralistic planning theory. Additionally, it is fundamental that the new abstract themes and concepts that characterise postmodern theory and approaches are integrated in planning along with neo-modern approaches. A mutual dialogue between the two main schools of planning would engage the power of synthesis and the benefits of complementarity to the enrichment of planning in its totality.

In spite of this, it is worth reiterating that Allmendinger has specific objections to postmodern planning approaches. He provides what is for him a universal critique of the limitations of all postmodern planning approaches:

The central drawback of all the postmodern planning approaches to date is that they have focussed on themes rather than processes or structures. Writers have set out general postmodern themes such as diversity and then over optimistically expected them to filter down to processes, structures and everyday practice. (Allmendinger, 2001: 168).

I believe this critique is vulnerable as it is based on a limited view of the dynamics of postmodern culture and a misconstruction of the nature of postmodern themes as they operate in contemporary culture. While it is true, as suggested earlier, that postmodern approaches focus on themes rather than processes or structures, and do not provide a ready master socio-spatial framework, I firmly believe postmodern insights can in fact be captured for planning.

For Postmodern Planning Approaches and Insights

What perhaps has not been understood by critics of postmodern planning’s focus on themes (perhaps its distinctive historical strength), is that any influence postmodern themes or perspectives may be likely to have on planning is of necessity indirect and will inevitably be mediated through linking ideas and processes. This is an a priori or ‘necessary’ truth within the context of the diverse and complex societies and ideologies of our time. In

63 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

addition to the logical necessity of this, there is a further and more important truth. Postmodern thinking presents contemporary ideas that are useful, and indeed often indispensable, for interpreting social practices and cultural trends under the gaze of planning. It enables greater cultural sense to be made of a broad range of important phenomena ranging from cultural diversity and indigenousness to tourism, popular culture, urban design, heritage and the cultural industries. Thus, for example, accessing and integrating historical and intangible culture is crucial for good spatial planning, whether at the regional or local scale or in the form of planning documents ranging from a site development plan, to a master plan or a regional strategy. It is also clearly essential in developing the kind of aspatial planning strategies that have new cultural, social, environmental, ecological and post-industrial objectives in mind. In these cases postmodern themes and insights are crucial and should not be underrated or misconstrued. They have at times the uncanny capacity to become the new and more relevant categories and organising ideas that are the keys to deeper planning in sectors such as heritage, tourism, interpretation and the cultural industries. They are the vehicles and bearers of the future. Indeed, they are frequently the drivers of post-industrial development of many kinds and thus impact on everyday matters such as employment and wealth creation. Although the causal link between postmodern ideas and post-industrial planning is central it is subtle and can be elusive at first glance.

I would also argue that postmodern approaches have a strong interest in ethical issues and can have positive and beneficent impacts on issues such as respect for cultural diversity and equity issues when considered in social, environmental, ecological and inter-generational terms. For example, the contemporary practice of cultural mapping mixes collaborative processes such as community workshops and focus groups while it also draws on local and regional postmodern themes, cultural studies and political economy. And this occurs within an ethical frame that could represent from Allmendinger’s perspective the enforcement of a theme or even a master-narrative. If this is so it is a master-narrative embodied in international law and international agreements that have been developed in the period since the end of the Second World War by the United Nations and other bodies.

64 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

I believe postmodern approaches are part of the essential means to deliver Sandercock’s call for a postmodern praxis based on other ways of knowing and other knowledges. This will require as Sandercock (1998) recognises that planning theory be rewritten to reach beyond the social sciences. What this requires, rather than the abandonment of neo-modern planning, is collaboration between the two main schools in a revised theoretical pluralism. A pluralism of theory that correlates with the multiple epistemologies and conditions of being that are today’s cultural experience wherever and however they are embedded in the multifarious cultural geographies of the globe. The process of imaginatively absorbing postmodern knowledge, perspective and approaches in planning should however never be far from the practice and consideration of the more mainstream communicative planning approaches to which I will now turn.

Neo-modern Planning Theory

The polar opposite to postmodern theory in planning are neo-modern theories that encompass collaborative planning and pragmatist philosophy and theories such as ‘reflexive modernisation’. Communicative theory is however the bulk of neo-modern theory and has a more venerable tradition than postmodern theory. Neo-modern theory is a ‘broad church’ that encompasses many of the themes of Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, but also draws on many other sources of philosophical and theoretical inspiration. These include, in the words of the planning theorist Margo Huxley, ‘pragmatist philosophy, Giddensian structuration theory, ethnomethodology, and ethnographic methods as well as elements of critical social theory’ (Huxley, 2000: 369).

In this context I will focus on communicative theory and planning, as it is the primary form of neo-modern planning theory. What communicative planning shares with Habermas are themes that include ‘critiques of positivist science and neo-Marxist structural theory; critiques of technocratic and instrumental rationality; and an emphasis on inter-subjective communication as a fundamental prerequisite for understanding and transforming society’

65 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

(Huxley, 2000: 369). Huxley goes on to characterise the communicative planning literature in this way: The communicative planning literature rejects as unrealistic the idea of planning as technical and apolitical, and, indeed, technical and political neutrality are seen to be incapable of achieving planning’s reformative goals. Instead, planners and planning systems need to be responsive to difference, to be genuinely participatory, and to strive to create deliberative contexts that, as far as possible, minimise inequalities of power and knowledge (Huxley, 2000: 369).

I acknowledge, however, as Huxley suggests (2000), that a significant debate has nevertheless emerged over the theory underpinning the practicality of communicative planning associated with among others Flyvbjerg, Allmendinger and Yiftachel.

In this context, the neo-modern idea of reflexive modernisation has reformist currency in planning theory but remains perhaps philosophically brittle and relatively unimaginative in its response to postmodern culture and the social need to negotiate and harness cultural diversity and cultural hybridity. It also places the claims of ecology, in philosophical and intellectual terms above and before those of culture and culturalism. By doing this I believe it creates an impediment to the development of new cultural approaches and solutions that will encompass the issues of ecological maintenance and continuity.

Before evaluating the communicative debate in terms of its relationship to the theoretical pluralism I propose as relevant to a culturised planning, it is important to examine a number of the key ideas of the major communicative social theorist Jurgen Habermas. Habermas propounds a morally serious philosophical and social engagement at all times, having spent his early teenage years under the shadow of Nazism. The philosopher’s personal sense of ‘rupture’ with the German tradition under Nazism encouraged in him an openness to other intellectual traditions that led to his discovery of the American pragmatists. In Bernstein’s words: He felt strong affinity with the pragmatists’ vision and understanding of radical participatory democracy. In the centrality of a fallibilistic critical community, and in the probing of the dynamics of intersubjectivity, he discovered the kernel of what

66 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

he was later to call ‘communicative action’ – action oriented to mutual understanding. (Bernstein, 2002: 4).

Habermas’ theory of communicative action has had a profound influence on the social sciences and on the planning literature. But at the same time as Huxley argues ‘(planning) research methods parallel pragmatic perspectives, which do not necessarily share the transformative aims of critical theoretical projects’ (Huxley, 2000: 376). I mention this at the outset for the pragmatic component of communicative planning is frequently more focussed on technicalities and the means to an end, rather than the broader social objective of the ‘end’ itself. Ironically, this mirrors some postmodern theory that becomes an end in itself when it pursues the complications of what Barthes calls ‘writerly’ texts (Dovey, 1999: 30) and the related experience of ‘jouissance’. Jouissance is defined as ‘the almost erotic joy of complicity in the undermining of language or meaning’ (Dovey 1999: 30).

In the decades following the Second World War Habermas bravely confronted the belief that the legacy of the Enlightenment was the triumph of instrumental or purposive rationality – Zweckrationalitat. This was the view propounded by the early twentieth century sociologist Max Weber. According to Bernstein (2002: 7) in Weber’s view ‘The growth of Zweckrationalitat does not lead to the concrete realisation of universal freedom but to the creation of an “iron cage” of bureaucratic rationality from which there is no escape’. Not only that, but Weber despaired about the:

possibility of rationally grounding the ultimate norms that guide our lives; we must choose the ‘gods or demons’ we decide to pursue. With the disenchantment of the world that results from the ineluctable processes of modernisation which destroys the foundation of traditional world-views, we are left with a void (Bernstein, 2002: 6-7).

Habermas responded to this by breaking free from Weber’s logic. Part of his philosophical gambit was to divide rationality into instrumental and communicative forms. Instrumental action is concerned with taking control and strategy and is not about ideal communication. It is ‘Orientation to Success versus Orientation to reaching Understanding’ and he sees ‘…strategic action and communicative action as types’ (Habermas, 1984: 286). In this way

67 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

‘Habermas sees communicative action as connected to the lifeworld - the world of everyday life outside the system, the formal economy, and the state – and free from the media of money and power’ (Huxley, 2000: 370). It is easy to see communication as belonging to the heart of life and ideally as anchored at the centre of planning. The communicative turn in planning theory suggests the persuasiveness of this vision. The Achilles’ Heel of this approach, however, is the issue of power and the impact of power on communicative transactions. Habermasians such as Patsy Healey must confront this. Although Habermas himself believed the lifeworld to be free from systems power, Margo Huxley notes that ‘as both Foucault and some feminist critics of Habermas point out, discourses and practices of power are continuous with the social’ (Huxley, 2000: 372). This leads Huxley to conclude that:

The possibilities for oppositional – let alone transformative – action need to be argued for, rather than assumed, and this involves questioning assumptions about the possibility of communicative planning itself (Huxley, 2000: 376).

In developing the case for ‘the possibilities for oppositional action’ the collaborative planning theorist Patsy Healey draws on an institutionalist approach based on a theory of structuration from the British social theorist Anthony Giddens. According to Gidden’s idea of structuration the interactive relationship between social and organisational structures and individual agency means that we are ‘shaped by our social situation but we actively shape it too’ (Healey 1997: 57). As in Marxism and some feminist scholarship the power of structure is recognised as significant. But interestingly Healey’s institutionalist approach, following Giddens, does not treat these powerful forces as external, rather ‘they are present in, and actively constituted through, the social relations of daily life’ (Healey, 1997: 57). In other words:

The approach does not treat people as mere cogs in someone else’s machine. It emphasises that the powerful forces which structure our lives are actively made by us as we acknowledge them in our doing, seeing and knowing, in our systems of meaning. It also acknowledges that we are reflective beings. As a result, we have choices about what to accept of our structured, social embeddedness and what to reject. As we make these choices, so we maintain, modify and transform the structuring forces which shape our lives. (Healey, 1997: 57).

68 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In this way, according to institutionalist social theory, we actively make our lives and in our engagement with others, build up relational bonds that over time create intellectual and social capital. These relational bonds are built up from the webs and networks of everyday life and overlap and vary in numerous ways as they evolve in the time and space of everyday lives. ‘Relational bonds’ develop and intersect everywhere - in the workplace, in clubs, in households and on holidays. These relational worlds, however, are embedded in past experience for as Healey argues ‘The power of structure and system is at its most forceful in these embeddings, in the deep structure of the “taken-for-granted” assumptions which people implicitly draw upon’ (Healey, 1997: 58). In the same way, these influences are also present in governance, particularly in the informal aspects of power where they are ‘embedded in the thought worlds of the powerful’ (Healey 1997: 59). This means that local environmental conflicts can occur between people who share values but also between people and cultural communities who do not share a past but who are ‘neighbours in space’ (Healey, 1997: 60). Yet, each arena shares to some degree the potential for transformation, because thinking can be changed through discussion and policy discourse. These very discussions also contribute to possible new ways of thinking and the creation of new networks and new social capital. In fact, spatial planning work, Healey argues (1997) can become part of governance focussed on developing public discourse about the environmental and social qualities of a place. This has the potential to culminate in a collaborative ‘high’: Where the emphasis is on transformation, planning could become part of an effort to build new relational links between networks co-existing in an urban region, and building up new systems of meaning, new cultural referents. It thus has a role in building up the institutional capacity of a place (Healey, 1997: 61.)

This links through to the national and international levels and planning thus has ‘…the potential to shape the building of relations and discourses, the social and intellectual capital, through which links are made between networks to address matters of shared concern at the level of neighbourhoods, towns and urban regions’ (Healey, 1997: 61). Healey has in mind issues such as quality of life, economic competitiveness, sustainable development and maintenance of the biosphere. Culture, however, is perhaps the sleeper here. While equally embedded in institutional structures such as governance, culture is also

69 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

perhaps ultimately made and re-made through the ‘social relations of daily life’ (Healey, 1997). In this sense the ongoing splintering of contemporary cultural and social diversity into greater fractions and the development of new creative hybridity are the vehicles of culture. In this way the fluid personal identities and relational bonds of our increasingly diverse ways of life and structures of feeling are mixed with the culture embedded in organisations. The rapid increase of diversity coupled with the creative interplay between contemporary ways of life and media-based expressions of culture are together new accelerators of reflexivity. I would argue expanding on Healey’s vision and the vision of communicativeness in general that this reflexivity is potentially at the disposal of a planning dedicated to transformation. It is thus an issue and an opportunity that need to be addressed in any effective culturisation of planning.

It is also true that planning improvements - however uneven in their distribution – continuously emerge based on oppositional and transformative actions in line, in fact, with Huxley’s belief that they must be ‘argued for, rather than assumed’ (Huxley, 2000). The assumptions behind the possibility of communicative planning do need to be questioned, as Huxley demands, and out of this critical dynamic incremental planning change occurs.

A Plural Approach to Theory

It can be seen that contemporary planning is characterised by an eclectic mix of theories and has no endogenous body of theory. This eclecticism has decided advantages as it provides ‘a much more eclectic “pick and mix” basis to theory development and planning practice’ (Allmendinger 2002a: 84) which in turn matches contemporary complexities and the situationally differentiated nature of postmodernity. Even so, ‘neo-modern’ planning approaches and postmodern schools of thought in planning theory can be seen to inhabit different world-views (Allmendinger, 2001). Yet, I am firmly of the view that irrespective of their separate realms both world-views offer different strengths and advantages to a planning based on culture. Indeed, neo-modern approaches and postmodern thinking are complementary in their different capacities to integrate culture in planning. And we live in a world of extremely diverse world-views that are now more highly visible than before. In

70 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the era of the global village ethnic and racial diversity rub shoulders in real life in multicultural and multi-racial neighbourhoods and societies, and a bewildering diversity of values and artistic practices underlies much creativity in popular culture, the arts and the media. Increasingly, in this context, diversity also reveals itself through contested values. In the face of such complexity a policy of cohabitation and exchange between planning theories works best and effectively answers planning’s needs. Both of the main schools of planning theory are available to nourish planning. Each perspective, however, is part of the one quest for a new and emancipated planning that works with, rather than against, (our) different times (Allmendinger, 2001). And our different times enfranchise the insights embedded in multiple theories and approaches.

Smart argues, for example, that the ‘strategic choice’ Habermas believed he faced, for or against Enlightenment values and modernity, is too limiting and that there is a third possibility ‘embodied in a range of other analyses’ (Smart, 1993: 91-92). He cites, among other examples, Giddens’ views of the complex consequences and possible alternatives to modernity, Bauman’s description of the (post) modern experience of living with contingency and ambivalence, and Foucault’s history of modern rationalities (Smart, 1993). In the case of Foucault, Smart singles out observations he believes are relevant to postmodern sociology that I believe are also profoundly suggestive for the case of a culturised planning. In Smart’s opinion, postmodern sociology has as its central task ‘the reactivation of disqualified, local, popular and illegitimate forms of knowledge’ (Smart, 1993: 76). Further, in Foucault’s terms these forms of knowledge exist ‘against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchise and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects’ (Foucault in Smart, 1993: 76). A form of analysis such as Foucault’s therefore ‘lays no claim to totality or universality’ (Smart, 1993: 76).

Planning mirrors the task of postmodern sociology to explore and utilise more than ‘a unitary body of theory’, and to reactivate local, popular and disqualified or illegitimate forms of knowledge. Postmodern and communicative planning theories are each in a

71 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

position to make a distinctive and enabling contribution to this process. The postmodern approach uses powerful and imaginative themes to challenge and interrogate settled realities and to introduce ‘emergent culture’. Neo-modern and communicative planning sources and voices the specificities of the vibrant diversity and hybridity in communities. Constructive engagement between different schools of thought is also espoused by Allmendinger, who recognises that collaborative or communicative planning will continue to dominate academic debate and that its proponents need to engage with emerging critiques, and other ideas and schools of thought (Allmendinger, 2002b). Further, the neo- modern collaborative approach is:

what could be termed ethnographic, that is, it approaches planning through direct observation and often includes participant observation. The danger is that those observing can become ‘too involved’ with those being observed often missing the ‘big picture’ (Allmendinger, 2002b: 223).

In conjunction with the growing critical warrant for exploring multiple analyses, I believe a broader and foundational cultural perspective, as well as rigorous culturally based approaches, are required to guide planning and to maintain its relevance. Culturally directed and collaborative planning approaches, subtle enough to respond to our era of culture and its social diversity, and yet deep enough to promote satisfying levels of cultural reflexivity and understanding, need to draw on multiple ways of knowing, numerous disciplines (including the neglected humanities) and historical culture.

Conclusion

It is something of a surprise to acknowledge that a largely unperceived consensus is emerging between the theorists whether coming from the postmodern or neo-modern grouping in planning theory. Regardless of the critical opposition between the groupings, a number of key theorists from both sides of the divide point to the need for the use of planning approaches and tools that relate to cultural context and circumstance. As I suggest, the best way to achieve this is to utilise tools and approaches that respond to the

72 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

specific culture, issues and opportunities of each place. Of course, these tools and approaches need to acknowledge and respect an integrated approach to culture and be capable of targeting both its contemporary and historical as well as tangible and intangible manifestations. I believe a cultural heuristic can be developed to promote this in conceptual terms and in day-to-day planning. This position reflects the views of a range of theorists. For example, it encompasses Sandercock’s emphasis on the use of appropriate knowledge, and understanding which knowledge is to be used in a specific planning situation (Sandercock, 1998). Allmendinger’s argument that theories contribute to planning in different ways is also relevant. The culturised planning I outline elsewhere in the thesis is compatible with Gidden’s theory of structuration and the insights of Habermas synthesised in the work of Patsy Healey. It is also compatibly enriched by postmodern planning theory such as the work of Soja, Allmendinger and Sandercock and the profound insights of Foucault.

In addition to ideas originating from the theoretically sustained planning literature, in other chapters I examine insights sourced in sociology, pragmatism and planning policy, but which also have relevance for culturised planning. Both Sandercock’s proposals for a post- modern planning praxis and Charles Landry’s practical emphases are discussed. These positions can also be refined and continuously improved by reference to planning theory and theory in other disciplines, traditions and cultures.

Neo-modern and postmodern planning theory and practical and policy-based approaches are variously required in planning practice to promote cultural goals, to articulate the diverse and the eclectic and to enfranchise and mobilise subtle situational responses. Further, the specific planning technique or mix of techniques that is chosen – whether collaborative, pragmatic or postmodern in their character – has distributive consequences. It determines the degree to which the fruits of culture, ecology, and the economy are to be shared equitably, within and between communities.

73 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Within the context of new forms of experience and new ways of thinking a more flexible culturised planning based on plural theory could enfranchise the best cultural, theoretical and ecological understanding available for each place. In doing this, it would harness the richness of communities and histories and be responsive to and representative of the specific character of the modern and postmodern elements and the local and global as they are differentially and unevenly present in multiple places. This has the potential to contribute to the development of Healey’s normative values and ‘pluralist democratic practices for governance’ (Healey, 1997: 71), as well as contributing to the exploration of Foucault’s ‘pluralism of images and narratives of action, rationality and value’ (Foucault in Smart, 1993: 82).

In summary, I would draw a parallel here. The promise of culturised planning lies in the normative introduction of culture to planning mobilising the plurality of postmodern and neo-modern theory. Such an approach has the potential to transform meanings and values and to heal the fractured dimensions of culture. And it is a promise that applies to planning in all of its multiple forms and scales.

74 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER FOUR

PLANNING HISTORY AND CULTURAL CONCEPTS

In this chapter I sketch the history of the evolving concepts of culture as they have impacted on planning, principally in Australia and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, from the beginning of the twentieth century up until the present day. I also address culture in relation to international governance in the period since the end of the Second World War and in contemporary planning. The contemporary trends in relation to culture and planning are considered in terms of three key issues, expressed by postmodern culture, postcolonial and minority cultures and the post-industrial context of planning. The theme of culturalisation is also threaded through the contemporary picture as the threats and opportunities it represents for communities and environments need to be addressed in planning.

In this fashion the likely contours of the future that will impact on planning are foreshadowed.

The Overall Trends for the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

In Australia and the United Kingdom the first half of the twentieth century saw the dominance of the concept of in society. This bourgeois and elitist concept of culture stressed perfectibility in individuals and societies. Planning concepts of culture reflected this ideology. Following the Second World War change was in the air and the 1970s represented a clear watershed. A more democratic concept of culture broke through, associated with the work of the cultural theorist Raymond Williams. This perspective emphasised the interrelationships within culture and culture as ‘a whole way of life, material, intellectual and spiritual’ (Williams 1966: 16). An anthropological perspective to the study of culture was also propounded, stressing the importance of systems of meaning, the role of the symbolic and the significance of interpretation (Geertz, 1973).

75 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

These perspectives were dominant in the humanities and the social sciences and Williams’ view went on to influence planning. Under the broad aegis of culturalism this perspective influenced social and cultural planning, while not displacing high culture in other planning sectors that it challenged. By the late twentieth century with the acknowledged ‘turn to culture’ in the social sciences the philosophy of culturalism had triumphed, based on the concept of culture as ways of life and as systems of meaning. In addition, the flowering of the Information Age, occurring in tandem with the maturing of the cultural economy (Hall, 1998), meant that up-to-date concepts of culture could never realistically be overlooked. In Australia, planning reflected the concept of culturalism in its cultural and social planning forms and in some tourism and heritage planning. However, in more technicised and statutory-based areas planning remained at least in the unconscious grip of the concept of high culture. Thus ‘mainstream’ planning with a close nexus to land, power and capital remained conservative in its conceptualisation of culture while newer ideas were confined to planning’s perceived social and ‘cultural’ margins.

The full-blooded emergence of the condition of postmodernity (Harvey, 1990) from the late twentieth century and the flowering of the current Information Age have further entrenched culturalism. At the same time, culturalisation as a commodifying process was increasing with the maturing of the cultural economy, so important in major metropolitan centres and to the processes of globalisation. Place marketing is often a strong indication of this and in overall terms the trends in planning reflect this. However, while culturalisation encompasses the ubiquity of city and regional re-invention and marketing strategies, including global strategies for urban waterfronts, they are also related to the greater integration of cultural and community diversity in broader based heritage assessment and social planning and in sensitive cultural mapping and interpretation practices. I describe this as the Age of Interpretation, with planning moving towards integrating the new opportunities, in tandem with developments in the cultural industries by innovators and entrepreneurs. Contemporary perspectives reflecting culturalism, strategic connectivity and new theoretical angles promote the integration and use of culture in planning. In an age of culturalism, and culturalisation, planning – like culture – is best served by connectivity.

76 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

For example, connectivity between cultural forms, and between planning in its various manifestations, scales, and levels, can serve to undermine spatial and aspatial distinctions and the divorce between tangible and intangible culture.

To make sense of this pattern I will outline its history in both chronological and thematic terms. Before this, however, it is useful to introduce a key perspective from the realm of cultural theory. This will assist in understanding the dynamic nature of culture and its ever- present creative tensions and possibilities for change.

Dominant, Emergent and Residual Culture

The cultural theorist Raymond Williams had an enormous impact on cultural thinking particularly in Britain and in Australia and his ideas remain foundational to this day. Williams drew a useful distinction between and emergent culture in society (Williams 1966). He also introduced the idea of residual cultures in a later publication Marxism and Literature (1977). The thrust of this perspective is described by the cultural theoretician Tony Bennett in the following way:

To understand the historical dynamism of a culture, Williams argues, it is necessary to realise that the composition of any culture is always marked by a tension between the different temporalities of its constituent elements. The hegemony of the dominant culture can, Williams suggests, be partly undone from the perspective of the residual or the emergent – from the point of view that is, of a time which precedes it or of a time which goes beyond it – since each rests on a creative force – an ascendant social class in the case of emergent cultures; a once influential but now declining force in the case of residual cultures – which can have an alternative or even oppositional relation to the dominant culture (Bennett, 1998: 98).

Williams’ ideas are a useful tool in understanding the key ideas of culture I describe as operating in the United Kingdom and Australia historically and the relation of these concepts to planning. Associated with this approach however are practical difficulties in identifying residual and emergent cultures in a society at any one time and their specific social base. Added to this, post-colonial realities provide another dimension and diversify

77 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the picture, as indigenous and migrant cultures often represent an alternative relation to the dominant culture. They do this, however, without undermining the conceptual utility of Williams’ distinctions, although it is apparent that these distinctions should be used with care in a global and postcolonial context.

For example, Williams’ concept of ‘a whole way of life’ of a given society or nation accommodates the nested ways of life prevailing at the local, community level and within sub-cultures. I also note that Williams’ concept of ‘emergent culture’ is close to the idea and practices Leonie Sandercock identifies as ‘insurgent culture’ in Towards Cosmopolis (1998) and connects up with her development of a proposed ‘Radical Postmodern Planning Practice’ in Mongrel Cities (2003). More important perhaps in postcolonial contexts is the fact that indigenous culture may bear comparison with Williams’ positive idea of residual cultures, related in terms of British experience to the marginal cultures of Wales and Scotland. In Australia, however, indigenous culture like the cultures of Wales and Scotland in Britain is undergoing a renaissance within the broader national culture. It has, in many sectors radically influenced and reformed values and perceptions in the dominant culture. This alternative relation may be - in the case of the diversity of dynamic migrant cultures in Australia, for example - one of tightly held traditional values in a process of mutation well reflected in intergenerational and intercultural ‘ethnic’ humour. Emergent culture has affinities with new forms of culture, such as digital culture, and those that have emerged internationally driven by the forces of globalisation. As well, Williams’ distinctions are useful in explaining the rise of new concepts of culture, the demise of old, and in accounting for the process of cultural and conceptual ’lag’.

In the case of planning the shadings and contradictions inherent in the presence and coexistence of dominant, emergent and residual concepts of culture have been eased in practice by planning’s diversity of forms, scales and levels. This complexity serves to occlude anomalies and differences. In a postmodern and postcolonial context however there is the potential for more dialogue between the values and interests represented by the diversity of cultural concepts. Also, there is the potential to see the overall picture relating

78 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

to resistant and oppositional tendencies in culture as the source of new opportunities and inspiration. I will pursue these themes at a later stage but it is now appropriate, armed with Williams’ distinctions, to examine the relationship between cultural concepts in history and their evolution in the practice of planning. This will be achieved by examining the complex history of culture according to a number of historical periods and in thematic terms. While the categories of periods and themes overlap at times, this structure helps to clarify an otherwise dense and interwoven pattern.

The historical periods covered are the ‘modern period’ in overall terms from the beginning of the twentieth century up until the Second World War, the period following the Second World War, the great shift in culture that occurred with the watershed of the 1970s, cultural and heritage discourse in late twentieth century Australia, and the contemporary period. The themes considered, to add to the periods outlined, encompass culture and planning in the twenty and twenty-first centuries, culture and international governance, and to elucidate contemporary culture and planning the three themes of postmodern culture, postcolonial and minority cultures in planning and post-industrial issues in planning with culture.

Twenty and Twenty-First Century Culture and Planning

Since the beginning of the twentieth century planning has tended in its totality to reflect the dominant concept of culture in mainstream society. Emergent concepts about culture in society have not necessarily been announced or reflected in planning until sanctified by the passage of time. This introduced a lag between emergent concepts in the social sciences as they rose to dominance and their integration in planning practices. Yet, in terms of the wider picture this is a story of substantial change, although frequently the take-up of new ideas was narrowly sectoral as will be described. A narrow, elitist and socially dominant paradigm of culture was embodied in the history of modern planning. This concept of bourgeois culture was centred on aesthetics, traditional arts practices and the values and interests of a classically based education for a mostly male minority.

79 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The period after the Second World War saw a broadening and a democratisation of culture in society that began to be introduced into planning on its perceived margins in the 1970s, with a growing emphasis on communities, values and environments, developing in pace and diversity through the 1980s and 1990s. The leading ideas of culture today, bridging this century and the last, are of culture as an all-pervasive phenomenon. The implications of these ideas are perhaps more familiar to the world of advertising and marketing than to mainstream planning practice. The key theory of the information geographer Manuel Castells, for example, is better reflected in the consumption sector with its emphasis on consumer demographics and target markets than it is integrated in professional planning practices, sometimes still becalmed by positivist and elitist approaches to culture. But again, the inclusion of emergent cultural ideas on the ‘margins’ of planning is reflected in texts on the cultural economy (Scott, 2000), in recent planning technologies such as cultural mapping (Clark, Sutherland and Young, 1995), and in the exploration of migrant place (Armstrong, 1994; 2000) and work on the importance of the home (Thompson, 1993a; 1993b).

Apart from planning’s lag in the take-up of new cultural concepts, innovative planning practices in one place at one time have not necessarily caught on elsewhere. Regional and national differences, differences in governmental ideology and political administrations and the overall political economy of places account for this. For example, a cyclical pattern of positive and negative changes supplanting one another almost in turn can be seen to have sometimes operated at the federal level in Australia. The period since the 1970s reflects the influence of political ideology and fluctuating levels of interest in the practical and economic importance of culture.

Owing to the complexity of the experience my focus in this account is confined to Britain and Australia for the modern history of planning. After this for the period following the 1970s I concentrate mainly on New South Wales, Australia, with a small number of international examples used to highlight important principles for this period.

80 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Modern Planning

The relationship between planning, as it emerged in a highly developed form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until the period of the Second World War, and concepts of culture, was one of strong correspondence. The dominant elitist ideas of culture held sway in society at large as in planning. Planning focussed on cities. Social well-being became a priority as the health and productive capacity of the urban working classes and the amenity of the middle classes were threatened by environmental damage from congestion, pollution and inadequate facilities, and services and standards. In allocating priorities between land uses, planning sought to negotiate and impose a concept of the public interest to reconcile competing interests and demands based on principles of urban efficiency and social equity. Cultural considerations were an integral part of this equation although they were confined to the provision of cultural facilities and services. Such provision was in principle governed by considerations of equity – equity of access for the disadvantaged working classes unable to source ‘high’ culture from the private market. Middle class activists sought recognition for significant historic buildings and places associated with the processes of national development, as an important source of culture.

The model was based on a strong correspondence between an elitist paradigm of culture and planning modernism that saw moral improvement most often in bourgeois cultural terms. I sketch the model because although it began to be challenged from the period of the 1970s it is important to note three of its key aspects. First, the model dominated the social imaginary up until the 1970s with a concept of ‘high’, or bourgeois culture. Second, the model deemed ‘culture’ on its own elite terms to be beneficial but optional for the working classes. Third the model was embedded in the culture of the Enlightenment and based on a concept of scientific progress and moral improvement. The culture of other classes or minorities was either not recognised or perceived through a middle class filter and not considered to be equal, or as worthy or important as bourgeois, high culture.

81 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The concept of ‘high’, or bourgeois culture is best exemplified in Mathew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy published in 1882. The work identifies ideal norms of human perfection and uses these as the basis for education and emulation. In Arnold’s heroic words, culture was ‘the best that has been thought and said’ (Arnold). Selective and ideal in nature, and based on universal values, this culture, ‘indefatigably tries not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that’ (Arnold, 1979: 39).

This was a long way from the ‘beer and skittles’ culture, the everyday culture of the English working classes in the industrial towns, on whose improvement the early planners sat in contemplation. It was a concept of culture focussed on the high cultural products of literature, music, painting and architecture, and was transmitted through a classical education, ‘civilised’ values and standards and the concept of ‘taste’. This pervasive model of culture was embedded in planning and was reflected in its priorities and practices that favoured the moral improvement to be gained from the cultural provision of education, museums, libraries, art galleries and concert halls. ‘High’ culture was accommodated in planning through measures such as the preservation of the dwellings of the powerful and famous in history or sites associated with key events in the past. In a seigneurial approach selective education in grammar schools in the UK and their state equivalents in Australia sought to spread the benefits of high culture to all classes. In Britain the zenith of this tradition found its apotheosis perhaps in the propaganda of the Second World War. Ironically, what was often a caricature of the national high culture was conveyed by the technologies of modern mass culture, such as film, radio and the print media – nicely demonstrating Williams’ theory of the dominant and emergent in culture. A British culture of Shakespeare, the music of Handel, the churches of Sir Christopher Wren and a dozing countryside of ancient values was produced by public filmmakers for His Majesty’s Government. This high-culture was also used to provide the setting for depictions of the ordinary, decent lives of the imperial national culture.

82 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The concept of an exclusive high culture is on occasions still with us in planning in the form of a drained residue. Ironically, ‘high’ culture and its canonical ‘texts’ hung on for most of the second half of the twentieth century in many communist states such as the Soviet Union and other countries of the Warsaw Pact, where bourgeois fiction and performing arts were eerily compatible with state ideology and formed a large part of the educational curriculum along with the sacred texts of Marx and Lenin.

Culture after the Second World War

Much of this landscape was to change profoundly in the period that followed the Second World War. In Britain in the 1960s, the lives and culture of the working class emerged unapologetically in cultural and social research and professional history. E. P. Thompson published The Making of the English Working Class in 1963 and a ‘revised Pelican version was published in the turbulent year of 1968’ (Hartley, 2003: 24). The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was established at the University of Birmingham’s English Department, by Richard Hoggart in 1965 and founded a British discipline (Hartley, 2003: 26).

The influential cultural theorist Raymond Williams worked throughout the post-war period redefining culture and its understanding in Britain. In Australia he was widely taught and read, as were his compatriots, E. P. Thompson and Richard Hoggart. Williams publicised and expounded the concept of culture as a way of life. This ‘now enjoys a more or less canonical status as the founding concept of cultural studies’ (Bennett, 1998: 10). Williams Culture and Society, 1780 –1959 was first published in 1958 and, as a Penguin book, in 1961. This famous text charted the changes in the meaning of the key word ‘culture’ for the period reviewed in the book. In the text, Williams gives his much-quoted account and definitions:

The word … ‘culture’ … changes, in the … critical period. Before this period, it had meant, primarily, the ‘tending of natural growth’, and then, by analogy, a process of human training. But this latter use, which had usually been a culture of

83 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

something, was changed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to culture as such, a thing in itself. It came to mean, first, ‘a general state or habit of the mind’, having close relations with the idea of human perfection. Second, it came to mean ‘the general state of intellectual development, in a society as a whole’. Third, it came to mean ‘the general body of the arts’. Fourth, later in the century, it came to mean ‘a whole way of life, material, intellectual, and spiritual’. It came also, as we know, to be a word which often provoked either hostility or embarrassment’ (Williams, 1966: 16).

Williams was the most prominent advocate of his time of culture as a whole way of life and his ideas have continued to be influential in Britain and Australia since that time. For example, the postcolonial theorist Edward Said drew on Williams’ ideas about culture in illuminating repression under colonialism and its ideological veiling in metropolitan discourses such as fiction and history.

It should be noted that that the concept of culture as ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group’ was ‘decisively introduced into English’ by E. P. Tylor in his book Primitive People of 1871, as Williams himself acknowledged in Keywords (Bennett, 1998). As Tylor wrote:

Culture or Civilisation, taken in its widest or ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. (Bennett, 1998: 93).

Williams’ mobilisation of an aspect of Tylor’s account of culture more than half a century after its original expression is said to have sounded the death knell for ‘the Arnoldian or selective definition of culture in according an equal value and significance to the cultural beliefs and practices which make up the everyday life of all social groups and classes’ (Bennett, 1998: 95). Tylor’s ethnographic or anthropological view is discussed throughout his work in Eurocentric terms and any attempt at that the statement lends itself to, is denied. For Tylor, humanity could be classified as it corresponded ‘more closely to savage or cultured life’ (Bennett, 1998: 93).

84 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Williams’ ‘Tylorian’ view of culture has had widespread influence. At the global level it is reflected in current UNESCO ideology and policy, particularly as it has evolved since the 1970s. In Australia it is reflected in the Commonwealth’s first National Cultural Policy, Creative Nation (1995) and in its cultural mapping guide - Mapping Culture – A Guide to Cultural and Economic Development in Communities (Clark, Sutherland and Young, 1995). Nevertheless, the original Tylorian anthropological approach to culture had no discernible influence on planning in Britain or Australia until its mediation through Williams and the theorists influenced by Williams. The anthropological concept of culture did however assist in laying the groundwork for the conceptual democratisation of culture after the Second World War, just as the wars years in Britain and Australia successfully broke down selective ideas of culture - although within a Eurocentric frame - and laid the practical foundation for further social democratisation.

The 1970s Watershed in Culture

By the 1970s popular culture and broader concepts of anthropological culture and popular culture derived from the so-called ‘Birmingham School’ and Williams’ work were responsible for toppling the old ‘high’ culture from its pedestal. The universal standards of modernism in planning and architecture were also challenged by popular culture and more communitarian values as they emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. These ideas had an important impact on planning in terms of the development of community development philosophies and social planning practices. Jane Jacob’s work (2000) on the living culture of the street and neighbourhood epitomises this view.

The social revolution of the 1970s expressed and was itself an expression of more evolved ideas about culture that came to be described as culturalism. The 1970s were perhaps a ‘bridge’ period in which competing ideas about culture were current and emergent and broader forms or categories of culture were integrated into planning in an uneven fashion. At the same time, by the late 1970s the formerly dominant rationalist and positivist model

85 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

of planning was being questioned and attacked from within planning itself (Searle and Cardew, 2000).

In Australia, the claims of culture were asserted in two main ways. Firstly, they were expressed through the development of heritage conservation and secondly, in a segmented or ‘niche’ fashion, through new ideas about the value of community culture. Heritage conservation was facilitated by international agreements that permitted the extension of global governance and I will deal with this story on its own terms shortly.

The new ideas concerning the importance of community culture began to emerge as a planning philosophy and practice styled as ‘community cultural development’ (CCD) that was related to the development of communities through arts practices. Community arts are undertaken in a participatory fashion that seek to involve all groups in the community, indigenous, majority and migrant groups, women and men and children and the elderly. Suburban centres, parks and shopping malls have been the venues for participatory public art works, installations, and exhibitions relating to community diversity. This approach was viewed as an optimistic practice that assisted in addressing community alienation, particularly as engendered by the remote technicalities of modernist planning practices. The Australian Government body responsible for funding and program development for CCD was the Australia Council. Indeed CCD remains a core responsibility and function of the agency to this day which frequently works through other tiers of government, including the community and social planning divisions of local government. The arts culture it sponsors echoes in a popular fashion Arnold’s views of personal development. However, democratic and popular in its cultural concept, CCD also tends to operate in isolation from other forms of planning and to perpetuate the perception of culture as an optional extra little related to the opportunities of a postmodern age.

86 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Culture and International Governance

Woven into the preceding history of the understanding of culture in the period since the Second World War are the important layers of UNESCO philosophy and documents on culture, its forms, social priorities and uses. The United Nations founding Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) occupies a key, catalytic role here. This Declaration identified cultural rights as defining rights of humanity and UN documents and those of its agencies have consistently promulgated the importance of culture and cultural rights since then. These concepts are crystallised in a framework of conventions and recommendations that continue to evolve. [Conventions of the United Nations require ratification by member states and must be adopted by a two third majority of the General Conference, while recommendations are adopted by a simple majority of the Conference (Young, 1988: 28)].

A former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam has been a tireless advocate for the value of international activity in relation to culture and human rights and its potential for impact at the local and national levels. This is perhaps one of the great sleepers in the story of culture, because the effects have been felt in a subtle fashion and in terms of a cumulative intellectual advocacy and development over the entire period. Throughout the period, UNESCO documents promote culture and human rights in an impressive fashion. For example, despite its unwieldy and patronising title, the Recommendation on Participation by the People at Large in Cultural Life and their Contribution to it, of 1976 reveals an integrated philosophy. The Recommendation stresses:

the need to promote cultural rights as human rights on the grounds that, if cultural rights are recognised as human rights, a government is duty bound to establish the conditions required for the exercise of these rights and to frame cultural policies for that purpose (Young, 1988: 30).

The Recommendation also recognises that free participation in cultural life is related to and promoted by a number of other policies such as development policy, social and communication policy and environmental policy. An environmental policy is defined as

87 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

‘…one designed, through the planned use of space and the protection of nature, to create a background to living conducive to the full development of individuals and societies (Young, 1988: 30). An earlier Recommendation concerning the Protection at National Level of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972 spells out the homogenous nature of cultural and natural heritage; the fact that it consists of works of great intrinsic value as well as modest items; its role not to act as a check on national development, but as a determining factor in such development; and its essential place in regional development and in community life.

In 1972 UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage known familiarly as the ‘World Heritage Convention’, and in 1978 inscribed the Galapagos Islands as the first property on the World Heritage List. (There are now over seven hundred World Heritage sites in some one hundred and twenty countries.) In this way heritage became in the late twentieth century perhaps the leading element or form of culture pursued at the international level, in terms of governance, policy and procedural development.

However, the broad principles of culture and the perspective of developmental improvement initiated in the period after the Second World War are now reflected in a broad spectrum of international agreements relating to human rights, health, heritage, ecology, the law and justice. This perspective is tempered by more than half a century of practical experience with cultural diversity around the globe at the project and developmental levels as well as experience in the crafting of international charters and declarations. UNESCO ideology having come to crystallise the belief now promotes it as a standard - culture is foundational in the process of all development and planning for development, whether the planning is spatial or strategic. Owing to its history and broad cultural and planning remit UNESCO, its agencies and organisational advisers tend to recognise the status of all categories or elements of culture and their formative and interactive role. For example, the role diverse cultural values play in shaping cultures and

88 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

ecologies historically and today is well recognised as is the importance of cultural heritage and the history of cultures, including the civilisations of past ages.

The early normative struggles based in rhetoric laid the foundations for these later developments. The concept of sustainability was integrated into planning at the UNCED ‘Earth Summit’ of 1992. In addition, its Agenda 21 nominated local cultural awareness as the foundation for the practical implementation of sustainability strategies for cultures and their environments. It recommended ways to strengthen the part played by major groups ‘women, trade unions, farmers, children and young people, indigenous peoples, the scientific community, local authorities, business, industry and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – in achieving sustainable development’ (UNCED, 1992).

In the 1990s a number of the strands of earlier thinking coalesce in the 1995 findings of the WCC and its report, Our Creative Diversity (WCC, 1995). The independent WCC was established in 1992 by the United Nations. In the Commission’s1995 report its President Javier Perez de Cuellar argued:

Just as the Bruntland Commission had so successfully served notice to the international community that a marriage of economy and ecology was overdue and had set in motion a new world agenda for that purpose, so, it was felt, the relationship between culture and development should be clarified and deepened, in practical and constructive ways (WCC, 1995: 8).

This document represents the full flowering of culturalism at the level of international governance and global ethics. It states the case for considering cultural policy in the broadest of terms and for grounding development policy in culture. It argues that:

Any policy for development must be profoundly sensitive to and inspired by culture itself… Defining and applying such a policy means finding factors of cohesion that hold multi-ethnic societies together, by making better use of the realities and opportunities of pluralism. It implies a thoroughgoing diversification of the notion of cultural heritage in social change. With regard to the natural environment it means building better understanding of the profoundly cultural dimensions of environmental management, creating institutions that give effect to that

89 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

understanding. Finally … it requires new research which pays attention to the hitherto neglected integration of culture, development, and forms of political organization (Gordon and Mundy, 2001: 5).

The Commission sets as objectives for countries the application of the key principles that follow:

• Make cultural policy one of the key components of development strategy • Promote creativity and participation in cultural life • Reinforce heritage safeguard policy and practice and promote cultural industries • Promote cultural and linguistic diversity in and for the information society • Make more human and financial resources available for cultural development (WCC, 1995).

The Commission and the Conference arguing that these general principles and methodological guidelines should be the basis for formulating and implementing cultural policy with UNESCO acting as a global ‘clearing-house’ in identifying and sharing good practice and innovative thinking in cultural policy-making. The importance of this ideology is that it applies equally to strategic and spatial planning objectives. In Part Two a model for integrating culture in planning is outlined that seeks to develop the WCC’s position further and present useful concepts, techniques and a methodology to implement the approach in a practical fashion in planning.

Cultural and Heritage Discourse in Planning in late Twentieth-Century Australia

Most of the discourse and planning activity in relation to culture during the last thirty years has been dominated by the theme of cultural heritage. Other forms of culture have played a secondary role but heritage has taken the limelight in planning circles. The connection heritage has with land, history and capital and its visibility and importance to tourism are probably the reasons for this. In more recent times other forms of culture have emerged from the planning shadows. Continuing social maturation is likely to encourage the

90 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

perception of heritage as part of the ensemble of culture, a trend facilitated by the growth of the importance of the intangible and associational values of place. The indissoluble link between these two elements has emerged as a paramount consideration in contemporary planning.

The Australian story starts with the agitation that led to the first Commonwealth inquiry into heritage. The federal Committee of Inquiry into the National Estate (1974), known as the ‘Hope Inquiry’, identified the importance of heritage and recommended national heritage measures and legislation that led to the passage of the Australian Heritage Commission Act 1975.

In 1974 the Commonwealth ratified the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) known familiarly as the ‘World Heritage Convention’.

In 1983 the Commonwealth Parliament passed the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act which enabled it to prevent the Tasmanian Government constructing a dam in a World Heritage area in the south-west of the State. Since that time a number of world heritage properties in Australia have developed management policies based on advanced cultural understanding, as in the bi-cultural management of the Uluru-Katajuga World Heritage Site, shared between the Aboriginal custodians and professional conservation specialists.

In NSW the NSW Heritage Act (1977) and the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, (1979) ‘the EPA Act’, were prescribed, representing an innovative framework for the development of new planning activities and practices. The concepts of heritage and of environmental planning were both given broad definitions by the legislators. Environmental heritage was defined in the Heritage Act 1977 as ‘those buildings, works, relics or places of historic, scientific, cultural, social, archaeological, architectural, natural or aesthetic significance for the state (of NSW)’ (Young, 1985: 8).

91 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This definition offered broad scope for the accommodation of culture as ways of life, in society and in history, and for the potential integration in its many forms. The NSW Heritage Council began to recommend the making of conservation orders to the Minister for Planning, who ultimately shared responsibility for both pieces of legislation. The Council represented professional historical, architectural, and planning bodies and development interests. The historical sector was represented by the Royal Australian Historical Society (RAHS) and the National Trust of Australia (NSW); architecture by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) and the NSW Government Architect The views of the RAHS were in the main positivist and at times colonialist in its orientation to history and culture, with little sympathy for historical recency, ordinary ways of life or cultural diversity. The views of the RAIA were conservative and formalist for the most part.

In NSW, with the Heritage Act and the EPA Act in place from the late 1970s, planning broadened out into a consideration of the discursive realities that the new legislation permitted. For example, the 1980s saw the introduction in NSW of a system of heritage studies under a Direction of the EPA Act. Heritage studies were based on balanced multi- disciplinary documentary and environmental research into heritage items and their contexts. The goal was to reduce a bias in heritage assessment that split tangible culture from its context of intangible cultural qualities. Material and architectural qualities dominated at the expense of history and community values. A methodology for heritage studies was developed and distilled into a staged flow chart. The methodology was designed ‘…to implement a holistic environmental philosophy for the human-adapted environment … that recognises the need to conserve representative evidence of the total historical development pattern of an area’ (Young, 1985: 27). Radical for the time, the philosophy behind the framework in fact saw few innovations in terms of multicultural and indigenous history and values, although heritage proposals seeking to test these parameters were made to the Government’s advisory council by this author. At the level of policy discussion the idea of ‘class shares’ (Young, 1984) in the making of conservation orders and social equity in the distribution of the state’s resources in activities to conserve history and heritage assets

92 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

(Young, 1988) were proposed. To extend recognition to a diversity of ways of life in the community a heritage proposal for the protection of an item of Chinese heritage was prepared by the writer and was successful. Another and more challenging proposal of his for the conservation of terrace housing occupied by the Aboriginal community in inner Sydney in Redfern on the grounds of cultural association with the place was rejected as an attempt to expand conservation practice into the realm of ‘social conservation’.

Official cultural heritage conservation was intertwined with the work of organisations such as the National Trust of Australia and Australia ICOMOS. Australia ICOMOS is the Australian national body of the International Council on Monuments and Sites that advises UNESCO on heritage policy. This organization developed and adopted in 1979 an important and influential conservation code The Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance that drew on the 1964 Charter of Venice. The Australian Charter was a major influence in establishing a more consistent process for preparing conservation plans, based on a sequence of assessing cultural significance, developing a conservation policy and strategy and implementing the strategy. However, it was not until the 1990s that community values and cultural diversity were accorded a fuller place in heritage policy. Intangible culture came into the fore integrated with tangible heritage and positivist approaches to research and knowledge were challenged by considerations of heritage as a practice related to the formation of identities and as social action.

Legislative and policy systems in Australia were traditionally built around criteria for the establishment of significance, usually based on four criteria, those of aesthetic, historical, scientific and social significance. The development of indigenous cultural rights in Australia and the effects of the ‘Mabo’ decision of 1992 (the Mabo decision of the High Court of Australia recognised native title to land and a process to enforce this), quickened considerations of social value. The decision had the effect of deepening white perceptions of the holistic nature of culture, including community attachments to place, the importance

93 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

of memory and stories and the indissoluble links between Aboriginal and white culture, as manifest for example in the pastoral industry.

Formal cultural policy and planning activity related to culture in Australia was not confined to material culture. At the Commonwealth level in the context of culture in the 1990s a number of key Commonwealth policy documents were released and a model for cultural mapping that has continued to grow in influence nationally and internationally. In 1992 the Commonwealth Department of Arts, Sport, Environment, Tourism and Territories (DASETT) issued a discussion paper The Role of the Commonwealth in Australia’s Cultural Development, which linked culture as an intellectual and artistic activity with culture as a whole way of life, in the spirit of Williams:

The Government encourages and supports culture in its more specific sense (the practice and appreciation of music, the visual arts, literature, theatre, cinema, the preservation of our history and heritage) because of its fundamental importance to culture in a broader sense – that is, because of its importance to our whole way of life (Bennett, 1998: 89).

In defining culture as a whole way of life, the everyday lives of a multicultural society are laid open to planning for cultural development and for inclusion in other cultural and economic development processes and opportunities.

The year 1994 was something of a high watermark for Commonwealth cultural initiatives. It saw the launch of Australia’s first National Cultural Policy Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy (Department of Communications and Arts, DOCA, 1994) and the initiation of a landmark cultural mapping project. Creative Nation accepted the anthropological view of culture as a standard and referred to Australian culture as ‘the work of Australians themselves through what they do in their everyday lives, as communities and as individuals (whether it be as writers, workers in industry, farmers, parents or citizens)’ (DOCA, 1994: 9).

94 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The cultural mapping consultancy resulted in a published guide Mapping Culture – A Guide to Cultural and Economic Development in Communities (Clark, I., Sutherland, J. and Young, G., 1995). The Guide put into operation the concept of culture as ways-of life and defined itself as a planning tool for cultural and economic development. It is an ethical methodology that mobilises an integrated concept of culture for a range of planning purposes. These planning purposes include community development, creativity, tourism, environmental planning, design and rehabilitation, education and entertainment, and the needs of information networks and the ‘telecommunity’.

Two years earlier the Australian Heritage Commission had released a key policy paper on social value in conservation entitled What is Social Value? (Johnston, 1992). The paper was the first detailed discussion of the concept of social significance in conservation. Social value was discussed as an attachment to place and the paper elaborated a methodology for identifying and using community social values in heritage protection.

In NSW during this period there was a significant development in the integration of holistic culture in planning. A sophisticated model for the integration of holistic culture in planning was developed in 1991 by the NSW Tourism Commission and released as the first NSW Cultural Tourism Strategy (Young, 1991a). Later, the model was recommended for use in all Australian states in a national report on cultural tourism prepared by consultants to the Commonwealth (Brokensha and Guldberg, 1992). The key elements of this Strategy have maintained their relevance for the greater integration of culture in planning at the strategic level and in terms of administrative innovations. The Strategy was based on an integrated concept of culture, including culture as ‘ways-of-life’, heritage and the arts. Indigenous and non-indigenous cultural maps were proposed for all local government areas in NSW, as a means to determine this. Indigenous maps were to be prepared in conjunction with Aboriginal communities as the custodians of indigenous culture and to ensure cultural authenticity and indigenous control over representations of culture. Aboriginal control was also intended to ensure the return of income to Aboriginal communities, in an economic sector noted for its vertical integration. Non-indigenous maps were to be based on

95 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

multiculturalism. Cultural diversity in lifestyles was singled out as key aspects of the experience of NSW culture. To encourage a whole of government approach, interconnectedness between government and the private sector, and the holistic consideration and integration of culture, the Strategy was implemented by an Inter- Departmental Committee (IDC) on Cultural Tourism and a Cultural Tourism Working Party. The IDC included representatives from the NSW Tourism Commission as Chair, the NSW Department of Planning, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the NSW Ministry for the Arts as well as peak private sector tourism bodies. These departments were responsible for supporting as well as and funding various forms of culture throughout NSW, although they did so with little coordination and no concept of a shared resource, either at the conceptual or practical level. Their responsibilities encompassed tourism product development, tourism infrastructure, tourism advertising and marketing, environment planning and development, the conservation of cultural heritage and protected natural areas, cultural interpretation and marketing, and arts development including the NSW funding program the development of the arts, museums, libraries and galleries. Although the Strategy was abandoned by a subsequent tourism Minister, the ideas behind it were not. Lying fallow, the planning concept later influenced the Commonwealth in its decision to develop an ethical model for cultural mapping to promote community and commercial development.

Australian developments broadly reflected overseas trends, particularly in respect of the USA although there was not a significant level of official exchange on cultural policy. Social value, however, in terms of associations with place in conservation was habitually seen in broad and strongly multicultural terms by the US National Parks and Wildlife Service and by organizations such as the Los Angelina Power of Place, founded by Dolores Hayden. In her book of the same name Dolores Hayden describes how communities and professionals can nurture public memory by tapping the power of historic urban landscape in planning. This opening up of the cultural possibilities to connect people’s lives and livelihoods to the urban landscape through using social and environmental history in

96 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

planning is not seriously explored in Australia, although the introduction of interpretation plans by the City of Sydney at a professional level is a new development.

Culture in Contemporary Planning

Sketching the contemporary picture and emergent trends in the integration of culture in planning is a complex undertaking. To focus such an account I introduce three key themes in culture and planning that will serve to organise the rich and diverse picture that has developed. The three themes encompass the postmodern world and its search for social communication, postcolonial and minority cultures and the qualities and issues of the new post-industrial age. Although the picture that emerges is an uneven one in terms of innovation and is fragmented geographically and politically within Australia and internationally, yet its general outlines are clear. Similarly, the work of planning, geographical and cultural theoreticians coming from different contexts and perspectives, also exhibits commonalities in relation to the trends in innovation.

I should say at the outset that the three themes I suggest as capable of organising the complex global picture of innovation do not so much represent the elimination of earlier and residual cultural views, or planning or industrial practices but rather are a mix of all stages in an overall postmodern context. It is this postmodern blending of disparate realities, phases and stages that creates the need for different perspectives and practices and innovation that is based on multiple forms of culture and knowledge. As reminded by Williams earlier ‘the composition of any culture is always marked by a tension between the different temporalities of its constituent elements’ (Bennett, 1998: 98) and in a global postmodern context this pattern is intensified.

It remains true to say, however, that despite overlaps each theme has a particular planning reality that can be separated out quite clearly. For example, postmodern theory has provided new categories and themes in the realm of strategic planning for marketing, tourism and interpretation purposes, and new phenomenological and hermeneutic tools

97 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

sensitive enough to capture important values and considerations in the area of minority migrant culture, gay and lesbian culture and the home. Again, planning for indigenous culture in the postcolonial contexts of Australia and New Zealand has achieved some notable innovations in relation to corporate, strategic and heritage planning. Post-industrial planning also has many commonalities as for example in the planning and marketing of cityports and their waterfronts globally. In the case of the cityport planners have sometimes sought to integrate regional and local culture in the form of history, heritage, traditions and ways of life in regional renewal strategies that are more sustainable. Marketers have also sought to differentiate cities, including cityports, from other urban regions in order to attract investment, corporate headquarters and visitors. In these cases ‘thin’ and superficial representations about culture often dominate.

Postmodern Culture

Postmodern social and cultural theory emphasises the rise and importance of values, difference and diversity in cultures. At the same time, globalised communications ‘within which spin doctors manipulate the conceptualisation of issues and images of people’ (Armstrong, 2003: 1) grow in strength and influence as does the ‘deterritorialisation of culture’ (Papastergiadis, 2000: 100). In an era such as this, planning has a critical role in recognising and responding to the diversity of all ways of life as they evolve and are made manifest. Under the spin-doctor’s radar screen, diversities splinter across class, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. At the same time the elements and aspects of each alignment are hybridising as a result of their mutual impacts. New connections are also made between communities and their histories and cultural knowledge of every kind is spliced together as the basis for new arts and cultural practices. This new diversity becomes more and more visible with the growth of networked communication and information technologies.

The intellectual’s role as a cultural interpreter emerges in this context as primary. Under modernism with its universal cultural values interpretation was less viable. In a un-

98 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

relativised world of absolutes little interpretation is appropriate or seemingly needed. This situation has been reversed under postmodernity. A world of cultural differences and a plurality of values require continual interpretation and re-interpretation. Within this the relations between migrant communities, indigenous minorities and the dominant cultures are in a state of permanent negotiation. Minority communities from former colonies in the countries of their colonisers and the waves of migration that followed the displacement of the Second World War, and gay and lesbian communities have created new spaces and cultures on the postmodern and postcolonial stage. Indigenous, migrant, and gay and lesbian communities present new challenges for the development of communicative planning practices and in securing human and cultural rights.

The research and recording of culture by groups and individuals has become a means to give voice to aspects of culture and to community groups that would otherwise remain outside the picture. Cultural mapping as developed in the Australian Government Guide Mapping Culture – A Guide to Cultural and Economic Development in Communities (1995) is a structured technique positioned to capitalise on the whole culture of a place for a range of contemporary social and economic purposes. Cultural mapping in the model I cite encourages the potential consideration of all aspects of the whole historical, contemporary and environmental culture of an area. In the Guide it is described in the following way:

Cultural mapping involves a community identifying and documenting local cultural resources. Through this research cultural elements are recorded – the tangibles like galleries, craft industries, distinctive landmarks, local events and industries, as well as the intangibles like memories, personal histories, attitudes and values. After researching the elements that make a community unique, cultural mapping involves initiating a range of community activities or projects, to record, conserve and use these elements. …the most fundamental goal of cultural mapping is to help communities recognise, celebrate, and support cultural diversity for economic, social and regional development (Clark, Sutherland and Young, 1995: 1).

Cultural mapping, like the claim for postmodern sociology is in a position to give voice to cultures and communities that otherwise appear to be silent or inaudible. As a result,

99 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

mapping practices are developing at a fast pace globally as their practical relevance to planning is understood as a means to get closer to communities and develop community connections.

The techniques developed by the Power of Place organisation as well as the Australian cultural mapping model are able to draw on the social history of places to enrich their multiple identities. This can be achieved through responsive planning and commemorative practices undertaken with a range of interpretive and artistic techniques. However, exploring the identity of social groups and community places through interpreting and representing their histories is not always a simple process and requires an ethical base if it is to succeed in respecting and accommodating diversity. The work needs to be grounded in the communities themselves with control over its representation and interpretation remaining with the local groups concerned, to avoid the appropriation of culture. The trend to appropriation, for example, sometimes exists in tourism planning when driven by superficial product development and marketing needs. However, cultural diversity, when ethically embraced by planning, is a countervailing force to the omnipresent market pressure to ‘consume’ such diversity to expand the level of culturalised consumption that underwrites the Information Age. Innovative planning based on culture is required to hone the social tools needed to develop, use and exchange culture in a dynamic based on empathy and respect for all. Therefore, at the heart of the new social planning and planning for cultural development lies a need for new culturised planning tools and approaches. Potential options for these are outlined in a culturised model developed in later chapters.

Postcolonial and Minority Culture in Planning

In a postcolonial world overlain by a North-South divide, the movement of people and the growth of migrant communities in large urban centres pose specific challenges for planning to come to terms with diversity and to promote equality and harmony in society. For example, planning in European societies that were once the centres of empire faces the challenge of embracing communities whose origins lie in their former colonies. New world

100 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

settler societies such as Australia are confronted by questions of cultural recognition, reconciliation and cultural and economic equality for Aboriginal people. Developed countries, in particular, have substantial and vocal gay and lesbian communities that have emerged from subcultural status and are now perceived as wielding significant power in the economic marketplace. Unlike other minorities, these communities cross class and economic boundaries and are less constrained by geography, but share a common fate in their haphazard exposure to majority prejudice. Yet again, countries that straddle the global north-south interface and that include the USA and countries to the north of the Mediterranean, face economic and informal migration. Within all of these countries, however, minorities and majorities overlap and intersect. Minorities possess a shared history of difference and a burden of disadvantage that may be addressed in its cultural specificity by planning. At every level planning may be closely involved in strengthening communities and in encouraging broader community recognition and acceptance of diversity, in values and ways of life whether reflected in different socials needs, concepts of heritage and community place or domestic family space.

Planning needs the tools to engage and ‘read’ the community in subtle terms and as a partner. Similarly, the gastronomy (Young, 1991a; Thompson: 2005), the music, the writing, religion and politics of these communities are all cultural references that assist the planner. In Australia indigenous communities have embraced cultural research in many forms that can assist environmental and social planners and have adopted cultural mapping on a widespread basis. Mapping projects include the mapping of attachments to rural land or ‘country’ and urban places, the history of families and sustainable environmental and ecological practices. The last mentioned draw on local ecological knowledge and urban communities have introduced the practice of permaculture. Aboriginal culture is intuitively assumed to be a whole way of life and includes cultural and spiritual values and attachments to land. In traditional tribal circumstances Australian courts recognise the coexistence of traditional Aboriginal law as culturally appropriate and bi-cultural strategic planning is used to integrate different cultural knowledges and techniques in terms and language accessible to both sides.

101 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Post-industrial Issues in Planning with Culture

Culture is now being strongly engaged at the strategic level in regional planning in developed countries, especially in promoting the claims of major cities as centres for investment and visitation. On another level culture is also being promoted by the WCC as an integral part of any development project or program in the developing world. These two approaches have culture in common and are both post-industrial in the sense that culture is being mobilised as the key to social and economic success and to environmental sustainability beyond old-style patterns of unsustainable production and consumption.

In the case of global and sub-global cities there is a growing realisation that culture has the dual power to differentiate areas in the marketing battle between major urban regions for investment and to satisfy the demands of the local community for the maintenance of history, heritage and lifestyles. This trend can be illustrated in relation to cityports as a global urban type that has existed for millennia. In the 1980s the waterfront areas of cityports faced a common decline precipitated by global changes in transport technology, such as the introduction of containerisation. Waterfront areas that had been centres of activity were less used and in some cases abandoned. The substitution of post-industrial forms of production and consumption was the solution to lost industrial activities. A recipe of urban refurbishment, entertainment, and facilities for luxury leisure craft was not sufficient. Cities also needed differentiation if they were to compete for visitation. Culture, came to be mobilised in a number of key global cities to provide this differentiation. Notable examples of such cities can be found in Europe, the USA, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australasia. In Barcelona, a combination of museums devoted to the urban, artistic, design, maritime and political history of the city, refurbished waterfront areas, promenades and attractions built on the city’s cultural strengths and improved its image. The effect was a practical renaissance.

A post-industrial world of this kind thrives on culture as a source of productivity and wealth. The cultural strengths of cities and regions promote urban creativity and make for

102 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

attractive locations for concentrating mobile capital and symbolic workers. Peter Hall describes this process and its results in the following way:

Rich, affluent, cultivated nations and cities sell their virtue, beauty, philosophy, their art and their theatre to the rest lf the world. From a manufacturing economy we pass to an informational economy, and from an informational economy to a cultural economy’ (Hall, 1998: 8).

Postmodern trends in which culture becomes increasingly self-referential are the basis of the cultural economy. At the same time post-industrial needs require culture as a sustainable product based on knowledge. The postcolonial, minority and indigenous presence provides further ingredients and niches for cultural production and consumption, including new cultural fusions and hybridity that again feed into regional differentiation. In this context tourism emerges as an industry with a cultural stake in each of the three themes I outline. Tourism’s ‘product’ is culture and its success is usually based on broad strategic planning. Finally, and especially in the context of the post-industrial, it should be mentioned that ecological sustainability is a key ingredient. Sustainability is increasingly perceived and described in cultural terms that I endorse. In other chapters I explore the opportunities for a stronger cultural frame for sustainability, trapped as it sometimes is in a ‘parallel universe’. For the moment I quote the WCC’s philosophy of sustainability from Creative Diversity: ‘… culture is a central variable in explaining different patterns of change and an essential determinant, if not the essence itself, of sustainable development, since attitudes and lifestyles govern the way we manage all our non-renewable resources.’ (WCC, 1996: 10).

Conclusion

The history of cultural concepts and planning is an interesting one and gives pause for reflection. In the broad pattern of its history in the modern period in the UK and in Australia planning has tended to reflect a dominant concept of culture, or one in historical decline. Planning has been slow to represent the onset of new cultural ideas in overall terms and further, has tended to exhibit a form of conceptual schizophrenia. A dominant or

103 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

declining idea of culture has been uppermost in planning’s ‘mainstream’ land-based activities - the statutory and spatial sectors with a close nexus to power and capital. More up to date ideas about culture have been influential on planning’s perceived margins of social and ‘cultural’ planning and suchlike. Commodified ideas of culture have been more readily accommodated in strategic planning activities especially in relation to tourism and marketing.

Nevertheless, Raymond Williams’ introduction of an anthropological concept of culture - democratised for the period after the Second World War - represented a sea change. This was a normative concept of culture that enabled the culture and values that inhered in working class lives and residual centres to be considered valuable. This concept of a way of life was pluralised and extended into minorities represented by sub-cultures and ethnic, migrant and gay and lesbian communities. Yet, Williams’ lessons do not stop here. As a thinker Williams has been described by his exponents as ‘exemplary’, for his refusal to succumb to the dangers posed by specialisation in knowledge. With a cast of mind that Stuart Hall argues was ‘intrinsically connective’, Williams himself argued that ‘we must keep trying to grasp the process as a whole’ (Hall in Bennett, 1998: 54). In writing against the effects of fragmentation and lost specialisations in knowledge and life, Williams’ goal was ‘to return everyone - critic, politician, student, general reader – to the only subject which really mattered: the “central processes of our common life” ’ (Hall in Bennett, 1998: 54).

These central processes of our common life, considered as ways-of-life, constitute a practical tool for the purpose of their own discovery. Along with the principle of connectivity they have immense importance for the re-invigoration of planning. They have been influential in global terms. For example, in South Africa the African Nation Congress (ANC) in 1996 developed a draft policy to recognise previously disregarded expressions in the diversity of everyday lives and cultural practices. The ANC draft cultural policy states:

104 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Arts and cultural policy deals with custom and tradition, belief, religion, language, identity, popular history, crafts, as well as all the art forms including music, theatre, dance, creative writing, the fine arts, the plastic arts, photography, film, and, in general is the sum of the results of human endeavour. (Bennett, 1998: 90).

At the global level, while the practical ambitions of the United Nations in creating international security after the Second World War foundered on the rocks of the Cold War, the organization was able to resource intellectual, conceptual and ethical work. In the field of culture, despite the cynicism of many commentators, work in conceptualising and creating standards for many aspects of culture has moved to the point where it now can be used to assist in defining the opportunities for planning, as I hope to have illustrated. The gap that lies in the area of creating supporting and enabling methodologies to realise the conceptual vision and the opportunities framework, however remains. This is the task I take up in Part Two, in presenting cultural principles, cultural techniques and a culturised methodology for planning. Yet, the deeper implications of culturalism for planning continue to be realised as the de-cultured approach of planning modernism is seen to have failed the test of relevance in the face of the ongoing expansion of the cultural economy (Scott, 2000) and the accelerating diversity of postmodern communities. Once again, as in the 1970s, we perhaps stand on the cusp of significant changes that may lead to a broader and more thoroughgoing culturisation of planning as well as other key social technologies. In a deeper sense this may represent Williams vision essayed in Culture and Society as it draws closer through:

the growing assertion of a whole way of life, not only as a scale of integrity, but as a mode of interpreting all our common experience, and, in this new interpretation, changing it (Williams, 1966: 18).

Married to this in an Age of Interpretation, recognising, assessing and articulating culture through a process of collaborative community reflection is emerging with the potential to add a level of value to planning that is not available elsewhere.

105

PART TWO

A CULTURISED MODEL

FOR

PLANNING

THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

PREAMBLE

In this part I develop and outline a Culturised Model for planning designed to integrate culture into planning in a practical and achievable fashion. The Model draws on the contents of Part One and is outlined in three chapters. The first of these chapters deals with the overall development of the Model and presents five principles for culture. The second chapter develops and outlines three key literacies for planners tagged as the planner’s ‘literacy trinity’. The third consists of a practical methodology for use in culturised planning and includes figures illustrating the components of ‘integrated culture’ and ‘integrated research’.

107 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER FIVE

DEVELOPING THE CULTURISED MODEL

In this Chapter I describe the development of the Model and its positioning and principles for culture in some detail. The positioning and principles for culture are synthesised from cumulative contributions in the thesis to date and from new sources. These sources encompass prescriptive writing on planning reform, urbanism and creativity, international governance and development policy, and an outline of a range of advanced global planning practices, including contemporary approaches to strategic planning.

The Culturised Model

Firstly, I advise that the term Model is used in the specific sense of something to be copied or itself modelled, as a template or format that may be applied to improve an activity or practice of some kind. It is not used in the sense of a copy of some aspect of reality, represented in another format and/or at another scale.

The overall structure of the Model consists of three interrelated parts, the positioning and principles for culture that are developed in this chapter and a subsequent ‘literacy trinity’ and practical planner’s methodology that are described in chapters six and seven. All elements of the Model are dovetailed and designed to work together. For example, a familiarity with the principles for culture, and the planner’s literacy trinity help ensure that the methodology is used to gain the best results. In this respect the framework is also an educative device and sensitises the user to the complexity of the issues entailed.

I first begin with the principles for culture and a description of their role. The principles are tools that help frame culture for planning and set the stage for its use in the methodology. They are introduced at a later stage in this account. This follows a review of cultural and planning theory, prescriptive writing related to planning, policies from international

108 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

governance, and advanced planning and strategic planning practices. All of the sources are then available in a logical order prior to the outline of the principles for culture.

Integrating Theory

Cultural theory and planning theory were each discussed in the Introduction and Part One, and contribute to the development of the model. The term cultural theory is used in a formal and academic sense to refer to the writings of individuals as varied as Raymond Williams and Henri Lefebvre. It is also used in a less restricted sense to describe cultural philosophy and policies of the kind generated by UNESCO and related advisers such as the WCC. The intellectual and ethical perspective of both kinds of theory on culture and planning, whether abstract or policy-based, are relevant to culturising planning and are accommodated here.

In the Introduction and Part One the work of Raymond Williams was introduced, including his concept of connectivity. Williams’ concept of ‘connectivity’ connects life. It connects culture and its environments and histories. In addition, Williams’s typology of ‘dominant’, ‘emergent’ and ‘residual’ culture, and his normative concepts of ‘ways-of-life’, and ‘structures of feeling’ are aspects, and indeed ‘faces’, of connectivity and are integral to the argument throughout this thesis. Williams’ umbrella idea of ‘connectivity’ is so important that I utilise it as one of the principles for culture. It is an idea of enormous importance for both culture and planning.

The ontological basis for this view of culture is demonstrated in the categories of culture and in Figures I and 2 of the Introduction. The typological categories of culture developed in this model parallel and reflect the ontology of culture developed by Henri Lefebvre in his trialectics of culture. The model therefore integrates Lefebvre’s formal ontology of culture with Williams’s anthropological approach to a way-of-life. I now follow these foundational assimilations to the development of the Culturised Model with a description of further inputs to the Model from the world of prescriptive writing.

109 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Contribution of Prescriptive Writings

Outside the deep theory of writers such as Williams and Lefebvre lies a spectrum of utilitarian ideas developed to reform and optimise planning practice. These ideas are to be found in the ‘prescriptive’ writings of a number of planning theorists and in the planning literature on culture, creativity and urbanism. I examine the prescriptive suggestions of five planning writers, all of whom take up the challenge of responding to culture and its implications for planning. Two of the writers, Patsy Healey and Leonie Sandercock, were discussed earlier in terms of their theoretical and academic contributions, but they have also chosen to highlight reforms and opportunities that could be transferred to planning practice. Another pair of writers, Dolores Hayden and Charles Landry, operate on the boundaries of planning theory, but have each contributed to the development of progressive planning practices. Their insights are the result of quite different social and commercial objectives, as I will outline. The fifth writer Jon Hawkes argues that ‘a cultural perspective is the essential basis of all public planning’ (Hawkes, 2004).

I have selected the five writers in question in order to illustrate the fact that planning is able to gather inputs from many different directions, and in fact in the case of the culturisation of planning has an active need to do so. In addition, each writer emphasises different aspects of culture. For example, in the work of Sandercock and Healey the focus is on communities (in Healey’s case cultural communities). In contrast, Hayden directly relates communities to their own histories and to the creation of a body of public history. Landry argues, among other things, the practical and creative implications of history for urbanism. Hawkes stresses the importance of the relationship between values and public planning. This diversity is important because it illustrates the many needs of a compendious discipline such as planning and the variety of sources the Culturised Model draws on for inspiration.

I now examine each writer in turn and explore his or her separate emphasis in terms of the Model.

110 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sandercock and her Postmodern Planning Praxis

Sandercock’s perspective is an evolving one and gathers richness through her work. In Cosmopolis II – Mongrel Cities in the 21 st Century (Sandercock, 2003) she develops new ideas to add to those first outlined in Towards Cosmopolis – Planning for Multicultural Cities (Sandercock, 1998). As the development of these ideas is an evolutionary process, building on – and sometimes over - earlier insights and platforms, I will outline both Sandercock’s earlier and more recent writing.

In Toward Cosmopolis Sandercock asks a question that is widely voiced in planning - ‘How do we move beyond the modernist paradigm?’ (Sandercock, 1998: 44). She suggests that the way out of the ‘modernist inferno’ lies in two directions. First, the recovery of hidden and alternative histories, and second, the revision of planning’s knowledges in terms of feminist, postmodern and postcolonial critiques. Together these strands are the basis for outlining an epistemology of multiplicity for the multicultural cities and regions of our millennium. In Sandercock’s view rewriting and rethinking planning’s theories needs to include ‘… thinking that reaches beyond the social sciences, crossing boundaries and entering the borderlands, thereby challenging the wisdom of planning’s accepted traditions’ (Sandercock, 1998: 30). Her recipe for planning is a mix of postmodern and communicative approaches, including collaborative and pragmatic ones. For example, she calls for planners to also view planning ‘through the lenses of postmodern cultural critiques’ (Sandercock, 1998: 29). The principles for culture to be outlined here are partly designed to fill this gap. They provide the principles, tools, and perspectives lacking in planning theory to promote the integration of postmodern insights, themes and re- positioning.

In Cosmopolis II (Sandercock, 2003) outlines an epistemology of multiplicity for planning practice. Her point is not to discard scientific and technical ways of knowing but to add other ways of knowing that may be important to culturally diverse groups, and to determine in what circumstances these diverse ways of knowing are best used (Sandercock, 2003).

111 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

She lists at least six different ways of knowing:

• Knowing though dialogue; • Knowing from experience; • Learning from local knowledge; • Learning to read symbolic and non-verbal evidence; • Learning though contemplative or appreciative knowledge; and • Learning by doing, or, action-planning (Sandercock, 2003: 76-81).

Perplexingly, Sandercock’s discussion does not explore the one nascent planning technique of cultural mapping with the potential to utilise all of the additional ways of knowing that she identifies. The ethical Australian model of cultural mapping in particular is designed to accommodate Sandercock’s ‘epistemology of multiplicity’. Similarly, where Sandercock cites the postmodern desirability of ‘making the invisible visible’, this is in fact a large part of the rationale and the power of cultural mapping. The ‘many ways of knowing’ and the alternative and hidden histories and knowledge that Sandercock describes have already broken through in a random and piecemeal fashion to enrich planning in some areas. Sandercock’s own outline of insurgent planning practices suggests this and encompasses both examples of communicative planning and a more postmodern approach. These range from Habermasian communicative action in Frankfurt, Germany, based on community hearings involving migrant groups, to actions inspired by feminism, postcolonial politics, liberation theology and the rainbow coalition. Optimistic examples though they are, they suggest that a culturised approach has not been developed or adopted in any systematic sense. What Sandercock does proposes in Cosmopolis II is a ‘Radical Postmodern Planning Practice’, to replace ‘… the now-defunct modernist planning paradigm’ (Sandercock, 2003: 34).

112 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The distillation of this ‘Practice’ is as follows:

1. A greater and more explicit reliance on practical wisdom.

2. Planning that is less document-oriented and more people-centred: deliberative as well as analytical.

3. Different kinds of appropriate knowledge exist in planning. Planners have to learn to access these other ways of knowing. Local communities have knowledges manifested through speech, songs, stories, and various visual forms (from cartoons to , from bark paintings to videos).

4. Community based planning geared to community empowerment is an essential complement and control over the hubris of top-down processes. The modernist reliance on state-directed futures is not misguided – but it is not the whole story.

5. Need to acknowledge that there are multiple publics and that planning requires in this new multicultural arena new kinds of multicultural literacy. Need to deconstruct the ‘public interest’ and ‘community’, recognising that each tends to exclude difference.

6. Planning with multiple publics requires a new kind of democratic politics, more participatory, more deliberative, and also more agonistic. Planners and planning activity, are embedded in this politics and operate in conjunction with citizens, politicians, and social movements, rather than standing apart from them. (Sandercock, 2003: 34-35).

These new suggestions for practice, however, may be heightened by their integration in graspable principles for planning implementation. Aspects of this amalgam of needs and opportunities are included in the framework of principles for culture and in the planner’s literacies outlined in the next chapter. More importantly, the methodology in Chapter

113 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Seven is a practical tool that may elicit the qualities of postmodern planning practice, through bringing to bear ‘a structure of awareness’ and a process for cultural integration.

In Cosmopolis II Sandercock also suggests five qualities of a new planning imagination for the 21 st century. These she describes as political, therapeutic, audacious, creative and critical, and they are accompanied by the desirability of a new language for planning based on memory, desire, spirit and ‘city songlines’ (Sandercock, 2003: 209). In following these qualities Sandercock claims ‘Planners could be midwives at the birth of cosmopolis’ (Sandercock, 2003: 212). Her vision of planning in these terms is neo-heroic in its aspirations. Further, the five qualities she enumerates are extremely problematic to ground for the planning practitioner. This reminds us that Sandercock’s major engagement with planning has been in the areas of cultural and planning theory, and in planning education, rather than in a professional, day-to-day grappling with planning practice.

Healey and the Normative Viewpoint

In her book Collaborative Planning - Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies (1997), Healey summarises a ‘normative viewpoint’ for spatial planning theory and practices. She bases this on three elements: adopting a relational viewpoint; developing links appropriate to the particular history and current circumstances of an area; and reaching out to all those with a stake in their locality. In her opinion each of the three criteria are important to planning, but that the third is indispensable if spatial planning efforts are to deal with local environmental conflicts in sustainable ways (Healey, 1997: 71). Each of the three factors is a distinctive aspect of culture and each is amenable to the work of an explicit and systematic culturisation designed to address culture in relation to what are in fact normative categories. According to Healey’s institutionalist analysis ‘We are constituted through our cultures’ (Healey, 1997: 64) and culture is as much embedded in consciousness as it is in organisations or material culture. Healey describes the path through the dilemmas of cultural difference as:

firstly to recognise the potential dimensions of differences (‘where people are coming from’), and secondly, actively to make new cultural conceptions, to build

114 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

shared systems of meaning and ways of acting, to create an additional ‘layer’ of cultural formation. Local environmental planning thus becomes a project in the formation and transmission of cultural layers (Healey, 1997: 64).

This viewpoint is highly normative and is ultimately the basis for a broader and more interesting claim in relation to spatial planning. Healey argues that ‘the field of spatial planning has the potential, because of the complexity of the issues involved and the range of potential people with a stake in them, to make a general contribution to the development of pluralist democratic practices for governance in our unequal, culturally diverse and conflict-ridden societies’ (Healey, 1997: 71.)

The realisation of the potential of spatial planning suggested in this optimistic sketch, is strongly allied with the culturisation of planning I propose, and is reflected in the constitution of the principles for culture.

Dolores Hayden and Public Memory

In her book The Power of Place (1995) and in the activist community organisation of the same name (which she founded), Hayden explores the importance of the social history embedded in urban landscapes. Hayden recognises that the social history of landscapes ‘…needs to be grounded in both the aesthetics of experiencing places with all five senses and the politics of experiencing places as contested territory’ (Hayden, 1995: 43). Communities and professionals are encouraged to nurture public memory by tapping the power of historic urban landscape, because in Hayden’s words: ‘Understanding the history of urban cultural landscapes offers citizens and public officials some basis for making political and spatial choices about the future. It also offers a context for greater social responsibility to practitioners in the design fields’ (Hayden, 1995: 43). Hayden underlines the value of these opportunities by quoting David Harvey who argues that ‘the elaboration of place-bound identities has become more rather than less important in a world of diminishing spatial barriers to exchange, movement and communication’ (Harvey in Hayden, 1995: 43). Nevertheless, Hayden recognises that much of urban hybridity exists as ‘fragile traces’ that may be too vulnerable to survive economically and physically (Hayden,

115 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

1995: 100). Although Hayden sees Los Angeles as the model for understanding the new urban hybridity, it is a quality of most global cities and increasingly all urban landscapes. The insights of the approach developed by Dolores Hayden inform the Culturised Model, particularly in its value to the process of engaging an active view of the past, and in broadening planning decision-making across communities.

Landry and Creative Culture

In his writing and consulting Charles Landry has highlighted the need for a creative response to urban problems in communities and professionals. He acknowledges the close relationship between creativity and culture and their drawing together in the postmodern world. In The Creative City, Landry observes that sustainability took 20 years to come onto the agenda and that ‘…for 15 years there has been a concerted effort to highlight the importance of culture to development, but general acceptance remains a long way off’ (Landry, 2000: 271). In response, he asks ‘…how long does it take to get creative ideas accepted and turned into reality in a broad-based way and what are the best mechanisms for speeding up the process?’ (Landry, 2000: 270). The implicit challenge laid down by Landry here is taken up in this thesis. It is accommodated through the proposed culturisation of planning promoted by the Model outlined in this Part. The goal of this project, seen in terms related to Landry’s question, is to act as a mechanism to speed up the process of culturisation so that it may parallel the history of sustainability. Landry argues that sustainability is a powerful concept that has produced a paradigm shift, the effects of which are unleashing innovations and best practices throughout urban systems. Further he claims that ‘it will be difficult to come up with a concept as strong in its overarching impact as sustainability, especially when seen as something that goes well beyond the environmental aspect’ (Landry, 2000: 258). The new economy notion based on information is Landry’s suggestion for the best candidate. This overlooks, however, the looming and inevitable wave of culture that embraces and subsumes the ambitions of the new economy and its informational needs. That is, culture should be seen as both the shaper, and the shape, of the new informational economy and its needs.

116 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Again, Landry’s description of the major areas within which creativity and innovation are required has resonances with the Culturised Model I outline. Landry describes these areas in this way: Strong concepts can help agenda setting, strategy creation and direct the flow of urban development. They can be revolutionary and unleash creativity as their implications cascade down into the texture of our economic and structure. In order to maximise the potential of such conceptual breakthroughs it is usually essential to change the incentives and regulatory regimes, as new concepts, such as changing the idea of waste to a resource, often turn a problem on its head and find solutions for things that previously seemed incompatible (Landry, 2000: 258).

The Culturised Model is intended as a planning tool with the power to ‘unleash’ culture in all of its multi-dimensionality. This has the potential to flow through and connect up planning activities at different spatial scales, at different levels of governance, and in varied institutional settings. This potential parallels Landry’s description of the capacity of strong concepts to ‘cascade down into the texture of our economic and lifestyle structure’ (Landry, 2000: 258).

Hawkes and Cultural Evaluation

Hawkes’ approach is outlined in his book The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability – Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning (2004). He argues that for public planning to be more effective ‘its methodology should include an integrated framework of cultural evaluation along similar lines to those being developed for social, environmental and economic impact assessment’ (2004: vii). According to Hawkes, once culture is accepted as ‘the expression and manifestation of what it means to be human, it becomes obvious why a cultural perspective is the essential basis of all public planning’ (2004: 32). Just as there are social, environmental and economic frameworks to evaluate plans so there should be for culture. Hawkes see the development of a that can be applied to all policy, as a surer way forward than the creation of a cultural policy. All activities of a body such as a local government should be evaluated ‘as to its likely and/or achieved impact on each of the four sustainability domains’ (2004: 32). Further, Hawkes argues that:

117 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

however it’s done, cultural impact evaluation has to be introduced as a mandatory activity throughout the entire public planning process. Without it we will become an endangered species (Hawkes: 33).

The problem with this approach lies not in its emphasis on the mandatory importance of culture for the entire public planning process, but rather in its strategy and location of culture. Firstly, in common with David Yencken, author of the Foreword to Hawkes’ book, I would argue the importance of both cultural policy and an overall cultural framework. Secondly, I would differ with Hawkes as to the positionality of such a framework. Coming at the impact evaluation stage of the planning process is too late an introduction. In contrast, culturisation as I propose it relates to all stages and aspects of planning. It is integral to the very constitution of planning as well as to the evaluation of its impacts. Hawkes is suspicious of cultural policy on the following grounds:

The reality is that all policy is cultural. Just as all policy is social, environmental and economic. The moment one attempts to create discrete ‘Cultural Policy’, one becomes enmeshed in the mire of reductionism. It would appear that once embarking on this path, it is inevitable that one ends up back in arts and heritage territory (2004: 34).

In spite of this Hawkes praises the policy of the WCC on culture as integral to development, a position outlined in Our Creative Diversity as in Agenda 21, and refers to the ‘fantastic conceptual tools’ of the international cultural policy debate (2004: 36). This suggests that what in fact is needed is a Culturised Model for planning. Such a model will build in relevant principles for culture such as for example ‘connectivity’ and promote ethical engagement such as that based on reflexivity. This will promote the return to the fundamental issues of international and national cultural policy based on culture, diversity and human rights, as well as promoting the consideration and integration of these issues in planning activities.

All of the prescriptive writings on culture and planning emphasise two factors. Firstly they emphasise new culture and its diversity and, secondly, they recognise the importance of an alternative approach to culture other than that of the mainstream. However, they have all done this through different means. To summarise the picture:

118 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

• Hawkes acknowledges the ‘fantastic conceptual tools’ of the international cultural debate and proposes cultural evaluation; • Landry focus on creativity and on innovation; • Hayden perceives the power of public memory and emphasises the value of ‘experiencing places with all five senses and as contested territory’; • Healey proposes a relational viewpoint; links to the particular history and current circumstances of an area; and reaching out to all those with a stake in their locality; • Sandercock proposes a postmodern planning praxis.

The Contributions of International Governance, Development Policy and Planning Practice

I now turn to describing the promulgation of leading ideas and best practice in governance and development policy as they relate to culture and seek to integrate it planning. In a global age governance policy and functions are increasing through the activities of the United Nations, its agencies and advisers, and other key internationalist organisations and political groupings. UNESCO and the WCC are each leading examples of this state of affairs. They promote culturalism as a common doctrine of culture. They also argue that culture should underpin all development planning and good governance - whether of states or corporate organizations. These policies are nested in each other, as UNESCO’s objectives are shared (and developed) with its advisory NGOs and interact and influence the policy of groupings such as the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD). I will refer to policy in the collective noun in that case to mobilise the common aspects of their values and objectives.

UNESCO’s ideology on culture, described in Chapter Four, ‘Planning History and Cultural Concepts’, propounds the essential nature of culture for development and conservation activities, and encompasses the promotion and valuing of community cultural participation. This philosophy sought to extend and develop the implications of the Universal Charter of Human Rights (1948). The Charter defines the right to culture as an essential human right.

119 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This followed attempts to eradicate other cultures before and during the Second World War. Nevertheless, the right to culture remains challenged in many parts of the globe.

The WCC report Our Creative Diversity (1995) spelled out the central and foundational value of culture for all research, planning and development. It does this however, within the frame of a neo-modern perspective. I have shown in earlier chapters that this is only a part of the story of culture. The frame of connectivity and of an integrated approach to culture and a plural approach to theory accompanied by integrated research, establishes the value and possibility of a richer cultural connectivity. The UNCED ‘Earth Summit’

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, promulgated ideas and policies that closely relate to the objectives of connectivity and culturisation. The Summit’s message is that cultural attitudes and behaviours around the world need to be transformed if the changes necessary to ensure a healthy planet for generations to come are to be achieved. International and national plans and policies need to be redirected to ensure that economic decisions take account of environmental impacts. The Summit argued that this encompasses patterns of production, alternative sources of energy, creating a new reliance on public transportation and of the growing scarcity of water (UNCED, 1992). Since that time subsequent United Nations Conferences on environmentally sustainable development have included the interconnected relationship with human rights, population, social development, and women and human settlements. The Summit included the development of Agenda 21, a program for global action for sustainable development. The Agenda states among other matters that human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development, that eradicating poverty and reducing disparities in worldwide standards of living are indispensable for sustainable development, and that the full participation of women is essential. The Summit’s objectives and programs are being translated into culturally appropriate strategies and methodologies for national and regional action on a worldwide basis. These highlight the importance of community cultural action for sustainability, the role of culture in influencing the key area of population growth, and a range of culturally important issues

120 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

such as the integration of traditional agricultural practices where they have been shown to be environmentally sustainable (UNCED, 1992).

Global Planning Practices

The pattern I earlier describe in relation to the integration of culture in the framework of international policy is also occurring with the integration of culture in global planning practices. This includes the integration of culture in urban and regional planning, and strategic planning. A similar pattern also encompasses the areas of governance in public government and business. The WCC statements on culture in governance, planning, research and development are central as they seek to promote the global recasting of organisational perspectives and activities in the light of culture. Together these policies and practices are high water marks for integrating culture in planning, research and development. Yet while they represent a trend to greater cultural integration, no overall methodology has ever been developed to assist in the process.

The leading trends expressed through the 1990s and the 2000s represent the beginning of the responsible integration of culture of planning. However, this pattern is expressed by uneven, localised and piecemeal planning approaches and practices. Most of the policy approaches and planning practices have their origins in the demands of cultural diversity, and in commercial development and employment creation associated with the arts and culture. I cite this motivation for Australia in respect of the country’s first National Cultural Policy, Creative Nation (DOCA, 1995), that emphases the practical and economic role of culture, its resources and activities.

Greater recognition of the opportunities represented by culture in planning is emerging at a fast pace globally. The integration of traditional culture in the repositioning and cultural refurbishment of waterfront areas in cities on water, around the world is a good example. It exemplifies a global trend, and takes both more positive and negative forms. For example, in a positive vein in Venice, Italy, the pattern has been realised with some cultural subtlety. At the historic Arsenal of Venice, the site of the original naval dockyards of the Republic, a

121 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

high-tech environmental research and conference centre has been developed located in Renaissance workshops and positioned around Venice’s history of maritime and environmental innovation (Young, 2000). In negative terms in Sydney, Australia redevelopment of the inner-city waterfront area of in the late 1980s as a leisure and conference precinct obliterated much of the industrial heritage and saw the dispersal of most of the traditional community from the historic suburb of Pyrmont. Nevertheless, in the 1990s and 2000s former defence waterfrontages and harbour islands on Sydney harbour are benefiting from a more culturally sensitive approach.

In Australia other examples of the successful integration of culture encompass bicultural environmental management, such as at the World Heritage area of Uluru KataTjuta National Park, in the Northern Territory (Uluru-Kata Juta Board of Management and Parks Australia, 2000), cultural mapping practices, the recognition of intangible and social values in the dominant heritage conservation charter, The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS, 1999), the growth of the role of interpretation in development and conservation practices, and the emergence of the concept of the ‘Fourth Pillar of Sustainability’ (Hawkes, 2004).

Within this grouping I single out the policy-oriented approaches because of their general relevance. A key example is the technique of cultural mapping. As developed in the Australian federal model, cultural mapping is a structured technique to identify, record and utilise the entire historical and contemporary culture of an area (Clark, I. et al., 1995). Cultural mapping is evolving into a complex set of diverse practices in a number of countries and in the case of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), is the subject of ongoing exchange in relation to mapping models, practices and outcomes (Young, 2003). The Australian cultural mapping model and techniques developed by the Power of Place organisation are able to draw on the social history of places to enrich their multiple identities. This can be achieved through responsive planning and commemorative practices undertaken with a range of interpretive and artistic techniques. However, exploring the identity of social groups and community places through interpreting and representing their histories is not always a simple process and requires an ethical base if it

122 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

is to succeed in respecting and accommodating diversity. The work needs to be grounded in the communities themselves and the representation of the experience and its interpretation should remain with local groups.

The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS, 1999) has been adopted by the Australian Government and other tiers of government for conservation management and describes a process for the incorporation of intangible culture and diverse values into the cultural heritage conservation process. It recognises the diversity of community attachments to place, and these are being widely explored and interpreted. For example, the significance of heritage to Australian migrant groups, and by extrapolation to migrant groups globally, has been investigated by Armstrong (1994; 2000)) and illustrates the importance of conceptual and practical differences that emerge for the understanding of heritage among each group. At the same time the stereotypical display of difference (Armstrong, 1993) in conservation practices in majority planning and in place marketing may be problematic. Similarly, the adoption of religious nomenclature and imagery in community events for example may also be contentious. This illustrates the fact that the use of culture and imaginative interconnections in planning does require and prudent consultation where important cultural values are concerned.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning has grown dramatically as a global phenomenon over the last few decades, and is used in urban and regional planning and as an aspatial planning tool in government and business, and by NGO’s and community groups.

I begin by suggesting a number of the salient characteristics of strategic planning. The first of these is the fact that strategic planning is a dynamic and evolving set of practices that will continue to develop into the future. Further, with broader acceptance of the benefits of culturisation the vehicle of strategic planning will come to draw on new forms and levels of connectivity based on the resources and underlying commonalities of culture.

123 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Thus the new positionality of culture using the model outlined here would be tapped for both strategic and urban and regional planning.

Strategic planning spans the public and private sectors, although strategic planning in organisations has developed in isolated terms from strategic spatial or urban and regional planning. Strategic planning however, is an aspect of government environmental management and development and of governance, planning, development and marketing in business. The potentialities in inter-sectoral planning have, however, been so far little recognised. Strategic planning also exists in sectors strongly connected to government, such as heritage, tourism and urban and regional marketing. Regardless of this, the intellectual thrust and tenor of all strategic planning shares commonalities. In the case of strategic planning for space and culture especially, this is a good basis for developing opportunities to release new and unexpected synergies. It is however worth asserting that most forms of strategic planning, whether in the public or private sector, could be improved with greater and more sensitive cultural content. This applies in accommodating the cultural diversity of contemporary organizations, in achieving marketing and promotional efficacy through closeness to new markets, and to the developing trends in the cultural economy.

Good strategic planning is a powerful tool. It includes the need to take into account in a creative way, the dominant strategic issues at any moment, and to consider new and innovative options for research and information-gathering about the environment in developing an appropriate strategy (Kelly and Booth, 2004). It is in these terms, of course, that culture goes to the very heart of the matter. Culture constitutes the ‘big issues’ and it represents the operating environment, and the constraints as they come to be embodied in an action plan. Regardless of the size and complexity of a strategic plan, the fundamental strategic planning process is based on the movement between a series of key interrelated questions. Finding successive answers to the questions ‘where are we now’, ‘where do we want to go’, and ‘how do we get there’, is the basis of a strategic exercise. In this process culture informs the environmental scanning process that constitutes a key part of many strategic plans and in developing the ‘strengths’, ‘weaknesses’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘threats’

124 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

of a ‘SWOT’ analysis, where that technique is employed in the strategic process. This is also the case with heritage sites. One of the many examples of the strategic planning process is that of the Oregon Visions Project, developed by the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association (Oregon Chapter American Planning Association, 1993). The Oregon Model follows a version of the classic strategic pendulum I describe above comprising in its case the following questions or issues - ‘Where are we now?’; ‘Where are we going?’; ‘Where do we want to be?”; and ‘How do we get there?’ (Oregon Chapter American Planning Association, 1993: 9). This sequence represents the four steps of 1) preparing a community profile, 2) outlining a trend statement and probable scenario, 3) developing a preferred scenario and community vision and, 4) developing an action plan with goals and strategies, and a prioritised action agenda.

The systematic thinking and the processes, techniques and methodologies that define strategic planning are necessary tools for planners, whether working with communities, markets, or the development of green field sites. A process designed to optimise outcomes through coordination and alignment, strategic planning is equally beneficial to spatial and aspatial planning. Further, it has a powerful, though mostly unutilised integrative potential for culture in planning at different scales, and in different forms and sectors. It is a natural beneficiary of the Culturised Model.

I have now outlined a complex global pattern and historical picture It encompasses a description and of prescriptive planning writing, the normative fundamentals of international governance, leading global planning practices, and the opportunities supplied by strategic planning. This outline is now to be embodied in principles.

The Principles

The complex range of inputs assembled and synthesised into the Culturised Model is illustrated in Table 3 below. These inputs cover cultural and planning theory as well as the considerations outlined in the previous chapter.

125 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 3. Inputs to Culturised Model

Theory Prescriptions Governance Global Practices Policy

ƒ Harvey ƒ Sandercock ƒ United ƒ Strategic ƒ Williams (postmodern praxis) Nations Planning ƒ Lefebvre ƒ Healey ƒ WCC ƒ Cultural ƒ Castells (aesthetic materials) ƒ Agenda 21 Mapping ƒ Sandercock ƒ Hayden ƒ International ƒ Bi-cultural ƒ Healey (public memory & Charters place ƒ Rennie Short landscape) (NGO’s) management ƒ Landry (toolkit) ƒ NSW Govt. ƒ Sustainability ƒ Young ƒ Place Marketing (heritage studies, cultural mapping, cultural tourism model) ƒ Hawkes (cultural perspective)

Source: Author

The principles for culture are distilled from the same range of materials. My combination consists of the following five principles that are linked and mutually reinforcing:

• Plenitude; • Connectivity; • Reflexivity; • Diversity; and • Sustainability.

I single out these five ideas out as relevant to culture and to the literacy of planners, and as illustrative of the potential value of a grouping of key unifying principles. Any list will vary over time, of course, if it is not to be self-defeating. However, the potential of the

126 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

principles to act as ‘bridges’, and as catalysts in developing culturised planning is important, and they are each described in turn.

Plenitude

The idea of cultural plenitude indirectly supports and complements a holistic approach to culture and plural theory. It is an underpinning idea. Simply stated, the concept of plenitude asserts that culture is plentiful and reinvents and expands itself. It is an idea associated with the democratic rebellion of cultural studies from the 1960s and 1970s that sought to consider culture as whole way-of-life. Culture was to be found and explored everywhere and was neither a scarce commodity, nor one that that involved through personal cultural expression any detraction from the culture of another. Foucault’s ‘plenitude of the possible’ (Foucault, 1984: 267) underwrote cultural studies interest in knowledge and ideas, so that ‘working-class culture, women’s culture, , gay and lesbian culture, post-colonial culture, third world culture, and the culture of everyday life were all quickly discovered and described’ (Hartley, 2003: 4).

Cultural plenitude is the intellectual and philosophical frame within which a planner operates. Further, it is a context that supports professional optimism, and respect for diversity, multiplicity and hybridity.

Connectivity

Connectivity is a principle with a dual, and a multiple value. I develop it as a principle and assert its dual value in both cultural and planning considerations, and its multiple value for the realm of the life world and ecology. Raymond Williams is the inspiration here, whose cast of mind was in Stuart Hall’s opinion ‘intrinsically connective’ (Bennett, 1998: 54). For Williams the connective operated ‘against the frame of the forms’ (Bennett, 1998: 54). The phrase ‘connectivity’ turns the connective into a principle with resonance for contemporary planning. Connectivity can operate between the nested scales of planning and through planning in its multiple forms. It asserts the connections in culture between

127 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

thought and feeling, and implies the dangers in isolating instrumental rationality. Its use can also highlight the value of the humanities, the arts and all of the forms of history, for planning, as variously argued by planning commentators (Harvey, 1990; Healey, 1997; Forester, 1999; Sandercock, 1998; 2000; Hawkes, 2004). Further, it is strongly linked to creativity and imagination as espoused for cities and planning by Landry (2000).

Connectivity parallels both the informational and technological connectedness of Castells’ network society and ecological knowledge in understanding the multifarious webs of life. In respect of the latter, John Rennie Short argues that ‘… in geography we now know where everything is’ (Short, 2000: 1) but that locational accuracy has come at the expense of cosmological understanding and sensitivity to the environment (Short, 2000). In this process ‘metaphor, suggestions, possibilities and the opportunity for adopting an intriguing point of vision’, (Short, 2000: 1) have all been diminished. So much is this so that Short proposes four new discourses to address the issue – ‘cosmology’, the ‘embodied world’, the ‘connected world’ and the ‘speaking land’ (Short, 2000). I believe they all individually express the value of connectivity and in the connectedness that obtains between them.

Diversity

The values and principles of cultural diversity are the supporting pillars for social, cultural and economic democracy. They encompass respect for differences based on ethnicity, race, religion, gender, age and sexual preference, and varied combinations of these.

Further, they promote ‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (Young, 1990: 320), a necessary and healthy position in an age of migration and refugee experience. This is an era in which ‘The multicultural city/region is perceived by many to be much more of a threat than an opportunity’ (Sandercock, 2000: 164). Further, through holding ourselves open to ‘otherness’ we test and modify our fluid selves. At the same time and through the same process we learn that concepts such as authenticity, for example, are also dynamic as much as for example our tangible heritage and intangible values (Young, 1991c). Humility towards the Other or ‘openness to the unassimilated other’, is based on a postmodern idea,

128 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the belief that rapport can exist between any two people regardless of ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, religion, previous encounter, possession of a fixed address, emotional condition, and mental stability.

Cultural diversity is also related to both multiculturalism and . Multiculturalism is an interactive arrangement in which cultural groups influence one another positively, based on a supporting legal framework, and in which ethnic and cultural hybridity are thus free to develop. Under cultural pluralism, ‘…diverse cultures coexist and maintain some degree of separate identity’ (Johnson, 2000: 70) based on religious, ethnic or linguistic differences. The terms are sometimes confusingly used as interchangeable. Added to this complication are theories of political pluralism, such as those of American political science of the 1960s, which argued that ‘…the United States was a democratic society because political power was widely distributed amongst the competing interest groups that operated therein: none of these groups was all-powerful and each was powerful enough to secure its own legitimate interests’ (Marshall, 1998: 499). This theory echoes that of cultural pluralism in a number of nations, but can be defined against the claims of cultural diversity that includes elements such as sexual preference, and is not based on relative numbers or the diffusion of power between rival groups for legitimacy. Iris Marion Young states the ideal of a culturally pluralist democracy in the following terms: A culturally pluralist democratic ideal … supports group-conscious policies not only as a means to the end of equality, but also as intrinsic to the ideal of social equality itself. Groups cannot be socially equally unless their specific experience, culture, and social contributions are publically affirmed and recognised (Young, 1990: 174).

In Cosmopolis II Sandercock undertakes the work of defining a multicultural perspective in terms of a long list of propositions to serve as a political and philosophical basis for thinking about how to deal with the challenge of the multicultural city. The premises of this virtual manifesto are these:

• Human cultural embeddedness if inescapable, but we can understand as well as criticise our own and other cultures;

129 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

• Culture is not static, it is dynamic, contains multiple differences and is necessarily hybrid; • Cultural diversity is a positive quality and intercultural dialogue is a necessity; • Multiculturalism is inevitably politically contested, and in the West is part of an unfinished project of decolonisation; • The right to difference and the right to the city are at the core of multiculturalism. This means that minority and subaltern cultures have legitimacy and specific needs, and the right to the city includes occupying public space and participating as an equal in public affairs; • The right to difference must be perpetually contested and redefined; • The perpetual contestation of multiculturalism demands active citizenship and the daily negotiations of difference; • A sense of belonging can not be based on race, religion or ethnicity but on a shared commitment to political community; • Reducing fear and intolerance can only be achieved by addressing the material as well as cultural dimensions of ‘recognition’. To do this the inequalities of political and economic power must be addressed and new stories and symbols developed about national and local identity and belonging (Sandercock, 2003: 102-103).

Sandercock argues that the perspective of her multicultural manifesto contains two key public goods. The first is the freedom to criticise in thought, and challenge in practice, one’s inherited cultural ways. The second is recognising the widely shared aspiration to belong to a culture and a place, and so to be at home in the world (Sandercock, 2003). This sense of belonging includes that which comes from being associated with other cultures. We need ‘ a lived conception of identity/difference that recognises itself as historically contingent and inherently relational, and a cultivation of a care for difference through strategies of critical detachment from the identities that constitute us (Sandercock, 2003: 104). Thus the twin goals of belonging and freedom can be made to support each other.

I utilise the organising idea of diversity ahead of Sandercock’s multiculturalism, as it also captures diversity of sexual preference and cultural and ethnic hybridity as it accumulates.

130 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Multiculturalism under Sandercock must speak for all of the splintering racial and ethnic fractions that emerge under diversity and that will continue to take new forms that may bear slender relationship with the complicated and ever-dwindling components of their past. Sandercock’s strategy is to add the idea of ‘… planning for multiple publics, or for a heterogeneous public’ (Sandercock, 2003: 210) to that of multiculturalism.

Reflexivity

The concept of reflexivity can be formulated in simple or complex terms, but regardless of the path taken it is essential to culture and to planning. In simple terms, reflexivity can be defined as ‘…the process of referring back to oneself, and it is applied both to theory and to people’ (Johnson, 2000: 255). On a more complex level reflexivity is the term ‘…used to describe the way in which, particularly in modern societies, people constantly examine their own practices and, in the light of that examination, alter them’ (Abercrombie, N., at al, 2000: 292). In this way, people create their own social order from their reflections and communicativeness about the social world. This is a tradition that is related to the practices of self-examination that stretch back to the philosophy of classical Greece. Further, according to Giddens’ work (1990) the identities of individuals ‘…are no longer based just on external factors but are constructed by a constant reflection on, and a working and reworking of, their own biographies’ (Abercrombie, N., at al, 2000: 292). This is linked to Giddens’ view that:

Only societies reflexively capable of modifying their institutions in the face of accelerated social change will be able to confront the future with any confidence. Sociology is the prime medium of such reflexivity (Smart, 1993: 42).

While it is certainly true that sociology is a prime medium of reflexivity, it is not the only one. Cultural reflexivity is also the hallmark of good planning in its examination and potential re-direction of social and individual practices. Culturised planning is based on cultural knowledge and cultural reflexivity, whether in individuals, communities or planning systems. Also, personal cultural reflexivity supports collaborative cultural reflection that involves the full diversity of the community. The planning process can utilise the discussion of ethical issues and aesthetic questions, and in many narrative forms.

131 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Moral dilemmas and aesthetic experience are engaged through forms of reflexivity. These involve the production, and growth of values through subtle adjustments that further reflection and the social development of ethics also promote. Reflexivity is thus a crucible of life. It involves the recognition that values are dynamic, are always in need of renewal, and are more than the accumulations of empirical knowledge. Landry also argues that reflexivity is the key to sustainable creativity in his concept of the ‘Learning City’:

The city of the future needs to be a learning city reflecting on and responding to achievements and obstacles. Only by embedding reflexiveness and learning into every crevice of a city’s inner workings can it sustain its creative momentum (Landry, 2000: 258).

Criticality is also important, and I include it as an aspect or a sub-set, of reflexivity. In simple terms it is similarly a process of referring back to theory, and of applying theory, for instruction. It is also based on the recognition that language and communication are not solely designed to produce the truth. Fundamental to the tool of language is its role in obscuring truth, as much as its role in revealing it. As Deleuze, writing in 1964 suggests: ‘Although words are revealing, their content is deceptive. People can say what they like; nothing constrains them to tell the truth. All encounter is interpretation, and language is arbitrary’ (Deleuze, 1973: 1). This situation is heightened by the blurred and situational nature of postmodern truth and the ideological role of the media. The theory of discourse analysis formalises this approach by indicating that argumentation is a strategy and an aspect of power. It asserts that ideology and persuasion are a part of all communication and that theories and ideologies represent, and may seek to camouflage, the interests of groups and individuals. These interests vary across a range of the socially positive and negative. Under discourse analysis ideas and information may be used in planning to justify or to attack a planning proposal, submission or argument, as they are mobilised by politicians, communities, and planners. As a result, emphasising arguments as part of discourse highlights competing values and interests, including concealed values and interests. The value of this approach for reflexivity is that it suggests that rationality has many forms and that these are mobilised by different groups for different purposes. This is an important realisation. For example, David Harvey claims the deconstruction of universal claims of

132 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

social rationality as one of the legacies of the radical critique of society of the ‘60s and ‘70s (Harvey 2003). In Harvey’s view:

Feminists, those marginalised by racial characteristics, colonised peoples, ethnic and religious minorities echoed that refrain in their work, while adding their own conception of who was the enemy to be challenged, and what were the dominant forms of rationality to be contested. The result was to show emphatically that there is no overwhelming and universally acceptable definition of social rationality, to which we might appeal, but innumerable different rationalities depending upon social and material circumstances, group identities, and social objectives. Rationality is defined by the nature of the social group and its project rather than the project being dictated by social rationality (Harvey, 2003: 107).

This is a liberating perspective. It entails the recognition that every group has the right to its values and perspective. In responding to this planning must recognise difference and develop the tools and ethical approaches to communicate and collaborate with all groups in the community.

At the same time, the explanatory power of theory is one of the great strengths of culture. The unifying and interpretive value of theory can position and contextualise knowledge, permits new insights, connections, and approaches, and encourages innovation in cultural practices and forms of everyday behaviour. Combining a belief in the value of theory with the utility of discourse analysis is a viable critical strategy.

Sustainability

The UNCED Conference known as the ‘Earth Summit’ of 1992 was the watershed in terms of sustainable development. The concept of sustainability has travelled a path to acceptance and planning incorporation that may now be followed by culturisation. Both have commonalities in terms of holistic and systemic approaches. At the Earth Summit Gro Harlem Brundtland put forward the concept of sustainable development as an alternative to one simply based on economic growth. She defined it as a concept ‘… which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to

133 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

meet their own needs’ (UNCED, 1992: 1). This definition is relevant for the conservation and development of culture.

Sustainability is more elaborately defined as economic development that takes into account the environmental consequences of economic activity, and that uses resources in a fashion that ensures that they can be replaced or are capable of renewal, and are not therefore depleted (Allaby, 1998).

The idea of sustainability proposes the conservation of resources to ensure their survival and regeneration. It includes an ecological understanding of the web of life and an awareness of the implications of inter-generational equity. Agenda 21 of the Rio Summit, however, stresses that sustainable development will only be achieved through community cultural action. In a related vein, Harvey argues that ‘…all social projects are ecological projects and vice versa’ (Harvey, 2003: 113). Harvey justifies this view not according to ideas about the rights of nature or other elements from the agenda of deep ecology, but in relation to the justice due to future generations and to other inhabitants of the planet. He recognises that human beings transform the world in the course of making their own history, ‘but they do not have to do so with such reckless abandon as to jeopardise the fate of peoples separated from us in either space or time’ (Harvey, 2003: 113).

In recent times a trend has developed in the sustainability literature to add culture to sustainability. Sometimes this takes the everyday form of the concept of the ‘quadruple bottom line’ or, as in Hawkes’ formulation, culture is described as ‘the fourth pillar of sustainability (Hawkes, 2004). This dawning recognition of the value of culture, however, is based on a flawed premise; culture precedes and includes sustainability, and is not a late addition. While such perspectives generate valuable ideas and techniques for the inclusion of culture in planning, they also play a ‘blocking’ role in the liberation of a mature and integrated culturised planning.

It is now time to summarise the five illustrative principles for culture, and I do this below by grouping them together in Table 4 along with their meanings and intellectual sources.

134 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 4. Principles for Culture

CONCEPT MEANINGS SOURCES Williams, Culture is plentiful and reinvents Plenitude Cultural Studies and expands itself Foucault. Williams Life is connected through its Castells forms, histories, environments and Ecology Connectivity networks. It opposes the artificial Rennie Short frame of the form. Healey

Young

Respect for difference in all of its manifestations and openness and United humility towards ‘the other’. Nations Declarations Respect for basic human rights, NSW Charter such as gender equality. of Principles Radically, rapport can exist Diversity for a between any two people, Culturally regardless of ethnicity, age, Diverse Society gender, sexuality, religion, Sandercock previous encounter, possession of Healey a fixed address, emotional condition, and mental stability.

Referring back to the self and to theory are part of personal growth Classical Greece and growth in intellectual and ‘Western’ Tradition emotional understanding. Harvey Reflexivity Radically, language and discourse Giddens camouflage the real interests of Landry groups and individuals. These

interests vary across a range of social positions and values.

Do not over-use a resource and Ecology ensure the capacity for inter- UNCED generational transmission and Sustainability ‘Earth Summit’ development. Local cultural Hawkes implementation seen as essential

under Agenda 21.

Source: Author

135 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Conclusion

The role of the principles for culture is to contextualise and support the work of the methodology. However, they also stand alone in their capacity to act as potential educational and didactic tools. The product of a moment in time they will be updated as culture continues to transform itself. They are supported and interlock with the key planning literacies and the methodology that are developed and described in Chapter Six and Chapter Seven that now follow.

136 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER SIX

PLANNING LITERACIES FOR CULTURE

This chapter further outlines the content of the Culturised Model for planning, by developing the planner’s ‘literacy trinity’. This trinity builds on the principles for culture in the previous chapter. It does so by examining proposals from a number of writers for the development of cultural and planning literacies, and outlining ‘global competence’ and the importance of strategic planning as a contemporary planning skill. The planner’s ‘literacy trinity’ emerges from the subsequent analysis. The literacy trinity is specifically related to culturised planning and the developed Model.

On a philosophical level, the planner’s literacy trinity is a way of defining the lifeskills of a postmodern global citizen. This is because culture is increasingly being understood as the basis for acquiring, managing and creatively transforming the diversity of knowledge and behaviours that characterise postmodern society and the new economy that operates in parallel.

An overall competence in relation to culture is now critical and urgent for all planners, based on an understanding of the nature of contemporary culture and the way in which it is perceived and operates. This includes knowledge of diverse cultural values and practices and the social and legal protocols in relation to these practices at the national and international levels. Fundamentally, these are centred on recognition of the ‘right to culture’, a foundational human right, that has been formally and internationally recognised since the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The Declaration is a common standard of achievement for all and is the basis for the United Nations advances set out in the existing international human rights instruments, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

137 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Importantly, an overall competence in culture also encompasses an appreciation of hybridity at the social, scientific and artistic levels and the inheritance of history and heritage. Such competence is not only based in knowledge or analytical approaches but also includes the complex levels of awareness that relate to openness towards social diversity and an empathy with multiple values. These qualities are as much a requirement in the successful transaction of international and post-industrial business as they are in decoding postmodern cultural practices and technological change. Fundamentally, however, they remain a sense of the challenges and opportunities represented by postmodern times. They are a combination of the skills and subtle awareness that are required to navigate the shoals of our contemporary social and intellectual experience and can be taught, and improved upon in a continuous fashion. Before examining a range of commentators on the relevant literacies for planning, I believe it is instructive to recall Raymond Williams’ description of the theory of culture as ‘…a theory of relations between elements in a whole way of life’ (Williams, 1966: 12).

Williams maintained that:

We need also, in these terms, to examine the idea of an expanding culture, and its detailed processes. For we live in an expanding culture, yet we spend most of our energy regretting the fact, rather than seeking to understand its value and traditions. We also need detailed studies of the social; and economic problems of current cultural expansion, as means towards an adequate common policy (Williams, 1966: 12).

The implications of what Williams suggests here is that issues of our time such as cultural diversity - in all of its dimensions - social and artistic hybridity, and globalisation, are all expressions of ‘expanding culture’. Further, this requires the development of an adequate ‘common policy’. In fact, a key thrust of this thesis is to provide an intellectual and practical response to Williams’ challenge as it relates to planning. Describing practically valuable principles for culture, spelling out literacies for planners, and culturised planning techniques, are in effect contributions towards the development of a ‘common policy’. In this chapter, this work is undertaken by distilling planner’s literacies from a review of selected materials including those from a number of writers introduced in earlier chapters

138 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

who share an interest in planning, urbanism and creativity. I begin by reviewing the work of these writers

Progressive Urbanism

A selection of writers on planning, urbanism and creativity have at times made detailed suggestions for the constitution of the skills and literacies desirable in the contemporary planner. Sandercock, Landry and Hayden have thrown into high relief some of the demands and requirements that challenge the planner in a culturalised age. In addition, they have directly or indirectly suggested elements that contribute to identifying workable literacies, although writing from different perspectives and with separate objectives in mind. On the whole however Healey has not taken this path, at least in such direct terms, and similarly proposed literacies. This presumably relates to her espousal of communicative rationality that is itself perceived as most likely to underwrite genuine communication and collaborative planning outcomes. This is because it is based on the ideal speech situations of Habermas, as against the instrumental rationality of the state (Healey, 1993).

Outlining the commentators’ proposals for literacy is the task to which I now turn.

Sandercock and TAMED

In Towards Cosmopolis – Planning for Multicultural Cities (1998), Sandercock outlines in the Appendix a series of literacies desirable in future planning graduates. She suggests a group of five such literacies, which together form the acronym ‘TAMED’. Sandercock’s ‘literacies’ are designed to overcome what she describes as ‘the tendency to reduce knowledge and understanding of a subject as complex as the urban/regional habitat to a shopping list of skills, methods and competencies’ (Sandercock, 1998: 225).

139 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sandercock’s group of literacies with which she argues future planners should be armed are: • Technical; • Analytical; • Multi- or cross-cultural; • Ecological; and • Design literacy. (Sandercock, 1998: 225).

Sandercock’s acronym, is also intended to suggest ‘…a frame of mind more humble, open, and collaborative than that of the heroic modernist planner’ (Sandercock, 1998: 225). Following this list Sandercock concludes the Appendix with a short section entitled ‘Planning as an Ethical Inquiry’. In this way she effectively endows ethics with an integral and formative role in deploying the designated literacies.

The concept of literacies as developed by Sandercock is useful and I believe worth pursuing. However, the group of literacies she proposes, while no doubt useful in developing academic planning programs, are perhaps rather complex and conceptually unwieldy to serve as a ‘day-to-day’ heuristic in the culturised model being developed here. A simpler and more usable formulation will be developed that bears in mind the needs of an active, contemporary planner.

Hayden and New and Old Connections for Place

Dolores Hayden’s techniques to reveal the power of place were pioneered in Los Angeles but the lessons are global. People’s lost connections with their own place add to urban angst and frustration and they disempower minorities, marginalised groups and workers whose stories and places remain fragmented and neglected. Recovering these connections to place as they evolved over time can tap the power of historic urban landscapes to nurture public memory. Hayden singles out the need for sympathetic accounts of women and ethnic communities, situated historically as well as spatially. For Hayden, these are

140 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

missing for example in both the work of Mike Davis in his widely read City of Quartz and in Edward Soja’s Postmodern Geographies (Hayden, 1995: 101).

What is interesting about Hayden is that she extends her utilisation of community or public history - developed from the bottom up – further, to encompass a genuine community tourism and the local marketing of place. This insight is important because it does two things. Firstly, it begins to expand the utilisation of culture to other planning sectors such as tourism and marketing that chime with the broader and full-scale role I describe for culture in the thesis model, and secondly, it begins to suggest the conceptual and practical expansion I propose for the role of the contemporary planner. Reconstructing the role of place in people’s lives, as Hayden demands, is perhaps the precursor of the planner’s construction and reconstruction of culture in all of the communities’ lives.

Landry and New Understanding

Landry lists seven specific areas where he believes quantum leaps of new understanding are required (Landry, 2000). Although these are sometimes unfinished ideas, they are suggestive, and represent an important beginning. All are relevant to my set of planning literacies. Landry’s list encompasses:

• ethics as a guide to action; • favouring social solutions over technology; • promoting resource consciousness; • harnessing diverse visions for their creative capacities; • connecting the past to the present for the purpose of triggering new solutions for the future; and • embedding reflexiveness and learning in the city as a basis for sustainable creativity (Landry, 2000: 258).

As with Sandercock’s list of literacies this is a useful catalogue to draw on for inspiration. Landry also maintains, as does Sandercock, that ‘we require urban strategists with a deep

141 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

knowledge of urbanism who use the knowledge of conventional planning as part of their toolkit rather than being dominated by it’ (Landry, 2000).

Landry describes seven themes that require new understanding in urbanism including the kind of practical emphases that cut across disciplines and are perhaps equally relevant to our individual life world. The themes are:

• Creating value and values simultaneously; • From hardware solutions to software solutions; • Doing more with less; • Living inter-culturally; • Valuing varied visions; • Recombining the old and the new imaginatively; and • The Learning City (Landry, 2000: 258).

Landry argues however that the seven themes can only happen under three main conditions. These are the rethinking of incentives; the dissemination of successful urban projects; and the existence of urban strategists who use the knowledge of conventional planning as part of their toolkit rather than being dominated by it. This last mentioned condition Landry cites because he believes everything impacts on how we plan cities and who should plan them (Landry, 2000: 258).

The Culturised Model is designed to promote the cultural emphases, crossovers and lateral connections that lie at the heart of Landry’s inspiration, through engaging a comprehensive perspective on culture and on research.

Global Competence

In reviewing these sources of potential literacies for culturised planning I introduce the idea of global competence. This has recently been put forward by Harvard University following the first review for thirty years, of teaching in its arts and sciences. In reporting on what it

142 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

means to be an educated person in the twenty-first century, the University proposed that ‘… global competence, an empathic appreciation of another culture, and the ability to work as part of a team across cultural boundaries’ were key issues and further required ‘a significant first-hand encounter with another culture’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 2004: 2). The terms global literacy and global competence appear to be used interchangeably in this context. However, the term is defined as meaning ‘broadly knowledgeable individuals who are curious, reflective, and independent citizens of a global society’. They are defined as possessing the capacity to ‘understand, criticise and improve our world constructively’ and to do this they need the ‘capacity not only to understand others, but also to see themselves, and this country, as others see them’.

Global competence in planning would also include planning learning and exchange. Planning learning is based on example and professional practice. The study and exchange of problems and solutions is extensive in planning and planning cases are frequently studied and diffused as templates.

Strategic Planning

The practice of modern strategic planning itself is a good example of the diffusion of planning templates. Modern strategic planning can be traced to developments in defence planning and production in the USA in the 1960s, and it was later translated to business planning and urban and regional planning. Although strategic planning has waxed and waned in fashion since its introduction, it has never been abandoned and has grown more sophisticated during its history. In the light of the speed of contemporary social, technological and market changes, the need for flexibility and intelligently opportunistic responses in strategy are being promoted. For example, the most recent models of strategic thinking and planning from the organisational perspective highlight the value of flexibility and the capacity to adapt to change in addition to the significance of strategic thinking and organisational learning (Lerner, 1999). An emphasis has also emerged on planners serving as ‘facilitators, catalysts, inquirers, and synthesisers to guide the planning process effectively’ (Hax and Majluf, 1999: 34). This trend is likely to grow into the

143 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

future, and it will do so largely for reasons connected to the nature and function of contemporary culture.

Selecting Key Literacies

I believe the key literacies required in the process of culturising planning can be distilled into three over-arching literacies. The number could of course be greater or even less than this, as is suggested for example by the five literacies of the planner TAMED, as developed by Sandercock. However, whatever the differences in number and in expression the literacies will be interconnected and in practice difficult to separate. I single out three literacies for the purpose of developing a simple, heuristic approach. The three over- arching literacies are memorable, and easy for the planner to deploy in planning considerations. In a utilitarian discipline such as planning a pragmatic justification of this kind is appropriate. Further, for ease of reference I describe the three literacies as a planner’s ‘literacy trinity’. This trinity then consists of , ethical literacy, and strategic literacy. These literacies are critical to the success of the contemporary planning practitioner. The literacy trinity is illustrated in the Table 5 below.

Table 5. A Planner’s Literacy Trinity

ƒ Cultural Literacy ƒ Ethical Literacy ƒ Strategic Literacy

Source: Author

The composition of the planners’s ‘literacy trinity’ is important. Cultural literacy is the literacy on which, in this context, the others turn. However, it requires the support of ethical and strategic literacy. I include ethics, in its own right in this up-front fashion, as it is more than an independent or merely added consideration, as is the case with Sandercock’s proposed literacies. The reason for this is that ethics, when they are not sets of principles, are working tools used on a day-to-day basis and are capable of evolution and

144 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

conscious ‘sharpening’ in the university of life. They are both creative and they are created. In planning for cultural diversity, sustainability and heritage conservation, ethics are engaged directly. Further, they are essential if planning is to integrate the requirements and insights of international charters and agreements and national codes and protocols with fundamental ethical dimension.

Strategic literacy is included as a master literacy because it encompasses the skills to give practical momentum to projects and ideas and to discriminate between them. More than this, however, as I argue throughout this thesis, it is part of the convergence in planning that is bringing spatial and strategic planning closer together and is one of the vehicles through which the opportunities provided by culture may be re-thought and integrated in planning.

Each of the three literacies will be examined in turn.

Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy in the planner encompasses the capacity to identify, develop and utilise culture in its tangible and intangible forms and contemporary and historical manifestations. It requires an understanding and familiarity with the principles for culture and the capacity to integrate and work with and through such concepts. In planning this involves bringing cultural ideas and information into consideration and manipulating the full spectrum of cultural data, materials, concepts, theories, themes and practices. Understanding contemporary concepts and forms of culture is essential in interpreting culture in planning and requires superior levels of cultural literacy. Sandercock emphasises that planners have to learn to access other ways of knowing, if they are to recognise different kinds of appropriate knowledge (Sandercock, 1998). She point out that:

Local communities have experiential, grounded, contextual, intuitive knowledges, which are manifested through speech, songs, stories, and various visual forms (from cartoons to graffiti, from bark paintings to videos), rather than the more familiar kinds of planning ‘sources’ (census data, simulation models, etc.) (Sandercock, 1998: 30).

145 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The speed and diversity of cultural change requires alternative ways of knowing if planners are to keep up, and this also includes alternative methods of discovery and storytelling. Further, in all of this Williams’s overriding approach of ‘connectivity’ is a permanent goal.

Alongside these keys to culture is the deep human experience and value of empathy. I speak of empathy with the multiple values represented by cultural diversity. This includes empathy for differences manifest in lifestyles, cultural practices, abilities, attachments to place and home, and values and language.

An appreciation of the opportunities for the culturisation of planning supports this capacity. Culturisation is based on culturalism, an idea that endows society with the emotional capacity to deal with and make sensible generalisations about the nature of the trends and forces at play in society. The breadth and depth of culture expressed by culturalism is sweeping in nature and profound in its implications for planning. Under the omnibus concept of culturalism, tangible and intangible and contemporary and historical dimensions of culture are linked. In today’s world in particular, this includes the environmental, artistic and emotional transformations wrought by the impacts of cultural diversity and cultural hybridity. Planning’s quest to accommodate such changes encompasses the needs of the social and cultural diversity of communities, the responsibility to ‘invest’ geographical places with the full dimensions of their multiple histories and community attachments, and the opportunity to devise sustainable cultural responses to climate and other deleterious environmental changes. This is the basis for sensitive and responsive planning in relation to place and community and for the valorisation of hidden or neglected historical, environmental and ecological knowledge that may be integrated into planning processes. Furthering these needs is the basis of the Culturised Model, whether utilised for planning in spatial, strategic or organisational settings. Distinguishing and actualising culturisation, in the face of pressures to produce the routine of culturalisation is a challenge to the cultural literacy of the planner.

The culturised planner will also need to respond to a dynamic, fluid world that requires the planner to understand and deploy collaborative and postmodern planning approaches, as

146 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

necessary in tracing and addressing the needs of hybridity and new forms of marginalisation.

Sandercock, following Friedmann, outlines the main socio-spatial processes that form the substantive domain of planning under the terms of ‘Cultural Differentiation and Change’:

This process is particularly important in high-immigrant cities, but is also at work elsewhere, reflected in spatial segmentation and culturally specific forms of living which give form and character to streetscapes and neighbourhoods; ethnic identity- formation; inter-ethnic and race conflicts; the formation of youth and gay sub- cultures; and the functioning of segmented labour markets. Out of (with its undercurrents of class and race), new hybrid forms of politics and urban living are emerging in the ‘borderlands’ where cultures meet, but so too are new forms of intolerance and exclusion (Sandercock, 1998: 223-224).

In addition, new, creative and lateral approaches involving collaboration and interpretation are relevant for planners. For example, humour has an ethical and strategic dimension and, in perplexing and culturally gridlocked times, may be one of the few resources available. Humour is an imaginative, intellectual mining of culture, and as such is an important tool in the cultural toolkit. It is one tool not cited by Landry or the other commentators I document. Thus a generous and subtle literacy should be taught in university planning faculties and included in training programs for professional planners. I also believe that it may help to make planning and the planner visible after a long period of fading from the public and media view.

Finally, cultural literacy includes the implications of viewing ecology as a cultural construct and sustainability as a range of cultural practices. This latter view is promoted by Agenda 21 of the Rio Summit. In this context, the social planner Wendy Sarkissian argues that ‘…the environmental crisis can not be solved by the same kind of education that helped create the problems’ (Sandercock, 1998: 228). In this context, Sarkissian developed a five-dimensional model of ecological literacy for planners ‘… that emphasises teamwork; experiencing nature directly; a grounding in community (including community struggles for social and environmental justice); the study of environmental ethics; and … new literacies

147 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

coming from alternative ways of being, knowing, and acting/teaching’ (Sandercock, 1998: 228).

Ethical Literacy

It is increasingly important to acknowledge that ethics is as fundamental to planning as it is to any other aspect of life. ‘We can not study (planning) practice without studying ethics’, writes Forester (Forester, 1999: xi). This study he relates to life’s fundamentals, such as creating or squandering value and achieving or repressing autonomy (Forester, 1999: xi).

Ethical reasoning is, as Forester’s work over decades also indicates, a learned and acquired capacity. It is a capacity that can be refined and deepened over time, or it can be allowed to atrophy through its lack of exercise, or exposure to an environment where it is suborned by a continued abuse of power. In either case, ethical reasoning takes many forms and is assisted by protocols, forms of due process, and the development and practical mobilisation of ethical codes.

Global conditions of increasing technical ease of communication and media surveillance, however, are not necessarily allied with greater ethical understanding or reasoning. Sandercock identifies the mistaken idea that learning will make us better people and reminds us that the world’s information explosion with its phenomenal increase in data of all kinds should not be confused with an increase in knowledge and wisdom (Sandercock, 1998). Further, while some knowledge increases other kinds of knowledge are being lost. As she writes:

learning, as Loren Eisely once said, is endless, and will never, in itself, make us ethical beings. Ultimately it may be the knowledge of the good that is most threatened by all our other advances. It is possible that we are becoming more ignorant of the things we must know to live well and sustainably on the earth (Sandercock, 1998: 230).

Ethics includes perspectives, principles and guidelines that assist us in articulating knowledge and wisdom in the face of the information explosion and in developing an active

148 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

capacity for moral engagement. While it is true that learning may not, in itself, make us ethical beings, there is a framework of ethics based knowledge in relation to both culture and the environment that the planner needs to know and be able to interpret and apply. Further, planners need heuristic tools, including principles and methodologies, to assist them in their work of discriminating and testing in the process of reflecting and analysing the planning conundrums and complexities of a networked Age of Culture and Interpretation. While reflective practice is the basis of success in this enterprise, it is supported and enabled by agreements and protocols at the various planning levels. United Nations agreements affect practice and behaviour at all levels, such as human rights agreements. National and state or local legislation exists in governance in democratic polities that similarly support and enable good practice in planning in relation to participation, standards, and processes. Planning for World Heritage items is an example.

New planning tools such as cultural mapping depend on an ethical frame for their implementation, as advised in the Australian cultural mapping model. These work through, rather than bypassing, standards for the protection of confidentiality and intellectual property rights. Planning intervention in a culturally diverse world impacts on a multiplicity of values and intellectual and . This is a prima facie argument for the integrated and sensitive consideration of those complex ethical issues that arise for example, in relation to aspects of cultural diversity such as the cultural requirements and sensitivities of indigenous groups. Ethical cultural mapping emphasises the same points made by Sandercock who refers to the ethical requirements not to ‘…speak on the behalf of others and to maintain openness, empathy etc and respect for difference in ways of knowing (Sandercock, 1998: 121). Face-to-face- dealings are the basis of communicative action and include dealing with the ‘cultural other’, and acquiring sensitivities and skills through interaction based on talking and listening (Sandercock, 1998).

Strategic Literacy

Strategic literacy is an important conceptual element of Sandercock and Landry’s proposals and is exhibited in practice in Hayden’s linking of public history and civic culture as the

149 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

basis for tourism and place marketing. Sandercock introduces the valuable idea of the need for planners to know which kind of planning and planning approach to use when and where. Strategic literacy is promoted as essential for developing and deploying culturised planning in the model proposed here and this encompasses the strategic capability to introduce an appropriate planning concept, approach or technique. Strategic literacy is given a greater prominence here as a master literacy because of its integrative capacities in planning and the fact that culturised planning will need to draw on this literacy more than in the past. Strategic concepts and approaches are now central to all planning. Further, it is the basis for the ‘seamless’ deployment of binding cultural knowledge, information, concepts and themes across planning scales and forms.

Understanding the diverse scale and modalities of planning and how these relate to governance and institutions is therefore central work for the future and this must draw on Landry’s injunctions for the use of greater creativity in finding solutions to problems. Here I am referring to the creative and ‘saving’ opportunities and prospective relationships that can emerge from partnerships in and between layers of governance, institutions and commercial operations. If culture is to speak with a clear and audible voice and to promote sustainability this is the agenda for the future planner. In terms of a culturised perspective, the interconnections that transmit and ‘preserve’ culture and cultural understanding between planning scales and modes need to be understood and reinforced by an emphasis on connectedness and the value of ‘joined up’ planning.

Sandercock identifies the need for planners to understand the larger picture that needs to be taken into account in planning. Community planners need to understand that locals need the resources of the state because ‘… the state is the locus of resources’ (Sandercock, 1998: 196). On the other hand, the legitimacy of state planners ultimately depends on the community.

In addition, strategic planning tools promote the experience and understanding of interconnectedness within and between communities, environments and history. Cultural mapping is a tool designed to make the most of this opportunity. Potentially all forms of

150 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

planning are the beneficiaries of cultural mapping knowledges. This includes environmental planning, social planning, so-called cultural planning, heritage planning, sustainability, major and special events strategies, place marketing and place governance. Further, mapping promotes recognition of the needs and opportunities provided by a strategic approach to erstwhile unconnected planning in different forms and at different scales. Planning activities are nowadays converging, in an environment of the post- industrial economy, the cultural economy and sustainability. Convergence needs to be taken further. The basis of future planning convergence for the new economy and postmodern culture is to be found in a re-thought approach to the importance and application of strategy. Further, this will involve the planner acting in the catalytic, inquiring, educative and synthetic modes I document earlier. I will demonstrate the importance of this development, and the opportunities for the future, in Part Three that illustrate the Model.

Conclusion

The three literacies work in combination in facilitating culturised planning. Each element of the planner’s trinity of cultural, ethical and strategic literacy is relevant and assists the planner to know which planning principle, approach or technique is appropriate to utilise. This is because planning is in its highest culturised manifestation is a holistic cultural, strategic and ethical undertaking. In the most basic sense possible, cultural literacy and the planner’s trinity are the literacies needed to work through the culture of places and to connect up such culture through planning at different scales and in different forms. Thus these literacies are necessary to unlock the qualitatively different cities and societies of today as sites for culturised planning.

Culture has the power to reform and update planning as a . The realisation of this in practice will be dependent on new culturised planning practices and their associated planner’s literacies. The three master literacies in question are the agents that will assist planning to re-focus its mission and to engage in cultural reflection that is the ethical work of planning at its highest level. As Forester comments ‘If planners should

151 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

often respect value in the world as plural and incommensurable, those planners will need to learn how to do that, as they recognise that no decision-making calculus will allow diverse values to be easily added and subtracted to yield net gains or losses’ (Forester, 1999: 241).

152 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MODEL’S METHODOLOGY

This chapter outlines a methodology developed to integrate culture in planning on a step- by-step basis. The methodology is the final element in the Model’s overall, three-part framework for the culturisation of planning. It follows the preceding outline of the principles for culture and the planner’s literacy trinity, and is designed as a functional tool for culturising planning. As a practical system, the methodology is able to stand on its own and can be used independently of the Model’s full framework. However, optimal utilisation of the Model will be facilitated by an awareness of the principles for culture and the planner’s literacy trinity.

Rationale

In proposing a methodology for the deeper integration of culture in planning I am conscious of numerous complex issues existing at the conceptual, semantic, and practical levels that call for flexibility in the development of such a methodology. Firstly, however, it needs to be stated that any methodology is a dynamic and iterative construct and however robustly constructed is evolutionary in nature. Secondly, a methodology for culturised planning should be relevant to planning at all geographical levels and in a broad spectrum of forms. It should also be capable of being shared between planners, communities, and the academies and be applicable to planning settings in developed and developing countries. To achieve this it must be based on sound and accessible principles and techniques and workable cultural definitions. To do this the methodology is developed in line with an important principle in the sciences. The principle asserts that the greater the explanatory power of a theory or principle across a wide range of conditions the more likely it is to be valid. The methodology is robust and flexible and can be applied across a range of planning scales and in both spatial and strategic settings. In order to achieve its goal of making richer and deeper culture available for practical planning, the methodology is

153 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

developed from two powerful approaches to culture. These are the perspectives of integrated culture, and integrated research.

Integrated culture and integrated research each consist of three categories, and in each case the sum of the three elements is greater than each its parts. Table 6 illustrates the methodology in relation to the Culturised Model, and shows the three components of integrated culture and integrated research.

Table 6. Structure of the Culturised Model

Source: Author

Integrated culture and integrated research as they are utilised in the methodology are now outlined in turn.

Integrated Culture

‘Culture’ has a defining centrality in the contemporary world but it is a controversial and fluid realm that easily escapes description and research ‘capture’. For that reason it is defined for the model in integrated and graspable terms that make it readily accessible to

154 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

planning. I have identified three categories: ‘geography and the environment’, ‘history and intangible heritage’ and ‘society and ways-of-life’. These reflect Lefebvre’s categories of culture and encompass Raymond Williams’ description of culture. The categories are also able to encompass historical and contemporary culture as readily as the tangible and intangible elements of culture and the splintering and diversification of culture in numerous new directions since Williams’ day. However, in the spirit of Williams’ thought I adopt the practice of referring to ‘ways-of-life’ in the plural.

The three categories of culture are ontologically complete and are all equally relevant to planning. The three elements ‘contain each other (and) cannot successfully be understood in isolation’ (Lefebvre in Soja, 1996: 72). The three categories are designed to facilitate the easy recognition of the depth, breadth and diversity of culture and to promote planning articulation and inclusion.

The three constituents of integrated culture outlined in detail are as follows. Geography and environment encompass natural features, topography and geology and cultural landscapes as they have evolved over time. Cultural landscapes are based on urban and regional environments and include, architecture, landscape and archaeology. Topography and geology have been shaped by culture and incorporated in the creation of cultural landscapes, in the form of buildings, materials, and remnant natural features that serve an aesthetic and/or a practical purpose. I also include ‘natural heritage’ as part of culture in relation to natural areas within the so-called human footprint where humanity has a direct influence on the environment.

History and intangible heritage relate to the past. History is the description of the past, whether the accounts are professional, popular or community based and it includes memories of the past. Intangible heritage includes the values, traditions, customs, and attachments to place that are inherited from the past. Numerous writers (Jameson, 1984; Hayden, 1995; Young, 1988; Landry, 2000) now recognise a special importance for history in the contemporary cultural equation. The importance of history however is normally

155 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

accepted as natural and commonplace in indigenous communities and comes to the fore in postcolonial societies.

In a culturalised age history has a special destiny in creating a robust and worthwhile civic culture, as Hayden recognises. History also teaches us that there are many ways of being human. The existence of cultural diversity and cultural hybridity throughout history is of enormous ethical, community and practical importance. It is the basis for recognising not only contemporary postcolonial insights but also the historical complexity of ancient civilisations and living cultures. This latter recognition, of course, has emerged as much in popular cinema as in other aspects of the cultural economy, such as publishing and documentary filmmaking. Recent films from the 2000s such as The Gladiator, Alexander, and Gangs of , bear testimony to the opportunity.

By contrast society and its ways-of-life are all the ways of living that include home, work and leisure activities as they occur in all the fractions of diversity, and between regions and nations around the globe. The humanities and the arts and sciences, as practices in these societies, are part of the ways-of-life, as are business and economic and government activities. In an age of globalisation the speed and frequency with which individuals travel, as with their ideas, values and products, all impact on, and interweave with local and regional ways-of-life.

The elements of integrated culture can be illustrated diagrammatically in simple terms, as in the following table.

156 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 7. Integrated Culture

Geography and History and Society and Environment Intangible Heritage Ways-of-Life

ƒ Geodiversity ƒ Academic & popular ƒ Diverse ways of life ƒ Biodiversity history, memories in the home, work, ƒ Cultural landscapes ƒ Social, intellectual and & leisure ƒ Architecture, religious history, ƒ Humanities archaeology, & industries & ƒ The Arts landscapes community places ƒ Social Sciences ƒ Indigenous, settler, ƒ Humanities and the ƒ Sciences migrant and arts ƒ Business, minority heritage ƒ Colonialism & contact Economics and places histories Globalisation ƒ Natural heritage ƒ Historical geography ƒ Sustainability ƒ Ecology ƒ Historical ecology

Source: Author

My goal is to use ordinary language, and to facilitate the inclusion of culture in planning in an integrated and comprehensive fashion. The categories are of course overlapping and interdependent but their utilisation will enable planning practitioners to articulate culture in a more focussed and balanced way.

While alternative categories of culture exist and could be used for the same purpose, it is important that the categories adopted are both accessible to communities and of practical use to relevant professional groups, public agencies and institutions. It is also important, where possible, that the methodology has utility at both national and international levels.

157 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In particular, policy agencies at the level of international governance and international NGOs with a development focus should be able to recognise its value and utilise and adapt it as a worthwhile heuristic. In this respect it is worth observing the conceptual and semantic diversity that exists in the area of cultural management and development between various states globally. For example, in the USA and Australia different terms are used in the area of cultural heritage. The American usage refers to cultural resource management and the Australian cultural heritage management. In Australia the American term is not understood by communities and would be regarded as jargon. Regardless of the difference here and in other examples the model is intended to have broad practical utility and be capable of application in national and international settings.

What Table 7 makes clear, is that potentially greater levels of cultural information in relation to each category of culture, may be included in planning whether the knowledge is historical or contemporary in nature, or relates to tangible or non-tangible culture or natural heritage. In addition, new levels of cultural understanding and awareness in relation to any of the three categories may also be integrated in the planning process. The integrated and comprehensive approach to culture I propose, ensures planning regard for all of culture, and encourages creativity by establishing new connections within culture, and by bringing diverse cultural elements into new and rewarding planning relationships. It is an approach based on connectivity. The same connectivity applies to the nature of plural theory and the process of integrated research that I outline next.

Integrated Research

Working in tandem with the power of integrated culture, is the more comprehensive access to culture offered by integrated research. Integrated research consists of three elements, all of which are required to address both contemporary cultural and social diversity and current levels of planning complexity. The three elements are: 1) cultural research, 2) cultural collaboration, and 3) cultural interpretation. Each mode privileges different types and dimensions of culture but when considered together provide an overall view of culture and its planning potentialities. While I use ordinary language to describe the techniques of

158 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

integrated research, specialist terms also apply. ‘Cultural research’ is best described as quantitative research and is based on information derived from sources such as census statistics, historical records and environmental data. This information is usually in the public domain and may exist in the form of on-line databases. Quantitative or ‘lower order’ culture is important to planning but needs to be better and more imaginatively integrated within the processes of research and development in planning.

Collaborative cultural information is sourced from more communicative research that involves community participation in processes such as action research, cultural mapping, community histories and community projects in areas such as sustainability and cultural tourism.

Cultural interpretation values and utilises the insights and knowledge derived from cultural theory, postmodern social theory, academic history, political economy and indigenous understanding and values. It is the basis of authentic access to indigenous culture in the context of bi-cultural planning and management. It is the argument of this thesis that each approach is relevant, indeed essential to the culturisation of planning.

I should point out that not only are the different elements of integrated research related, but that they represent different practical opportunities for varied aspects of the planning spectrum. For example, general cultural research and quantitative cultural information may be widely included in spatial planning at every scale and in more aspatial forms of planning for social, economic and ecological purposes. They provide the base data for the history of places, and for measurable features. This is in essence the basis of the WCC’s call for the inclusion of culture in all planning and development as foundational.

Collaborative techniques are the basis for accessing and including the values, perspectives, needs and stories that relate to community diversity, in terms of gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, religion, class, and disability. They tap the seemingly inaccessible, or what otherwise can remain inaudible, and give voice to diversity strengthening diverse cultural

159 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

groups and the community in its totality. It is the knowledge form usually proposed by neo- modern planning theorists.

Cultural interpretation on the other hand comes into play at specific stages in planning and has the capacity to make a major contribution to particular planning topics and to bi- cultural and culturally diverse planning and management. This aspect frees up different value structures and cosmologies, cultural perspectives and priorities. It enriches strategic planning where theories, artistic considerations, and postmodern ideas, determine themes and categories in planning documents, as is especially apparent in heritage conservation, interpretation, events development, and place marketing and promotion. Cultural interpretation is the knowledge strategy most favoured by postmodern social and planning theorists.

Each of the three research elements is relevant to planning but need to be part of integrated research. In this way the postmodern whole of culture may be woven in a collaborative fashion through the culture of all of our lives and of our communities and public and corporate governance. In this fashion the model serves as a heuristic for culture, a short- hand method to ensure that all aspects of culture are considered in planning projects to unlock culture’s full potential for planning. This view of culture is also expressed by theorists as varied as Jameson, Castells, Sandercock and Soja but without a developed heuristic for culture or a planning modus operandi.

In overall terms I believe that these opportunities when taken together have the potential to achieve a quiet revolution in planning’s relevance and legitimation.

The components of integrated research and their applicable data, knowledges, and techniques are illustrated in the following table.

160 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 8. Integrated Research

Cultural Research Collaborative Planning Cultural Interpretation

ƒ Census data ƒ Cultural mapping ƒ Cultural theory ƒ Historical records ƒ Action research ƒ Cultural studies ƒ Environmental data ƒ In-depth Interviews ƒ Postmodern social ƒ Heritage places ƒ Oral history theory ƒ Cultural infrastructure ƒ Community histories ƒ Indigenous ƒ Arts and Humanities ƒ Community projects understanding (eg fiction, poetry, – eg sustainability, ƒ Academic history music, philosophy, tourism, public arts, ƒ Feminism etc) etc. ƒ Queer Theory ƒ Story-telling in ƒ Hermeneutics different modes ƒ Semiotics

Source: Author

What is distinctive about this approach is that each route to culture is considered potentially relevant to planning in some way. Combined with an integrated view of culture, the qualities of each dimension of culture are able to flow through all aspects of the planning process and enrich the totality.

Ironically, the process of separating out the various dimensions of culture and of integrated research is undertaken precisely in order that culture may be understood as a whole with the synergy of its interrelationships captured for planning. In fact, I divide culture into three categories and introduce three research dimensions for culture precisely in order that culture may be made whole again. Integrated culture and integrated research form one heuristic planning tool. In practice, the relationship between the categories of culture and the elements of integrated research tends to be one of layering, intertwining and

161 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

interpenetration. The structure of the model helps to bring this richness forward. The important thing in a planning exercise is that ‘no stone is left unturned’ and that the full range of culture and of research are utilised. The Culturised Model is intended to overcome the conceptual blockages and cultural fragmentation that characterise the limited concepts and poor access to culture commonplace in current planning.

For the moment, it is sufficient to indicate that integrated culture and integrated research are together the basis of the new methodology I propose, and that optimal use of the methodology will be modulated through a background of the principles for culture and the planner’s ‘literacy trinity’. This relationship is illustrated below.

162 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 3. Culturisation Methodology

Source: Author

Conclusion

The methodology outlined introduces some of the formal preconditions for good planning in a culturalised age. Animation of the spirit of the methodology will also depend on other aspects of the Culturised Model including the planners’ literacy trinity and the principles for culture. In combination these elements may work together in contributing to the objective of culturising planning. This need not be surprising once the underlying logic of the Culturised Model is understood and accepted. After all, in its appetite and potential aptitude for culture, planning is merely reflecting the global context of its times.

For too long, a fuller and richer integration of culture in planning has been hampered by narrow and superficial research approaches. The traditional inclusion of culture in planning has favoured quantitative cultural information at the expense of deeper values, subjectivity and theoretical interpretation. Yet superficial approaches to culture are increasingly limited in their utility to planning in an age of socio-economic diversity and are associated with brittle and impoverished planning outcomes. The cultural richness and complexity in communities, governance, customers and businesses demands a corresponding richness in planning responses if planning’s social and economic relevance is to be maintained.

163

PART THREE

ILLUSTRATING

THE

MODEL

THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

PREAMBLE

In this part I illustrate the Model in three chapters. The framework of principles for culture, the planner’s literacy trinity, and the practical methodology are applied in principle and in two case studies. In the first of the chapters the model is illustrated generically to show its potential power and application for all relevant planning. As the model’s capabilities exist in principle, and are relevant to planning globally, these illustrations are international in nature. In the two chapters that follow, the model is illustrated in concrete terms in relation to two specific case studies drawn from Australia. The first of these is urban and regional planning in relation to Sydney, the capital of NSW, in which the model is selectively illustrated at nested spatial scales from the metropolitan to that of a single suburban site. The second is strategic planning and strategic management for the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania, one of Australia’s largest heritage sites, and one of the most important European colonial convict sites from the nineteenth century.

165 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CULTURISED MODEL IN PRINCIPLE

In this chapter I illustrate how the Model and its key methodology for the culturisation of planning operate in generic terms. I use specific cultural materials and cultural approaches in spatial and strategic planning to do this. The purpose is to demonstrate the greater cultural power and relevance that is at the disposal of planning through a more rigorous and imaginative use of cultural materials. The Culturised Model is designed to act as a trigger and enabler in this process. The Model alerts the planner to the nature of significant principles for culture, to three key literacies, and to the range of integrated culture and integrated research that are at the disposal of the planner. The discussion of the principles and literacies follows a general sequence, moving in the most elaborated examples from a general and policy-related realm, to international examples, followed by examples drawn from Australia.

Principles for Culture

The principles for culture operate best in combination, but each can be illustrated from the point of view of the sensitisation, and greater awareness that they introduce to planning. The principles of plenitude, connectivity, diversity, reflexivity and sustainability outlined in Part Two are capable of empirical illustration. The examples I use to illustrate the principles have been purposefully selected, and are strong in their relevance to the culturisation of planning. I treat each of the principles in turn.

Plenitude

Culture is plentiful and, it is often unexpectedly so. Further, unlike many ecological and natural resources such as fragile ecological systems and old growth forests, culture is capable of renewal. The renewal is a function of continuing creativity and cultural innovation produced in societies, and in new perspectives that permit the rethinking and re- working of values, practices, knowledges, places and landscapes.

166 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

On a basic material level where culture has been forgotten, damaged, or marginalised it can often be brought forward or developed again. The historic city of Warsaw that was largely demolished during the last phases of the Second World War was re-built from pre-existing measured architectural drawings. This is, in some ways, a controversial practice, but few would question its social and psychological importance to Poland during and since the phase of the city’s reconstruction.

Plenitude is also related to the powerful ‘culturised tool’ of cultural mapping that operates around the inherent possibilities of plenitude. Not only is former culture rethought and revived, but also new culture and new perspectives are developed, and these can be related to fresh social and commercial opportunities. The work of Dolores Hayden’s Power of Place organisation in Los Angeles built on the capture of public memories of attachments to place. These became part of ongoing pride and connected the community to its traditions. Further, they served as the basis for developing conservation proposals and community tourism initiatives (Hayden, 1995).

In Australia the traditional Aboriginal perspective on land has influenced and enlarged wider community environmental consciousness, and contributed to an ongoing debate. In most postcolonial societies indigenous culture was marginalised after colonisation, but in Australia as elsewhere now, it lays claim to wider attention, through its integration in films, histories, stories, ands art works that grow in scope and quantity.

Connectivity

The underpinning connectivity of culture links and binds the categories of integrated culture. This connectivity mirrors ecological connectedness and is part of the networked information and knowledge age. It also connects spatial and strategic planning. For example, the themes established in a heritage study of an area are not only relevant for conservation purposes. In particular, if they possess intellectual robustness and give strong expression to culture, they are potentially relevant to most of the cultural economy and the creative industries. These include all of the creative arts, the digital industries, education curricula, tourism planning and tourism product development and all aspects of design.

167 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This is because the same cultural themes, perspectives or information are relevant for incorporation, reworking, or representation in different settings.

Diversity

Diversity is the character of our times. By this I mean that an acknowledged and self- conscious diversity is recognised in the constitution of societies, and in their ethnicities, sexualities, beliefs and values. In this context, empathy and openness to the ‘cultural other’ are necessary in order for diversity and pluralism to prevail and further hybridise.

For example, in the year 2000 the British Government was forced by the European Court of Human Rights to abandon its prohibition on homosexuality in the military. The Royal Navy is now advertising in the gay press for recruits and ensures gay personnel have equal rights to housing benefits and pensions (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 February 2005: 10).

In Australia the NSW Charter of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society (Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW, 2003) works towards this end. The Charter is based on four principles of State Policy: the right to participation in all levels of public life; respect for the culture, language and religion of others; the greatest possible opportunity to use NSW Government activities and programs; and NSW recognition of the cultural and linguistic assets of the population as a resource for the State. The Charter is to be reflected in all Government policies, and activities, and in dealings with the non-government sector. The principles are used in developing recruitment policies and strategies for government employment and are standard in staff selection, sound management and training practices, and appeal and anti-discrimination processes.

In terms of engaging diversity at the local government level, the positioning and re- positioning of growing community event programs provides an example. Inclusive event programs can be developed that closely reflect the social and cultural diversity of a local community. Existing events may be enlarged to accommodate greater diversity of participation according to age, ethnicity, sexual preference, and gender. New events may be developed to better reflect community diversity, and to meet ethical responsibilities in

168 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

this respect, as well as to attract state based funding related to diversity criteria. For example, Parramatta City Council in Sydney, NSW, which is located in the demographic and multicultural heart of the region, successfully re-positioned its Parramatta Foundation Day. This traditionally Anglocentric event had exclusively celebrated Parramatta’s white settler history and was popular and entrenched with Anglo-Celtic groups, and older members of the community. However, as an increasingly exclusive event it attracted public criticism calling for cuts to its funding or abolition. In professionally reviewing at that time Council’s overall program of events, I proposed that the event be ‘opened up’ and re- positioned as an inclusive event celebrating Parramatta’s history as a continuing and evolutionary process that included the arrival and foundation of all its numerous cultures. This was acceptable to indigenous and other groups, who supported multiculturalism. In 2003 the theme of the Parramatta Foundation Day was ‘Origins’, which was chosen to reflect Parramatta’s colonial and multicultural heritage, the social and cultural diversity of its landscape, and links with ‘the traditional owners of the land, the Barramatugal of the Parramatta District and Wategura people of the Duck River’ (Parramatta City Council, 2005)

Reflexivity

Self-examination by individuals, communities and organizations, critical discourse analysis and good theory together prevent the subject endlessly repeating conventional wisdom and mistakes. These usually takes the form of apparent common sense, or the acceptance of discourse at face value unrelated to the existence of vested or concealed interests.

Allmendinger warns, however, that the professional status of planners actually limits ‘the extent to which they can act as reflective individuals’ (2002b: 23) and be influenced by the social sciences. This is because the State expects the professional groups it legitimises to participate in the realisation of governmental policy goals. His response to this dilemma, I believe, is to call for a more rigorous and informed reflexivity, ‘instead of asking whether a theory ‘works’ we should be asking questions about why this particular theory was used, who is using it and for what purpose’ (Allmendinger, 2002b: 25).

169 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In spite of this, the example of the Parramatta Foundation Day cited above, is an example of reflexivity - of working with the dynamic trends of culture and with diversity policy. In this case, the NSW Charter of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society (Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW, 2003) were reflexively applied to the local government program of public events, thus meeting the State’s legal and ethical policy imperatives in relation to diversity.

Sustainability

Recognising that the concept of sustainability is a cultural construct, based on a set of ethical principles, assists its implementation through community initiatives and consensus. While scientific warnings of ecological perils and cumulative ecological damage may temporarily alarm communities action directed to implementing changes usually requires something more. Creative responses to ecological and environmental issues are often based on cultural or group-based initiatives that motivate and stimulate a practical response to solutions.

The Agenda 21 of the ‘Earth Summit’ clearly expresses these opportunities.

In Sydney, NSW, an annual clean-up of rubbish in sensitive environmental areas such as the harbour foreshores and suburban bushland, is organised by ‘Clean Up Australia’ (Clean Up Australia, 2005). This is carefully packaged as a family-based activity and has good media promotion. In attracting community attention in this way, the program has been built into a major environmental intervention that is now being modelled internationally.

These then are the principles for culture considered in relation to their general applicability for planning. The principles provide a strong and responsible orientation to culture and a philosophical rationale that serve as the backdrop to the ‘literacy trinity’. In the foreground of the model the planners’ literacy trinity assists in shaping day-to-day planning decision- making. I now turn to elaborate how this may occur.

170 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Planner’s Literacy Trinity

The planner’s literacy trinity was earlier distilled from a number of contending options. Although small in number it has the power to encompass complex and multiple experiences. I begin by illustrating the first of the literacies, cultural literacy.

Cultural Literacy

The presence of culture in the leading literacy is indicative of its overall importance to the social life-world, the economy, ecology and the environment. It is perhaps the governing literacy. It is grounded in understanding and in the active inclusion of all of the categories of integrated culture in planning. It is centred in the recognition that the ‘right to culture’ is a foundational human right that has been formally recognised since the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

Cultural literacy involves empathy and practical understanding of new and often hybrid culture and the experience of minorities, however defined. In terms of minorities this includes the presence of indigenous peoples and their experiences the world over.

In terms of understanding and appreciating migrant cultures it involves sensitive cultural literacy, new cultural readings and empathy. Tapping these differences and their nuances of culture calls for sensitive techniques such as cultural mapping or the use of small focus groups. Small group work can elicit feelings and values that are closely held in the community (Armstrong, 2000).

The humanities are another potent source in reading culture, especially fiction, and in promoting imagination and providing linking themes and concepts. For example, the concept of the ‘modernist inferno’, introduced by Sandercock’s in Towards Cosmopolis (1998), is as she makes clear, inspired by a term used by Calvino in Invisible Cities (1978). Further, this charts a reflexive return to Dante, and the Italian early Renaissance, in a fashion that suggests the cultural involution I describe in Part One. Landry would see this

171 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

as the imaginative re-combination of old and new. This power, of course, lies at the heart of good cultural mapping that works through a combination of empirical, imaginative and historical openings and fusions.

Cultural literacy is also knowledge and research-based, and may suggest connectivity, commonalities, and opportunities for strategic solutions in planning. Reading the city in this way, is a form of cultural literacy indispensable to the contemporary planner and a key contributor of historical and imaginative content for the creative city and the cultural economy. For example, recognising and understanding the urban typology of the cityport is an important example of the value of cultural literacy. The cityport occurs around the globe in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, and is important down through history. These cities exhibit multiple commonalities and a connectivity established by the global exchange of people, practices, goods and ideas.

As a geographical and historical phenomenon the cityport is thus a coastal, trading city, usually with a cosmopolitan culture. The culture of the cityport we would expect to encounter encompasses all the categories of integrated culture. In the case of the ancient cities of the Mediterranean such as Athens, Barcelona, and Alexandria this may encompasses numerous cultures within the ancient world. The modern period could include life as an entrepot within a nineteenth century empire and, before and after the Second World War, serving as a departure point for large-scale international emigration, often to other cityports in the ‘New World’. This history represents a rich heritage of culture and in Landry’s terms is the basis for imaginatively re-combining the old and the new in design, the arts, cultural events and marketing promotion.

Up until the revolution in transport economics of the 1980s centred on containerisation, many cityports were characterised by working populations clustered around the port in over crowded flats with the male population employed in stevedoring. Both bourgeois and working class residents of the cityport developed their own lifestyles, entertainment and membership of churches, trade unions and clubs. Histories, novels and poetry in many languages document these social patterns with their attachments and loyalties to values,

172 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

places and institutions. The traditions and customs of these cities have also become international bywords, whether as fading memories of red-light port areas or as contemporary centres for tourist promenade and urban spectacle.

Further, the contemporary cityport exists in a critical relationship with its coastal zone. Such cities face sustainability challenges that must be addressed in relation to their broader coastal contexts. I include sustainability, both in terms of its understanding and promotion, as elements of cultural literacy. The concept of sustainability is of course a cultural construct. A model of ecological literacy for planners discussed by Sandercock (1998: 228), for example, emphasises cultural qualities such as teamwork, possession of a grounding in community, and the study of environmental ethics, and literacies.

Ethical Literacy

Ethical literacy exists on a number of levels. It includes ethical knowledge in respect of factual information in key legislation, governance standards and guiding principles and codes at the international and national levels. These include codes of conduct and codes of practice in relation to culture and cultural diversity, human rights, the environment, and sustainability.

As an example, ethical literacy is mandatory in the inclusion and articulation of the NSW Charter of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society (Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW, 2003) in good planning, in terms of social planning and community cultural development projects. This ensures that plans reflect NSW law. Less immediately obvious are ethical issues seen in relation to the social distribution of economic and environmental goods. For example the nexus between social justice and the distribution of conserved and interpreted heritage resources is rarely perceived, or even stated. Yet, the deployment of public resources determines the number and location of conservation orders to protect heritage items, and thereby creates a differential access within the community access to the culture represented by history and heritage (Young, 1988a).

173 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This is merely a starting point, however, for ethical literacy includes a reflexive and interpretive capacity that relates to engaging, and sustaining cultural difference in social values and practices. This also applies to a sensitivity towards and encouragement of cultural innovation in community cultural practices, including the arts. Scoping and feasibility exercises that are the preliminary aspects of a planning project engage ethical literacy in considering issues such as community cultural sensitivities, intellectual property rights, power imbalances between communities, corporations and governments, and political, media and marketing implications. The ethical provisions and standards of governance can provide assistance here. For example, the Australian cultural mapping publication Mapping Culture- A Guide to Cultural and Economic Development in Communities (1995) contains a range of ethical protocols in relation to ethical issues such as gaining consent, intellectual property and copyright issues, heritage assessment processes, and procedures to ensure respect for diverse cultural sensitivities.

On a global level in an era of the cosmopolis, increasing migration flows and contested human rights, the issue of migrant culture is at the forefront of ethical considerations. Understanding and acknowledging such culture and their issues is of growing urban importance and sensitivity. In this respect, Fincher suggests that the concept of migrant culture is one that involves understanding the actual ‘recomposition’ of or reconstituting of cultures (Fincher in Armstrong, 2000: 96). Fincher argues that the ‘recompositions’ of culture in the new country result from processes such as finding employment, establishing families, linking into social support systems in the new country, getting qualifications accepted, and accessing government agencies. These are just as important as adjusting to cultural values and norms. In Australia Fincher describes these patterns as including ‘Greetings in airport lounges, waiting at Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) offices, (and) vans delivering bundles of fabric to public housing high-rise flats. These are the images of culture in the experience of material life as lived daily’ (Fincher in Armstrong, 2000: 97). Armstrong describes similar processes based on subtle readings of migrant places in Australia (Armstrong, 2000: 97) that suggest more apt representations of cultural pluralism, as well as cultural renegotiation. Capturing these impressions, values, and images, that represent more subtle readings of places, is a key

174 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

issue. It is an issue, however, that applies to the life world of all the diverse elements of society for whom the planner has - in very real terms – ethical and reflexive responsibilities. Other minorities such as the elderly, the very young, people with disabilities, and gay and lesbian groups also reflect this need. In fact, every fraction of postmodern society is here able to make its claim.

Strategic Literacy

Strategic thinking has been increasingly articulated as strategic planning. Although it has risen and fallen on the tides of fashion since the 1960s, it is now standard in the public and private sectors and in organizations of any substance independent of their purpose. Strategic literacy involves understanding the range of strategic planning and its applications. Such knowledge is relevant to most officials in government and business who deal with organisational management, program development, marketing, strategic alliances and sponsorship. It is also relevant to the world of small business as it evolves the world over.

In the case of the spatial planner Sandercock (1998) argues that the foundations of a postmodern planning praxis lie in a range of factors that include identifying which knowledge is appropriate to use in which situation. Strategic literacy is an aspect of this as it assists in determining what cultural knowledge is needed and how it is to be deployed. Deploying strategic literacy in this context will assist in two important areas. Firstly, it will suggest what knowledge is already contained in the existing spatial planning or strategic planning, or that may be extended, drawn out, or integrated between these sources. Secondly, strategic literacy will suggest what new planning opportunities or possibilities may come into existence or be opened up through fresh and deeper cultural research as well as the introduction of collaborative and postmodern projects and themes and knowledge fusions and projections.

In summary, planners need to be able to make strategic choices from among the range of planning tools that exist for the one job. Choosing and conducting the right research is

175 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

critical. For example, understanding a tool such as cultural mapping is essential because a relatively new technique of this kind produces multiple benefits from the one process. The themes, values and information produced may be applied in most spatial planning, whether for the purposes of community development, heritage conservation, social planning and development and master planning for tourism and other purposes. Strategic planning is an equivalent beneficiary for organisational development and marketing. Developing the strategic connectivity that exists between these forms of planning and the opportunities that arise in ‘whole of government’ approaches and across and between sectors is a key accountability of the contemporary planner.

In relation to the example of the cityport and Coastal Management Zones, strategic solutions move between these areas as they face similar and often interrelated ecological, economic and cultural pressures. Good strategic practices and innovations serve as templates that enable the practical world of planning to adapt and transfer practices and knowledge and strategic innovation.

It is at this point that the methodology can be introduced and I turn to illustrating it in operation in generic terms.

The Methodology

The methodology’s categories of integrated culture and integrated research are designed to illuminate culture as a whole. They do this by engaging all of the elements of culture in a comprehensive fashion, in order that no aspect of culture remains overlooked or ignored, and by engaging different research approaches, and theoretical perspectives that span neo- modern and postmodern planning theory.

As previously discussed, each of the three categories of culture (‘geography and the environment’, ‘history and intangible heritage’ and ‘society and ways-of-life’) has an individual and a collective relevance for planning. This is so regardless of the spatial scale, purpose and form of the planning in question. Similarly, each of the methods to research

176 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

culture is relevant in its own right, while the collective strength of the three methods and the synergy between them is greater than the sum of the parts.

Below, I outline the categories of integrated culture to illustrate their respective, defining content. Following this, culture and its categories are explored using the integrated research format. I mention key examples recognising that they are of course multiplied many times over in reality and across the range of cultural variables that exist for the full spectrum of culture. The examples I evidence stand for numerous others each with a vast attachment of cultural information of its own.

Integrated Culture

Culture as Geography

The geographical expression of culture has been built up over millennia. This however, has been a two-way process with the environment shaping the artefact of culture as it has evolved. The biophysical is a constant companion to culture as it twists and turns throughout human evolution and history. The development of the planet as a cultural landscape now relates to virtually its entire surface. According to Castells’ point of view outlined in Part One, the planet is in its entirety culturalised (1998). Independent of these constructions, increasingly, the earth is an urban landscape with an expanding population whose sustainability is an issue for planning at every scale. Historical and contemporary ways of life have profound consequences for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecologies. Planning for sustainability is as much about urban planning strategies to reduce energy consumption and pollution outputs, at all levels, as it is about any other approach. Cultural values and community participation are the basis of sound sustainability. Good planning actually starts with understanding, as a basic consideration, the geodiversity and biodiversity of an area.

177 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Culture as History and Intangible Heritage

The social history embedded in landscape and contemporary attachments to place and heritage are aspects of culture the importance of which has risen in recognition since the 1970s. The democratic watershed in the concept of culture described in Chapter Four, together with the postmodern valorisation of place and attachments to place, are the reasons for this.

Contributions to history from academia, popular history and oral traditions and memories are enriching new mutli-layered accounts. History from the top down is being joined with history from the bottom up, to the enrichment of both. For example, Anthony Beevor’s highly popular history of the battle for Stalingrad during the Second World War drew on formerly ‘secret’ strategic and policy materials in the Soviet Archives as well as the diaries, letters and personal memories of combatants and civilians on both sides of the conflict (Beevor, 1999).

Present-day themes and issues that invigorate history reflect the spectrum of contemporary and postmodern approaches and concerns. The culture of minorities, migrants and indigenous people, are being asserted in multimedia history, and in a profusion of writing including fiction and autobiography. The past examined and re-interpreted from the multiple perspectives of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and place, and as a source of , leads to new appraisals and understandings. These dimensions are the bases of any community planning that seeks to be sensitive and responsive to diversity and to feelings of difference.

Culture as Society and ‘Ways of Life’

The concepts of ‘a whole way of life’ (Williams, 1966) and ways-of-life as I refer to them assist us in accessing the social and cultural diversity that surrounds us and that we as individuals, in fact, represent and reflect. It also encompasses ways of life in history and the dynamic engagement of these cultural formations with their environments and ecologies on a cumulative basis. As I suggest in the Introduction, the relationship between these dimensions of culture is now more interpenetrated than ever. For example, in this case of

178 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the cultural economy, hybridity in the arts and in ethnicity is consumed in the media and digital arts industries and in tourism, and possesses a history and cultural heritage of its own.

In the period since Raymond Williams’ discussion of culture, in the 1960s and 1970s, culture has become more complex and fluid and is widely perceived as an all-embracing phenomenon. In the intervening period, ‘ways-of-life’ have evolved and splintered into forms and practices that would be new to Williams. Diversity and hybridity are increasing apace, while globalisation adds layers of standardisation and shared commonalities that did not exist previously. ‘Ways-of-life’ include patterns of work, home life and leisure. For example, the growth of flexible and casual employment, watching TV, viewing global sport and recreational shopping, are all contemporary aspects of life. So are terrorism, and anti- terrorism, activities that involve global planning, research and implementation. Central to the practices of both terrorism and anti-terrorism, are fluid, and fast evolving changes, and the novel application of technologies, ranging from telecommunications, email and websites, to surveillance and missile systems.

The ‘ways-of-life’ I refer to are characterised by diversity, and involve divergent cultural values and practices. The cultural and symbolic interpretation of contemporary and historical societies is also an aspect of discourse analysis and semiotics analysis. Finally, sustainability has emerged as a tool for survival based on a soft infrastructure of environmental ethics and community action, as well as sustainable technologies and practices.

Following this outline of culture through its heuristic categories, I now turn to a general description of each of the methods of integrated research that provide access to it. The three dimensions of integrated research are cultural research, cultural collaboration and cultural interpretation. Each element of the group may operate in an independent fashion at times, but in practice they will normally operate together and reinforce each other.

179 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Integrated Research

Cultural Research

Cultural research into the three categories of culture is quantitative, statistical and descriptive in nature. It searches for and compiles the so-called facts in relation to the dimensions of culture. It can yield new and more comprehensive and representative cultural information for planning.

This information may be used in developing planning instruments at the local, regional or national levels and for master plans for specific sites. Strengthening the planning research strategy through culture in this way has many advantages as the full diversity of the environment, history and ways-of-life can be made available for a practical purpose. This is a democratic approach to the quantitative aspects of the historical and contemporary culture of all groups. Computerised Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are useful for mapping and representing this information and it can be cross-checked, expanded and deepened by collaborative and qualitative approaches, such as action research, cultural mapping, and oral and community histories. Other related examples of cultural research include census statistics for an area showing the range of ethnicities that may be relevant for social planning for language assistance, heritage research into the periods and types of buildings in an area, and details of cultural infrastructure in relation to the local provision of libraries or sports fields. The novels, poetry and art produced in an area, or that relate to an area in some way in their content are further examples. Both postmodern and neo-modern planning theories mobilise creative works in their texts. Soja and Sandercock use art works such as photography to illustrate their text and Sandercock and Healey recommend the greater utilisation of fiction in planning. Writing such as fiction gives us unique access to ‘ways-of-life’ and ‘structures of feeling’ as lived in the present-day (and historically). Further, music, for its part, not only sum up the ethos of a period but also the qualities of a specific place. For this reason, the words and titles of songs often come to do double- service in providing the sub-titles for periods and aspects of past times.

180 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Cultural Collaboration

Cultural collaborations between groups and individuals are projects, studies and processes that are based on communicative transactions. Cultural collaborations can reveal and release data and ideas about contemporary and historical ‘ways-of-life’ and their intertwining and can serve as the basis for developing social inclusion and planning strategies to develop cultural sharing and exchange. Collaborative techniques expand quantitative information with the introduction of qualitative elements such as values, beliefs and practices that are embedded in communities and sub-cultural groups. Empowering culture of this kind is located in the community’s plural histories and cultural practices. Neglected cultural areas such as the full range of the arts and minority knowledge held, for example, in the custodianship of indigenous, gay and lesbian or ‘alternative’ communities, is important. These knowledges may be accessed through cultural mapping work, community development projects, sustainability initiatives, projects for the care and remediation of the environment, community art works, and inter-ethnic and inter-cultural projects to develop sharing and understanding. In Sydney, Australian food and gastronomy are being used as links to discover cultural heritage and the development of convivial, multicultural dining precincts (Thompson, 2005). While ethnic precincts totter on the edge of Disneyfication and commodification, the world over it is only through superior cultural knowledge and imaginative cultural research that more inclusive planning solutions will be achieved. In this respect, solutions rely on broader and more integrated cultural policy goals and cultural collaborations than those achieved by commercial interests. For example, Zukin (1995) has noted that there is a lack of critical infrastructure to develop and market non-downtown ethnic areas.

Examples of collaborative projects include community gardens and permaculture projects, cultural mapping in terms of the quantitative research mentioned previously, and collaborative projects such as community-based tourism, community management of land and heritage resources, and crime-reduction and safety strategies.

181 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Cultural Interpretation

Cultural interpretation is the last mentioned technique or research method. Interpretation applies new and up to date theory and insights to this expanded articulation of culture. It may be applied to data and ideas about all aspects of ‘ways-of-life’, including work, home life and leisure in both contemporary and historical terms and in their interweaving. Culturised techniques such as cultural mapping combine all three levels of cultural research, cultural collaboration and cultural interpretation. Cultural interpretation uses theories, concepts and themes from cultural theory, cultural studies, postmodern social theory, historiography, hermeneutics, political economy and the realm of indigenous understanding to add other layers of meaning to the planning process. The nature of these meanings is plural and includes multiple meanings that exist for the same phenomenon or phenomena. Examples include interpreting the role of class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in history as inscribed in the landscape and current variations in attachments to heritage. The effects of major changes in industrial technologies, transport, and the media, are all fruitful material for cultural interpretation.

Let me illustrate this with an example. The long shadow cast by the twin effects of the Industrial Revolution and European colonialism, from the late fifteenth to the twentieth century, is drawn in a vast and tangible cultural heritage, and in complex social and equity issues in postcolonial environments. These strands are interwoven in settler societies such as Australia. This means that interpreting and conserving cultural heritage is a dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous groups, including migrant groups arriving before and after the Second World War.

The Industrial Revolution also left a dramatic landscape heritage of factories, warehouses, prisons, mass housing and museums, and a repressed history of the gap between the social winners and losers in the accumulation process. The landscape of the Industrial Revolution stands in need of conservation, as much as the painful historical transformation it represents is in need of deeper interpretation. Australia’s largest convict heritage site, the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania, is an example and is discussed in Chapter Ten.

182 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Again, in settler societies this pattern of economic production often depended on indigenous communities and their labour, especially in remote regions. By the end of the nineteenth century, the improving values inscribed in town planning and theories of social redistribution had also entered the picture.

In these overall processes of interpretation, knowledge is re-thought, re-interpreted and re- formatted. It is also handled critically and explored according to comparative knowledge in an age of multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural approaches. These approaches are part of a wider process of creativity that leads to the development of crossovers in knowledge, cultural categories, forms and practices and to the acceleration of diversity through hybridity. In such a way the world is re-thought and re-created. Harnessing this re-thinking and ongoing creativity is critical for the continued development of planning. Although I believe this is relevant to all planning, it is particularly obvious in the social, cultural, heritage and tourism planning sectors that depend for their strength on the inclusion of richer and more diverse levels of historical and contemporary culture. Culture is the basis of robust strategies for planning in all these areas and is equally central to the development of effective ecological proposals.

Applying the Methodology

The preceding materials illustrate the categories of integrated culture and of integrated research in general terms. It is now important to illustrate how integrated culture and the integrated research format can be applied to planning in general. I will now look at each dimension of culture highlighting the integrated research sequence of cultural research, cultural collaboration and cultural interpretation.

Integrated Research and Geography and the Environment

Geography brings space and the planet’s environment into the field of research, collaboration and interpretation. This includes the planet before humanity began its process of transformation and the complex and dynamic interaction with humanity since that time.

183 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Research of the geodiversity and biodiversity of an area is nowadays not only important in terms of ecology and conservation, but also as a formative background to culture, its evolution and current practice. The culture of an area has been created in response to the opportunities and threats that geography provides, and is inscribed in that geography. This relationship prevails at the full spectrum of geographical scales, from a continent to a local geographical feature such as a river valley, a desert area, or a forest of some kind.

Planning therefore intervenes with either the culture of communities and/or the cultures of the environment. I say that all of the earth is a cultural landscape owing to the fact that over a period of scores of millennia humanity has inscribed its ephemeral, vanished and re- written occupations as a blurred palimpsest, on every continental land mass, archipelago and island of the globe. This means that towns and cities, sparsely settled regions and so- called greenfields sites are already culturally situated through their human history. Much of this is known or recoverable through records and material remains. Former cultures and civilisations are part of this picture.

Further, urban areas, and in particular large contemporary cities, experience continuous waves of refurbishment and internal and external migration. The ‘soft’ contemporary city that has evolved around the globe is a city that is not so much redeveloped as constantly re- conceptualised, repackaged and re-marketed (Young, 1993: 7). Development relies on infilling and overlaying the cultural spaces of pre-existing cultural landscapes. Cultural research is therefore essential in documenting the history and fabric of such places.

Cultural collaboration is also essential to the process of planning the heritage of the soft, postmodern city, riddled as its is with cultural subtleties and multiple cultural values that are interwoven through the same tangible places. For example, in settler societies, heritage place will have attachments for indigenous communities accrued before the colonial presence and throughout recent centuries into the present. Collaboration with the full diversity of the community is the only way to capture the values of this dynamic, material heritage.

184 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In terms of the soft city a research study undertaken collaboratively into the heritage of migrant groups in inner-city Sydney (Armstrong, 1993; 2003) who settled there after the Second World War, indicates the rich heritage that is mirrored in many cities. The typology of heritage sites developed in Armstrong’s study also applies in many places. The methods to identify this culture included cultural research, and collaborative work with communities such as focus group work with informants.

Cultural interpretation was also undertaken using the tools of cultural theory such as hermeneutics. The very concept of heritage was found to vary between cultural groups with some migrant groups considering heritage less as material phenomena, and more in intangible terms that included the very process of psychological struggle necessary to build a new life in a difficult environment (Armstrong, 2000).

Integrated Research and History and Intangible Heritage

History is today accorded a new relevance by planning theorists and in prescriptive planning writing. This is perhaps because historical research, collaboration and interpretation are practices that assist in centring the plural communities that make up postmodern societies. Society everywhere is also responding to the same pressures for homogeneity from the forces of globalisation.

Cultural research encompasses the basic chronological aspects of the history of an area, group or individual. This includes information about the make-up of communities, their administration, businesses, families and heritage places. For example, the settlement of a specific in a particular geographical area may have implications for local gastronomy, architecture, and cultural planting over time. Indeed, in Australia, the nineteenth century settlement of Cornish copper miners in NSW towns such as Cobar, bequeathed a legacy of typical round mining chimneys and houses built from stone rubble (Jeans and Spearitt, 1980: 51). In the Hunter Valley, NSW the significant Jewish community that resided there, prior to their departure with the 1890s depression, chose the Romanesque style for its synagogue in the town of Maitland. These and other influences

185 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

can be read and researched in the geography of Australia’s post-colonial landscape (Birmingham, 1984: 79), and have continuing relevance. The former Maitland synagogue, for example, is now included on Israeli diplomatic tourism. The search for distant traces and lost roots is a form of postmodern cultural involution and it presents an economic dimension of cultural tourism.

Collaborative practices can be illustrated for cultural heritage conservation through the example of the house museum. Houses significantly associated with an important individual or individuals may offer insight and inspiration in relation to a past way-of-life and as examples related to human creativity. Collaborative community engagements and projects centred on such places are often the best way to understand and to express their values. Collaborations feed into the work of cultural interpretation.

There are numerous houses and apartments around the globe with associations of this kind. Statespersons, thinkers, artists of all kinds, and writers are all commemorated and collaborative projects, exhibitions and activities developed around the dwelling. A lateral example is Nelson Mandela’s prison and his cell at Robbin Island, in South Africa. Former prisoners and guards have been encouraged to contribute their memories and stories to further the interpretation of the place for an increasing numbers of domestic and international visitors.

In Sydney, Australia, the home of , Australia’s only Nobel Laureate for literature, was proposed for conservation (Young and Lascaris, 1995). A writer, intellectual and activist, White lived in a homosexual relationship with his life partner Manoly Lascaris. While knowledge about the relationship was not entirely open, it was acknowledged internationally, and was in Australia, the famous gay relationship of its time (Young, 2005). Not only are White’s philosophies, aesthetic and narrative outputs interwoven through his relationship, his home and its locale, but his pattern of work and that of his partner, their everyday lives and leisure activities are equally illustrated through their home. (The contents of the home were sold at auction in 2004, but the house was fully documented by the NSW Government prior to this).

186 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Cultural interpretation may draw on works of art such as novels, poetry and history that reveal not only a manifest content but also critical, metaphorical and imaginative insights about the past. They thus play a role in contributing to the depth and content of criticality and reflexivity in the present. To take a classic example, while Jane Austen’s novels clearly describe the lives of the country gentry in England during the Napoleonic Wars, they also hint at the ‘absent’ colonial estates, industries and slavery that contributed to such landed comfort and satirise the caste-like role of class and gender. In this specific case, fiction is important to planning on multiple levels. Firstly, it is the material and subject of post-colonial and other interpretations of history and culture. Secondly, ‘re-reading’ the fiction and culture of the past can changes heritage perceptions and thus conservation planning priorities, interpretation and funding. Fiction is characteristically reflexive like all of the arts and describes ways-of-life and their detailed aspects in architecture, domestic interiors, and landscapes, as well as reflecting cultural diversity, cultural values and practices. In the words of the writer Colm Toibin, ‘reading the world’ (2005: 10) through fiction can access ‘the atmosphere of a single consciousness or the atmosphere of a room or a stretch of cityscape or landscape’ (Toibin, 2005: 8). Autobiography can do this as well, as for example, in the case of the Australian writer Roger Millis in his autobiography Serpent’s Tooth (1984). This account inimitably describes the guesthouse culture of the Sydney harbourside suburb of Manly, once fashionable for rural and interstate holidaymakers in the period before and after the Second World War. It was used to develop the themes of recreation and leisure that forms part of the area’s heritage study. This planning study is the basis for the local municipality’s conservation controls and thus impacts on developmental decision-making.

Cultural interpretation is also able to draw on film as a trend, and an opportunity, that grows in importance in an increasingly visual age. David Harvey illustrates the role of film in illustrating cultural change in society. In Spaces of Hope Harvey cites two films, Jean- Luc Godard’s One or Two Things I Know About Her (Un ou deux choses que je sais d’elle) from 1965, and Hate (La Haine) from 1995 (Harvey, 2000). Godard’s film he argues operates at a key point in the emergence of the postmodern sensibility. The film poses all the questions that are with us still – the limits of language, the impossibility of true

187 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

communication, the feeling that something inexplicable is missing, and the ‘… perverse ways in which signs, representations, and language confuse rather than clarify an always elusive reality’ (Harvey 2000: 10). The film Hate depicts life in the strongly migrant world of suburban workers’ housing projects. It is a world of unemployment, discrimination, despair, and alienation. The city implied in Godard has become ‘…fully- formed in Hate’ (Harvey 2000: 11) and is the backdrop of many French cities, of Los Angeles, and of Manchester and Liverpool in the 1990s. This is a city that ‘… incarcerates, the underprivileged and further marginalises them in relation to the broader society’ (Harvey 2000: 11). Loss of a sense of belonging and a loss of citizenship are endemic to many contemporary cities and are key challenges for planning. This applies in terms of the more immediate capabilities of social planning and in broader terms to the longer term shaping of more culturally directed and responsive forms of accessibility to education, jobs, services and transport.

Integrated Research and Society and Ways of Life

Cultural research into contemporary society and its ways-of-life includes the basic statistical information about a group or area. The profile of an area might cover ethnicity, religion, indigenousness, age, income distribution, and so forth. National statistics maintain these data and are freely available through government. In Australia such statistics are accessible on-line from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Details of cultural practices include the numbers of people involved, possible economic dimensions, strength of affiliation, and so on.

Generally statistical materials and other data about ways-of-life are valuable as quantitative resources and can be used to supplement qualitative materials related to community knowledges and the practices and theories based on intellectual interpretation. Recording the cultural products of an area whether they represent ‘high’ or popular culture assists in documenting ways-of-life. This is an important starting point for it can reveal basic information about a community or place, that is not well known or appreciated, permitting new and different constructions and opportunities that add value to society and planning.

188 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Examples of such information include heritage lists, bibliographies of written and oral history, fiction and poetry and lists of works of art. The works of high, popular and mass culture are all relevant: fiction describes and documents lifestyles and values; graffiti may be relevant in assessing the social health of a place. For example, the fictional life of a young Anglo-Celtic single mother and her relations with her daughter and erstwhile new partner are depicted in the contemporary gentrified migrant suburb of Leichhardt, Sydney, in the novel Camille’s Bread (1996) by Amanda Lohrey. Further, this novel is used to make a number of points in the urban study of Sydney, Surface City (Murphy and Watson, 1997).

Graffiti can evidence the characteristics of local cultural loyalties and pathologies such as racism and homophobia, and in a ‘liminal space’, do this with rare force. In a study of an inner-suburban Melbourne creek Chris Drew indicates that graffiti can express the ‘unofficial history’ (Drew, 2004: 108) of a place, and that graffiti artists - as in the public place he examines - ‘persist in raising the question of whom …public space belongs to – the landowners or the disenfranchised?’ (Drew, 2004: 111).

Exploring the concrete aspects of the life of a community group such as a smaller ethnic grouping or an alternative or feminist community adds a new dimension to the total overall picture. This applies not only to smaller cultural groupings. Aspects of ‘mainstream’ community life, or the lives of major ethnic groups, are subject to the same opacity, being downplayed or simply not revealed. Here, everything from male psychic needs in male chauvinist cultures, to damaging or indeed inspiring aspects of prison life might be relevant. We know from many cultural observers that the way a society treats its minorities or its prisoners often reveals as much about the society overall as it does about the lives in question. One way of testing this, of course, is to look at international or inter-regional comparisons that at a basic quantitative level suggest the presence of disquieting anomalies or huge discontinuities. For example, the filmmaker Michael Moore, in his film, Bowling for Columbine (2002) diagnoses pathological levels of gun-violence and crime in the USA. He does this by comparing the levels of gun ownership in the USA and neighbouring Canada, relative to the percentage of gun-related crime. The level of gun-ownership in

189 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

both of these former frontier cultures is similar, but the level of gun crime is very low in Canada compared to the USA. At a prima facie level, this suggests we need to consider a more complex analysis than that provided by a simple nexus between gun ownership and gun crimes. Further, it is salutary to recognise the political and ethical role of a popular film documentary in relation to a global audience. Changed culture that reduces the role of print literacy has increased the attention paid to visual media, and this applies not only to pure entertainment, but also as in this case, to an exposure to polemics and political argument that might not otherwise take place

What this discussion shows is that researching and understanding ways-of-life is relevant to a wide range of planning. A good example of this is provided by patterns of work and leisure as they vary substantially between different socio-economic groups and have differed enormously over time. The collaborative capture of the pattern of current work life is relevant to social planning, transport planning, and the development of recreational and cultural facilities. The growth of flexible employment and casual and migrant labour in developed economies, as a result of respectively the new economy, neo-liberal re- structuring and low-cost labour shortages have all impinged on planning and culture. The impacts of these trends are highly differential according to educational advantage, gender, age, and ethnicity.

Patterns of home life have important implications for planning and vary from cultural group to group. The meaning of home to women of different ethnicities is diverse as has been explored for Australia (Thompson, 1993a) through collaborative projects. Hayden however laments the absence of sympathetic descriptions of ethnic communities (and of women), situated historically as well as spatially (Hayden, 1995: 101). Hayden’s own method is designed to reclaim and reconstruct the role of place in people’s lives and to use ‘new perspectives on gender, race and ethnicity to broaden the practice of public history and public art, enlarge urban preservation, and reorient the writing of urban history to spatial struggles’ (Hayden, 1995: cover).

190 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

These opportunities are relevant to social planning, cultural planning and community cultural development. Collaborative projects with communities can be complemented through experience presented and interpreted in works of art, such as films and art practices. Mapping community attachments and cultural and ethnic concentrations in these fluid environments is a process of characterising important and subtle realities that are hard-to-access.

Collaborations are also essential in the process of developing and integrating cultural diversity into environmental management. In Australia and New Zealand, the bi-cultural management of places between indigenous and non-indigenous communities has emerged based on the integration of two sets of values and differential responsibilities. Further, the capture of migrant voices in social and conservation planning has evolved and coalesces with arts and community arts practices. Sustainability projects and community action for Agenda 21 are also part of this collaborative picture. For example, a widespread community cultural mapping project being undertaken by the National Museum of Australia is mapping the cultural dimensions of salination in the massive Murray-Darling Basin (National Museum of Australia, 2004). This project involves communities in several states documenting their experiences of the impacts of the rising salinity of the Murray- Darling Rivers throughout their entire catchments. These experiences include rising salt levels in buildings, and the early corrosion of dishwashers and air conditioning units. The mapping of stories, pictures and art works, brings more forcefully into community awareness the consequences of soil and vegetation losses on water salinity and eventually on the ways-of-life of multiple regions. The lessons to be learned here are to do with scale and holism. The entire, continental river and drainage system of the Murray-Darling Rivers is interconnected. It requires an integrated planning strategy that involves federal political leadership, and collaborations that cross state borders, local planning boundaries and the division between the public and private sectors. This, of course, is only to sketch the basis of other neglected strategic planning collaborations that could and should occur, as in tourism and marketing.

191 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

On another lateral and integrative note it is appropriate to mention the role of humour in all aspects of the methodology. Humour is a tool of culture in this context. It depends on finely tuned cultural sensitivities and a cutting-edge form of cultural ‘radar’. The point about humour, however, is that it works. Humour can act as a circuit breaker and send settled cultural understandings off on a roller coaster of self-examination. Perhaps, effective humour that engages creatively with new culture and the forms of cultural diversity is a powerful expression of the spirit of Williams’ ‘connectivity’ in its most lateral vein.

Regardless of the aspect of integrated culture or the research method used, the sum is more important than the parts. Further, receptivity to culture is intensified by an awareness of the principles for culture, possession of the planner’s literacies, and by the practical reinforcement of the methodology

Planning Scales and Types

The relevance of all categories of culture to planning exists at all scales, whether these relate to heavily built up inner urban metropolitan areas, or sparsely populated areas in the countryside. However, increasing numbers of the world’s population now live in cities and are gravitating to them, making familiarity with an integrated concept of culture and culturised planning approaches essential. Integrated culture also applies to planning of most types. Relevance will also usually flow between planning at the scales shown in the illustration below and for spatial and strategic planning.

192 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Table 9. Planning Scales and Types

Scale Planning Type Integrated Integrated Culture Research

ƒ Site ƒ Control Plan ƒ Geography ƒ Research ƒ Precinct ƒ Precinct Plan ƒ History ƒ Collaboration ƒ Neighbourhood ƒ Local Plan ƒ Society ƒ Interpretation ƒ Region ƒ Regional Plan ƒ Nation ƒ National Strategy ƒ Globe ƒ Global Instrument

Source: Author

I should mention that this applies to a global type, World Heritage Sites, which are often a microcosm of the relationship between culture and planning and can serve as instructive examples. Sites such as these possess histories that include those of numerous, defunct civilisations, and can illustrate the encyclopaedic nature of history ranging from mediaeval European industries, to global religious centres, and the pilgrimage routes for all of the major faiths. In all of these cases, present-day communities may live adjacent to such sites, or in them, as in the case of Venice and other world heritage cities. The communities’ lives and values in these cities intersect with the past. These communities have an understanding, knowledge, and a point of view about such areas that contribute to their identity and maintenance. Of course, what I am alluding to here is a thinly veiled metaphor for the relationship that prevails between people and places everywhere. Although world heritage sites are at one end of the global spectrum of types, they highlight the relationship between the integrated culture of the past and the present and the fact that communities are repositories of knowledge about their area, regardless of the status of the area.

It should also be pointed out that specific research techniques and cultural materials may have special relevance in a particular planning case. For example, at a site level a control plan may need to include controls in relation to the colours, shapes, textures and landscape of a neighbourhood and/or historical pattern in order to contextualise future design. At a

193 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

precinct level the specific qualities of an architectural ensemble may need to be conserved or taken into account. We may know these qualities from paintings and sketches, as we do for Venice through the renowned paintings of Canaletto. At a regional level, broad planning issues relating to culture are paramount. Culture relates to marketing, tourism and competitiveness and if ethically represented suggests the true culture of an area in the balance of its diversity. At the scale of a nation or the globe we move into the realm of strategic planning. The representation of national culture in terms of international tourism and destination marketing has wider potential spin-offs if it is inclusive and culturally representative. From another angle, international agreements that commit a nation to conservation of certain sites according to pre-determined standards or to preventing certain behaviours damaging to the global environment may be implemented through proactive national planning.

Conclusion

It can be seen in principle that culture can contextualise and renovate planning at all geographical scales, including regional plans, local plans, masterplans and site development controls. The same applies to environmental, heritage and social assessments, and strategic plans for regional governance tourism, interpretation, and marketing.

The power of connectivity is inherent in culture. This is demonstrated when integrated culture is included in planning across the full spectrum of geographical scales and the range of planning forms. Culture has the capacity to enrich planning based on commonalities in ways of life, history and heritage and shared environments and ecologies. Further it can work through all of these elements simultaneously and transcend the polarisation in planning theory based on neo-modern or postmodern approaches.

Culture needs to be unlocked and its multiple knowledges made a definitive part of the locus of planning. As such, culture can then play its part as the foundational resource of planning. Factoring the model’s integrated culture into the planning process is the start. The end, in terms of postmodern global culture and commerce, is a superior differentiation

194 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

of place and a better articulation of culture. In Landry’s sense, connecting the present up with the past is a creative and differentiating opportunity; it is also part of articulating and mobilising the strategic aspirations of a community.

In terms of history however, information about the past is derived from a vast pool of resources that includes both the arts produced in a place and the representations about that place that they make. The development of conservation and heritage planning, and its informing international and national conservation codes and guides express this reality. In Australia, the establishment of the ‘cultural significance’ of a place is the central process in planning of this kind. I would suggest however that the value of working through the culture expressed in a community or place is of even greater importance and planning’s key agenda for the foreseeable future.

195 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER NINE

URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING IN SYDNEY

This chapter illustrates the Culturised Model in relation to Sydney, capital of the Australian state of NSW. It explores culture’s potential for planning for metropolitan Sydney in toto and selectively, down to the level of an individual allotment of suburban land. The analysis of the Sydney relationship between culture and planning necessarily refers to a continuum of scales in geography. In the same way, it also encompasses the links between levels of urban and regional planning, and aspatial strategic planning that occurs outside this frame. Culture not only runs through planning at all urban and regional levels, but also determines the integrity of much strategic planning outside the urban and regional framework, in sectors such as tourism and marketing

I illustrate the Model in selective terms. From a vast source of research materials and explanatory opportunities, my goal is to give an indication of the Model in terms of the principles for culture, the planner’s literacy trinity and the methodology based on each category of integrated culture and of integrated research. I choose the illustrations from relevant and telling cultural data that are important for Sydney, or theory that introduces a new aspect or interpretation in viewing the elements of Sydney’s culture.

The discussion of Sydney’s culture is undertaken at four, nested geographical scales that correlate with four key dimensions of Sydney’s actual planning. These dimensions are 1) Sydney at the metropolitan level, 2) the level of Sydney Harbour, 3) the inner suburb of Pyrmont-Ultimo, and 4) an individual site Bullecourt Place, at 428-466 Harris Street, Ultimo.

This illustrates the vast potential of culture for planning and its interconnectedness across the region. Further, it can be used to highlight the character and qualities of Sydney, in terms of its status as a developing global city, its post-colonial culture and its history as a cityport. These perspectives are invaluable because they illustrate the importance of

196 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

developing the broader connectivity of culture to urban and regional planning, and reveal the true power of culture as it may be released and intellectually engaged through the Culturised Model.

I begin the discussion with a clarification of the nature and terminology of the spatial planning to be outlined in this chapter.

Urban and Regional Planning

I note that significant variations exist in planning terminology internationally and between planning authors. For example, in NSW planning legislation is based on the paradigm and terminology of environmental planning, which in the 1970s replaced the earlier nomenclature of town and country planning derived from Britain. I will refer however to the more ‘global’ term of ‘urban and regional planning’ as I believe it emphasises the key relation of planning to place, and is less nebulous than the term environmental planning. Other Australian commentators, such as Gleeson (2003), also refer to urban and regional planning. The focus then is on Sydney in terms of urban and regional planning. At the metropolitan level, however, urban and regional planning planning assumes a strategic form in Gleeson’s terms of coordinating public and private investment and government regulation within particular spatial frames (Gleeson, 2003: 25). This definition highlights the form of strategic planning that occurs within urban and regional planning and permits its contrast with aspatial strategic planning. Aspatial strategic planning is discussed in Chapter Ten in terms of the strategic management and strategic marketing of a major heritage site. I will however indicate in this chapter potential opportunities for linkages between strategic urban and regional planning and aspatial strategic planning, as in the case of strategies for place marketing and the like.

197 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Culturised Model and Sydney

My Culturised Model for Planning will be applied to Sydney in terms of four areas. In Table 10 below I list the four areas to be discussed, and the respective geographical scale, planning form and/or documents associated with each.

Table 10. Sydney Areas, Geographical Scales, and Planning Types

Place/Area Geographical Scale Planning Form/Documents ƒ Sydney ƒ Region ƒ Metropolitan strategy ƒ Sydney Harbour ƒ Sub-region ƒ Regional Plan ƒ Pyrmont-Ultimo ƒ Suburb ƒ Local Plan ƒ Bullecourt Place, Ultimo ƒ Site ƒ Development Plan, and Interpretation Plan

Source: Author

The purpose of this discussion is to show culture in all of its forms, range and detail as it may be articulated for planning inclusion. The model thereby facilitates inclusiveness, creativity and planning invention.

Principles for Culture

The principles for culture in relation to Sydney are a compass that reminds the planner or researcher of key opportunities, potentialities and issues and can also suggest where research has, or could be, blown off course. The principles of plenitude, connectivity, diversity, reflexivity and sustainability vary in their individual levels of importance for each place, but they will generally all have a relevance of some kind. I now turn to illustrating the principles with examples to demonstrate their practical value for spatial planning. I begin with the first principle of plenitude.

198 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Plenitude

Sydney’s culture is plentiful. It includes great social diversity, and a rich heritage of indigenous and non-indigenous material heritage. Further, the humanities, arts and sciences are under constant evolution and development. I will illustrate this pattern of the plentifulness of culture with two examples, the first is from the realm of material culture and the second relates to imagination and creativity. Modern Sydney is built on a colonial archaeological underlay repeatedly exposed in the process of CBD development and re- development. This erstwhile hidden resource is a palimpsest of the physical history of the foundation of Sydney. At various points in Sydney this foundational layer is exposed in new development or restorations. For example, in the late 1990s, the city’s former General Post Office (GPO) was converted to an international hotel, the Westin GPO, part of a global hotel chain. In the process, the original stone and brick works of Sydney’s water supply, the Tank Stream, were revealed. They are now presented as an ‘in-house’ museum in the substantial basement area of the hotel, along with a series of bars, restaurants, and gourmet providores.

The second example of the plenitude of culture is represented by culture’s active expansion through the growth of hybridity in, and indeed between, cultural values, ethnicities, and the arts and sciences. This pattern is highly visible in a multicultural, migrant metropolis such as Sydney. Sydney qualifies as one of Sandercock’s ‘mongrel cities’ (2003). The growth of hybridity especially in regions as diverse as Sydney increases the numerous fractions of culture, and encourages fresh perspectives to be brought to bear on experience and history that reveal new materials and connections.

Connectivity

Connectivity is a rich and suggestive concept. It is also a concept for postmodern times, in that amid fragmentation and incommensurability, it suggests the power of cultural connection. Connectivity may be shown to exist on a number of axes. For instance, it is a

199 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

powerful but often hidden link between planning scales and forms and the mutiple dimensions of integrated culture.

The two examples I introduce to illustrate the potential value of connectivity relate to planning and to history, and the interpretation of history.

For Sydney, potential planning links exist between the city’s planning, and its promotion and marketing. That is to say formal, conscious and planned links may be created between metropolitan and sub-regional planning (as for Sydney Harbour) and the city’s representations about itself in the national and international tourism markets. This adds authority to the marketing and promotional process by introducing diversity in terms of cultural materials, cultural forms and community cultural perspectives.

In terms of history and its interpretation I refer to an example that is also pursued later as a case study. The history of a single site, Bullecourt Place in the Sydney suburb of Ultimo, reflects Sydney’s broader history, including the waves of globalisation in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Until the late 1920s, Bullecourt Place consisted of a large number of houses, shops and industrial enterprises, and over time these were home to some 75 different trades and industries (Godden Mackay Logan, 2003). These trades and industries were a mosaic of nineteenth century production and were the face of the industrial system and the social fabric of the time. Their connectivity expressed the social formation of the era. The interpretation of the place and its history needed to express this reality. It was in fact inspired by my observation as a project consultant on the art practice of the Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-1999). Gascoigne’s collages were assembled from found objects such as road signs, driftwood, newspapers and such like materials. These collages remind me of Australian society:

the intercultural ensemble of contemporary Australia is like the work of the artist Rosalie Gascoigne, something new and poetically beautiful, assembled from the old. Both the work of Gascoigne and contemporary Australia seem to owe something to ‘found culture’ and work through re-ordering layers of memory and association. (Young, 1999: 2)

200 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The conceptual insight in relation to social collage was transferred to the diversity of Victorian trades and industries that once existed at Ultimo, and on the site in question. A large interpretive installation or collage, in the form of a floor mosaic or mural, was proposed in the Interpretation Plan for the foyer of the new apartment building. The collage consisted of the names of the myriad trades and businesses that comprised the connected world of Victorian industry, as it once existed in the numerous terrace shops and factories on the extensive Harris Street site.

Figure 4. Metropolis, Rosalie Gascoigne Collage. Source: Edwards, D. (1998). Rosalie Gascoigne. Material as Landscape, Sydney: Art Gallery of NSW.

201 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 5. Installation Concept for Mosaic or Mural in Apartment Block at Bullecourt Place. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: Godden Mackay Logan.

Diversity

A pluralism of values and practices can be read through Sydney’s culturally diverse lifestyles, and the forms of Sydney’s landscape, history, and aspirations. Historically Sydney Harbour is a symbol of migration and multiculturalism, as it was the principal arrival point for migrants from the eighteenth century up until the late twentieth century. It was also the point of embarkation for Australian troops leaving to fight overseas in the two world wars of the twentieth century. The Quarantine Station, overlooking the harbour from North Head, and the Customs House at , also illustrate these roles.

The history of European migration that followed the Second World War is written into the images, stories and places of Sydney Harbour, and illustrate not only the connectivity in global flows of people, ideas and values, but the fear that these sometimes aroused.

202 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 6 – ‘Migrants Arriving in Sydney, 1966’ - David Moore Photo. Source: Moore, D. (1993). Sydney Harbour, Sydney: Chapter and Verse.

Photographic images document the arrival of migrants from Europe, and personal and family stories of the settlement experience. Suburban and domestic places document the attachments that grew up in the process of adaptation and survival in a new country. This is part of a broader story in term of the evolution of social, health and labour policies and the emergence of an ethical and legal framework of support for cultural diversity, including ethnic diversity. Diversity is also reflected in Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity is a foundation stone of planning and the social sciences. It is also the foundation stone of more enduring aspects of human culture that reside in the arts and sciences and in the power of imagination.

203 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Allied with criticality, reflexivity is a pillar of democratic culture, especially in an age of media democracy. I also believe a healthy level of reflexivity is the corollary of an ethical society, because although ethics is about knowing what is right to do it is also about interpreting and maintaining the active engagement of society’s ethics as expressed in its laws, standards, values, and codes. In the case of planning for Pyrmont-Ultimo, critical thinking at the most straightforward level, suggests an abrogation and appropriation of local authority and responsibility by the state government. More complex analysis may serve to put this within the frame of international experience of the time, which saw a combination of government objectives and practices such as developmental entrepreneurialism and debt retirement. Reflexivity suggests that global cityports such as Sydney exhibit commonalities of culture and history and have experienced in recent decades a similar recent pattern of economic and physical re-structuring. Further, the current planning of such cities is directed to accommodate the needs and opportunities that relate to their waterfronts and their coastal ecologies. The theme of the post-colonial adds to the mercantilism and migration that characterise a cityport, and the history of colonisation where its impacts continue into the present day.

Similarly, only a reflexive approach will begin to provide answers to questions such as the kinds of promotion and marketing of Sydney culture that are appropriate and where and how the community might come to draw the line on the inherent problem of commodification (Thorns, 2002; Wirth and Freestone, 2003). Community participation in the state and federal marketing of Sydney are issues, as are community inputs into the direction of the public culture and its relation to tourism and tourism culture. Place marketing and tourism planning are postmodern determinants of the location, and concentration of the tourist gaze and as such require a sophisticated reflexive practice.

Sustainability

In pre-colonial times Sydney as the Aboriginal place known as Weerong was a sustainable environmental system (Flannery, 1999). It was a cultural landscape produced by Aboriginal occupation and practices such as the periodic firing of bushland to facilitate the

204 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

hunting of animals. This relationship exhibits a particular viewpoint in regard to land and country. Interpreted in terms of longer swathes of environmental time, Flannery (1999) argues the case for a more cautious approach to Sydney’s sustainability and one that draws on conservative elements of the Aboriginal approach.

The sustainability of Sydney Harbour’s is now perceived in more holistic terms in relation to the entire Sydney Harbour catchment (NSW DUAP, 2000: 10). In 1998 the NSW Government introduced the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority Act, 1998 to control all foreshore development in terms of height and proximity to the shoreline, thus making a beginning towards the adoption of such an approach.

Literacy Trinity

The literacy trinity in relation to Sydney planning can be illustrated with an example for each of the literacies, beginning with cultural literacy.

Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy in terms of relevant cultural theory for Sydney includes an appreciation of the post-colonial perspective and an understanding of post-colonial theory. This perspective is present in the Australian model for cultural mapping, and in the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS, 1999) and its associated Guidelines and Code on the Ethics of Co-Existence (Australia ICOMOS, 1999).

A post-colonial perspective is also part of NSW and Commonwealth planning for Sydney Harbour and is the basis of inclusive histories.

I will illustrate this important challenge to the planner’s literacies with a slightly lateral example that suggests a rule. It is a subtle example that illustrates the negative potential that can exist in the field of cultural representation, in the case of popular culture and gay and lesbian culture within a multicultural context. The organisers of a gay and lesbian

205 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

dance party in Sydney, utilised the name of the Hindu religious epic the Kama Sutra, to label their dance party as Homosutra. They also appropriated Hindu religious imagery and language for their posters and other advertisements of the event. Commentators noted the borrowing and consumption of the exotic Hindu ‘Other’ by the dance party organisers in the following terms:

This may be categorised as a kind of postmodern phenomena whereby popular cultural practices are intensively involved in cultural borrowings, nostalgic re- appropriations and pastiches of different styles owing to the fact that there are fewer ‘innovations’ to move to because of the speed and diversity of images presented, and no newly ‘discovered’ cultures and societies to primitivise or exoticise. In one sense, the cultural borrowings in Homosutra can be seen to cut across previously separated conceptual domains such as from religion to popular culture, from high culture to , from the specialised to the everyday (Velayutham and Wise, 2001: 151-152).

While cultural borrowings of this kind are probably best seen as postmodern, the reasons given for the phenomenon in relation to the speed of the circulation of knowledge and a lack of new ‘culture’ to appropriate are more open to debate.

The presence or absence of clear, ethical standards in relation to cultural representation is an important social issue, perhaps particularly so in societies where the principles of cultural diversity have statutory recognition. In addition, the ‘message’ given out by the dance party has an impact on perceptions of cultural diversity, the qualities of urban precincts, and the social character of a minority group. How and where to use popular knowledge of Hinduism or any religious faith requires the deployment of the three literacies. This can be demonstrated by comparing the actual use of the title Homosutra by the Sydney gay and lesbian group with a potential use of the title. A Hindu gay group, for example, could seek to make a particular point for its own culture. Following on from this are potential difficulties that such a group might encounter within its own ethnic and religious minority in Sydney, or elsewhere.

206 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Ethical Literacy

A lucid example of the role of ethics and of reflexivity in ethics in planning in relation to Australia, and with particular relevance to the Sydney Region, is provided through the issue of population and environment in Australia in the next half century. This is important to Sydney as the City takes the majority of overseas migration and thus faces more environmental stress than other Australian cities.

The demographer Ian Burnley has drawn attention to the fact (Burnley, 2003) that some environmentalists have come to see continued population growth as a threat to the environment, particularly growth that occurs through immigration. The environmentalists argue that Australia, a country almost the size of the USA, should aim for a population of only twenty million by 2060, when the global population will reach nine billion. Burnley takes ethical issue with this view as based on a complex inward-looking nationalism that could lead to Australia’s marginalisation in the world. While arguing for environmental interventions and changed environmental practices throughout the country, Burnley sees a moral necessity, and legal obligation, for Australia to give asylum to a significant number of refugees. Burnley’s reflexivity succeeds in taking a higher ethical and compassionate ground based on global citizenry than that of the environmentalists.

Strategic literacy

The relationship between the diversity of planning scales, levels and forms is an important component of strategic literacy, as are the nature and differential utility of planning techniques. Planning exercises for the same area often run along separate tracks and fail to engage despite interconnections. This creates parallel universes of planning, in spite of intersections and the underlying, shared base of culture. The promotion of Sydney as a destination to national and international visitors and investors should be strategically aligned, though it is currently the responsibility of diverse agencies. It also presents the opportunity to link heritage conservation and interpretation, museum and gallery programs, events and budgets, and local community cultural development activities. This scenario is

207 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

scarcely envisaged but could be furthered by state intervention and through administrative devices such as coordinated policy development and inter-departmental committees (IDCs).

The Methodology

The operation of the methodology for Sydney is illustrated in terms of the four, nested areas described earlier – 1) Metropolitan Sydney, 2) Sydney Harbour, 3) Pyrmont-Ultimo, and 4) Bullecourt Place at 428-466 Harris Street, Ultimo. Under the NSW planning system these areas would normally correspond to a hierarchy of State and local government jurisdiction and types of planning control under the provisions of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, 1979, No 203. However, in reality the suburb of Pyrmont-Ultimo (containing the site of Bullecourt Place), is the subject of a NSW Government control, the Sydney Regional Environmental Plan No 26 – City West, owing to the area’s developmental interest to the State. Sydney Harbour’s surrounds are subject to State Environmental Planning Policy No. 56. – Sydney Harbour Foreshores and Tributaries. A new metropolitan strategy is currently under development by the State for the Sydney region.

Each level is briefly illustrated with a ‘snapshot’ of its culture in the section on integrated culture, and then in relation to integrated research. In the case of each category of integrated culture and the elements of integrated research, I focus on two themes or issues. Woven through these scales I also introduce materials in relation to Sydney at the international scale. The purpose is not to provide an exhaustive account of Sydney, but rather to illustrate the methodology and its relationships in sufficient detail to render its power visible. The heuristic value and underpinning frame of the methodology can have a decisive role in culturising planning and deepening the depth and breadth of its content.

208 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Integrated Culture under the Methodology

Figure 7. Map of Sydney Showing the Harbour, Pyrmont-Ultimo and Bullecourt Place. Source: Jack Barton, Sydney.

Geography

Sydney

Sydney is a city of some four million inhabitants and sprawls along the Cumberland Plain between the Pacific Coast in the east and the Blue Mountains in the west. It is a postcolonial, multicultural cityport that began its white history in 1788, having been

209 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

occupied by Aboriginal nations for ‘almost certainly more than thirty thousands years’ (Kohen, 2000: 76).

In the most fundamental geographical sense its evolution has been profoundly influenced by its geology. The city’s geography encompasses Sydney Harbour, National Parks, ocean beaches, a multi-layered architectural and landscape heritage, and a pattern of suburban sprawl. This is a complex geography, images of which are recognised around the globe. Sydney’s fundamental geographical assets, including its geodiversity and biodiversity require planning protection, to achieve sustainability and to reinforce the city’s most basic identity. At every level culturised planning will seek to identify and explore geographical qualities, including geodiversity and biodiversity. At times the control and continuity of these assets are in contention between governments, communities, developers and environmentalists. However, these qualities are also as much the ‘bedrock’, of community liveability as they are of the tourism industry and need specific area-by-area research for planning purposes.

Sydney Harbour

At the heart of Sydney and its identity lies Sydney Harbour, a massive and iconic waterway. The utility and splendour of Sydney Harbour escapes no one. Apparent to all, from the indigenous people of Weerong to European naval officers and colonizers, the Harbour geography inspires culture in all of its manifold varieties.

Sydney Harbour is deep and navigable. Its geography includes numerous promontories into which the Parramatta River flows, from the West, and because it is a short river the Harbour is relatively free of silt. The Harbour is relieved with a number of islands and is surrounded by the suburbs and foreshore areas of Sydney. It is worth noting in respect of Sydney’s geography that the Harbour was formed by rising sea levels some 6000 thousand million years ago (DUAP, 1999: 12). Of equal importance is the fact that Sydney Harbour was once a sandstone river valley - for sandstone is both a symbol and a marker of Sydney. There is no better illustration of the Harbour’s depths than in the photographs of huge

210 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

ocean liners docked at the Overseas Passenger Terminal, Circular Quay, on the city’s doorstep, taken by David Moore. The dramatic character of the Harbour is also illustrated in aerial photographs taken by Moore who documented the evolution of the Harbour from the air from the 1930s on and spent a lifetime surveying the working and social life of the Harbour at ground and water levels. The geography of the harbour had a similar impact on innumerable other artists working in all media.

Figure 8. ‘Sydney Harbour from 20,000 Feet, 1992’. David Moore Photo Source: Moore, D. (1993). Sydney Harbour, Sydney: Chapter and Verse.

211 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The numerous promontories of the Harbour mark the course of the old river, as it meandered to the sea. As a result, much of the character of the Harbour is a consequence of the earth materials, including sandstone, of which it is composed, and of the way Europeans have used the Harbour. For example, the flatter southern shore attracted wharves and industry and the CBD, while the steeper north shore has attracted affluent housing because of the views. Apart from the significance of the geodiversity the Harbour’s biodiversity has been maintained with the harbour suburbs retaining remarkable amounts of natural vegetation with a bushland experience usually available in close proximity. This is the

212 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

background to countless photographs, and paintings, in architectural settings and writing, and indeed is the background to the birth of environmental politics in Sydney. In the early 1970s a coalition of middle-class Sydney residents in the harbourside suburb of Hunter’s Hill, obtained for the waterfront bushland of Kellys Bush a protective Green Ban from the radical NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF) (Murphy and Watson, 1997: 159). The green ban movement has been publicised and studied globally.

At the broadest level, information about the geodiversity of Sydney, as well as details of its biodiversity and flora and fauna habitats, are important cultural considerations for planners and local communities. Their detailed research and updated monitoring are fundamental to good planning. Considerations such as these go to the issue of local distinctiveness and its intrinsic and utilitarian value in planning documents. They represent opportunities and constraints, are part of the web of sustainability, and are important in deliberative and design settings in planning. They are also phenomena relevant to the ongoing cultural interpretation of Sydney, and potentially inspire artistic and behavioural creativity, as well as new connections, themes, events, and community collaborations. These are important considerations in imaginative cultural and social planning and in developing culturally respect and responsive tourism planning at all levels. For example, Australia’s oldest surviving European building Elizabeth Farm, now a NSW house museum, hosts an annual ‘Festival of the Olive’. The Festival not only celebrates the planting of the first olive tree in Australia in the grounds of the house in 1805 but also explores Mediterranean culture through music and food (Historic Houses Trust, 2005).

The landscape of Sydney Harbour and its beauty have been at the service of tourism imagery and promotion for some time. Cliffs of mainly Hawkesbury sandstone greet those arriving at the entry to Sydney Harbour by sea and then become lower on the inland trip. To the west of the , and on the south shore, Pyrmont Point arises. It stands out as a prominent peninsula jutting into the Harbour and is dominated by a massive sandstone cliff face.

213 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sandstone is now part of the character of the city, particularly its most important colonial buildings. A cool, pale, soft, brown stone that is easily discoloured by weather, and the impacts of air pollution, it dignifies Sydney’s CBD, suburban centres and affluent housing. Sandstone contributes to Sydney’s largely cool palette of natural and painted materials under its blue, sub-tropical skies. In Flannery’s words ‘No city has been as profoundly influenced by its rocky foundation as Sydney, for its sandstone has given form and colour to its finest buildings, shaped its economy, guided its spread and protected its natural jewels – the rainforest gullies, coves and beaches made inaccessible to builders by its steep bluffs’ (Flannery, 1999: 8).

Occasionally the character of this traditional colour palette is overridden, most famously in the 1990s in the CBD by the erection of an award winning building comprising office and residential towers. Designed by the noted Genoan architect Renzo Piano, the towers are faced with a warm, terracotta coloured ceramic tile. The development’s elegant forms have a close and harmonious relationship with the surrounding urban geometry. However, the warm ‘Mediterranean’ colour of the tiling of these elegant new compositions, fails to reflect Sydney’s geological identity and the sandstone building culture of its CBD. Yet, I contend that every aspect of good design is necessarily anchored in the components of the culture of a place. Sandstone is Sydney’s base rock; it is its geology, and the stuff of the Harbour’s promontories, cliffs and outcrops. Planning documents have the opportunity to consider sandstone topography in conservation, site design and landscaping, especially in the NSW REP for Sydney Harbour, in all master planning for the harbour waterfront, and in site specific and precinct DCPs. Current planning and administration for much of the harbour foreshore under the responsible body, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA), recognises in principle the importance of the harbour’s geography (DUAP, 1999). This includes its visual qualities, foreshore open space, remnant native bushland and other natural features that need to be conserved and managed as part of a natural ecosystem. For example, the harbour’s character is described as including ‘the exposed sandstone cliffs (that) form a grand-scale gateway to the Harbour’ (NSW DUAP 1999: 28).

214 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Pyrmont-Ultimo

On the borders of Sydney Harbour lie numerous waterside suburbs. These include Pyrmont and Ultimo situated on the Pyrmont Peninsula, which are often bracketed together as the one area known as Pyrmont-Ultimo. The Pyrmont Peninsula terminates in a massive sandstone promontory at its northern extremity that faces the Harbour. The defining sandstone topography of the Peninsula has the kind of dramatic and even wild beauty that characterises the Harbour foreshores. As an aspect of Sydney’s core, the Harbour surrounds are controlled under the provisions of a broader State planning policy, Sydney Harbour Environmental Planning Policy No. 56 - Sydney Harbour Foreshores and Tributaries.

Today, the peninsula is dominated by the Star City Casino complex, media and hi-tech businesses, and high-rise apartments concentrated at densities far higher than existed previously (Searle and Byrne, 2002). Pyrmont-Ultimo is adjacent to the entertainment and dining precinct of Darling Harbour, and close to the City’s CBD. Its apartments compete with each other for views and glimpses of the Harbour and their residents are employed not in the old factories of the Peninsula, but in the globalised service sector of the CBD. In search of community, these residents find cafes, restaurants and local convenience stores and shops emerging as the basis of a more fluctuating and fluid identity of place.

Bullecourt Place, 428-466 Harris Street, Ultimo

At the southern end of the Pyrmont-Ultimo peninsula lies the site of the former AML and F Woolstore that was destroyed by fire in 1992. On this parcel of land, a modern apartment complex known as Bullecourt Place was constructed in the early 2000’s. As a condition of consent for redevelopment of the site for residential use, the NSW Government required an Interpretation Strategy, which I will examine shortly.

The site’s geography has played a part several times through its history. For example, trades and services were attracted to the area in the latter part of the nineteenth century

215 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

because of its proximity to the CBD. Likewise, the woolstore constructed in the late 1920s needed to be close to the deep-water frontage and the railways nearby for shipping. The railways delivered the wool bales from country NSW and they were stored until overseas dispatch from the wharves nearby (Godden Mackay Logan, 2003). The present day apartment block also profits from the site’s geographical proximity to the CBD.

History

Sydney

Sydney’s history ranges from the early environmental practices and cosmology of its indigenous people through to its current social diversity and postmodern culture. This history includes indigenous dispossession, a continuing postcolonial cycle of indigenous social exclusion, convictism, the birth of a kaleidoscopic multiculturalism after the Second World War, and egalitarian, sceptical and criminal social traditions. This history requires ethical and social acknowledgement and psychic and creative integration into the city’s planning documents and in reflexive planning practices.

Prior to British colonisation in 1788, Sydney was known as Weerong in Aboriginal culture, and many parts of Sydney now have Aboriginal names (Flannery, 1995: 323). For example, the site of the is Bennelong Point, named after Bennelong, one of the first Aboriginal men to engage in regular contact with the settlers (Flannery, 1995: 324).

At the time of European colonisation the Aboriginal population is variously estimated to have been up to and over 5,000 people for the Sydney region, with more people living on the coast because of the greater availability and variety of food resources (Murray and White, 1988). Some migration inland occurred during the winter months when marine resources were not as plentiful. As in other parts of Australia, the basic unit of social organization in traditional Aboriginal society was the ‘clan’, usually consisting of no more than fifty people. Although clans usually kept to their own territory, extensive trade, legal,

216 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

religious and social relations were maintained and their material culture was similar to other Aborigines throughout the continent, with local variations to suit available resources and uses. included fur garments, particularly in colder (inland) areas. Bark huts were larger on the coast, housing up to 6 people compared with inland huts that housed only 1 or 2 people. Substantial numbers of Aborigines lived around Sydney Harbour and the diet of the coastal area included land animals, seafood and ‘bush tucker’ such as roots, tubers, fungi, and berries. Rock engravings and paintings occur throughout the Sydney region, at Bondi Headland, Royal National Park, and Kuringai National Park. Planning needs to protect, interpret and present these resources to the community. In presenting this culture Aboriginal custodians have the right to interpret and present their views as to meanings, levels of access and interpretive approaches, in the spirit of the NSW Charter of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society.

Aboriginal culture experienced a traumatic and comprehensive rupture with the beginning of colonial settlement in the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless the history of Aboriginal peoples is woven through the from this period up until the present day. Aboriginal communities support the inclusion of their history in the overall history of Sydney and Australia, and take their historical and social place across the spectrum of Australian educational curricula including civics. This historical inclusiveness is a political statement about the nature of Australian culture as it has evolved into an official and functioning multiculture. Social planning needs to find ways to draw on this culture and strengthen it.

Following colonisation Sydney evolved slowly but surely. By the 1820s the pattern for the future was established, with Sydney becoming a trading port servicing the Pacific region. Over the next few decades wharves were established around the Cove and at Darling Harbour for the coastal trade of coal, timber, grain and vegetables. Desirable foreshore land to the east of the harbour attracted the attention of the wealthy and powerful who built elegantly-sited 'marine villas', with picturesque views to and from the harbour. The evidence of this physical historical culture remains as an archaeological underlay in Sydney. Conservation planning, including archaeological zoning plans for the CBD, and

217 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

key historical areas are required to protect, reveal, and add to the store of knowledge about colonial Sydney, when sites are re-developed.

In the 1850s wool and wheat poured into Sydney from the west of New South Wales on the new state railway system. Large clipper ships dominated the export trade in these goods until the end of the century and their masts and rigging roped the harbour sky. The wool clippers berthed at Circular Quay were a famous Sydney site, commented on by numerous observers and visitors such as the writer Joseph Conrad. Conrad visited Sydney on a schooner a number of times and described it in The Union of the Sea, 1906 (Morris, 1992: 161).

By the 1890s the overseas trade had moved to Darling Harbour, serviced by railway lines and it was here that the 1980s complex of exhibition spaces, museum, restaurants and shops was created, in the post-modern spirit of spectacularisation. During the second half of the nineteenth century new suburbs appeared all around the Harbour, and as today ferry services connected them to the city centre. Yachting became a popular pastime and a regatta was held on 26 January each year, to commemorate the day European colonisers landed from the ‘First Fleet’ in 1788. This date became .

Circular Quay became the dock for ocean liners in the twentieth century, especially the P & O Line. It was here that many Australians left on their trips to Europe and European immigrants first stepped ashore. Middle class Australians of Anglo-Celtic descent travelled in the direction of England, while Mediterranean and central European migrants stepped ashore. Nowadays these divisions in Sydney and Australian society have lost most of their importance and in the meantime the Asianisation of Sydney culture increases its pace.

Sydney Harbour

Sydney Harbour has always been well served by its painters. The great painter of the nineteenth century was Conrad Martens who came to Sydney on Charles Darwin's ship the

218 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Beagle. Infatuated by the Harbour, he stayed on, content to capture the shifting light and moods of the Harbour for life.

The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, visiting from England in the early 1870s, also fell under the Harbour’s spell, claiming that he despaired of being able to convey to any reader his idea of the Harbour’s beauty:

It is so inexpressively lovely that it makes a man ask himself whether it would not be worth his while to move his household goods to the eastern coast of Australia, in order that he might look at it as long as he can look at anything (Trollope, 1873: 210).

Apart from its aesthetic inspiration to those with artistic sensitivity such as Trollop, the Harbour also played a role in the worlds of work, and of defence activities. The navy was centred on Sydney Harbour from the 1880s with shipbuilding and repair facilities located on a number of islands, including Garden, Cockatoo, Goat and Spectacle. Like other shipping, naval activity has contracted in the Harbour and most of the state's exports are now carried on large foreign vessels, increasingly departing from Botany Bay to the south. This shift has ignited a debate over maintaining Sydney Harbour as a working port. However, what Sydney lost in the twentieth century, in the decline of picturesque Harbour industries such as ship-building and the coastal shipping trade (taken over by the railways), it has perhaps more than gained through the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932, and the Opera House in 1973. The Bridge was the great public work of the Depression. It brought the picturesque qualities of the harbour into focus, and pulled the northern and southern shores of the Harbour together.

Joern Uzon's Opera House was Sydney's post-war icon, constructed on Bennelong Point, a sacred Aboriginal site. The romantic modernism of the Opera House contrasts with the classicism of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Like Venice's Campanile and St Mark's Cathedral, the two buildings work together through contrast. And the Harbour is the link with the ocean beyond.

219 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sydney’s recent history revolves around its post-colonial status and its legacy as a cityport. This encompasses the pre-colonial history and culture of indigenous Australians, and their subsequent role in the City’s story. The Harbour is a distilled expression of both of these themes. The Harbour also includes waterfront areas and traditional waterside communities that have both frequently been transformed from the period of the1980s on, following the global re-structuring of port activities and the growing demand from the tourism, leisure and entertainment sectors.

Pyrmont-Ultimo

As a former industrial area just to the west of the City’s CBD, the area has a long history as an industrial and maritime suburb and a strong relationship with the historic Port of Sydney. The area has since been redeveloped and its former blue-collar community and industrial heritage has largely disappeared. A major redevelopment scheme of the 1990s for gentrified living and working, saw most of the former industrial structures removed. The scale and intensity of the endeavour invites comparison with similar projects to redevelop former waterfront industrial land such as at London’s Isle of Dogs. However, unlike the environment of the area had already been transformed several times in its history by earlier waves of development, that I describe.

The pattern of the early history of Pyrmont-Ultimo is that in outline of much of early Sydney. Ultimo was a large grant to an influential member of the colony’s officer class, Surgeon John Harris of the New South Wales Corps. The grant was made in 1795, but by 1818 Harris had become the owner of 233 acres covering most of what is now Pyrmont and Ultimo (Fitzgerald and Golder 1994: 17). By the 1830s commercial and industrial uses were springing up around Harris’ estate. Harris recognised the inevitable and subdivided and sold off part of the estate. By the late 1800s the suburb had assumed its residential and industrial character. Small-scale manufacturing industries, local shops and services characterised both suburbs, with residents living close their places of work. By the beginning of the twentieth century the area was a mix of quarries, markets, power plants, industries such as the Colonial Sugar Refinery (CSR) factories, and the physically

220 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

dominating bulk of massive woolstores. The woolstores were constructed in the 1880s, and swept away a large number of small industries and businesses, as the peninsula experienced its first taste of the impact of globalisation. A similar woolstore constructed at a later period between 1925 and 1930 by the AML and F Company, had the same environmental consequences for the area. The AML and F Woolstore occupied an Ultimo block bounded by four streets, Quarry Street, Pyrmont Street, Harris Street and William Henry Street, and becomes a further part of this account shortly.

The wool industry had an equally dramatic effect on the area when its operations relocated to more distant suburbs in the 1960s, leaving behind the massive woolstores as industrial megaliths. Some of the woolstores were later converted to apartments but the AML and F Woolstore was demolished. Later, a modern apartment block was developed on this site, known as Bullecourt Place, at 428-466 Harris Street. The history, planning and planning context of this site is a thread in this story.

The overall history of the Pyrmont-Ultimo Peninsula is that of a pattern of large-scale industry and of a close-knit community that lived in the area for generations. This industrial and maritime history is characterised by historians of the area (writing in the mid- 1990s) in the following terms:

Through its railway yards, wharves, woolstores and mills have passed much of the produce of New South Wales and beyond. Ships docked at its wharves have loaded and unloaded unnumbered tons of produce and thousands of immigrants. Its powerhouses have given light and heat to the streets and homes of Sydney, and moved its trams. For years, its incinerators destroyed the evidence of society’s wastefulness. Its quarries have given up the sandstone which is the hallmark of the best loved historic buildings of Sydney (Fitzgerald and Golder, 1994: 9).

This history is also characterised by waves of globalisation. The building of the woolstores in the 1880s resulted from the need to house wool bales before they were exported, in what had become Australia’s largest colonial industry. The Peninsula of Pyrmont-Ultimo was close to the railways and possessed the deep-water access for international shipping that the cityport of Sydney provided. However, the death knell of the industry after almost eighty years on the Peninsula was sounded by its re-location away

221 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

from the area in the 1960s. This left behind disused industrial sites, and considerable amounts of government owned land, such as railway land and the sites of power plants.

A complicated political and planning history then followed for the area. This was set in play by the State’s desire to utilise its land assets to retire state debt through the sale and redevelopment of government land at Pyrmont-Ultimo, as well as jockeying with the City of Sydney for planning jurisdiction (Searle and Byrne, 2002). Ultimately, a government development body, the City West Development Corporation, was established (Fitgerald and Golder, 1994: 126). In 1992 the Corporation released its plans for Pyrmont-Ultimo proposing major commercial and residential development. The increase in residential numbers proposed and the plans for a casino, a heliport and a ‘media village’ for the 2000 Olympics left the traditional residents in a state of confusion. The consequence of these plans was to make residents living in the area as redundant as the Peninsula’s heritage. In the words of the City of Sydney’s historians, local people were made to feel they were ‘…getting in the way, spoiling the view. They don’t have a place in the planners’ idealised drawings. Nor is there much room in those plans for buildings, industrial and domestic which are Pyrmont and Ultimo’s heritage’ (Fitzgerald and Golder, 1994: 130).

Around this time the Australia Council funded a collaborative cultural mapping study, known as the Pyrmont Pieces Project (Fitzgerald and Golder, 1994: 120). In this project community development workers collaborated with the residents to identify those places it considered significant in the area and that should be kept. Some sixty items were identified by the community that related to their memories and attachments to place, including wharves, stone steps, palm trees and the peninsula’s massive railway cutting constructed through raw sandstone. Despite the success of this planning collaboration only a handful of the heritage items were in fact conserved (Searle and Byrne, 2002: 17).

222 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 9. Sketch from Pyrmont Pieces Cultural Map, 1992. Source: Fitzgerald, S. and Golder, H. (1994). Pyrmont and Ultimo under Siege, Sydney: Hale and Iremonger.

Fitgerald and Golder pronounced the epitaph of the former community, and all of Sydney’s inner areas in the following terms: ‘If, as a society, we have been unremarkable in preserving our built heritage, we have been even more unable to preserve the social heritage of our old, inner-city, working class areas’ (Fitzgerald and Golder, 1994: 130). As in many cities around the globe, Sydney planning was too laissez-faire, and unassertive in the face of development interests. It was also dominated by the middle-class mind-set of the town planner that did not readily identify with the conservation of working class communities or fully value industrial history and heritage. Conceptualising social conservation or the idea of environmental justice, was therefore not easy for planning, although the planning theorist Hugh Stretton raised the possibility of protecting ‘class shares’ of the environment (Young, 1984). I myself applied this concept within the NSW

223 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Government in the early 1980s as a policy proposal in respect of a terrace row in the Sydney suburb of Redfern with strong social significance for its indigenous occupants. The proposal was rejected, but I later described social conservation in NSW Government publications as a general option for NSW heritage policy (Young, 1984; 1988). The capacity for social planning to deal with this issue is likely to be developed by the practice of cultural mapping as this establishes the grounds of cultural interconnection and hence community legitimacy.

Bullecourt Place, 428-466 Harris Street, Ultimo

Figure 10. ‘Archaeological Palimpsest’ - Remains of former yard structures preserved beneath the concrete floors of the 1925 AML and F Woolstore, Ultimo. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: Godden Mackay Logan.

224 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This history of the site is chronicled in the Interpretation Strategy (Godden Mackay Logan, 2003). The site was first part of Surgeon John Harris’ grant. Harris resided at Ultimo House on Harris Street. On one corner a small quarry was operated. Thus we have the origin of the names of two of the surrounding streets, Quarry and Harris Streets. A small laneway also crossed the site, known as Schlinker’s Lane, after the resident, fireman and owner of 136 Quarry Street, John Schlinker (Godden et al, 2003: 9). A hotel and two terraces were built on the site in the 1870s, and were later all demolished and replaced by a new hotel built by the large NSW brewing company Tooth and Co in 1922. The Harris Street frontage of the site was developed from the 1880s with shops, houses and industries eventually numbering some seventy-five different trade and industries (GML, 2003: ). The AML and F Woolstore replaced many of these, with only five terraces and a manufacturing premises remaining until the 1970s. This jagged streetscape was finally reduced to an empty site when the Woolstore was destroyed by fire in the late 1970s.

Schlinker’s Lane had a symbolic Australian fate, and because of anti-German sentiment during the First World War the Council changed the lane’s name to Bullecourt Lane. The new name commemorated two important battles in the First World War, in which Australian troops participated. At Bullecourt in France more than seven thousand Australians lost their lives (GML, 2003: 9). Thus we arrive at the name of the former laneway and the contemporary 272-unit apartment complex.

225 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 11. Australian Infantry Force (AIF) near Bullecourt, France. Source: Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: Godden Mackay Logan.

The history of this site is a microcosm of the history of Pyrmont-Ultimo. The site itself is a palimpsest of the area’s heritage with layers of foundations from different periods and archaeological artefacts. Archaeological excavations revealed numerous remains of earlier building materials, including sandstone foundation blocks from a number of former terraces and a factory. These sandstone footings are included as features in the landscaping of the recently constructed apartment complex.

226 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Society

Sydney

Sydney society is open, diverse, and increasingly Asian in its population and orientation. It is a society that is ‘… almost wholly a migrant creation’ (Birmingham, 1999: 13) with a vibrant multiculturalism that includes ethnic and artistic hybridity, richness in all of the arts and diversity of cuisine. This society is a focus for all planning issues and deliberations, spanning natural heritage conservation and the reduction of pollution locally and globally, the conservation of tangible and intangible heritage, the fostering of social belonging and cultural participation, and the development of the economy, including the competitiveness of the city’s cultural economy. A broad spectrum of planning issues confronts Sydney. These encompass coastal management, historical, social, heritage, design, industrial, tourism and marketing matters. In addition, Sydney is a driver of the national economy. As a global city it competes with other such cities and regions, and its cultural economy lies at the heart of its international competitiveness. This perception has led the NSW Government to propose major redevelopment for the traditionally low-income, inner-city suburb of Redfern and the interconnected southern CBD (Jopson, Ryle and Goodsir, 2004). These areas may now face a similar history to that of the residents of Pyrmont-Ultimo. The genuine integration of the community’s voice in social planning and in effective efforts to conserve its rights of occupation and attachments to heritage places will be tested.

Sydney is exploring the diversity of its population in terms of its communities and their values and practices (Armstrong, 1994; Thompson, 2005). The ebb and flow of communities and their lifestyles renders collaborative research a priority, as community culture and social history are often the most vulnerable and disposable elements in the process of change. Cultural interpretation, especially aided by political economy, permits us to see the physical and social change that typifies the processes of neo-liberal urban re- structuring. More specific cultural theory provides the lenses through which we might see the new culture of spectacle and hyper-reality that accompanies the economic re- structuring.

227 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Sydney Harbour

Many traditional harbourside communities have been replaced with the process of gentrification in suburbs and through the restructuring of waterside port and industrial activities. Former productive landscapes are now devoted to consumption with restaurants, museums, apartments, berths for cruise ships, marinas for international yachts and waterfront promenades replacing stevedoring and warehousing.

Pyrmont-Ultimo

In Pyrmont-Ultimo, where new residents have replaced traditional communities, the new communities experience greater social ‘churning’, with the frequent turnover of residents, whether as owners or tenants. Pyrmont-Ultimo has emerged as a hub for media industries employing younger generations many of whom choose to live locally. The increasing number of coffee shops, take-away restaurants, laundromats and gourmet providores is a response to the income levels of the most recent demographic groups. The time-poor lifestyle of these groups is catered for by such facilities and new patterns of community interaction have emerged centred on the coffee shops and a ‘café lifestyle’.

Bullecourt Place

The apartment complex of Bullecourt Place offered apartments for sale in what was an expensive, and higher price bracket for the area. As an expensive complex within an area of relative affluence it again attracts residents in the most prosperous categories of the services sector.

Integrated Research with the Methodology

The preceding outline of Sydney’s culture of geography, history and society, indicates the diversity of its elements. This parallels the epistemological variations and possibilities in coming to know such culture. These range from quantitative research in a positivist

228 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

epistemological mode, to qualitative and communicative levels of understanding dependent on community collaborations, and interpretation based on theory, whether informed by principally neo-modern or postmodern assumptions. Again, in practice each aspect may be interpenetrated with the other or others. While it is the argument of this thesis that all planning may benefit from culture, it is also true that planning at different geographical scales or for specific outcomes may in practice focus on specific aspects or culture, or techniques of access. In the Sydney context master planning for redundant metropolitan industrial land or former port areas will require a close examination of the history, heritage and of each precinct. Social planning on the other hand, encompassing areas with differences in age and ability, with culturally diverse migrant populations, ort gay and lesbian communities will require sensitive cultural mapping of community values and the development of strategies to promote cultural belonging and sharing. Again, a controversial historic site will require subtle and sophisticated cultural interpretation to tell its multiple stories in the context of a postcolonial history of indigenous dispossession and multiculturalism.

Cultural Research

Sydney

The cultural research of Sydney’s geography encompasses the city’s biophysical qualities and topographical and geomorphological characteristics. The City’s history includes past ways of life, their heritage, cultural practices, and arts and sciences. It also includes the historical ecology of the Sydney basin. Cultural research into society encompasses present day ways-of-life and the interaction of communities with globalised culture and its communication technologies. These three levels of quantitative information provide a fundamental base line for planning. For example, the specific biodiversity and geodiversity of Sydney is the basis of the City’s biological sustainability as soils, plants and animals are part of an integrated system derived from millennia of ‘natural’ evolutionary solutions to the specific environmental issues of the Sydney basin.

229 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

This environment is also important because it is the dynamic context within which both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people have and are creating their stories, beliefs and cultural representations. Further, Sydney’s economic, transport, building and other systems were developed in response to the City’s topography, geomorphology and climate. Similarly, the city’s architecture and landscapes were influenced by local conditions as well as the frequently decisive influence of international styles such as Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco, and those of Modernism. These styles, and their variations, pull the culture of Sydney into the orbit of comparative analysis in assessing design innovations and responses to local social and environmental circumstances.

The history of Sydney in terms of its cultural diversity is growing in research value and importance as diversity in its contemporary manifestations is more fully appreciated and protected by a legal and regulatory framework. The history of multicultural communities, including that of the Chinese community since the middle of the nineteenth century, Mediterranean migrant communities following the Second World War, and Vietnamese following the Vietnam War, is now increasingly well-known but the attachments to place of these communities is only beginning to be understood and attended to in planning (Armstrong, 2000). In this fluid context, planning systems need to develop more sophisticated cultural approaches and learn to embody a diversity of values. In heritage planning focus groups conducted in Sydney, Greek, Lebanese and Vietnamese Australians identified heritage as perceived in their own terms (Armstrong, 2000).

Sydney’s ways of life are revealed in fiction, autobiography, poetry, film, and the performing arts, and can be researched and studied through these expressions. For example, the lives of minorities, women and children are depicted in important detail that encompasses little-known cultural practices, values and feelings. Television documentaries produced by and for Australia’s multicultural broadcaster the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) play a significant role here. The series entitled ‘Hybrid Life’, dealt with issues such as the importance of Parramatta’s largest shopping mall in the restricted social life of Lebanese teenagers, in particular young women (Kaufman, undated: 1). The shopping mall became the principal site for meeting friends and members of the opposite sex, including

230 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

school friends from other multicultural groups. Another film looked at the role of teenagers and school children in Asian families in Western Sydney who ran clothing manufacturing businesses from home.

Sydney Harbour

Sydney Harbour’s heritage is being documented by two major management and planning authorities - the NSW Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) and the Commonwealth Sydney Harbour Federation Trust (SHFT), for the lands in their jurisdictions. Cultural mapping work is being undertaken by both bodies which draws on the history of cultural representations and inspirations offered by the harbour to poetry, fiction, painting, cinema and the performing arts. In addition to history, community values are mapped to indicate community attachments to place and community preferences for new and suitable uses for heritage buildings, structures and open space.

The writer Roger Milliss from another perspective documented in his autobiography Serpent’s Tooth (1984) the importance of the harbourside suburb of Manly in the pattern of residential recreation for middle-class country families in the decades before and after the Second World War. Manly’s proliferation of guesthouses hosted a wave of country and interstate visitors to Sydney. The Heritage Study of the Municipality of Manly (Manly Municipal Council, 1986) drew on this material in identifying the historical themes and representative buildings that characterised the suburb’s identity and that should be protected as heritage.

Pyrmont-Ultimo

Pyrmont-Ultimo in its new and gentrified formats is developing a culture related to the media and information technology industries that have located there and the sector that services the Sydney casino. This is based on a new ‘café culture’ of weekday evenings and weekends, and connection established between residents using retail services, such as delicatessens, take away restaurants, laudromats and dry cleaning businesses. The social

231 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

attachments to place that are part of determining heritage value are through these emerging patterns now under formation. The description of this culture is mainly in the hands of journalists writing for local and metropolitan newspapers that describe lifestyle trends in the area, frequently in the context of reviewing retail shopping and dining opportunities for the local and broader inner-city consumer.

Bullecourt Place

Despite the recency of its construction, an apartment complex such as Bullecourt Place would offer its residents numerous opportunities for interaction. For example, meeting and greeting in common areas and shared recreational facilities would be supplemented by events organised to celebrate Christmas and other holidays, and socialising during meetings to conduct the practical and legal administration of the complex.

Cultural Collaboration

Sydney

Collaborations in the research of Sydney have the potential to exchange and share the full gamut of the City’s cultural diversity. The voices of migrant communities, indigenous groups, the elderly, and gay and lesbian communities however, could play a major part in this through planning tools such as cultural mapping. Television and radio documentaries, sound installations and plays, especially broadcasts by public media such as the Australian Broadcasting Service (ABC) and SBS, are committed to exploring, extending and celebrating Sydney’s cultural diversity. As the popular historian John Birmingham writes of the impact of migration on Sydney ‘… it is the common threads weaving through the city’s tapestry which stand out. The way the stories of Cockney pickpockets, Irish rebels, German Jews, Italian fisherman and Vietnamese schoolteachers all wind through and around each other in recurring patterns’ (Birmingham, 1999: 13).

232 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Collaborative planning practices can increase the participation of local communities in determining their distinctive planning needs. This is especially so in a city such as Sydney which is so diverse, hard to get around in for the majority, and uneven in its opportunities for social and economic inclusion. The planning needs of ethnic communities, gay and lesbian groups, women and the elderly, and people with disabilities, need to be better and more sensitively accommodated. For example, Islamic and Buddhist religious premises have a troubled history in terms of their passage through the planning and development system in many parts of Sydney. Against this, ‘pink’ planning in terms of limiting retail uses that encourage the presence of homophobic individuals and groups in gay, or gay- friendly precincts has had some positive impacts in at least the inner-city suburb of Darlinghurst. This is partly because gay and lesbian community groups are organised and vocal in this area. Additionally, in the Sydney project known as Mapping Marrickville (Clark, Sutherland and Young, 1995: 40-41), cultural mapping utilising art projects was successfully used to elicit and develop a sense of place among diverse and sometimes isolated cultural groups.

Planning in its collaborative, communicative and deliberative guises and emphases is challenged by the integrated culture of Sydney and its metropolitan culture and metropolitan needs. Although little recognised by planners, the strategic marketing of Sydney at the metropolitan level needs to respond in a balanced, ethical and accountable fashion to the same culture. This same culture could and should shape communications in respect of Sydney in its global promotion to investors, tertiary students and tourists.

Sydney is Australia’s main international air and communications gateway and is placed towards the top of a group of cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Los Angeles described as sub-global. Sydney is thus in competition with other global cities in attracting tourists, investment and the location of regional headquarters. At the metropolitan scale Sydney’s culture - and perceptions and representations in respect of this - are thus closely related to the City’s competitiveness. This has both an urban planning dimension, in terms of the cumulative impact of planning across the region, and is related to the strategic marketing and promotion of Sydney as a place and destination.

233 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The City’s image is closely related to its cultural offer – the sum total of its offering of cultural services, facilities and charisma (Young, 1997b). Elements contributing to the City’s offering encompass cultural, environmental and entertainment facilities, conserved CBD heritage, possession of a multicultural labour force, and tertiary education facilities. Planning at the metropolitan level should therefore include regional planning for both soft and hard infrastructure, and planning for the strategic marketing and promotion of Sydney as a multi-faceted destination, for investors, tertiary students and tourists. In fact, this does not happen in the sense of a coordinated or aligned cultural offer or strategy. Instead, the NSW Government markets Sydney in two ways. It is marketed by two separate state agencies, firstly as an investment venue and source of goods and services, and secondly as a tourism destination. In the first case, it should be mentioned that Sydney’s environmental planning system itself is frequently cited as an incentive as it is argued that it represents a basis for secure investment and development. Sydney is also marketed directly and indirectly by the Commonwealth’s Australian Tourist Commission (Australian Tourism Commission, 2005), which is responsible for international promotion and advertising campaigns.

Sydney Harbour

The NSW Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, 2005) and the Commonwealth Sydney Harbour Federation Trust (Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, 2005) are engaged in cultural research of the Harbour’s history and intangible heritage. This includes collaborative mapping projects with harbourside communities, to establish local community attachments to place and community preferences for new uses for heritage buildings, structures and open areas. Utilisation of the Harbour as a platform for spectacle by numerous bodies, including the City of Sydney, has widespread harbour-side and metropolitan support, particularly for the New Year’s Eve fireworks displays. Through annual national television broadcasts this popular Sydney event has become noteworthy in national terms.

234 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Pyrmont-Ultimo

The expensive high-rise apartments that dominate the Pyrmont-Ultimo peninsula ensure that residents are now mainly those with high incomes who purchase their entertainment and recreational services on the open market, rather than utilise community-based resources. In this type of community collaborative approaches to planning issues are unusual as residents are able and willing to pay for the private services and facilities they need, and are little motivated to engage with local government or remaining public facilities. A more ‘privatised’ lifestyle is the norm and may be preferred, if parking, safety and other amenity issues are considered satisfactory. As the community matures however, and regardless of high levels of social churning, new social attachments to place will develop and be conceptualised and debated as heritage issues within the frame of current heritage planning. The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance treats social value and attachments to place as integral to the process of determining the cultural significance of heritage places. This will accommodate a collaborative approach to heritage issues as they develop over time through the ‘social patination’ of place.

Bullecourt Place

The on-site interpretation of Bullecourt Place, implemented according to the Interpretation Plan mandated by Council as a condition of its development consent, should have the positive effect of engaging residents and visitors with the history of the site and the cultural character of the area. This sensitisation may lead to a wider growth in cultural and environmental awareness over time and provide the basis for a sense of cultural continuity and renewed community.

Cultural collaborations can be promoted by the council in the form of consultations and participatory proposals that capitalise on the embryonic community that is emerging around the café and apartment life that characterises the Peninsula.

235 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Cultural Interpretation

Sydney

Interpretation of Sydney’s culture ranges from accounts grounded in political economy, geographical theory, cultural theory and ‘noir’ narratives in popular fiction that essentialise the city’s criminal cultures and corruption. The political economy frame emphasises the role of capital in planning and its power to influence, subvert or determine planning legislation and systems through political interventions. Legitimation theory would go further and suggest that planning exists only in order to mask the activities of capital. In terms of Sydney, the City’s planning culture has been weak and the successive waves of investment capital since the 1960s replaced a Victorian sandstone CBD with that of a high- rise metropolis (Searle and Young, 1988).

Other interpretive accounts such as those of economic geography may explain the influence of globalisation in Sydney in terms of investment location, the growth of its cultural economy, or the emergence of coastal management zones. Cultural theory on the other hand might suggest analyses of Sydney in which place promoters construct commodified images of Sydney suburbs for the consumption of the visitor and tourist, rather than related to the sense of place of a local community (Thorns, 2002; Wirth and Freestone, 2003).

Popular culture may emphasise the noir aspects of Sydney’s culture and image. These include the opening ‘white scenes’ of behavioural abandonment with the disembarkation of the First Fleet, the corruption of the ‘Rum Corps’, and bent police and administrators particularly in the decades after the Second World War. The first weeks after the arrival of the First Fleet were as Flannery reminds us ‘a salty, saucy, and insolent affair full of irony, colour and sex. It was as if the constraints of old Europe had been irrevocably left behind in this vast island prison, and the unbuttoned nature of the town, which remains characteristic, was stamped indelibly on it from the first’ (Flannery, 1999: 3). Sydney’s image perceived variously as Sodom, or international party destination, has been promoted by the city’s role as host to the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, one of the

236 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

biggest events of its kind in the world (Murphy and Watson, 1997: 39). This event has been promoted internationally by federal and state tourism bodies, and is part of the City’s image. Florida (1993) and others commentators would link this through, as an index of urban diversity, tolerance, and sophistication, to economic success in the competitive global cultural economy, the fastest growing sector in the post-industrial economy.

Sydney Harbour

Interpretation of the Harbour environment ranges from creative writings over the period of its history, through the comments of astute observers, to planning statements by planning and management bodies for the Harbour. Scientific views of the Harbour and of its natural history are important, as are recent critiques by ecologists, and designers. Environmental issues include urban run-off, sewerage disposal into the harbour and the destruction of native, harbourside bushland and bird and animal species. Concepts of sustainability and coastal zone planning have introduced further critiques and a balancing perspective. These views add to the understanding of the Harbour derived from the arts and humanities. I have described Sydney Harbour elsewhere as a great piazza (2000). As in Venice lagoon, the Harbour’s water is a great stage set. It is an environment that should influence its shorelines and take its place as a platform for marine events and spectacle (Young, G., 2000).

Since the 1990s the Harbour has moved closer to Sydney’s concept of itself and has become better linked to the City’s aspirations for itself. However, I would contend interpretively, that the Harbour and coastal zones perhaps await a new vision. The sources of this vision may lie in the sciences, such as ecology, or in the arts, in cinematography and music videos. Most probably they lie in an amalgam of both cognitive worlds. What is clear is that a much wider vision than that of conventional approach to the environment is needed. This may be a new perspective on the coastal zone and the human-ocean relationships that is much wider than that of conventional approach to the environment. It may draw on aesthetic materials (Healey, 1997), creativity and strong concepts (Landry,

237 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

2000), and a mixture of the imaginative re-casting of history and cultural diversity (Young, 1999).

Pyrmont-Ultimo

The interpretation of Pyrmont-Ultimo would need to tell the story of planning failure. This relates to the conversion of a community and a landscape of production into a gentrified dormitory out of which current residents and businesses are in the act of creating new social bonds and attachments to place. These will no doubt be different from those of the inter- generational blue-collar community and the industrial heritage of the past, but they are nevertheless the basis from which a new balance of community is being constructed.

Interpretations of the policy and planning that led to the emergence of the present-day Ultimo-Pyrmont include the articulation of cultural theory, such as that deployed in an article on selective visions in planning for the area (Searle and Byrne, 2002). The authors argue that planners and developers in combination selectively edited out the industrial and working class history of the suburb, and ignored not only the expectations of residents in the process but the former ‘sense of place’ built up from the cultural landscape and residents’ memories of the place (Searle and Byrne, 2002). They argue that this was not accidental, but emerged from place entrepreneurship that ‘repacked’ Pyrmont-Ultimo for a new middle-class lifestyle, erasing any competing images of the past under the patina of the sense of place of the planner and the developer. Following Bourdieu, Searle and Byrne suggest a planning ‘habitus’, in which the values, norms, beliefs and rules transmitted to planners produce, often unconsciously, an elitist bias that favoured redevelopment of the suburb in the name of city rejuvenation. The ‘habitus’ of the former, existing residents lead them to resist development to preserve their own community and their ‘sense of place’.

The nature of the planners’ ‘habitus’ also accepted the creation of landscapes intended for consumption by tourists in the name of the City’s economy, and undervalued attempts at social conservation. The state’s failure to take up the agenda proposed in relation to social conservation is cited earlier, and had grim consequences. This failure left the bureaucracy

238 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

and the community without a history of policy and practical experience in relation to the possibilities of social conservation. The whereabouts of residents forced out of the area by redevelopment and rising rents, and their relative condition in terms of amenity, accessibility and access to services, remains a suppressed issue in planning.

The pattern experienced in Pyrmont-Ultimo is not new. Abandoned industrial waterfronts were ‘discovered’ in cities the world over. Further, many famous examples shared a similar fate in that they became landscapes of consumption for tourists to consume cuisine, history, and most often a sense of commodified place. From the perspective of political economy, what occurred at Pyrmont-Ultimo represents a global pattern, as in Thorns view of such places. This perspective argues that:

Explanations for the increasing role of the local state agencies in the process of tourism promotion, image reconstruction and place marketing have linked policy to economic re-structuring and the new forms of urban entrepreneurialism that have emerged in a post-industrial society (Thorns, 2002: 135).

This is likely to be the future of Pyrmont-Ultimo adjacent to the entertainment and dining precinct of Darling Harbour and with easy access to the CBD.

Bullecourt Place, 428-466 Harris Street, Ultimo

I interpret Bullecourt Place as an allegory of the historical process of globalisation in which this small inner-city site has figured a number of times. The AML and F Woolstore on the site indicated the rise of the global wool industry and replaced the terraces and shops that occupied the site previously. Economic and transport re-structuring from the 1960s left the Woolstore idle, as for others on the wider peninsula. The population densities and uses proposed for the area by the State body the Citywest Development Corporation reflected the globalisation pressures on Sydney’s CBD and nearby areas, particularly with high amenity and accessibility. The very existence of the Development Corporation itself reflected the goals of neo-liberal economics and practices as they increasingly influenced government’s the world over.

239 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The site of Bullecourt Place also illustrates Sydney’s ways-of-life and the diversity of its lifestyles as they have operated through history, and their legacy. Although the history of a single residential and commercial site in Ultimo may seem of little importance and be dismissed as typical, this soon changes if it is enlivened by an interpretation that places it within broader Sydney and Australian cultural narratives. As I mention, these narratives relate to important social history, early globalised flows in the trade of international commodities such as wool, and contemporary patterns driving the city’s lifestyles and underwriting its likely futures.

The statutory Interpretation Strategy prepared for Bullecourt Place proposed that an archaeological store be included in the developer’s plans for the site, to physically reflect the social history of the site and the Peninsula through its artefacts. It also proposed a collage of the names of the Victorian trades associated with the site to be represented as a mural or mosaic in the new apartment block. Both the Strategy and the design of the archaeological store were informed by collaborative inputs from the developer. The Strategy also establishes the key historic themes for the site that encapsulate the culture in a snapshot. They are ‘The Ongoing Community’, ‘The Wool Bonanza and the Global Economy’ and ‘Imperial Identity’ (Godden et al, 2003).

At the same time the site may be taken to represent in an unmediated existential sense the mosaic of human lives and struggles that form part of the life of any great city. This is celebrated for New York by the filmmaker Martin Scorsese in his film Gangs of New York (2002) that combines the big picture themes of regional and national history with the small, representative and personal details of the history of New York. And as it is for New York, so it is for Sydney. Thus, interpretation of Bullecourt Place and by implication every site in Sydney, reveals the pattern I describe in Part One in which culture is able to feed off itself and through reflexivity create new meanings and understanding. As the work of Searle and Byrne also reveal, this is a suburb-wide opportunity. Their interpretation, enriched by the theory of Bourdieu, opens up new grounds of awareness pointing to new possibilities for action based on the learning derived from processes of critical reflexivity.

240 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Conclusion

This is an extended, but nevertheless selective outline of Sydney’s integrated culture and the possibilities for integrated research, across a range of scales. It suggests that culture is not only clearly plentiful but is in a state of dynamic evolution in Sydney as elsewhere. In fact all of culture changes. This encompasses modifications to the environment, shifts in historical thinking, adaptations in ways-of-life, and changes in social values and society’s composition. These changes are in both obvious and subtle ways linked, as culture shares the connectivity and commonalities that I have illustrated.

The Culturised Model facilitates the capture of these changes at any of the city’s planning scales. It also suggests the types of planning and planning documents that may be renovated through integrated research. Wherever spatial planning is conducted, whether as town and country planning, environmental planning, or urban and regional planning, there are possibilities to conduct integrated research in planning to capture the resources of culture. This planning includes inter-sectoral strategic planning for regions, regional strategies for marketing, and strategies for key sectors such as heritage and tourism. The framework of urban and regional planning and strategic place marketing for a large and coherent geographical region such as Sydney has provided a robust and dramatic opportunity to introduce the perspective of the Culturised Model, specifically its methodology. This has been achieved by applying the categories of integrated culture and integrated research, at a range of geographical scales and in terms of a spectrum of spatial and strategic planning types.

The relationship between urban and regional planning, and place and destination marketing, at any of the geographical scales is culturally close and inter-linked. The strategic marketing of place presents the opportunity to reinforce urban and regional planning objectives and vice versa. In the next chapter strategic marketing and strategic planning for a major heritage site are illustrated through the Culturised Model.

241 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER TEN

STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THE PORT ARTHUR HISTORIC SITE

In this chapter I turn to the Culturised Model’s potential for strategic planning. My attention is confined however, to illustrating strategic planning in terms of strategic management and strategic marketing, as strategic planning operates across a broad range of planning forms and is utilised in innumerable settings. To accomplish this I draw on the culture of a major heritage site with a strong international profile. The site I explore is the Port Arthur Historic Site (PAHS) in Tasmania, one of Australia’s principal heritage areas. It provides the opportunity to illustrate the model in relation to the strategic management and strategic marketing of a major heritage place and by implication other important heritage sites. Further, it also suggests the value of the model for other types of strategic planning although they may relate to many different planning settings.

The PAHS is highly significant in its state cultural and economic contexts, and is under consideration for nomination by the Australian Government for inscription on the World Heritage List as part of a serial nomination of Australian convict sites (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999). As suggested, the discussion of strategic planning within the context of the planning and marketing of the PAHS is relevant to other heritage sites, including those with a wide range of cultural interest. This situation is so because major heritage sites such as the PAHS usually comprise significant areas of land that are often strategic in their location and economic and tourism contexts. Further, major heritage sites usually have a close nexus with surrounding land uses and urban and regional planning. As places of cultural concentration, they have the capacity to be weighty factors in the strategic regional and international marketing and promotion of place and destination.

Despite this, in the process of illustrating the relationship between strategic planning and culture I am obliged to deal as much with the realm of potentiality as with actuality. This is because the opportunities I outline are in reality little developed in relation to heritage sites

242 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

and those innovations that have emerged have developed in a patchy and uneven fashion. Even so, I firmly believe that many of the possibilities I discuss, can be facilitated by the application of the Model. Further, such opportunities are the way of the future, and it is important to facilitate the emergence of a new positionality for planning.

Strategic Planning for Major Heritage Sites

In this chapter strategic planning is discussed in aspatial terms or in relation to issues that are only indirectly spatial, although they are closely connected to other forms of planning, in particular urban and regional planning. Strategic planning is discussed in terms of strategic management and strategic marketing for a major heritage site, and its administrator the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHMSA). I argue that aspatial strategic planning for major heritage destinations and their strategic place marketing is inevitably related to the goals of urban and regional strategic planning, regardless of whether this is recognised or in practice the subject of coordination.

Strategic planning in its public urban and regional planning context, as Gleeson makes clear, relates to the coordination of investment and government regulation (Gleeson, 2003: 25). This is distinguished from development control at the local scale and the assessment of the environmental and social impacts of proposed development activity at the local and regional scales. However, strategic planning in its public urban and regional planning context, especially at the larger spatial scale, overlaps with the strategic management and marketing of significant heritage sites such as Port Arthur. This is always the case in fact, because of the cultural connectivity between places, and its neglect represents a lost opportunity for planning and marketing and facilitates distortions in cultural representations and messages. This is because major heritage sites conserve key ‘symbolic’ and representative culture, and have ethical obligations to meet in fulfilling the conservation of cultural values and in their interpretation.

Culture is the fundamental quality of a major heritage site. In whatever form or configuration, it is the site’s culture that is being conserved, interpreted and marketed. In

243 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

practice, however, this may be poorly realised or subverted by more commercial concerns. Nevertheless, this is likely to be the case where public responsibilities are set out in terms of management objectives, or under local or international codes and instruments. Certainly, in the case of World Heritage Sites this is so, as their conservation is mandated according to intellectual and ethical policies embodied in UNESCO charters and instruments. Culture is therefore the basis of the strategic planning of such sites, much as its runs through urban and regional planning at all scales.

The quality, integrity, authenticity and ownership of this culture then become key issues. In Australia, government legislation, regulation and policy set a framework for the conservation of heritage places. Major heritage sites are usually administered according to high levels of legal protection and their strategic planning is driven by a concept of their identified culture. This is defined according to the standards and practices of The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS, 1999). In Australia, the Charter is recognised as the national conservation standard for cultural heritage conservation. The Charter works through a process of the systematic assessment of the significance of places, based on their cultural significance. Cultural significance is defined as ‘aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present, or future generations’ (Australia ICOMOS, 1999: 2). The establishment of cultural significance and the writing of a statement of cultural significance to define this, precede the development of a conservation policy and the management of the place in accordance with the policy. It is recognised that cultural significance may change as a result of the continuing history of a place and that places have a range of values for different individuals or groups.

Port Arthur Historic Site

The PAHS is at the apex of cultural significance for Australia, and is one of the country’s pre-eminent heritage sites. It is also of world importance. The site can be interpreted as an aspect of the historical need for greater social control in Britain generated by the rapid urbanisation of populations and the immiseration of an urban working class newly minted by the demands of the Industrial Revolution (Young, 1988).

244 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The site consists of the substantial and extensive remains of Australia’s second biggest convict penal station, after . It has a grim penal history from the nineteenth century and in recent times was the site of the infamous ‘Port Arthur Massacre’, in which a lone gunman, Martin Bryant, massacred a large number of site visitors (Port Arthur Historic Site Website, 2005a). Although it is one of Tasmania’s most visited tourist destinations, the site remains controversial. The area is administered under the Port Arthur Site Management Authority (PAHSMA) Act of 1987, and comprises some 125 hectares.

Figure 12 - Map of Port Arthur Historic Site, on the south of the Tasman Peninsula. Source: PAHSMA.

245 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Located on the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania, Port Arthur was first occupied by Europeans as a timber-getting penal establishment in 1830 (Kerr, 1984: 117) and grew to be one of the largest penal sites in Australia. Before its closure in 1877, about 12,700 sentences were served there. Throughout this period the form and life of the settlement were consistently influenced by developments in imperial policy. Port Arthur was closed in 1877, and the settlement’s name was changed to Carnarvon. Following this, ‘excursionists’ started to make day visits to the site. Settlers purchased land in the area in the 1880’s and tourism boomed. This was also the beginning of more than a century of attempts and activities to deny the brutality and suffering associated with the Peninsula and ‘the hated stain’ of convictism. In the 1980’s some nine million dollars were devoted to infrastructure works (including the development of visitor facilities) and conservation. During this period the priority given to the conservation of the fabric of the site over its interpretation ironically helped to perpetuate the silence surrounding some of the key issues for which Port Arthur has been a focus in Tasmanian history.

In the opinion of the historian Robert Hughes, Port Arthur anticipated the gulag’s of the Soviet Union and has always dominated the popular historical imagination in Australia as ‘the emblem of the miseries of transportation, “the Hell on Earth”’ (Hughes, 1988: 400).

Port Arthur is a complex heritage site and has a continuing message both as a reflection of Britain’s nineteenth century economic re-organisation and related forms of social control, and as a crucible for Tasmania’s re-presentation of its difficult past. It is also a place of great topographical drama and is invested with important research significance for understanding the mechanics of the convict system and the evolution of several key aspects of later Australian society. Port Arthur is under consideration by the Australian Government for nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of a serial nomination that includes other major Australian sites related to transportation and convictism (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005).

246 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Culturised Model and the Port Arthur Historic Site

I now begin my assessment of the PAHS in terms of the Culturised Model. The principles of culture and their relation to the site’s strategic planning and strategic marketing take priority. The principles of the Culturised Model are a compass that may help to keep the planning of such heritage sites on course. The principles of plenitude, connectivity, diversity, reflexivity and sustainability vary in their individual levels of importance for heritage places, but they will all generally have a relevance of some kind. Each principle is illustrated for the PAHS with examples to demonstrate its practical value for strategic planning. I begin with the first principle, that of plenitude.

Plenitude

The culture of heritage sites is in some respects different from other places, although this difference is not as great or as important as might initially be thought. On a first impression, the defined culture of a major protected heritage site may appear to be in some ways frozen, or its limits identified for all time. However heritage sites, like other parts of the cultural landscape, profit from the emergence of new evidence, and the social evolution of new perspectives that lead to the revaluing of old evidence and former interpretations. The past is not an end-point, dead and buried like the convicts. It is in fact fluid and assumes new forms. The historian Pieter Geyl has demonstrated the mutability of the past. Geyl shows that the image of Napoleon was transmuted by French historians, when they saw different aspects of the leader as their own situations changed (Jeans, D. 1985; Young, G. 1988). The history of Port Arthur reflects this form of plenitude. More perhaps than any other Tasmanian heritage place, Port Arthur has reflected and stimulated varied approaches to history and conflicting interpretations among specialists and professionals. It has also produced a sequence of self-serving myths, romanticised landscapes, and various forms of consumer gratification for the tourist.

Communities are often repositories of local knowledge and history about heritage places and Port Arthur is no exception. This understanding is embodied in The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Australia ICOMOS, 1999). Local

247 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

community knowledge about Port Arthur is being tapped through collaborative projects with the community of the Tasman Peninsula, where Port Arthur is located. Consultations with the traditional community of the Peninsula and with Aboriginal groups have suggested fresh, additional perspectives that constitute newly revealed culture (Godden Mackay Context, 2000). The ‘Port Arthur Massacre’ of 28 April 1996, has added new issues and new needs for reflexivity. On that date, Martin Bryant, a lone gunman, shot dead 20 people in the ‘Broad Arrow Café’ at the PAHS, as well as others at different points on the site (Port Arthur Historic Site, 2005a). In the wake of the massacre, the issue of the conservation or removal of the Broad Arrow Café was a controversial one, both for the community and conservationists. The debate that swirled around the massacre was also linked to the national reform of gun laws and the eventual implementation of new Federal gun controls.

In my own work in relation to Port Arthur (1994a; 1994c) I have asserted the importance of the place from a number of perspectives. These include understanding Tasmania’s broader attitude to its past, analysing the historical emergence of tourism and its culture of threats and opportunities, and engaging deeper levels of historical understanding in relation to key ideas from the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes, and his compatriot the historian Michel Foucault.

Connectivity

Connectivity in term of the PAHS has a number of dimensions. These exist in historical and contemporary terms. The historical connectivity of the place relates to its position within an imperial system, and its relevance for the emergence of postcolonial Australia. For example, the historical interconnectedness of the site is important in understanding not only colonialism but also the early and mid nineteenth century British industrial and penal system and the late nineteenth century birth of Australian cultural tourism. Connectivity highlights the site’s links with a suite of other convict sites around Australia and with other sites within the parallel penal systems of other European colonial powers. Based on this understanding a proposal for the collective inscription of Australian convict sites on the

248 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Word Heritage List has been prepared (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999). The realisation of the importance of the national links and international parallels is of recent origin, but provides the basis for repositioning knowledge and understanding Port Arthur in broader and more robust intellectual frames.

On a theoretical level the connectivity between new historical theory in relation to penology and to tourism practices is proving liberating for the limited understanding of the site that previously prevailed. The significance of the place was embedded in a simplistic and at times mythologised and manipulated history.

In contemporary terms the site’s links with the traditional local community on the Tasman Peninsula and with Tasmania’s Aboriginal groups has allowed memories and knowledge to surface for the broader community and for scholarly understanding. This represents the important element of cultural significance described as social value. This connectivity is now extended to interpreting and valuing the importance and meanings associated with the Port Arthur Massacre.

Diversity

The PAHS is important to Tasmanians and to the descendants of convicts who were imprisoned there. It is also important to a national and international intellectual market and to visitation from all over Australia and the globe. In the period following the Second World War, Tasmania’s population diversified with migrants from Europe, and from the 1970s on, with migrants from Asia. Tourism to Port Arthur is based on a global market, with visitors from Europe, the United States, Asia and Latin America. The significance of Port Arthur has to be defined and interpreted in such a way that it is understandable and relevant to these diverse tourism markets, as well as reflecting the diversity of interconnected issues, such as historical Tasmanian attitudes to convictism and to homosexuality.

249 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The site represents the full diversity of culture. This includes the geographical drama and isolation of the Tasman Peninsula, the contested history of the site’s large-scale heritage ruins, and the social conflicts over the values of the place. These conflicts take place between the local community, other Tasmanian groups, and the tourism ways of life as represented by the PAHS staff, and local, national and international visitors.

Reflexivity

Port Arthur is a reflexive challenge. The nature of its importance varies between different groups and its meanings are contested. These present ongoing interpretive and management challenges for the site. Referring back to the meanings of past penal and tourism practices, and negotiating and understanding variations in meanings between different groups is a long-term probability and a public challenge. For example, Port Arthur has a special and differentiated importance and values for the traditional community of the Tasman Peninsula. Many families have lived and worked on the Peninsula for generations, a number of these working at Port Arthur.

Different commentators (Roe, 1981; Hughes, 1988; Young G., 1994a, 1994c; Young, D., 1996) have explored Port Arthur’s importance in broad historical and cultural contexts. This work continues and new practices in Australia continue to draw Port Arthur into the reflexive net. I am thinking here of quite immediate themes and issues in relation to the ‘history wars’ of the 1990s and 2000s and Australian conflicts over penal practices including so-called black deaths in custody and the psychological damage inflicted by the incarceration of refugees, including children, in federal detention centres. Added to these issues are the sometimes remote-seeming possibilities for the development of a more reflexive tourism capable of addressing a difficult past.

Further, all of these meanings and opportunities need to be positioned as interpretation and messages to a diversity of visitors from Australia and internationally, including Asia. These markets are fluid and the culture of the site needs to be made relevant to a range of ages and cultural backgrounds. In this reflexivity may suggest the means to imaginatively

250 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

and intellectually connect the place to these markets. For example, these include the many countries in Asia that experienced European colonisation. Also, New Zealand shares a similar experience of colonisation with Australia as a settler society and the histories of these varied postcolonial countries since colonisation provides food for reflexive thought. This thinking may sustain empathy and could be considered as a basis for developing approaches that improve relationships in the present day based on a sense of historical connectivity.

Strategic marketing will be needed at the state and federal levels to provide marketing integration and interpretive connectivity.

Sustainability

Sustainability practices at a state funded site are important and may be given a special emphasis as appropriate skills and interpretive techniques are available on staff. Because of high levels of visitation, Port Arthur, like other heritage sites, has the opportunity to showcase sustainability practices. These include practices such as the recycling of wastes and the introduction of permaculture on such a large and diverse land holding. Collaborative projects off-site that are part of the functionality of the contemporary museum and major heritage site may be introduced with the local community.

As an interpretive theme at the site, the Aboriginal occupation of the Tasman Peninsula pre-invasion could be presented as sustainable presence for tens of thousands of years. Sustainability for the PAHS today can also be seen in terms of the buildings and structures that occupy the site and in cultural terms. A major tourism site, such as the PAHS, experiences major physical impacts from visitors and needs constant maintenance, repair and upgrading. In cultural terms sustainability includes the engagement of the local community in the conservation management and interpretive enterprise. Other groups such as historians, archaeologists, and cultural policy decision-makers and tourism experts are important in developing an alignment in practices that supports the objectives of sustainability.

251 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In marketing terms the sustainability of the experience requires subtle repositioning and the development of thematic and marketing linkages with other Tasmanian and Australian sites to add interpretive connectivity and depth to the experience and to excite the motivation to visit and importantly, to repeat visits to Port Arthur.

Literacy Trinity and the Model

Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy has interesting implications for understanding and conveying the complex and multi-layered Pyrmont-Ultimo adjacent to the entertainment and dining precinct of Darling Harbour significance of the PAHS. Implementing strategic management and strategic marketing for the site is a challenging cultural issue. Port Arthur was established as a functioning prison and factory under a global industrial system, and the site is now equally locked into the international system of tourism. This is a role the management authority and the Tasmanian Government are actively seeking to intensify, and it requires a deeper cultural understanding of the framework of world heritage and national positions within that frame.

The presentation of the site can be related to different eras and periods in its history and invoke questions of authenticity, and layering in material fabric and in interpretation. Heritage sites, especially where they have high levels of significance and have a long history, are sites of ongoing interpretation. This aspect of postmodern involution is reflected in the need to understand past interpretation and presentation. In the case of Port Arthur such interpretation and the presentation of the site colluded in a sanitised approach to the grim history of the place.

Collaborative approaches and strategies with groups whose voices have not been publically heard are important in redressing the omissions of past approaches. In recent times the community of the Tasman Peninsula has been consulted by the PAHSMA. The views of indigenous groups about the place have also been sought. Communicativeness of this kind

252 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

results in more inclusive interpretations of the place and indicates the existence of multiple views and diverse values in relation to the same place.

Tasmania has in recent times through State and local government policy been able to better come to terms with the issues of homosexuality, convictism and indigenousness. Writers, historians, artists and filmmakers have assisted in this. A similar cultural understanding is now important in negotiating the threats and opportunities associated with tourism, especially in relation to the sanitisation of difficult truths or narrow sensationalism about the past. The messages delivered by commercial tourism operations and also need to be strategically aligned. Techniques to achieve strategic marketing must be developed to facilitate this. Then again, not every thing need be serious, but the limits to this, the taste with which it is done, and the cultural implications that flow from interpretation and marketing strategies must be seriously considered. For example, the Port Arthur Ghost Tours, a nocturnal peregrination around the site for visitors includes the former morgue. The appropriateness of this activity at a site associated with so much brutality in its history is a matter for judgment, especially when Port Arthur is part of the case for a world heritage nomination. Fun, in heritage administration involves serious issues of morality and communication.

Ethical Literacy

I suggest that cultural conservation policy and heritage practices are in a democracy ideally not only issues of cultural interest to all but are aspects and responsibilities of citizenship. The Australian Government proposal to nominate Port Arthur, as one of a related series of convict sites for world heritage listing, is a proposal that has important ethical dimensions (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999). These accrue in terms of the need for the nomination to be developed consultatively with local communities and because any proposal of this kind is in fact a statement about Australian identity and history. Further, in postmodern societies, tourism flows around such sites will intensify and have significant implications for local cultural and environmental sustainability. Port Arthur is the most popular in Tasmania (Port Arthur Historic Site, 2005b).

253 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Ethical literacy will be engaged in the application and interpretation of all of the major international heritage agreements to which Australia is a signatory. Further construction work in evolving these frameworks at the national and international level strongly engages ethical literacy, as well as cultural and strategic literacy. This work involves high levels of reflexivity in the painstaking testing, drafting and distilling of clear and robust policy based on common ground and consensus. This is the realm of formal cultural heritage policy. In addition to this, and related to the definitions of social value and significance in Australian and Tasmanian heritage legislation and regulation and in the Burra Charter, there is the ethical issue of Port Arthur’s collaborative relations with its local community. Respecting and representing these contemporary alternative interpretations and valuations of the site, is essential if the two realms are not to exist as parallel universes. The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance has an associated document, a Code on the Ethics of Co-existence in Conserving Significant Place. This code comes into play in heritage conservation, and is especially important at a potential world heritage site such as Port Arthur.

In terms of Tasmania’s broader society, the site’s value in clarifying attitudinal blockages that inhibit community development, described by me elsewhere (1994a), are matters that require ethical navigation of the highest order and in the final analysis, political choices and political prioritising.

Strategic Literacy

Strategic literacy has an important role at Port Arthur. Firstly, strategic literacy includes a fundamental understanding of what strategic planning is, and what it is not. This involves a comprehension of the role of the strategic planning process including visioning, environmental scanning, and the development of strategies and an action plan. The value of subordinating competing priorities to an orderly and logical process such as this needs to be fully recognised, as much as the dynamic, reflexive and iterative nature of the process. In the case of a heritage site, its established cultural significance also needs to be

254 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

recognised as the driver behind all planning activities and should be used at all stages and in every aspect of strategic planning.

This consideration applies to strategic marketing, which is underpinned by the cultural significance of the site. For example, balancing the core heritage values of the place, or its cultural significance, with dynamic trends in cultural consumption in not one, but a number of visitor markets, is a fundamental strategic issue at Port Arthur. Strategic positioning in the market reflects the fact that site’s such as Port Arthur are often expected to return a profit, or at least, not to produce a loss. Miscalculation with strategic marketing and failed business plans can have calamitous results at a major heritage site.

Port Arthur’s relative and comparative position within the serial nomination for World Heritage is also strategically important. Indeed, the very prospect of achieving world heritage status is a strategic issue. Levels and kinds of visitation, funding, interpretation, and on-site training and education as a commercial option are all influenced by this status, or such potentiality. The site’s historical links to a broader colonial network or system are ironically mimicked today on at least one level in terms of the international systems of tourism visitation and marketing.

The Methodology

Integrated Culture

Geography

Port Arthur is located on the edge of a wind-swept peninsula, on a southern tip of the island of Tasmania, itself located off the coast of the world’s largest island, the continent of Australia. This is the stuff of romance in any cultural tradition. The site’s geography has been a determinative factor on many levels, strategic, practical and in the cultural imaginary. For example, in strategic terms the geography of the peninsula influenced the way of life chosen by its pre-invasion indigenous clan, the Pydairrerme band of the Oyster

255 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Bay Tribe. The Pydairrerme way of life was based on a seasonal pattern of movement. The clan lived on the coast and peninsula on shellfish and marine vegetables in winter and moved inland at the end of August to hunt birds, kangaroos and wallabies. With the approach of summer they moved further west for hunting and fired the bush to catch game (Ryan, 1981).

In terms of European use and settlement, Port Arthur was first occupied in 1830 on the instructions of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, who chose the site because of its convenience and its timber assets (Kerr, 1984: 117). Located on the isolated Tasman Peninsula, with only a thin corridor of land for access, it was in Arthur’s words ‘a Penitentiary formed by nature’ (Jack, R. 1984: 55). Other aspects of the Peninsula’s geography were also drawn into the penal enterprise, with small islands in the harbour at Port Arthur used as a cemetery and as a prison for boys. The Peninsula was also a source of coal that was mined underground by convicts at Saltwater River (Jack, R. 1984: 52).

The isolated and windswept geography of the place also played its part in terms of the cultural imaginary. For example, ‘literary gothic’ began at the site with the Marcus Clarke novel For the Term of His Natural Life (1874). This was inspired by other dark and lonely geographies in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The early twentieth century silent film of Clarke’s novel, of the same name, added a starker and ‘expressionist’ element to the same geography (Young, 1994a).

256 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 13. Filming For the Term of His Natural Life at Port Arthur. Source: Archives Office of Tasmania.

The ‘Port Arthur Massacre’ of 1996 added another layer of misery to the melancholy parklands of the site. These images of the Massacre were broadcast globally and have now lodged in the world’s televisual memory.

History

The history of the place can be divided into periods and themes such as the convict phase, the early tourism and excursionism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the professional conservation phase and cultural tourism from the 1970s forwards. Port Arthur’s importance for and connection to Tasmania society, colonialism and postcolonialism, and ongoing narratives of Australian identity-formation remains a permanent phenomenon through all this. The themes that emerge from this picture encompass the embedding of memories and values in Tasmania based on a pattern of

257 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

cultural repression in relation to the so-called ‘convict stain’ in society, homosexuality and the demise of the original Aboriginal cultures in Tasmania. A powerful and resonant history such as that of Port Arthur is likely to be debated and re-interpreted for the foreseeable future.

As early as 1983 the historian Kay Daniels pointed out that ‘there has been no imaginative opening up of the real relevance of Port Arthur to the present’ (Young, 1994: 32). This relevance is much stronger than might at first be expected as it encompasses the deeper nature and reasons for the convict system, the emergence of early tourism in the late nineteenth century, the operation of the traumatic repression of memory and history in Tasmanian society, the cult of the positivist conservation industry of the 1970s and 1980s and its current evolution into a mature embrace with contemporary global and national tourism flows.

Society

The society of the Peninsula was traditionally a small and fairly closed community. Over the generations many families worked at Port Arthur as guides and in other capacities. The social significance of the place to the local community and its local cultural memories are now being explored and incorporated in current conservation policy and interpretation. At the same time artists, writers and retirees are locating to the Peninsula for its dramatic topography and relative isolation.

Increasing sections of the community on the Tasman Peninsula are connected with the tourism industry, which is largely generated by Port Arthur and the effects of its economic multiplication. This is a way of life and an economy based on heritage tourism.

Port Arthur not only relates to the local community of the Tasman Peninsula, but also to the wider Tasmanian community and Australian society at large. For Tasmania to deal with its history it must interpret Port Arthur. This process is now well in train. Any convincing interpretation of Port Arthur is also an interpretation of the history of Tasmania, the history

258 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

of Australia, and of the British and wider European colonial and industrial systems (Port Arthur Historic Site, 2005).

Integrated Research

Cultural Research

Cultural research into the PAHS is broad in its nature. It encompasses historical, archaeological and landscape research into the place and research into its visitation and tourism markets. The historical cultural research is directed and re-positioned according to the perception and appreciation of new values, approaches and perspectives as they emerge. However it includes a layer of basic and continuous research into the clarification of historical materials such as papers, letters, iconography and archaeological evidence, and the pursuit of these materials. Such materials variously include material evidence on site that is available for archaeological research, quantities of materials in public archival and museum collections, and unexpected documents in private collections in Tasmania, Australia and internationally. As an example of this, in terms of material culture I would evidence the amount of timber furniture and ironwork manufactured at Port Arthur during its life as a convict station, that continues to surface at commercial auctions in Tasmania and that is retailed in antique shops. This material adds to the knowledge of Port Arthur’s role as a factory producing a range of goods and can be used to attest to the kinds and levels of craftsmanship involved in its production.

The cultural research undertaken to prepare the case for the nomination of Australian convict sites as world heritage is detailed, and geographically comprehensive. At the level of basic cultural research it establishes issues such as the number of convicts involved in the history of each site and the site’s functions within the total system. The nomination also provides the basic research to enable a comparative assessment of Port Arthur and other Australian sites with others in the British colonial system and with other European colonizers (Pearson and Marshall, 1998). Since then, an International Centre for Convict Studies (ICCS) has been established as a global and multi-disciplinary consortium of

259 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

scholars researching penal transportation and convict experience within the British empire from 1600 to 1940 (ICCS, 2005). Located principally at the University of Tasmania, cultural research of this kind is the basis for developing a fundamental comparative picture of transportation and convictism.

Basic cultural research also includes marketing research. This is essential for developing and updating the site’s business plan, and includes annual research into visitors in terms of their numbers, origin, and their reason or reasons for making a visit.

For example, the marketing and research consultancy Enterprise Marketing and Research reported in the year 2000 that:

Tourists today visit Port Arthur in large numbers – nearly 200,000 each year. Most are not Tasmanians (approximately 85%) and are visiting for the first time (around 65-80%) attracted by the history of the site (53%) – especially its convict history (27%) and architecture (8%) – and most recently by the tragic events of April 1996 (8%) (Godden Mackay Context, 2000: 126).

A visitation figure of almost 200,000 per year represents almost half that of the total Tasmanian population of some 473,000 residents (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). This figure begins to suggest the order of the environmental impacts on the site and the economic importance of tourism to the regional economy. Again, the fact that most visitors (approximately 85%) are not Tasmanian and are visiting for the first time (around 65-80%) indicates the site’s importance to the Tasmanian economy. It also indicates that some 65-80% of visitors to the site are probably unfamiliar with the basic terms of the cultural significance of the place and that this must be addressed in interpretation.

Cultural Collaboration

Collaborative practices in the management and interpretation of major heritage sites are increasingly perceived as essential. They are viewed as essential to a proper determination of the full significance of such places to all elements of the community. They are perceived as part of the realisation of higher levels of cultural sustainability, and as significant in

260 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

achieving ‘customer satisfaction’, particularly in a competitive and demanding consumer sector such as that of cultural tourism. At Port Arthur consultations with the local community, indigenous groups and site staff have added extra dimensionality to the social significance of the site, as variously defined in Commonwealth and Tasmanian conservation policy and that of The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Sifnificance (1999). This collaborative inclusiveness can help build a valuable and constructive consensus over time.

Collaborations to build consensus between site, community and business stakeholders also relieve potential conflicts over appropriate development of the site and on and off site impacts. This is particularly important over the longer term, for a site as large and as important as that of Port Arthur. They also release fresh and authentic information and values held by local and specialist that may become part of site interpretation. This adds inclusiveness to interpretation, and thus legitimacy. In the past, Port Arthur like many government heritage sites was planned and managed from the top down, with little community input.

The collaborative planning literature offers enormous insights for enriching the strategic management of Port Arthur. Numerous benefits flow from developing a local and regional consensus about tourism that involves all stakeholders. As Healey suggests this can reduce potential adversarial conflicts between stakeholders in the long term (Healey, 1998). Further community collaborations add value to the site’s strategic management in two dimensions. They ensure the continuing release and integration of local knowledge and historical memory and understanding in relation to the Peninsula’s history of convictism, tourism and repression. Also, in a general sense, they release other dimensions of local knowledge and build community, collaborative and strategic capacity. Additionally, artists and writers have located to the Tasman Peninsula and are a specific example of the value of this kind of contribution. In their specific case the culture of the Peninsula is added to by the strength of their interpretation and the creative work they undertake often about and in response to the special qualities of the place. The work of the poet Margaret Scott, who lives on the Tasman Peninsula, is an example (Scott, 1997). With the levels of visitation to

261 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Port Arthur both site managers and tourism markets depend upon the creative reflexivity of such residents to maintain cultural immediacy and insight

Local groups are now more included in the planning for Port Arthur (PAHS, 2005a) but as the collaborative literature suggests power imbalances between stakeholders are hard to eradicate. The existence of power imbalances is a phenomenon noted by collaborative and communicative theorists, who recommend it be addressed by respectful ‘speaking and listening’ among stakeholders (Forester, 1989). The success and character of communicative transactions and collaborations with local communities may be informed by discussion in the collaborative literature in relation to issues such as ensuring community representativeness, facilitation of participation, openness of dialogue, respect and learning between participants in terms of their differences, and ultimate policy implementation.

However, in the case of tourism planning and management in Australia, community and stakeholder collaborations are not extensive. In this context, the Australian Government has not chosen to assume a role in promoting or developing a national framework for such collaborations, including the potential for the development of collaborative local and regional tourism policy.

Such a role should encompass marketing. Marketing deals with promotion and advertising and ultimately representations about the culture of a place. These representations may be viewed as authentic, or inauthentic, sensitive or insensitive, or in simpler terms as effective or ineffective. Owing to its national and state cultural importance, iconic status and high levels of visitation, the PAHS assists in defining Tasmanian culture. It follows that it can be marketed appropriately within the context of Tasmania’s culture, or it can be marketed out of context. Of course, the marketing of Tasmania itself will need to be assessed in terms of the authority of its identity claims. However, unlike a heritage site, a state government’s marketing and tourism bodies may not see their brief in connection with a researched, complex, and sometimes thorny identity. Yet image and representations are central in the postmodern economy and may define a place by default, or in contradictory or superficial terms.

262 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Cultural Interpretation

The Port Arthur Historic Site is important to Australia on a number of levels, from Australia’s early social history to its contemporary psyche and current struggles over identity. Under Australian conservation practice the site’s cultural significance determines its management, interpretation and use. However until fairly recently the cultural value of the place, despite the massive conservation budgets of the 1980s, was understood in superficial and limited terms only.

The historical understanding of Port Arthur is a complex and subtle matter. Although seen in simplistic terms as a penal settlement with a common sense understanding of penal practices derived from the contemporary prison it is much more than that. The significance of Port Arthur relates to many periods, many different kinds of phenomena, and to a history of representation and mythology. I first suggest a little of this complexity.

Port Arthur was a penal station for secondary punishment for major offenders after their transportation to the penal colony (Roe, 1981: 7/2). As such it was a gaol within a gaol, at the tip of Britain’s possessions in the Southern hemisphere, and part of the dark heart at the centre of British social and imperial policy. About 12,700 sentences were served there from its opening until its closure in 1877 (Hughes, 1988: 402). By the time transportation to Van Diemen’s Land had ceased, the total number of convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land amounted to some 73,500 (Hughes, 1988: 402). Throughout this period the form and life of the settlement was influenced by developments in imperial policy. This was particularly so with the Model Prison, which was based on the penal philosophy of the ‘separate system’, first introduced in Britain at Pentonville Prison. The Model Prison received its first prisoners in 1849. It had 50 cells, 12 solitary exercise yards and two ‘dumb cells’ with no light at all and insulated from all outside noise (Jack, 1981: 7/71). The ‘separate system’ not only utilised separate cells and exercise yards, but also separate stalls for worship in the Prison Chapel (Jack, 1981: 7/71). The Model Prison was introduced in Governor Denison’s words to have the ‘means at my disposal by which I may have some hope of being able to tame the most mutinous spirits’ (Kerr, 1984: 161).

263 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Figure 14. Separate stalls for worship in the Chapel at the Model Prison. Source: Archives Office of Tasmania.

The Model Prison is a rigorous example of the ‘separate system’ developed by the penal philosophers William Jebb and Joshua Jebb, who created Pentonville in London as their exemplar in 1842-2 (Jack, 1981: 7/71).

264 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The end product of this system and the almost complete sensory deprivation it introduced was a high incidence of mental instability. Following Foucault, this phase in the history of Port Arthur can be interpreted as representing a key shift in nineteenth century European penal practices. The management of prisoners moved from physical control and discipline towards increasing surveillance and psychological control (Foucault, 1991). As British and European industrial society matured, the shift took place to discipline the swelling labour force in an acceptable fashion. Solitary incarceration, enforced silence and numbing routine worked through what we would now call ‘sensory deprivation’, the basis of psychological torture. In the view of Kay Daniels the system at Port Arthur did not depend on the grossness or extravagance of physical torture, but rather on the extravagance of total surveillance. This surveillance included a concern with sexuality based on constant observation and close physical examinations of the body, to detect evidence of sexual behaviour (Daniels, 1983). This more concealed approach, which did not resort to the physical grossness of the lash, lies at the heart of Port Arthur and its introduction of broader and subtler kinds of discipline and control. This is a key ongoing form of relevance that the site has and reflects practices still with us today.

Following the end of transportation to Tasmania in 1853 (Roe, 1981: 7/2) economic depression set in as imperial funding and free labour ceased. As a result Tasmania promoted itself in the late 1850s as a tourism destination to encourage wealthy visitors from mainland Australia. Tasmania promoted its architecture and scenic beauty, but did so concentrating on the relics of the past, while avoiding the memories and experiences with which they were unhappily associated. After the last prisoners left Port Arthur in 1877 for the Campbell Street Gaol in Hobart, the settlement’s name was changed to Carnarvon and ‘excursionists’ started to make day visits to the site. Settlers purchased land in the area in the 1880s and tourism began to boom. At this period Port Arthur’s asylum, for example, was re-built as Carnarvon Town Hall thus eliminating some of the obvious evidence for the unambiguous mental and psychological impacts of the later penal practices at Port Arthur. This was also the beginning of more than a century of attempts and activities to deny the brutality and suffering associated with the Peninsula and ‘the hated stain’ of a history ‘too awful to face, let alone honour’ (Roe, 1981). Knowledge of the hated convict stain, and of

265 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

the incidence of insanity and institutional homosexuality associated with incarceration, ultimately went underground in the Tasmanian mind (Young, 1994a). This repression gave rise to sanitised myths about the history of the place and to its conversion to a picturesque parkland. During the 1980s major restoration was undertaken at Port Arthur with the priority given to the conservation of the site’s fabric rather than to its interpretation. Ironically, this helped to perpetuate the silence surrounding some of the key issues for which Port Arthur has been a focus in Tasmanian history. A form of ‘convict sublime’ was maintained as the site’s landscape’s identity and continues to this day, although contemporary interpretation of the site is now more realistic.

Figure 15. The ‘Convict Sublime’ - Port Arthur Landscape. Source: PAHSMA.

266 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

A more integrated concept of culture and an awareness of the need for collaborative research into the site were proposed in the first strategic management plan for Port Arthur (TLC and Pac Rim Planning, 1995). This approach introduced far-reaching changes to the cultural interpretation of the site based on deploying sophisticated cultural theory. The authorities at the site now recognise that further cultural research in relation to women and the site’s role in late nineteenth century tourism is needed as these issues have been poorly researched and represented in the past. Again, the nominal collaborative knowledge about the place is being expanded through recent communicative work on the meaning of the site for the local community.

In terms of the cultural interpretation of Port Arthur I cite my own interpretations prepared for the first strategic management plan and condensed in a ‘Statement of Cultural Significance’ (TLC and Pac Rim Planning, 1995). Following the preparation of this plan in 1995, I broadened this interpretation into an interpretation of Tasmania in an article published first in Island as ‘The Isle of Gothic Silence’ (1994a). This demonstrates an important issue. In this movement between preparing the intellectual framework for the strategic management plan and its ‘Statement of Cultural Significance’ and the publication of a more general interpretation of Tasmanian history and society, I am in fact illustrating a key relationship for planning. The intellectual framing of Port Arthur in its principal management and planning document is closely related to the regional and State-wide framing of Tasmanian history and society. This illustrates the issue of the important cultural relationship that exists between the content of planning at related spatial scales and in terms of planning in its urban and regional and strategic forms. It is also the issue of the relationship between major heritage sites and wider place and regional marketing. Further, it demonstrates a key argument and perspective of this thesis, a plurality of theory including postmodern and collaborative theories are useful for planning and may be operationalised to its benefit.

A sample of the diverse theories that are relevant here includes Foucault’s theories of the prison and of discipline and punishment in history (1991), Barthes’ theory of social

267 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

mythology (1989), and the concept of place marketing. I will examine each of these in turn.

Michel Foucault’s theories in relation to power and its capillary nature have been used by Allmendinger and other theorists in examining planning in its totality (Allmendinger, 2002a). However, Foucault’s ideas in relation to the practices of discipline and punishment as they emerged in Europe up to the twentieth century can be used to introduce a fresh perspective for Port Arthur. This view is explicitly expressed in my ‘Statement of Cultural Significance‘ in the first strategic management prepared plan for Port Arthur (TLC and Pac Rim Planning, 1995) and in the broader interpretation of Tasmania. Such a re- conceptualisation and its recommendations for policy illustrate the application of new theory to a major strategic planning exercise that could lead to radical changes in the interpretation of the site and in major strategic planning objectives, flowing through to the site’s conservation planning priorities, budgets and interpretation.

Port Arthur has been dominated by myths of one kind or another for much of its history. The tourism industry of the late nineteenth century began the process of sanitising the site to make it comfortable for excursionists and tourists who preferred to ignore the brutality of the place and the extent of the ‘convict stain‘ in Tasmanian society. Further, during the period of extensive conservation of the site’s structures in the 1980s considerable evidence of the early tourism boom in the form of early site cottages converted for use as tourist guesthouses was removed. The cottages were restored to the convict period, as freely as in the nineteenth century the asylum was rebuilt as a town hall.

The Port Arthur mythology satisfied the needs of Tasmanian society unable to come to terms with the extent and brutality of its convict past. Roland Barthes’ writings contain a critique of the repressive effects of mythology (Barthes, 1989). Barthes describes myths as ‘a huge internal parasite’ and as ‘in the fullest sense a prohibition for man against inventing himself (1989: 170), that work to sap and cancel social and creative strengths. Myths in Barthes opinion organise ‘…a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity:

268 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

things appear to mean something by themselves’ (1989: 156). This is the world from which the conservation industry, particularly at Port Arthur, is slowly removing itself. It does so in the context of the public and private sector marketing of regions and place promotion. These activities are all agents in the creation of place and may produce conflicts over the appropriation of images and representations about a place as well as pressures for - and resistance to - the commodification of place (Thorns, 2002). In the late twentieth century Port Arthur promoted itself using imagery and language that suggested it was a romantic park. This technique was allowed to work subliminally through suggestive imagery, although the site being promoted was a convict gulag, a little at odds with the constructed message. Place promotion is important for Port Arthur because it is the opportunity to align culturally valid messages between the different layers of public marketing undertaken by the state tourism agency and the PAHSMA. This marketing and promotion also has the opportunity to invite an exploration of convictism throughout Tasmania’s geography and across many elements of its culture, including that to be experienced through museums, galleries and the retail of historic furniture, artefacts and memorabilia. A state tourism planning strategy might therefore develop self-guided tours relating to all of Tasmania’s convict geography, or by its regions. This suggests that strategic planning in relation to Port Arthur, and other heritage sites of such cultural magnitude, not only relates closely to other public strategic planning processes but also to local and state-wide urban and regional planning. The cultural interpretation and presentation of Port Arthur has a fundamental connectivity with many other places and heritage formats throughout Tasmania. In practice heritage mangers are often fearful of these opportunities because they are perceived as inviting commodification. However, as Thorns comments following the views of other commentators, the increased commercialisation of a place or new forms of commercialisation will not:

destroy a place in the sense of making it meaningless; rather it will take the form of a new importation around which local and global actors (including tourists, investors, marketeers, urban planners and managers, politicians and locals), will compete and/or cooperate in the ongoing and emergent construction of the meanings of place (Thorns, 2002: 146)

269 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In conservation planning at Port Arthur attachment to place and intangible social values are nowadays overturning the old materialist paradigm based on a positivist and Eurocentric epistemology. Mass tourism at Port Arthur once cooperated with modernist heritage planning by trading on the site’s romantic parkland and on the convict sublime. In true post-Fordist fashion the tourism market has developed into a range of cultural tourism niches. The cultural interpretation of Port Arthur now needs to offer meaningful learning, personal experience and subtle theming of a fully culturised kind. In terms of culturised planning this means that the Model and its elements of integrated culture and integrated research need to flow through the Authority’s ensemble of planning documents. In turn this would influence the Strategic Management Plan, the Conservation Plan, the Interpretation Plan, the Visitor Management Plan and the Marketing Plan. This applies equally to heritage sites, although the planning terminology may vary.

Conclusion

The strategic planning of major heritage sites is increasingly centred on the richness of the culture such places offer. Equally it is also increasingly centred on the success and richness of the integrated research that is undertaken and represented in strategic planning processes. Success in this area is the antidote to lifeless and commodified versions of culture.

I believe however, that strategic planning for major heritage sites has a close relationship with good strategic planning undertaken in other strategic contexts and for different strategic purposes. The culture in question may be more varied and socially fluid, but it bears key relationships in common with major heritage sites, such as the PAHS. Strategic planning, whether undertaken for aspatial purposes or for urban and regional planning, can achieve transformational gains by imaginatively and systematically factoring culture into planning. The use of the Culturised Model is capable of facilitating this in many of these contexts.

270 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONCLUSION - DRAWING TOGETHER

I have sketched a new and transformational role for culture in planning in this thesis. In the Preface I suggest some of the personal reasons for attempting this, as well as the reasons why I consider it of such importance. In the Introduction, I also raised the questions of how planning could be practically enabled to utilise broader and deeper levels of culture, and whether a new paradigm and culturised model could strengthen the quality, relevance and reach of planning.

These questions were answered with the proposal for a new positionality for planning based on culture. The goal of reinvigorating and reintegrating current planning was seen to be possible through using culture as the key to a positionality of this kind. In this context culture can then be perceived as the thematic tissue underpinning and connecting planning at every spatial scale and ultimately through all of its forms. To undertake this role however I recognised that culture would have to be conceived in a comprehensive and integrated fashion to play such a part, and that its research and identification also needed to be multi-dimensional and pluralistic. This led to the development of appropriate enabling perspectives that were outlined in a new Culturised Model. These perspectives were embodied in principles for culture, a planner’s literacy trinity and a practical methodology.

In this way, the Culturised Model is able to pick up and respond to Harvey’s call for a better positioning for planning related to solutions. On another level it is a response to the broadest developments represented by the emergence of a culturalised age, with a need to develop the fullest opportunities inherent in a new social and economic formation at the same time as guarding against its tendencies to cultural commodification. The key to this social and planning dilemma is to respond with a new organising concept of culture. This concept is described in the term ‘culturisation’. Such a concept treats the understanding and research of culture in an integrated fashion, and as a foundational practice for urban and regional and strategic planning and other related sectors.

271 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

To achieve this vision an integrated concept of culture was first evolved, based on the categories of culture that form Lefebvre’s ontological triad of culture. Further, the Model then integrated Lefebvre’s ontology of culture with Williams’s powerful concept of culture as ‘a whole way of life’. This historically important and normative democratisation of culture introduced by Williams, is now canonical. The idea of integrated culture was then complemented with another powerful approach, that of integrated research. Integrated research incorporates the three elements of quantification, collaboration and interpretation. In integrating research and epistemological diversity it encompasses a plural approach to planning theory whether from the neo-modern or postmodern theoretical wings. I assume that a diversity of theory, and different aspects of theories, are relevant to the variety of planning’s needs and circumstances, although the match in certain cases between appropriate theory and appropriate applications may be high.

For these reasons it can be said that the Culturised Model is based on robust concepts and theory. This enables it to deliver a potential benefit to planning that stands in contrast to the characteristics of non-culturised planning as it is practiced in urban and regional and strategic forms. In spite of this it must be said that although Sandercock’s characterisation of planning and the ‘modernist inferno’ is a powerful and dramatic description of a kind of planning that has lost credibility, nevertheless the culturised planning I propose is nowhere up until now fully argued, or pursued evenly or comprehensively.

Further, planning theory tends to be exclusionary on its own terms and rival schools appear to be in competition with each other. For example, neo-modern and collaborative planning approaches still mainly eschew the insights of postmodern theory. On the other theoretical wing postmodern planning approaches continue to undervalue the importance of basic quantitative cultural research and the social immediacy and legitimacy of inputs from community collaborations. While the debate in the theoretical planning literature sometimes proposes the greater integration of culture in planning culturisation (Sandercock, 1998, 2003; Healy, 1997; Soja, 1993, 1996) it tends to do this in a loose and nebulous fashion. It is also self-conscious about how little has been achieved in practice and silent about the conceptual issues that are raised and any possible practical means of

272 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

implementation. Paradoxically, even the best-intentioned reformers I mention, as well as the general thrust of postmodern planning theory itself, often serve to perpetuate the very stalemate on culturising planning of which they complain.

Proposals for reform as they come into view, lack the benefit of an integrated approach to the whole of culture and are inimical to a plural approach to theory. Planning reform is considered in terms of adding on to planning forgotten fragments of culture. These fragments usually relate to highly neglected aspects of culture such as values, subjectivity or artistic works. However, they are not a sufficient substitute for an integrated approach to culture and to research. The integrated approach of the Model promoted by the principles for culture, the planner’s literacies and the methodology has the potential to address these limitations. Culturised planning is characterised by different qualities and criteria from non-culturised planning and piecemeal approaches to reform.

Non-Culturised and Culturised Planning

Non-culturised approaches to planning are in evidence in many planning settings. For example, in the past planning at the PAHS was once dominated by such approaches. Such approaches characterise much urban and regional planning and strategic planning, including strategic planning for other major cultural and heritage sites. The characteristic limitations of these approaches are summarised below. I flesh the principal features out with additional comment on the circumstances at the PAHS as they speak for many other examples in Australia and internationally. Non-culturised approaches to planning are represented by all or some of the following features:

• A non-comprehensive and non-inclusive approach to history and the community. This neglects cultural diversity and gives a weak sense of history and theory. For example, at Port Arthur women, indigenous culture, children and intellectuals were neglected and there was a weak sense of historical periods, themes, actors and agency.

273 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

• A poor concept of connectivity in all its dimensions. At Port Arthur this included a failure to recognise the interconnected nature of the Tasmanian and Australia-wide penal stations and their relation to overall issues of social discipline, trade and manufacturing within the British imperial system.

• Non-reflexive approaches to culture. At Port Arthur this included insufficient reflexivity exhibited in considering the implications of new theory and history for the site, and in examining the ethical appropriateness of key site tours, marketing texts and images.

• Non-strategic approaches to culture. At Port Arthur this ranged from a poor sense of related, off-site tourism opportunities and experiences for visitors to an emphasis on low-grade positivist research of the site mostly related archaeological data.

• Failure to achieve proper ethical engagement with the implications of place and history, particularly in terms of wider interpretation and public policy developments. For example, Port Arthur was a major Australian ‘gulag’ from the nineteenth century. This requires a critical engagement between the site and Tasmania’s social history and public policy development and represents a higher priority than State tourism marketing and promotion.

As an overall example of these lost opportunities, I again cite the issue of public place marketing that is so closely related to urban and regional planning, as the objectives, cultural content and themes of these two forms of planning are matched. Frequently, however, the culture represented in both of these planning forms is contradictory. In the case of place marketing, it may be seriously commodified by marketers according to a particular vision of tourism and other markets and of consumption. In spite of this, and in part because of it, strategic planning at the regional spatial frame has the opportunity to clarify regional culture and to assert its identity in culturally diverse and inclusive terms. This process should be governed by public ethical considerations that are not ostensibly guaranteed elsewhere in a laissez-faire polity.

274 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

In contrast, culturised planning of a kind the Model is designed to facilitate and promote, is characterised by some or all of the following criteria:

• Openness to the plenitude and opportunities of culture. Culture exists everywhere and at all times, including in invisible or intangible forms that may depend for recognition on subtle forms of research such as cultural mapping.

• A reflexive approach to culture. The ability to practically, morally and psychologically integrate cultural ideas and materials with local needs, conflicts, issues and circumstances.

• Ethical engagement with culture and capacity to interpret and apply local and global ethics in national and international agreements and charters.

• Strategic approaches to culture. The ability to address the connectivity of culture, and the potential links between the same culture across a diversity of interrelated planning levels and forms.

• Capacity to recognise the integrated elements of culture, and the existence of cultural systems.

• Ability to access and interpret expanding culture with integrated research, based on comprehensive cultural research, responsive community collaborations, and the suppleness and relevance of contemporary cultural theory and planning theory.

• Ability to recognise and use environmental heritage, public histories, and the cultures of communities, as pools of ideas and as springboards for creative opportunities in planning.

275 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Use of the Culturised Model will help to promote these opportunities. It should also suggest that integrated culture and integrated research are important in a practical sense because they enable the specific creative opportunities of a culturalised age to be grasped and furthered. Once understood, these approaches can be engaged in the process of shaping the character of culturised planning and its innovations and techniques as they are developed globally. Their use can in a very practical sense further the opportunities of a networked age and realise the potentialities that too often remain dormant in cultural theory and in neo-modern and postmodern planning theory. They will also assist in disclosing, quite powerfully, the threats and weaknesses of a globalised and networked age. I should point out that the methodology is a heuristic tool. In its structure the methodology resembles the form of a matrix in that each category of culture is capable of being accessed through individual research elements. Despite this, the focus is always on an integrated approach to culture and on the conduct of integrated research. The methodology’s structure is merely a tool to promote a higher, integrative purpose, too often ignored or neglected in planning.

In a culturalised age the ‘capture’ of culture in planning becomes more urgent as culture moves higher and higher on the socio-economic agenda. Ethical, intellectual, community and commercial issues related to culture become the core issues of a culturalised age. The reform called for today lies in a transformation in planning perspective, centred on culture to enable us to plan with, instead of against culture. The Culturised Model is a technique to better recognise, assess and articulate cultural knowledge in planning. It is based on a process of collaborative and theoretical cultural reflection involving the full diversity of the community. Only a Model with a depth of this kind will be able to respond to a world that explores the past, present and future simultaneously, in which cultural practices, cultural forms, communities and individuals hybridise further around the globe and produce cultural capital of new and unexpected kinds. In a global culture of this kind, the Model has the potential to add a level of value to planning that far outweighs the contribution from other sources.

276 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

The Model is positioned to facilitate in a practical fashion the defined policy for culture of UNESCO and the WCC. Further, the growing literature on the cultural economy and its role at the forefront of the post-industrial age has also searched for some time for a practical planning tool of this kind. The Model should also be capable of assisting in the culturisation of other social technologies, in sectors such as education, health and development, and may play a role in capacity building in communities and institutions. It is a contribution beyond the concepts or financial valuations of neo-classical economics.

Into the Future

It is my vision to consider publication of the thesis as a contribution to cultural and planning debate and to promote the possibilities for culturisation in a number of sectors. A simpler, more copiously illustrated planning practitioner’s guide, may also be appropriate as a desktop planning resource.

277 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Bibliography

Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., and Turner, B. eds, (2000) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, 4th Edition, London: Penguin.

Allaby, M. (1998). A Dictionary of Ecology, Oxford: OUP.

Allen, B. (2004) Knowledge and Civilisation, London: Westview Press.

Allmendinger, P. and Chapman, M. (1999) Planning Beyond 2000, Chichester: John Wiley.

Allmendinger. P. (2001) Planning in Postmodern Times, London: Routledge.

Allmendinger, P. (2002a) ‘Towards a Post-Positivist Typology of Planning Theory’, Planning Theory, 1, 1: 77-99.

Allmendinger, P. (2002b) Planning Theory, Hampshire: Palgrave.

Armstrong, H. (1993). ‘Multiculturalism and Cultural Continuity in Urban Places: The Many Meanings of Place in a Multicultural New World’, unpub paper, Postmodern Arts Conference, Dept of Urban and Regional Planning, .

Armstrong, H. (1994). ‘Cultural Continuity in Multicultural Suburban Places’, in Gibson, K. and Watson, S. (eds.), Metropolis Now, Sydney: Pluto Press.

Armstrong, H. (2000). Cultural Pluralism Within Cultural Heritage: Migrant Placemaking in Australia, unpub PhD thesis.

Armstrong, H. (2003) Conceptual Journeys: Using Qualitative Processes in an Inter- cultural Exploration of Place, unpub. paper, Association of Qualitative Researchers Conference, Sydney.

278 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Arnold, M. (1979). Culture and Anarchy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Australia ICOMOS. (1999). The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance: Australia ICOMOS.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001). ‘Statistics, Tasmania – Resident Population’. Viewed 1 March 2005.

Australian Tourism Commission Website (2005), viewed 18 February 2005.

Barthes, R. (1989). Mythologies, London: Paladin.

Bauman, Z. (1992). Intimations of Postmodernity, London: Routledge.

Beck, U. (1997). The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order, trans. Ritter, M., Cambridge: Polity.

Beevor, A. (1999). Stalingrad, London: Penguin.

Bell, C. and Bell, R. (1972) City Fathers. The Early History of Town Planning in Britain, Harmondsworth, Pelican.

Bennet, T. (1998). Culture – A Reformer’s Science, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.

Bernstein, R. (2002). ‘Introduction to Habermas and Modernity’, in Jurgen Habermas, eds, D. Rasmussen, and J. Swindal, Vol 3, London: Sage.

Birmingham, J. (1984) ‘The Hunter Valley of NSW’, in Australian Historical Landscapes, D. Jeans, (ed.), North Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.

279 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Birmingham, J. (1999). Leviathan – The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney, Sydney: Random House.

Booher, D. and J. Innes (2002). ‘Network Power in Collaborative Planning’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 22: 221-236.

Bramwell, B. and Sharman, A. (1999). ‘Collaboration in Local Tourism Policy Making’, Annals of Tourism Research, 26, 2: 392-415.

Brokensha, P. and Guldberg, H. (1992). Cultural Tourism in Australia, A Report Commissioned by the Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment and Tourism, : AGPS.

Burnley, I. (2003). ‘Population and Environment in Australia: Issues in the Next Half Century’, Australian Geographer, 34, 3: 267-280.

Calvino, I. (1978). Invisible Cities, New York: Harcourt Brace.

Castells, M. (1989). The Informational City. Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process, Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, M. (1998). The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol 1, Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, M. (2003). ‘The New Historical Relationship Between Space and Society’, in Cuthbert, A. ed, Designing Cities. Critical Readings in Urban Design, Oxford: Blackwell.

Chaney, D. (1994). The Cultural Turn, London: Routledge.

City West Development Corporation, (undated), Pyrmont – Perfect Sydney, Pyrmont: City West Development Corporation.

280 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Clark, I., Sutherland, J., and Young, G. (1995). Mapping Culture – A Guide for Cultural and Economic Development in Communities, Canberra: AGPS.

Clean Up Australia Website (2005). Viewed 28 February, 2005.

Committee of Inquiry into the National Estate (1974). Report of the National Estate, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.

Commonwealth of Australia (1999). Australian Convict Sites. Nomination by the Government of Australia for Inscription on the World Heritage List, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Cuthbert, A. (2003). Designing Cities. Critical Readings in Urban Design, Oxford: Blackwell.

Daniels, K. (1983). ‘Cults of Nature, Cults of History’, Island,16.

Davis, Mike (1992). City of Quartz – Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, London: Vintage.

Deleuze, G. (1973). Proust and Signs, London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.

Department of Arts, Sport, Environment, Tourism and Territories (DASETT). (1992) The Role of the Commonwealth in Australia’s Cultural Development, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Department of Communications and the Arts, DOCA. (1995). Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

281 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Department of Urban Affairs and Planning. (1999). Sydney Harbour and Tributaries. Discussion Paper, Towards a Vision and Strategic Program, Sydney: NSW DUAP.

Dovey, Kim (1999). Framing Places. Mediating Power in Built Form, London: Routledge.

Drew, C. (2004). ‘Material Culture – Migration Landscape, Merri Creek’, Overland, 174: 106-111. du Gay, P. and Pryke, M. (eds.) (2000). Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, London: Sage.

Edwards, D. (1998) Rosalie Gascoigne. Material as Landscape, Sydney: Art Gallery of NSW.

Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW (2003). NSW Charter of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society, viewed 12 February 2003.

Evans, G. (2001). Cultural Planning. An Urban Renaissance?, London: Routledge.

Fincher, R. and Jacobs, J. eds, (1998) Cities of Difference, New York: Guildford.

Fitzgerald, S. and Golder, H. (1994). Pyrmont and Ultimo under Siege, Sydney: Hale and Iremonger.

Flannery, T. (1995). The Future Eaters, New York: George Braziller.

Flannery, T. (1999) The Birth of Sydney, Melbourne: Text Publishing.

Florida, R. (2004). Cities and the Creative Class, New York: Routledge.

282 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Forester, J. (1999). The Deliberative Practitioner – Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Foucault, M. (1973). Madness and Civilisation, New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge – Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972- 1977, (ed.) C. Gordon, Brighton: Harvester Press.

Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault Reader. (Ed.) Paul Rainbow, London: Penguin.

Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin.

Geertz, G. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books.

Gleeson, B. (2000). ‘Reflexive Modernisation: The Re-enlightenment of Planning?’, International Planning Studies, Vol 5, No 1: 117-135.

Gleeson, B. (2003). ‘The Contribution of Planning to Environment and Society’, Australian Planner, 40, 3: 25-30.

Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Godden Mackay Context (2000). Port Arthur Historic Site Conservation Plan. Overview Report, Sydney: Godden Mackay Context.

Godden Mackay Logan. (2003). Bullecourt Place, Ultimo. Interpretation Strategy and Implementation Plan, Sydney: Godden Mackay Logan.

Gordon, C. and Mundy, S. (2001). European Perspectives on Cultural Policy, Paris: UNESCO.

283 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Greed, C. (2000). Introducing Planning, London: Athlone Press.

Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action 1: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society, Boston: Beacon Press.

Hall, P. (1998). Cities in – Culture, Innovation and Urban Order, London: Phoenix.

Hancock, W. K. (1972). Discovering Monaro, A Study of Man’s Impact on His Environment, Cambridge: CUP.

Harootunian, H. (2001). ‘History’s Unwanted Surplus: Japan and the Irreducible Remainder of Everyday Life’, Postcolonial Studies, 4, 2: 163-167.

Hartley, J. (2003). A Short History of Cultural Studies, London: Sage Publications.

Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell.

Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harvey, D. (2003). ‘Social Justice, Postmodernism and the City’, in A. Cuthbert, (ed.) Designing Cities. Critical readings in Urban Design, Oxford: Blackwell.

Hawkes, J. (2004). The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability – Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning, Victoria: Cultural Development Network.

Hax, A. and Majluf, N. (1999). The Strategy Concept and Process, A Pragmatic Approach, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hayden, D. (1995). The Power of Place – Urban Landscapes as Public History, Cambridge: MIT Press.

284 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Healey, P. (1993). ‘Planning Through Debate: The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory’ in F. Fisher and J. Forester eds, The Argumentative Turn in Planning, London: UCL Press.

Healey, P. (1997) Collaborative Planning – Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, Hampshire: Palgrave.

Historic Houses Trust (2005). ‘Elizabeth Farm’, viewed 1 March 2005.

Horne, D. (1971) The Lucky Country, Ringwood: Penguin.

Hoyle, B. (1996). Cityports, Coastal Zones and Regional Change – International Perspectives on Planning and Management, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

Hughes, R. (1988). The Fatal Shore, London: Pan Books.

Huxley, M. (2000). ‘The Limits to Communicative Planning’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 19: 369-377.

International Centre for Convict Studies (ICCCS). (2005), viewed 1 March 2005.

Jack, R. Ian. (1981). ‘Tasman Peninsula’, in The Heritage of Australia, Melbourne: Macmillan.

Jack, R. Ian. (1984) ‘Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania’, in Australian Historical Landscapes, D. Jeans, ed, North Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.

Jeans, D. and Spearitt, P. (1980). The Open Air Museum. The Cultural Landscape of New South Wales, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.

285 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Jacobs, J. (2000). The Death and Life of Great American Cities, London: Pimlico.

Jameson, F. (1984). ‘Postmodernism, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, New Left Review, Vol 146: 53-92.

Jary, D. and Jary, J. (1991). Collins Dictionary of Sociology, Glasgow: Harper Collins.

Johnson, A. (2000). The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, 2 nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell.

Johnston, C. (1992). What is Social Value? - A Discussion Paper, Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.

Jopson, D., Ryle, G. and Goodsir, D. (2004). ‘Revealed: How Redfern will be Reborn’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 2004.

Kaufman, T. (undated). ‘Hybrid Lives: 21 st Century Snapshots’, viewed 1 March 2005.

Kelly, L. and Booth, C. (2004). Dictionary of Strategy: Strategic Management A - Z, Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Kerr, J.S. (1984). Design for Convicts, Sydney: Library of Australian History.

Kohen, J. (2000). ‘First and Last People: Aboriginal Sydney’, in J. Connell, Sydney – The Emergence of a World City, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Landry, C. and Bianchini, F. (1995). The Creative City, London: Demos/Comedia.

Landry, C. (2000). The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, Stroud: Comedia/Earthscan.

286 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Lefebvre, H. (1992). The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell.

Lerner, A. (1999). Brief History of Strategic Planning, Northridge: California State University.

Lohrey, A. (1996). Camille’s Bread, Sydney: Harper Collins.

Manly Municipal Council (1986). Heritage Study of Municipality of Manly, Sydney: Department of Environment and Planning.

Marshall, G. (1998). Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mc Auslan, P. (1980). The Ideologies of Planning Law, Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Millis, R. (1984). Serpent’s Tooth, Ringwood: Penguin.

Moore, D. (1993). Sydney Harbour, Sydney: Chapter and Verse.

Morris, J (1992). Sydney, London: Viking.

Murphy, P. and Watson, S. (1997). Surface City, Annandale: Pluto Press.

Murray, T and White, K. (1988). Dharug and Dungaree: The History of Penrith and St. Marys to 1860, Penrith: Hargreen Publishing.

Naisbitt, J. (1982). Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, New York: Warner Books.

National Museum of Australia (2004) Murray-Darling Basin, viewed 14January 2005.

287 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP). (2000) Sharing Sydney Harbour. Regional Action Plan, Sydney: NSW DUAP.

Oregon Chapter, American Planning Association (1993). A Guide to Community Visioning, Portland: Oregon Visions Project.

Oxford University Press. (1968). Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: OUP.

Papastergiadis, N. (2000). The Turbulence of Migration, Melbourne: Polity Press.

Parramatta City Council (2005), viewed 1 March, 2005.

Pearson, M. and Marshall, D. (1998). Australian Convict Sites Draft World Heritage Nomination, Canberra: Environment Australia and World Heritage Group.

Port Arthur Historic Site (2005a). ‘History, 28 April 1996’, viewed 1 March, 2005,

Port Arthur Historic Site (2005b), viewed 1 March, 2005.

Proudfoot, P. (1996). Seaport Sydney – The Making of the City Landscape, Sydney: UNSW Press.

Rasmussen. D. and Swindal, J. eds, (2002). Jurgen Habermas. Volume Two, London: Sage.

Roe, M. (1981). ‘Tasmania’, in The Heritage of Australia, Melbourne: Macmillan.

288 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Ryan, L. (1981). The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Vancouver: University of Press.

Sandercock, Leonie (1998). Towards Cosmopolis. Planning for Multicultural Cities, Chichester: Wiley.

Sandercock, Leonie (2003). Cosmopolis II. Mongrel Cities in the 21 st Century, London: Continuum.

Scott, A. (2000). The Cultural Economy of Cities – Essays on the Geography of Image- Producing Industries, London: Sage Publications.

Scott, M. (1997). Port Arthur: A Story of Strength and Courage, Random House.

Searle, G. and Young, G. (1988). ‘Old Buildings, New Money’, Australian Society

Searle, G. and Cardew, R. (2000). ‘Planning, Economic Development and the Spatial Outcomes of Market Liberalisation’, Urban Policy and Research, 18, 3: 355-376.

Searle, G. and Byrne, J. (2002). ‘Selective Memories, Sanitised Futures: Constructing Visions of Future Place in Sydney’, Urban Policy and Research, 20, 1: 7-25.

Short, John Rennie (2000). Alternative Geographies, Edinburgh: Prentice Hall.

Smart, B. (1993). Postmodernity, London: Routledge.

Smith, D. (2002). ‘Human Footprint All Over the Planet’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October: 5.

Soja, E. (1993). Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London: Verso.

289 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Soja, E. (1996). Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Cambridge: Blackwell.

State Environmental Planning Policy No. 56. – Sydney Harbour Foreshores and Tributaries. Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority Website (2005), viewed 3 March,

Sydney Harbour Federation Trust Website (2004), viewed 3 March 2005.

Sydney Morning Herald, (2004). ‘Harvard global competence’, 10 May: 2.

Sydney Morning Herald. (2005) ‘Hello sailor: Navy enlists pink press’, 22 February: 10.

Thompson, E.P. (1980). The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Thompson, S. (1993a). ‘Suburbs of Opportunity: The Power of Home for Migrant Women’ in Postmodern Cities Conference Proceedings, Sydney: Department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Thompson, S. (1993b). ‘Home: A Window on the Human Face of Planning’, in Freestone, R., ed, Spirited Cities, Urban Planning, Traffic and Environmental Management in the Nineties, Annandale: The Federation Press.

Thompson, S. (2003). ‘Planning and Multiculturalism: A Reflection on Australian Local Practice’, Planning Theory and Practice, 4, 3: 275-293.

290 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Thompson, S. (2005). ‘Digestible Difference: Food, Ethnicity and Spatial Claims in the City’, in International Migration and Security: Culture, Identity, Opportunities and Challenges (eds.) E. Guild and J van Selm, London: Routledge.

Thorns, D. (2002). The Transformation of Cities – Urban Theory and Urban Life, Hampshire: Palgrave.

Trollope, A. (1873). Australia and New Zealand, vol. 1, London: Chapman and Hall.

Toibin, C. (2005). ‘The Comedy of Being English’, The New York Review of Books, 1, 1: 6- 10.

Tourism Leisure Concepts Management Consultants, Pac Rim Planning and Professional Services Group, (1994). Port Arthur Historic Site Strategic Management Plan: Implementation Action Plans, Port Arthur: PAHSMA.

Uluru-Kata Tjuta Board of Management and Parks Australia (2000). Uluru-Kata Juta National Park Plan of Management, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

United Nations (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights, viewed 1 March, 2005.

UNESCO (1972). Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, viewed 1 March 2005.

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED (1992), viewed 8 June 2004. [http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/envirp2.htm]

United Nations (1993). United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Agenda 21, New York: UN Dept. of Public Information.

291 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Velayutham, S. and A. Wise, (2001). ‘Dancing with Ga(y)nesh: Rethinking Cultural Appropriation in Multicultural Australia’, Postcolonial Studies, 4, 2: 143-160.

West, D. (1990). Authenticity and Empowerment. A Theory of Liberation, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Williams, R. (1966). Culture and Society, 1780-1950, England: Penguin.

Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature, Oxford: OUP.

Wirth, R. and Freestone, R. (2003). ‘Tourism, Heritage and Authenticity: State-assisted Cultural Commodification in Suburban Sydney, Australia’, Urban Perspectives, 3-26.

World Commisssion on Culture and Development (1996). Our Creative Diversity, Paris: UNESCO.

Young, D. (1996). Making Crime Pay - The Evolution of Convict Tourism in Tasmania, Hobart: Artemis Publishing.

Young, G. (1984). Environmental Conservation – Towards a Philosophy, Sydney: Heritage Council of NSW.

Young, G. (1985). ‘The Place of History and Heritage in Environmental Conservation’, in Planning for Conservation by Local Government, Sydney: NSW Heritage Council.

Young, G. (1988a). Conservation, History and Development, Sydney: NSW GIS.

Young, G. (1988b). ‘Critical Issues in Heritage and Conservation’, unpublished MA Thesis, Sydney: University of Sydney.

292 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Young, G. (1991a) A Cultural Tourism Strategy for the NSW Tourism Commission, Sydney: NSW Tourism Commission.

Young, G. (1991b). ‘The NSW Tourism Commission’s Planning and Development Strategy for Cultural Tourism’ in Cultural Tourism – Making it Work, Sydney: Museums Association of Australia.

Young, G. (1991c). ‘Authenticity in Cultural Conservation’, Australian Planner, 29, 1; 3-6.

Young, G. (1993). Planning in Postmodern Times. The Planner’s Role, unpub. paper, School of Planning UNSW Professional Practice Course, Sydney: UNSW.

Young, G. (1994a). ‘The Isle of Gothic Silence’, Island, 60-61 (Spring/Summer): 31-35.

Young, G. (1994b). ‘Cultural Mapping: Capturing Social Value, Challenging Silence’, Assessing Social Values: Communities and Experts, Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.

Young, G. (1994c). ‘Statement of Cultural Significance’, in Port Arthur Historic Site Strategic Management Plan: Implementation Action Plans, Tourism Leisure Concepts Management Consultants, Pac Rim Planning and Professional Services Group, Port Arthur: PAHSMA.

Young, G. (1995). ‘History and Conservation: the Interface’, in S. Sullivan (ed), Cultural Conservation: Towards a National Approach, Canberra: AGPS.

Young, G. (1997a). ‘Is Conserving Heritage Diversity a Public Good’, UNITEC, Auckland, New Zealand, unpub. paper.

293 THE CULTURAL REINVENTION OF PLANNING

Young, G. (1997b). ‘Planning the Addition of Value to Sydney, Australia’s World City of Culture and Ecology’, Unpublished proposal to the Hon. Bob Carr, Premier of NSW, Sydney.

Young, G. (1999). ‘Museums from the Heart’, Keynote Speech, NSW Museums and Galleries Foundation: Sydney.

Young, G. (2000). ‘Behind the Venetians’, Australian Planner, 37, 1: 14-19.

Young, G. (2000). ‘Rites of Passage – How Australian Cultural Tourism Can Come of Age’, Historic Environment, 14, 4: 27-33.

Young, G. (2003). ‘Cultural Mapping in a Global World’, ASEAN Cultural Minister’s Conference, Adelaide, viewed18 November, 2004.

Young, G and Lascaris, M. (1995) ‘The Patrick White House’, Unpub. letter to NSW Premier, 12 April.

Young, G. (2005). ‘Saving the Site of White’s Dreaming’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December: 15.

Young, I. M. (1990). ‘The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference’, in L. Nicholson (ed.) Feminism/Postmodernism, London: Routledge.

Zukin, S. (1995). The Culture of Cities, Cambridge: Blackwell.

***

294