Tuesday 30/11, 9.15: Creating /terra nullius/: The long shadow of colonialism in planning

Far more than merely sites of exploitation, British settler colonies might more accurately be seen, as Ann Stoler suggests, as 'laboratories of modernity': where approaches not yet thinkable at home became possible. The production of blank spaces upon which new, modern arrangements of socio-spatial relations could be written became just such a possibility in colonial settings. What rationalities, technologies, desires and modes were present and shaping forces in the production of such blank spaces? This paper argues they were the emerging spatial cultures of what we today would recognise as urban planning. If modern planning is colonial by its very constitution, then we might see the contemporary desire for 'blank slates' in planning discourse, present in everything from national parks to urban regeneration sites, as the long shadow cast by colonialism.

Libby Porter teaches and researches in city planning at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland. She is the author of /Unlearning the Colonial Cultures of Planning/ (with Ashgate 2010), and co-editor with Kate Shaw of /Whose Urban Renaissance? An international comparison of urban regeneration policies/ (with Routledge 2009). She is Assistant Editor of the journal Planning Theory and Practice, and co-founder and coordinator of Planners Network UK. Before joining the academic community in Australia and now the UK, Libby was a senior researcher on urban and planning policy with the Victorian State Government, Australia.

Time and Venue
"Sydvästra Galleriet",
KTH Main Library,
Tuesday 30:e november 2010,
9.15.

(föreläsningstips)