Social housing renewal and the private sector : tenant participation as an invited space

This paper argues that place-based participation strategies, deployed by housing authorities as components of public housing estate redevelopment projects, are increasingly positioned within market-centric, technocratic and neo-communitarian (deFilippis, 2007) understandings of urban governance. This neoliberal understanding creates certain 'conditions of possibility' (Foucault, 1969) that shape and constrain the participation and consultation strategies deployed by housing authorities. These place-based participation strategies render invisible the ideological effects of neoliberalism, the market and the workings of capital by seeking to build a 'consensus seeking community' based on a functionalist approach to community building. To better understand these participation strategies a spatio-temporal research tool is put forward drawing on Cornwall's (2004) spatial metaphor of invited space. The research tool is deployed in this paper to investigate a public housing estate redevelopment project by public-private partnership in southwest Sydney. It calls into question participation strategies that consult public housing tenants within, and not about, place-based neoliberal redevelopment projects, suggesting this focus leaves aside broader questions of markets, capital and politics (deFilippis et al., 2006). The paper concludes by arguing if neoliberalism and market logic are going to continue to inform urban governance and policy, then public housing tenants should also have the opportunity to question and inform the ideological underpinnings of this urban logic (Shragge, 2003).