This event is free – Thursday, 28 April, Parramatta CBD Campus PC-X.6.4.15, 6.00 – 8.00pm (download flyer here)

This Public Lecture includes talks by some of Australia’s leading urban planning scholars. Associate Professor Kurt Iveson (University of Sydney) will chair the event with talks by Professor Heather MacDonald (University of Technology), Dr Crystal Legacy (RMIT University), Dr Nicole Cook (Melbourne University), and Dr Laura Schatz (Western Sydney University).

New metropolitan-level advocacy and planning networks are being created within Australian cities (for example, in NSW these include The Committee for Sydney, Sydney Alliance and the Greater Sydney Commission). Meanwhile, local community action groups are developing sophisticated methods for including themselves in local and state level urban politics, and industry lobby groups continue to apply political pressure to inform the planning of Australian cities. When considered against the latest thinking on planning and engagement, this emerging arrangement of voices presents new challenges and opportunities for citizen participation in urban planning in NSW.

This Public Lecture covers themes such as:

• What the people of Sydney know about urban planning and their motivations for being involved in the planning of their city;
• The new relationships between the public and private sectors, and local community groups;
• The re-emergence of urban planning ‘social movements’ and community action groups;
• The tensions between ‘government-driven’ and ‘community-driven’ participation in urban planning; and
• The questions these developments raise about democracy, social action and urban theory.

In the spirit of engagement and academic debate, the short presentations will be followed by a Q&A session where you will have the opportunity to discuss the ideas that are put forward by the presenters.

This event is sponsored by the Henry Halloran Trust, as a part of our Western Sydney University, Agonistic Community Engagement Study.