City Road Podcast

Education is one of the key civil rights struggles of our era, and urban schools need to do more to bridge the 'civic empowerment gaps' between students.

How and what we teach children will determine how they engage in civic life for the rest of their life. It's time to rethink the role of civic education in our cities. This goes way beyond tweaking the curriculum. It means upending the curriculum altogether. It's about teaching students about power, justice and the need for collective action, and their role in improving their lives and society.

We're talking with Professor Meira Levinson about her teaching and research. Meira's work draws on eight years of teaching in urban public schools in Atlanta and Boston. Educational disadvantage was a reality for many minority or disadvantaged students in these schools. Meira suggests that urban schools in some America cities are suffering from a 'civic empowerment gap', an achievement gap that was targeted by a 2001 government act known as No Child Left Behind.

For Meria, ethics matter! She is commitment to grounding her research in teaching practice and her experience as a public school teacher. In her recent book, Justice in Schools, Meira combines philosophical analysis and school-based case studies to illuminate the complex dimensions of evaluating, achieving, and teaching justice in schools. Academics play a key role, she argues, in rigorous cross-fertilisation of scholarship, policy and practice.

Guest

Professor Meira Levinson is a normative political philosopher who writes about civic education, multiculturalism, youth empowerment and educational ethics. Levinson argues that education is the civil rights struggle of our era, and that schools need to do much more than bridge now widely recognised achievement gaps; rather, they need to upend curricula and redefine civic education to address the civic empowerment gap. Real civic education, according to Levinson, teaches students about power, justice and the need for collective action, as well as how they can have a role in improving their own lives and society.

Her most recent books include the co-edited Making Civics Count (Harvard Education Press, 2012) and No Citizen Left Behind (Harvard University Press, 2012). Supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, Levinson’s newest project is on justice in schools and combines philosophical analysis with school-based case studies. Levinson spent eight years teaching in public schools in Atlanta and Boston, has a background in political philosophy, and is a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The Democratic Experiment Series

This is episode II of The Democratic Experiment series. This series is a partnership between City Road and The Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney. The Sydney Policy Lab exists to break down the barriers between researchers, policymakers, campaigners and the community at large. At the Sydney Policy Lab people of all backgrounds are coming together to strengthen our democracy, reduce spiralling inequality and help to empower communities to shape their own future.

In the early 1990s, when China’s artists were less able to participate in open debate about the shape of Chinese society, they turned to the production of urban space instead.

“If you want to see the political impact of Chinese artists, we can look to the city in order to see that.” Dr Christen Cornell

After the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, Chinese cities entered a period of radical social and spatial reorganisation. During the process, artists began to move from the countryside into Beijing. Some artists took up residence in the old communist compounds that had once housed the collective work units – compounds that were now earmarked for demolition.

You have probably heard of Ai Wei Wei, the controversial Chinese artist who designed the so-called birds nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. But what you might not know about artists like Ai Wei Wei is they have been reshaping the physical, cultural and perhaps even the political fabric of Beijing. We’re chatting with Dr Christen Cornell to find out how.

Christen says, when we look for examples of urban political activism in China many people search for signs of open protest in Chinese cities. And when we take an interest in the country’s artists, many people look for the political commentary in their artwork. But the role of the artist as a political actor in China involves a more complicated form of urban activism.

Drawing on ideas that were popular in western cities at the time, the Chinese artists renamed the sites they were claiming ‘artists villages’ and ‘art districts’. This was a political move to save these sites and their artistic practice. We talk to Christen about the shape and significance of these urban arts communities, and the impact they had on the physical and cultural life of the city.

Guest

Dr Christen Cornell is a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Christen is working across issues of cultural policy, housing, urbanism and contemporary Chinese culture.

PART II - How much public land has been stolen from the British people? The short answer is, a lot!

We’re talking to Professor Brett Christophers from Uppsala University about his new book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. And it’s a story that we just couldn’t squeeze into one episode, so alas, we’ve given the next two episodes of City Road over to exploring the ideas in the book.

In the first episode we talk about the old enclosure acts of the last few centuries before moving to what Brett calls the new enclosure—or the privatisation of public land in the UK today. In the second episode, Brett draws some connections between the privatisation of public land and addressing the housing problem in the UK. He maps out the winners and losers of The New Enclosure, and here’s a hot tip, if you’re looking to buy or rent a house, you’re unlikely to be a winner.

Here is the book blurb from Verso.

Much has been written about Britain’s trailblazing post-1970s privatisation programme, but the biggest privatisation of them all has until now escaped scrutiny: the privatisation of land. Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass, including some of its most valuable real estate, has passed from public to private hands. Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land—for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing—has been sold off en masse. Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences?

The New Enclosure provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original eighteenth-century enclosures. With more public land still slated for disposal, the book identifies the stakes and asks what, if anything, can and should be done.

Guest

Professor Brett Christophers’ research ranges widely across the political and cultural economies of Western capitalism, in historical and contemporary perspectives. Particular interests include money, finance and banking; housing and housing policy; urbanization; markets and pricing; accounting, modelling and other calculative practices; competition and intellectual property law; and the cultural industries and the discourse of “creativity”.

PART I - How much public land has been stolen from the British people? The short answer is, a lot!

We’re talking to Professor Brett Christophers from Uppsala University about his new book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. And it’s a story that we just couldn’t squeeze into one episode, so alas, we’ve given the next two episodes of City Road over to exploring the ideas in the book.

In the first episode we talk about the old enclosure acts of the last few centuries before moving to what Brett calls the new enclosure—or the privatisation of public land in the UK today. In the second episode, Brett draws some connections between the privatisation of public land and addressing the housing problem in the UK. He maps out the winners and losers of The New Enclosure, and here’s a hot tip, if you’re looking to buy or rent a house, you’re unlikely to be a winner.

Here is the book blurb from Verso.

Much has been written about Britain’s trailblazing post-1970s privatisation programme, but the biggest privatisation of them all has until now escaped scrutiny: the privatisation of land. Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass, including some of its most valuable real estate, has passed from public to private hands. Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land—for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing—has been sold off en masse. Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences?

The New Enclosure provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original eighteenth-century enclosures. With more public land still slated for disposal, the book identifies the stakes and asks what, if anything, can and should be done.

Guest

Professor Brett Christophers’ research ranges widely across the political and cultural economies of Western capitalism, in historical and contemporary perspectives. Particular interests include money, finance and banking; housing and housing policy; urbanization; markets and pricing; accounting, modelling and other calculative practices; competition and intellectual property law; and the cultural industries and the discourse of “creativity”.

In cities around the world, people are channeling their frustration with existing community engagement processes into the creation of urban alliances. These alliances bring together diverse civil society actors in pursuit of social change.

This is the second part of our two-part discussion about democracy and cities. We talk to Amanda Tattersall about how urban alliances work in practice in different cities around the world. We travel to Cape Town in South Africa and  Barcelona in Spain, before returning to Sydney, Australia.

"I'm interested in the urban alliances that are going to allow citizens to have a better city. I see them as progressive, because if citizens are going to have more rights, and more resources supporting their lives, that is a progressive outcome." Dr Amanda Tattersall 

If you missed the first part of our discussion you might want to catch up on that episode first. We talk to Kurt Iveson about urban alliances that allow citizens to play a proactive role in shaping their cities. Kurt suggested these alliances are an alternative to the reactive modes of engaging people in city making that exist in current urban governance and planning frameworks. 

Guest

Dr Amanda Tattersall is a scholar and a change maker. She is a Post-Doctoral Fellow on the Organising Cities Project in the School of Geosciences. She is the founder of some of Australia’s most interesting social change organisations, including the Sydney Alliance and GetUp.org.au. She is also the founder and Host of the ChangeMakers podcast, which tells stories about people trying to change the world. Her book, Power in Coalition, was the first international study of alliance building as a strategy for social change.

As an urban geographer, she focuses on questions of how the city can be a subject for democratic politics. She is currently undertaking research on intra and inter city coalition building strategies to identify ways in which networks of urban alliances may help citizens present solutions to wicked global problems like climate change, poverty, inequality and the politics of refuge. Her PhD was in industrial relations, and she has previously worked as a union organiser and was an elected official at Unions NSW. As a teacher, Amanda’s greatest passion is to bring the community in – with stories, guest speakers, practical projects that are strengthened by her extensive network amongst Australia’s not for profit community.

The Democratic Experiment Series

This episode is a part of a series called The Democratic Experiment. This series is a partnership between City Road and The Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney. The Sydney Policy Lab exists to break down the barriers between researchers, policymakers, campaigners and the community at large. At the Sydney Policy Lab people of all backgrounds are coming together to strengthen our democracy, reduce spiralling inequality and help to empower communities to shape their own future.

We talk to Saskia Sassen about her work on globalisation and the global city by tracing the key ideas in three of her books.

We start with Saskia's most famous book, 'The Global City', and the idea of intermediation in the global city. We move onto Saskia's historical and, as Saskia suggests, her best book, 'Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages' to discuss the methodological tools of capacities, tipping points and organising logics. We end our discussion with Saskia's latest book, 'Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy' and the ideas of expulsion and the systemic edge in the present.

Guest

Professor Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired till 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization three key variables running though her work. Born in the Netherlands, she grew up in Argentina and Italy, studied in France, was raised in five languages, and began her professional life in the United States. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of three books. Together, her authored books are translated in over twenty languages. She has received many awards and honors, among them multiple doctor honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands, and made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.

After the Arab Spring, Occupy and the Umbrella Movement the streets were cleared. But as the dust was settling some more durable democratic experiments emerged. These urban alliances sought to make our cities more equitable places to live.

In this two-part episode on democracy and cities we’re talking about a new type of political movement that is forming in different cities around the world; its called an urban alliance. In this first episode, Associate Professor Kurt Iveson sets up the discussion by telling us why cities are important for democracy.

“There’s a basic demographic thing about, you know, the majority of the world’s population now living in cities… that’s really important, in the sense of, the particular problems of everyday life in cities are now being experienced by millions of people around the planet... questions of water, food, housing, transport…” Associate Professor Kurt Iveson

It’s not only that there are different ways to practise democracy in our cities, but the very fabric of our cities and even the ecologies of our cities can shape how the new urban alliances operate. In other words, the geographies and socialities of the city matter for how democracy is practised.

The story we tell ourselves about democracy is often focused on nation-states and citizenships. But for Kurt, urban alliances and sustained community organising in cities are just as important for democracy as nations. Questions about cities frequently focus on who counts as a democratic subject and how to participate in various political, interest or geographical communities. These types of questions are being creatively re-imagined in cities around the world, and one of these re-imaginings is called an urban alliance.

“At the very basic level, what we’re trying to signal by this term of urban alliance is a kind of political formation that is not just about a particular issue, and is also not just based on a particular identity, but is an alliance that operates – the thing that binds people together is their shared inhabitance of a city”. Associate Professor Kurt Iveson

If you like this discussion you can listen to the second part of this two-part episode about democracy and cities via City Road. In part two, we start with Kurt’s suggestion that urban alliances are not just flash-in-the-pan protests on the latest political bugbear, rather they are a new form of democratic practise. We pick up where Kurt left off with Kurt's collaborator, Dr Amanda Tattersall, who is an urban activist and researcher. Amanda talks about her fieldwork uncovering new urban alliances in Cape Town and Barcelona.

Guest

Associate Professor Kurt Iveson is interested in the question of how social justice can be achieved in cities. In this episode, Kurt discusses his current study with collaborator Dr Amanda Tattersall: Organising the 21st Century City: An International Comparison of Urban Alliances as Citizen Engagement. The study is funded by the Henry Hallroan Trust.

This study builds on Kurt’s previous research, which has focused on two main areas. First, he has examined the significance of the urban public realm for citizenship and democracy. Second, he has explored how urban planning might work better to achieve social justice in cities. Kurt is the author of Publics and the City

The Democratic Experiment Series

This episode is a part of a series called The Democratic Experiment. This series is a partnership between City Road and The Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney. The Sydney Policy Lab brings people together to identify solutions to the major challenges of our age. At the Sydney Policy Lab people are coming together to strengthen our democracy, seeking to reduce spiralling inequality and helping to empower communities to shape their own future.

In Sydney, changing international migration patterns and the rise of apartment living means people of different cultural backgrounds are regularly interacting with each other inside their high-density buildings. And it’s not without its problems.

In 2016, it was estimated that around 55 per cent of the world's population now lived in cities. By 2030, urban areas are projected to house 60 per cent of the world’s population. While migration and compact city policies are rarely seen as intersecting by policy makers, cultural difference and living in close proximity to each other can compound the tensions that already exist in apartment buildings and society more broadly.

These tensions could be about shoes being left in common areas, or washing hung on balconies, or 'offensive' cooking smells wafting beyond the kitchen walls and down the halls. These tensions are connected to the gradual shift away from migrants from countries such as the UK and the increase in migrants from countries such as China and India.

Today we’re talking to Chris Ho from the University of Technology and Edgar Liu from the University of New South Wales, about how high density living and cultural diversity are changing the way we live in Australian cities. And when it comes to intercultural relations, little attention has been given to what’s happening inside the apartments building of our cities.

Guests

Dr Christina Ho is a Senior Lecturer & Discipline Coordinator, Social and Political Sciences, within the Communications program, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.  Chris is interested in: multiculturalism, diversity politics and cosmopolitanism; migration policy and migrant experiences; cultural and national identity formation among migrants; Chinese migration to Australia, including Chinese international students; Muslim diasporas and gender; cultural citizenship and community arts; segregation and schooling; and ethnic concentration and community building in urban areas. 

Dr Edgar Liu is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Built Environment's City Futures Research Centre. He joined the Centre in April 2009 soon after completing his PhD in cultural geography at the University of New South Wales. His research primarily focuses on assessing the effectiveness of public housing estate regeneration in Australia; service integration and Indigenous housing; affordable housing; housing choice decision-making; and concepts of community and place.

We’re talking about extinction, climate change, urban development and urban planning futures. Dr Donna Houston says urban planners need to be more attuned to the ecological realities and rhythms of our cities.

“The longer view, but also the responsibility. So cosmo-ecological is also to put one self into obligation or responsibility; in a way that... Western euro-centric or anthropocentric practices don’t do”. Dr Donna Houston

As urbanists, we need to imagine a different type of future to better plan for multispecies cities. Part of the answer might be to decentre the human from our discussion of cities and urban planning more specifically.

“… to understand that the ecological and cultural processes that are entangled within our relations are really important to our survival. In fact, we won’t really survive if we don’t attend to them”. Dr Donna Houston

Donna’s powerful and unnerving research starts with ecological time, which is important for understanding the way we plan, design and build cities. Donna ends by talking about the role of cosmo-ecological and Indigenous methodologies in urban planning.

Guest

Dr Donna Houston is an urban and cultural geographer in the Department of Geography and Planning at Macquarie University. Her research explores the intersections of urban political ecology and environmental justice in the Anthropocene; the biopolitics of climate change; toxic landscapes and bodies; and planning in the 'more-than-human' city. Dr Houston is the Director of the Bachelor of Planning and the Co-Director of the Faculty of Arts Environmental Humanities research stream.

We face an energy governance trilemma: of peak demand for electricity in cities; ensuring prices remain low; and addressing climate change with renewable technologies. And your home is right in the middle of this energy trilemma. 

A Smart Electrical Metre fitted to your home might just be the technology that pushes you into a more data-driven, digitally networked and automated energy world. But what do smart metres mean for you, your household and your home? 

"So the main benefit of the smart metre is that it can lower your electricity retail bill, and as we all know, we've seen significant increases in electricity prices". Dr Sangeetha Chandra-Shekeran 

We’re talking to Dr Sangeetha Chandra-Shekeran and Dr Jathan Sadowski about smart metres, energy governance, tech start-ups and privacy. They discuss the divergence between what smart metres promise electricity consumers and electricity managers, what they currently do, and what new data about electricity usage might allow in the future. These technologies might allow us to better manage energy, but there also other forces at play.  

"The smart metre opens up a lot of opportunities for energy companies and particularly this emerging eco-system of energy tech start-ups". Dr Jathan Sadowski

What is clear is that smart metres will create an uneven patchwork of costs and benefits for different actors in the electricity sector – an uneven patchwork that will impact you and me.

Guests

Dr Sangeetha Chandra-Shekeran is a Lecturer in the School of Geography and Deputy Director at the Melbourne Sustainable Societies Institute at the University of Melbourne. Sangeetha is an economic geographer with a focus on the political economic dimensions of change in large social and technical systems. Her research studies the challenges of deep decarbonisation and the complexities of the energy sector. 

Dr Jathan Sadowski is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Architecture Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. His research investigates how transformative technologies, that are data-driven, networked, and automated, shape societies and cities.