Walking as citizen-led placemaking in the neoliberal city : a case study of the Cooks River to Iron Cove GreenWay

Abstract

In an era of neoliberal urbanism, public participation in urban planning and governance is highly constrained, leaving minimal opportunities for citizens to meaningfully participate in decision-making processes (Legacy, Cook, Rogers & Ruming, 2018). Despite these constraints, communities engage in diverse strategies to influence planning policy across formal and informal political spaces (Rogers, McAuliffe, Piracha, & Schatz, 2017). Grassroots placemaking is one way that communities are subverting top-down planning systems to achieve place outcomes. Citizens and communities engage in everyday, emplaced activities which collectively shape their urban environments, constituting a mode of placemaking that is often overlooked in the field of planning. Walking is an everyday, embodied spatial practice for urban citizens that holds placemaking potential. This thesis therefore interrogates how communities are enacting local placemaking outcomes in the context of neoliberal planning frameworks, and how everyday spatial practices such as walking might contribute. The Cooks River to Iron Cove GreenWay is used as a single case study of community-led placemaking. Drawing from nine walking interviews and one focus group conducted with local volunteers, I present walking as an everyday, embodied spatial practice that is conducive to community-led placemaking. My findings reveal the diverse ways in which the GreenWay community shape landscapes and place meanings for transformative outcomes. Such placemaking practices are founded on embodied and emplaced practices such as walking. Walking is therefore conceptualised as a placemaking practice that facilitates place-based knowledges, experiences, and connections that enable and empower citizens to enact place change. However, when communities engage with institutional planning systems, local knowledges and experiences prove incongruent with state-led approaches to planning. Numerous challenges are encountered as communities navigate the complexity of neoliberal planning frameworks to achieve sustainable placemaking outcomes. By exploring communities' grassroots, embodied engagements with place, this research contributes to a greater understanding of diverse, alternative placemaking practices that will widen the possibilities for participatory planning.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English