- Title
- Honeysuckle, Newcastle: reimaging the city in the post-fordist era
- Creator
- Stevenson, Deborah Margaret
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 1993
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- In October, 1991, the New South Wales Government released a Concept Masterplan for the redevelopment of a forty-five hectare redundant industrial site in Newcastle, called Honeysuckle. This document details the design and planning priorities for the site and provides the framework within which the ongoing redevelopment of inner Newcastle is to occur. With Honeysuckle, Newcastle joins a long list of deindustrialising regional cities that have sought to make the revitalisation of a redundant industrial space the catalyst for an anticipated economic, social and cultural recovery. In the context of a much wider analysis of urban development, policy formulation, and urban and cultural theory, this thesis details the process of devising the Concept Masterplan for Honeysuckle. The Honeysuckle Concept Masterplan is a planning manifesto that privileges economic concerns over all others and appeals to the 'impartiality' of free market activity as the exclusive arbiter of value. The example of Honeysuckle demonstrates, however, that such processes of urban development often take place with the explicit consent of those interests most likely to be either marginalised or disadvantaged by the proposed development. Indeed, in principle the Honeysuckle Concept Masterplan has the overwhelming support of the majority of Newcastle residents, politicians and interest groups. It is demonstrated that central to the achievement of consent for the Concept Masterplan has been the mobilisation of specific images and identities of place that have resonance for residents of Newcastle. In this way, discourses of urban symbolism and the everyday meanings people attached to the places of their social and cultural worlds are deeply implicated in the legitimation of the production of urban space and the reproduction of hegemonic power relations. An emerging urban manifesto known as cultural planning is claimed to be an approach to inner city redevelopment that is grounded in empowering definitions of urbanism. Cultural planning also proposed principles said to enable the construction of more equitable cities through democratic planning processes. The considerable claims being made for cultural planning are assessed in this thesis. It is argued that, in its current formulation, cultural planning fails to take sufficient account of the historical nature of urban power relations and the on-going processes through which this domination is now legitimated. As a result, cultural planning may inadvertently serve to facilitate the reproduction of existing social inequality. The strength of cultural planning, however, lies in its concern with local government and local contexts. This focus has been largely absent from Australian urban analysis. The city is the site where control over the urban agenda is actively retained. Close analysis of the processes of reproduction may expose instances where hegemony of commercial interests is most vulnerable. These issues are explored in this thesis and it is argued that such an analysis should take as its starting point a reconceptualisation of the tripartite model of capitalist society: the state, civil society and the economy.
- Subject
- Honeysuckle, Newcastle; post-fordist era; redevelopment; inner Newcastle; cultural planning
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312975
- Identifier
- uon:22500
- Rights
- Copyright 1993 Deborah Margaret Stevenson
- Language
- eng
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