Outdoor Advertising and Public Space

So, there was controversy here in Sydney a couple of weeks ago about the NSW Government's decision to force the Opera House to display an advertisement for a horse race.

I wrote an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald about the broader issue of advertising and its impacts on public space.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian's intervention to insist the Sydney Opera House allow blatant Racing NSW advertising on its sails is objectionable for many reasons.

Most worryingly, it signals a new intensification of the ongoing privatisation of our public spaces through advertising. The surfaces of our city are being remade as advertising space before our very eyes. ...

You can read the rest of the piece here.

There was a great protest down at the Opera House on the night in question - you can read about that here.

I've had a bee in my bonnet about advertising in public space for a while now ... and published an article in Antipode a few years ago about the global outdoor advertising industry. You can find that here (email me if you're interested and have a hard time accessing it).

And there's also a piece about hacking outdoor advertising and the decommodification of public space in the new book I've been involved with writing, Sydney We Need to Talk!.

New book - SYDNEY WE NEED TO TALK!

I'm excited (and proud!) to announce the publication of a new book that I've been involved in pulling together.

It's called Sydney -- We Need to Talk!

It has been written by a group of folks at the University of Sydney -- geographers, plannings, political scientists, visual artists, staff and students -- who have been meeting every week to talk about our work on the politics of urbanisation. We're all either thinking about Sydney and/or thinking from Sydney. There are essays on decommodification, dispossession, democratisation, degrees, domains, dimensions, domesticity and digitalisation (we started riffing with d-words, and couldn't stop).

Each essay is co-authored, and while each essay features work on Sydney, it also travels somewhere else. We bring Sydney into dialogue into other cities where we're working, including Jakarta, London, Barcelona, Hong Kong, New York and beyond.

The book was designed by artist Wendy Murray, who has also responded to each essay with a series of illustrations.

You can find out more about the book and its making, and download a free copy of the book, at the website we've set up here.

The list of contributors is: Brittany Betteridge, Pratichi Chatterjee, Leah Emmanuel, Amy Fairall, Bradley Garrett, Mini Graff, Kurt Iveson, Rupert Legg, Sophia Maalsen, Marilu Melo, Wendy Murray, Madeleine Pill, Dallas Rogers, Jathan Sadowski, Alistair Sisson, Amanda Tattersall, Sophie Webber

The urban geography of attitudes to marriage equality (or, did car drivers vote 'no'?)

Yesterday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced the results of the postal survey it was directed to conduct by the Turnbull Government about the Marriage Act. Across Australia, 61.6% supported changing the Marriage Act to allow same-sex couples to marry. Yay!

But the uneven geography of this vote has also attracted attention. The 'Yes' vote was slightly lower in NSW - largely because 12 of the 17 Commonwealth electorates that had majority 'No' votes were in NSW, and specifically, in Western Sydney. This map of survey results has been doing the rounds:

Map of Survey Results in Sydney. Source: https://marriagesurvey.abs.gov.au/results/response-map.html

There are some particularly sharp divides here. Grayndler (not named in the map above, it is the purple electorate that sits in between Sydney and Watson) had a high 'Yes' vote of almost 80%. Watson, right next door, had a high 'No' vote of around 70%.

So, what should we make of this difference? How should we try to explain it? A few articles are popping up on the theme....

In this piece in the Guardian, Sam Dastayari - a Labor Senator from the region - argues that people in the region tend to be socially conservative. As for why this is so, he is quoted as saying: "The only demographic indicator that matters is ethnicity", and that any explanation based on a single religion would be incorrect. "[It’s across the board – Muslim, the Coptics, Christians, communities from migrant backgrounds contributed to voting no."

Likewise, Andrew Jakubowicz writes in The Conversation that "social conservatism among many ethnic communities loomed large as a factor" in the 'No' vote in Western Sydney". But he tells us not to essentialise this conservatism, and suggests a range of factors that might explain it:

The opposition to same-sex marriage ... was particularly resonant in communities where people have fairly poor educational backgrounds, somewhat limited English language skills and their information is mediated primarily through religious institutions.

So, in localities where there are strong communities built around Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Eastern Catholicism, African Christianities, Asian Christianities (ranging from Catholic to Evangelical), and even in other areas with pockets of Orthodox Judaism, there were singular funnels of information presented in cultural and moral terms.

There’s little information available to those people from any other source that they would trust, or to which they have easy access.

He goes on to argue that "It is important not to allow stereotypes to overwhelm analysis", and that "This is not simply about religion; it’s about culture in a more complex sense".

My colleague Dallas Rogers has written a piece for the ABC which seeks to head-off the stereotypes of those in 'the west' that are ever-present in discussions of Sydney's urban geography, and which are being hastily mobilised in some of the initial reactions to the poll. He worries that:

The discussion about the No vote will almost certainly follow a familiar narrative: the west is full of variously conservative new migrants, old people and ethnic and religious minorities. Religious and migrant media will come under fire. The familiar troupe of derogatory Westie, migrant and religious discussion will follow.

Dallas doesn't seek to explain away the poll results. Indeed, he identifies himself as a Westie who voted Yes, and as one who is disappointed by the results in this part of Sydney. But he makes a really important point when noting that:

The temptation might be to think about the diverse peoples and communities of western Sydney as the sole custodians of their views.

While the vote was clearly uneven, there were lots of 'No' votes from people outside Western Sydney, and lots of 'Yes' votes from people in Western Sydney, so we should not fall into the trap of focusing only on the colours of that map above. He also goes on to point out what we might forget now that the results are in -- that this postal poll was an incredibly divisive political tactic deployed by the Turnbull Government, which many have criticised for the fear-mongering and hate that it unleashed.


So, while it's tempting to try to explain the unevenness of the vote with reference to some of the rather obvious correlations between the poll results and the socio-demographic characteristics of an electorate derived from the 2016 Census, it's best not to jump to easy and unsupported conclusions.

Sure, there are significant differences in factors like religion, income, and education between majority 'Yes' electorates in inner urban areas like Sydney and Grayndler, and majority 'No' electorates in Western Sydney like Watson and Blaxland:

	Sydney	Grayndler	Watson	Blaxland
No Religion (%)	43.7	40.7	15.6	13.4
Avg Weekly Income ($)	933	997	490	462
Bach Degree or Higher (%)	43.8	42.6	22.9	17.3
English only Spoken at Home (%)	51.0	66.5	28.5	25.5

There are also some data that are surprising. For instance, of these four electorates, Sydney has the lowest percentage of people born in Australia:

	Sydney	Grayndler	Watson	Blaxland
Born in Australia	39.2	59.1	44.4	43.9

But before we start reading explanations from these correlations, note that there are also stark differences in other characteristics of the majority 'yes' and 'no' electorates, like public transport usage:
 

	Sydney	Grayndler	Watson	Blaxland
Public Transport to Work	35.7	38	25.2	21.3

Were people in Western Sydney more likely to vote 'no' because of their education levels, or because they are more likely to drive a car to work? There's a good correlation for both, but I haven't seen anyone try to explain the results in Western Sydney with reference to public transport usage! That's because, as they say, correlation does not equal causation...

More sophisticated analyses are going to be required to better understand which of any correlations might have some explantory relevance. And of course, such an analysis would need to take account of a range of other factors beyond simple demographic differences.

For instance, in his piece in Junkee, Osman Faruqi argues that:

The huge variation in the result across electorates has a number of factors, but is partly driven by the fact the No campaign appeared to focus its resources on migrant and non-English speaking communities while the Yes campaign spent its time and energy turning out the vote rather than convincing people to change their position on the issue.

I don't whether this is right, but it certainly does stand to reason that we'd need to look at the geography of the campaigns and information if we're interested in the geography of the result.

Sounds like something for some human geography students to get getting on with...!

Contesting bus privatisation in Sydney

Back in May, NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance announced plans to go to competitive tender for buses in the inner west of Sydney - effectively privatising bus services in that densely-populated region.

(In Sydney, bus services in different parts of the city are divided up into 'contract regions'. The government-owned State Transit Authority (STA) currently holds the contract to provide services in four of those regions. Region 6 is the one to be privatised. On average, there are around 3.5 million trips on buses in this region every month - making it the second busiest contract region in Sydney, after the STA-run Region 9 in the city's east.)

Sydney bus contract regions: STA regions 6-9 in blue

This is the latest in a long line of privatisations of urban infrastructures by this government: electricity infrastructure, crown land, government-owned buildings, train lines, ferries, hospitals, land titles registry, public housing all over the city (especially inner city) to name a few. A defining characteristic of their policy agenda is to shrink the role and assets of the public sector.

A terrific union-community campaign is taking shape to oppose this move, and to fight for publicly-owned and operated public transport that serves the public good. Drivers walked off the job for 24 hours the day after the announcement. A couple of weeks later, they swapped their uniform for Hawaiian shirts, switched off the Opal machines that collect fares, and handed out leaflets about the privatisation to happy commuters travelling for free. This month, there's been leafletting at bus stops, letterbox drops, a social media campaign, and well-attended community meetings across the affected area.

I was honoured to be invited to talk to a community meeting about the issue that took place in Pitt St Uniting Church on 28 June, alongside union leaders, community leaders, and politicians from both Labor and the Greens. Here's the long version of what I said, including links to sources. It's a critical analysis of the main arguments being used to support the privatisation.

**

I’m here to offer some critical analysis of the case for privatization that has been made by the Transport Minister, Andrew Constance, and his supporters.

There’s a lot at stake here. Tonight we’re talking about the privatization of buses in Sydney’s inner west. But if this goes ahead, it won’t end there. Back in March, Minister Constance told the Australian Financial Review that: “In 10 to 15 years' time government will not be in the provision of transport services”.

He has been strongly supported in this by the Tourism Transport Forum (TTF), a lobby group of tourism and transport operators. Last year, the TTF produced a report on "the benefits of private sector involvement in the delivery of bus services", urging governments around Australia to divest from public ownership and operation of bus services. When Constance made his announcement about inner west buses, they were highly supportive, and urged him to go further: “Today’s announcement the NSW Government will franchise the Inner West STA region is a very good start that hopefully signals a shift towards franchising more and more regions in due course.”

Four main arguments have been used to justify this privatisation. So let's do some fact-checking.

Claim #1: Inner west buses attract more complaints than privately-operated buses

In announcing the planned privatisation, Minister Constance frequently cited the high level of complaints received in about buses in Region 6 - for instance, telling the ABC: "If you consider that the private sector's had 19,000 complaints statewide verse 12,000 in this one region alone something had to give, and when it's complaints about buses not turning up, poor performance, we need to take action for our customers."

Now, it's not easy to check this claim, as the complaint data has not been made public by Transport for NSW. I have asked for the data, and have been told by Transport for NSW that I will need to lodge a Freedom of Information request, which I plan to do.

Guardian journalist Nick Evershed has seen, and analysed, the complaints data. He found that once you take account of the much higher number of passengers that use public buses in Region 6, they don’t receive way more complaints than private buses. Here's his figures:

Nick Evershed analysis of bus complaints. Source: Guardian Australia

This analysis undermines the Minter's claims. Indeed, he surely knew he was bending the truth in citing those statistics out of context.

What's more, the Minister's point makes little sense until we know more about the reasons for those complaints. For example, it’s possible that they’re about buses running late, or being full – factors that are beyond the control of the STA and its drivers. This leads to the second claim...

Claim #2: Inner west buses run late more often than privately-operated buses

The privatisation announcement included the claim that buses in the inner west had one of the worst on-time running performance results in 2016.

Well, this claim is technically true. But, as with the claim about complaints it is also pretty meaningless, when the data is offered without any context. Traffic congestion is also much worse in parts of the city covered by public buses. I have crunched some numbers from the Roads and Maritime Services Roads Report. For the period June 2016-May 2017, in the morning peak, traffic crawled along at an average of 54% of the speed limit in parts of the city where public buses operate. In less congested private bus areas, it averaged 62% of speed limit. Congestion influences on-time performance, having effects on punctual departures and keeping to timetabled stops.

On-time running 2016 x AM peak road congestion 2016-17. STA Regions shaded in blue. Sources: Transport for NSW Performance Reports; Roads and Maritime Services Roads Report

So, given the different road conditions across the city, it's just not meaningful or reasonable to compare on-time performance in congested and less congested areas.

Claim #3: Public buses cost more than privately-operated buses

As with all privatisation debates, supporters are talking up the financial benefits of expanding the role of private operators in Sydney's bus network. But their claims in this case are overblown, and/or blinkered.

Tourism Transport Forum CEO Margy Osmond was quoted on ABC news saying that "With a complete franchising of the bus service here in New South Wales, on the basis of research we did at the end of last year, it could mean up to a billion dollars over a five-year period for the NSW Government."

Well, actually, their research did not show that at all. It purported to show that a privatisation of all publicly-owned buses across Australia (ie, not just in Sydney and Newcastle, but in Brisbane, Canberra and Hobart) would save governments up to $1 billion over 5 years (see TTF, On the Buses, p. 4). Back in February, before being in the trenches defending the Minister, Osmond had said full bus privatisation in NSW could generate up to $500 million in savings over the 5 year period.

So ... what's half a billion among friends? Either way, these are big numbers. On what basis are such savings claimed?

The TTF never breaks down their calculations in its report, but it cites a 2005 journal article by Hensher and Wallis in support of its claims about the financial savings associated with privatisation. I've had a read of that article. And while Hensher and Wallis are by no means opponents of bus privatisation, their position is far more nuanced and critical than one might think from reading the TTF report. In particular, they identify several deficiencies in the process of competitive tendering for bus services that are relevant to our situation here in Sydney.

First, they note that the evidence on cost-savings is not particularly reliable. Indeed, they put the word 'evidence' in scare-quotes when discussing cost-savings (p. 300).

Second, while they certainly do think that competitive tendering seems to have generated savings where it has been implemented, they note some concerns about how such savings have been achieved in different contexts. In some contexts, particularly developing contexts, this has been achieved by driving down wages (p. 314). They also worry that "Although competitive tendering is market driven at the time of bidding, given the dominating focus on cost efficiency, it generally provides the wrong set of incentives to do more in line with social obligations or external benefits" (p. 318).

Third, they note that while there are often significant savings in the short-term from competitive tendering of bus services, the long-term is another story: "Evidence is accumulating of cases where some of the initial cost savings through CT are eroded through cost escalation in subsequent tendering rounds" (p. 313).

The competitive tendering of bus services in London in the 1980s provides a case of some of these points. There, it was reported that there was a significant 50% unit cost reduction in bus services between 1985 and 2000. A major factor was a reduction in labour costs. Another factor was a substantial increase in farebox cost recovery - a growth of 60-95% that does not seem to be accounted for by the increase in patronage of 12%, but by higher fares. Further, in the five years from 1995-2000, costs were back on the rise, at an average of 10% per year (pp. 301, 306).

Another case a bit closer to home is Perth. Bus services were privatised there in the 1990s. The TTF report points to cost reductions in the first decade of private contracting (p. 12). But costs have risen since then. The cost per passenger kilometre of bus services run by private operators in Perth has more than doubled since 2002, a rate of increase much higher than inflation over that period.

Perth, Bus Costs per Passenger Kilometre, 2002-2016. Sources: WA Public Transport Authority Annual Reports, Reserve Bank Inflation Calculator

As I noted above, Hensher and Wallis are far from advocates of public ownership (much less nationalisation!). But their review comes to the conclusion that a system of 'negotiated contracts' with established providers might be a more effective way to ensure cost efficiencies are matched with effective services levels that meet the important social obligations of a good public transport system.

Guess what we currently have with the STA for Regions 6-9 in Sydney? A negotiated contract, of course! And that negotiated contract has in fact been delivering performance improvements and cost reductions, through the hard work of staff, over the past several years.

Indeed, even the Tourism Transport Forum is forced to admit, in a small-print footnote on the last page of their report: "Sydney buses has begun to reduce its operating costs during 2013/2014, somewhat closing the gap to the private sector" (p. 31). These reductions have continued since then. It was being reported last year that as a result of these reductions, which were often painful for staff, in-principle agreement had been reached between the Government and STA to extend the STA's contracts for a further five years from 2017 with competitive tendering.

Now, Minister Constance is saying that the cost reductions have not gone far enough, and that STA buses still cost more to run than privately-operated buses in the rest of the city. Well, of course they do! The STA also happens to run a much more frequent service than those private operators - with regular services all the way from 5am to midnight, as we found when we mapped public transport frequencies for the Sydney Alliance a few years ago (see below). Benchmarking the STA against private operators with much less frequent services is just not reasonable.

Areas in purple = areas within 400m of public transport that has frequency of at least 15 minutes between 5am and midnight - note the overlap of high frequency parts of the city with STA contract areas. Source: Troy and Iveson for Sydney Alliance

Even the hard-line economists at the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal recognised in their 2015 report into the efficiency of NSW public transport services  that you could not directly benchmark the STA against private operators (pp. 52-57). While they attempted to take account of congestion and weekend services in their comparison, they too failed to take any account of the higher frequency of STA services during the average weekday. So IPART's conclusion that STA buses are less efficient than private operators is flawed. It does not value the STA's role in running more expensive bus services early in the morning and late into the evening. These non-peak services provide an essential social and economic service to the city - for shift-workers, people participating in the 'night-time economy', and many more besides. So comparing public and private here is like comparing apples and oranges.

Phew!

Claim #4: The private sector provides more innovative services

Finally, both the Minister and the TTF make the claim that the private sector will provide more innovative service offerings. The Minister, in particular, seems very enamoured of 'on-demand' bus services - in which passengers can effectively hail a small bus that could adjust its route in real-time. For him, cracking open the market to the private sector might allow such wonders to emerge.

Such services have been trialled now in a few cities – for example, in Helsinki (in a scheme called Kutsuplus that was run by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority), and in Boston, Washington and Kansas by a company called Bridj. There was plenty of hype about all of these services when they started up. But Kutsuplus, Bridj, and other similar services like Split have all fallen apart in the past few months. Evidently, the subsidies per rider were simply too high. In Kansas City, Bridj services (which were offered in partnership with the public transit authority there, and at least offered union jobs to drivers) were apparently being subsidised to the tune of $1000 per rider in the first six months of their operation. The public authorities and the venture capitalists who were funding the schemes eventually cut their losses.

Surely there are some lessons to be learnt here. It seems that right now, these on-demand, app-enabled mini-buses are no match for mass public transport in dense urban environments, from a cost perspective. So far, it seems the private sector is having no more luck delivering some of these techo-fantasies than the public sector.

Beyond the techno-fantasies, there's plenty of evidence for publicly-owned transport operators providing great, innovative services right here in Australia. Brisbane offers another example of this. There, the publicly-owned service includes a sector-leading Bus Rapid Transit network.

Conclusion: What kind of public transport do we want?

So, the case for privatisation has some big holes in it.

This is not to say that buses in the inner west, or anywhere else in Sydney, are perfect. Far from it.

But as we’ve been arguing in the Sydney Alliance for some years now, the biggest improvements we could make to public transport in Sydney are about filling the gaps in the network. We need to make sure that everyone is in walking distance to frequent public transport services, that form a coordinated network across the city that can get people wherever they need to go, whenever they need to travel.

That’s the job of … the government! It’s the government who ultimately has responsibility for network planning and service levels.

It seems that Minister Constance and Premier Berejiklian are trying to deflect our attention away from their failings to deliver the integrated network they promised in a series of previous plans. Worse still, they’re trying to redirect our frustration towards the drivers who deal with lousy Sydney traffic on our behalf, and the staff who keep those buses safe and clean.

I’m so heartened to see people in our city not failing for this attempt to divide us, sticking together with the drivers and maintenance workers and demanding that our public buses remain in public hands, serving the public good. And I look forward to working with you as we get ourselves organised to assert and win this demand.

Dear Greater Sydney Commission, my idea for Sydney is ... democracy

Last weekend, my fam and I popped in to Canterbury Racecouse, where a food market has just started up on Sundays. Empanadas and stuff. Right on.

At the far end of the market sat a parked bus that announced itself as a 'Talk Bus'. People with black t-shirts and balloons covered in hashtags were trying (and mostly failing) to connect with passers-by. They wanted to know what we loved about living in Sydney, and our ideas for making it better.

Someone from the bus tried to give one of my kids a balloon. It kinda freaked her out and she grabbed her mum's leg. Exactly, girlfriend. They also tried to stop my Mum for a chat. Mum's nice, and she politely declined. But in a classic spruiker move, that politeness was twisted into an invitation to talk some more. Mum tried to escape by telling them she was old, and that if it was all about the future, maybe they should be asking younger people. The frustrated spruiker then had a crack at her -- "what, younger people like the ones you're here with? They just walked past without talking to me!". End of engagement. I wonder what box got ticked on the woman's clipboard...?

It turned out the Talk Bus people were from the newly-established Greater Sydney Commission.

Here's a tweet of a picture of a camera filming a moment of consultation in front of the Talk Bus, with a guy with one of the hashtag balloons in the background:

The Greater Sydney Commission in action, working with some people and their dog to "co-create a more prosperous and liveable Sydney"
Image source: GSC Twitter Feed

Apparently, the Talk Bus will be travelling around Sydney for the next few weeks. Planning Minister Rob Stokes says it's all about "hearing directly from the local community to help shape the future of Sydney".

My blood is starting to boil just from typing out those words ... honestly.
 
I don't know anyone who works at the Greater Sydney Commission. They might be lovely people, for all I know. But I do know some bullshit when I smell it.

With the recent establishment of the Greater Sydney Commission, a bunch of appointed Commissioners have acquired incredible powers to shape this city. They've been given those powers by a Tory NSW Government that claims Sydney's problems are caused by the lack of a metropolitan planning authority. Apparently we need such an authority to make 'strategic' decisions for the city as a whole. Reduce silos! Cut red/green tape! Blah blah blah.

But the things that are most wrong with my town are not going to be fixed by the creation of the Greater Sydney Commission. In fact, the way that the NSW Government has gone about establishing the Greater Sydney Commission is a perfect example of what's most messed up with the way this city is governed.

When my mum extricated herself from the Talk Bus, she suggested maybe I should go talk to them and tell them what I thought. Best if I don't, I said. I'm not a fan of tokenistic consultation, and had no interest in contributing to their 'engagement' statistics. I was also a little annoyed that they had tried to get to me through my kid, and then made my Mum feel bad about not talking to them. And I had spotted the empanadas. 

But I probably should have stopped for a yarn, because I just ended up spending the rest of the afternoon being a little distracted, thinking of the kinds of things I coulda-shoulda-woulda said. You know the feeling, right?

Then I remembered I have a blog...

**

I don't have a problem with the idea of a planning for the city as a whole. In fact, I spend a lot of my time thinking about 'the city as a whole', and how it might be organised and represented and made more just, beyond local initiatives.

But as I've argued elsewhere on this blog, when people make claims to be representing 'the city as a whole', we have to ask some critical questions about the kinds of authority on which those claims are based.

Inclusionary Zoning and Affordable Housing in Sydney

A few weeks back, Sadiq Khan was elected Mayor of London. He has committed to a target of 50% affordable housing in new housing developments in London. That's a stark contrast to what's going on here in Sydney, where the affordable housing target is ... well, there isn't one.

Out of some frustration with that situation, I banged out an opinion piece that got a run in the Sydney Morning Herald, making the case for mandatory targets for affordable housing in new developments in Sydney - a policy known as inclusionary zoning. The article's copied in below, with links to further information about some of the points made along the way.

(The SMH ran the article with the title "Sydney needs to catch up to other global cities with affordable housing" ... which will be a nice anecdote for next year's lecture about the 'global city' concept as a hegemonic concept through which all sensible claims have to be articulated! But I guess I was playing that game in the article, so fair cop. Anyways, I digress...)

Inclusionary zoning is no longer especially 'radical' in many parts of the world. And, as Peter Marcuse pointed out in a recent blog post, if inclusionary zoning is used in the re-development of existing social housing or low income housing areas, it can actually reduce the proportion of affordable housing and contribute to gentrification. That's certainly a risk were it to be applied in some parts of Sydney -- the proposed redevelopment of Redfern-Waterloo, currently an area with substantial public housing, is a case in point. But setting a mandatory minimum target in a situation where such redevelopments are going ahead without any legislated requirements for housing affordability would be better than nothing!

Since the article was published, I've spoken at a very interesting forum on affordable housing hosted by Vinnies, and made an appearance on Channel 9 news for a story about NSW Labor's proposal for an affordable housing target (I don't think they've quite embraced a numerical target at this point). Here's hoping that through the hard work of lots of different actors in the city, the tide might slowly be turning on this issue...

***

We might poke fun at Malcolm Turnbull’s recent remark that wealthy parents should shell out to assist their adult kidsfind their way into the housing market. But his quip reflects the reality that is taking hold in Sydney today.

Housing has become unaffordable to all but the highest paid. Help from our parents is certainly the only way that my partner and I could afford the house we’re living in now – and we’re on higher wages than most. As Tim Williams from the Committee for Sydney recently argued, inheritance is becoming the main road to home ownership in Sydney.

The statistics on this situation keep on coming. Last year, one study reported in the Sydney Morning Herald showed that a nurse could not afford to purchase a home in 95% of Sydney’s suburbs. Another showed that in financial year 2014-15, there were 64 suburbs where not a single dwelling sold for less than $1 million.

Things get even worse for those on lower incomes. An Anglicare report showed less than 1% of available rentals wereaffordable for people on government income support payments.

There are so many reasons not to tolerate this situation – not least the injustice of intergenerational inequity and widening inequality, and the economic unsustainability of pricing key workers like nurses and teachers out of the city.

The reasons for the high cost of housing have roots in the changing economic structure of our city. Politicians of all stripes like to brag about Sydney being a ‘global city’. That’s all well and good. But as our city has made the transition to becoming ‘global’, the cost of housing relative to wages has skyrocketed. This is not a coincidence. Indeed, it is a global phenomenon in cities similar to ours.In global cities where employment is increasingly polarized between those in high-paid professions working for globally-oriented corporate services sector, and those in the lower paid consumer services sector, there has been tremendous upward pressure on house prices, especially in parts of the city close to major employment centres.

Left to their own devices, housing markets in these cities do not deliver affordability. Housing is not like the fictitious markets in high school economics textbooks, where increasing supply can cause prices to fall.

So, what are other ‘global cities’ doing about this problem? In many, Governments are setting enforceable targets for affordable housing in new housing developments. This policy is called inclusionary zoning. In London over the weekend, Labour’s Sadiq Khan was elected Mayor. Part of his platform was to require that a full 50% of all dwellings in new developments are affordable. This would represent an increase from the percentage achieved by his Conservative predecessor Boris Johnson. His administration set a three year target of 55,000 affordable homes, with an average 34% of new dwellings being affordable in the 2012-2015 period.

What is the mandatory minimum for affordable housing in new housing developments in Sydney?

We don’t have one. We don’t even have an aspirational target.

Inclusionary zoning is by now a mainstream idea in many major cities, and is supported across the political spectrum. In cities like London, the debate has moved on from whether it is a good idea – the argument is now about the proportion of housing that should be made affordable.

This widespread embrace of inclusionary zoning is reflected here in Sydney, where a diverse cross-section of society supports inclusionary zoning in new developments as an effective means to provide affordable housing. Civil society peak groups like the NSW Council of Social Service and coalitions like the Sydney Alliance are calling for inclusionary zoning. Academics who have been funded by Governments from across Australia to look into solutions for housing affordability are calling for inclusionary zoning. The Committee for Sydney, whose membership is made up of dozens of major national and international corporations located in Sydney – including several prominent developers like Lend Lease, Meriton and Mirvac – is calling for inclusionary zoning.

But for some reason, the NSW State Government won’t get with the program.

Earlier this year, Premier Baird announced a $1 billion fund designed to ‘encourage’ investment in affordable and social housing. It was reported that this might generate an extra 3000 affordable homes – that’s a start, but it’s certainly not enough to transform our situation.

We need much more from Government than polite ‘encouragement’. We need enforcement.

As we stare down the barrel at several major redevelopments across Sydney – like the Central to Eveleigh corridor, the Bays Precinct, the train stations along the soon-to-be transformed Bankstown line, Parramatta Road, the areas around the proposed Parramatta light rail, and many more besides – we must set substantial mandatory requirements for affordable housing.

Aspirational targets have been set for some of these developments, but we know from past experience that this won’t do. Enforceable requirements that apply across the city are the only way to ensure that all developers involved in the planning and construction of new housing – including the State Government’s own Urban Growth – can’t trade away affordable housing aspirations once developments get underway.

"What is saved is not always safe...": Alison Alder and Mini Graff poster exhibition on public housing sell-off at Millers Point, Sydney

For those in Sydney ... get in while you can to check out Some Posters/Local Positions, an exhibition of posters by Alison Alder and Mini Graff at The Cross Arts Projects.

Mini Graff, 2015, Pipped at the post (Dominos)

The exhibition is a part of the gallery's program to celebrate the 40th anniversary of International Women's Year (1975). It features new work from both artists that responds to the NSW Government's shameful sell-off of public housing in Millers Point and the Rocks -- inner urban neighbourhoods where public housing was 'saved' by the green bans in the 1970s.

(This recent piece by Alex Greenwich provides a little background on the sell-off, and a critique of its intentions and its execution.)

Building a City for 'The People': the green bans in pictures

I'm very excited to say that I've got an article on the green bans coming out soon in the journal Antipode. The article is part of a Special Issue on Grammars of Urban Injustice that has been put together by Gordon MacLeod and Colin McFarlane -- big thanks to Gordon and Colin for including the piece. Here's the abstract:

How can we act to contest urban injustice? This article grapples with this question through an analysis of the green ban movement that emerged in Sydney in the 1970s. For a time, this unruly alliance of construction workers, resident activists, and progressive professionals powerfully enacted a radical right to the city, blocking a range of unjust and destructive “developments” worth billions of dollars and proposing alternative development plans in their place. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how the figure of “the people” was crucial to their action. The article examines the rights and the authority that was invested in “the people” by green ban activists, and traces the work of political subjectification through which “the people” was constructed. “The people” was not invoked as a simple majority or as a universal subject whose unity glossed over differences. Rather, in acting as/for “the people”, green ban activists produced a political subject able to challenge the claims of elected politicians, bureaucrats and developers to represent the interests of the city. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this construction of “the people” for urban politics today.

The article is available on now on Antipode's 'early view'. If you want to read it and can't access that, please get in touch!

Anyways, this post is not (just) an exercise in self-promotion. There was no room to include any illustrations with the piece, and I promised in the article that I would post some illustrations here at Cities and Citizenship. I think these images add quite a lot to the story. They're annotated here with some basic notes, so they might be of interest regardless of whether or not you read the article. These images are all courtesy of the very generous Meredith Burgmann, who has made her papers on the green bans available for researchers at the Noel Butlin Archives in Canberra, and who also shared some pictures with me. Enjoy...

Demonstrators stopping demolition at The Rocks, 1973. Jack Mundey (who was at that point Secretary of the NSW Branch of the Builders Labourers Federation) in foreground, Meredith Burgmann on right of picture wearing very snazzy suit. The green ban at The Rocks was one of the most dramatic and successful of the bans ... although as Evan Jones has written recently, working class housing in the area is once again under threat.

Jack Mundey gets arrested at The Rocks, 1973.

NSW BLF Journal article about the green ban in the Rocks ... "People or Profits"? A big part of my article talks about the way that various green ban activists invoked the needs of 'the people', and considers the importance of this figure in the building of alliances between building workers, residents, and others.

Joe Owens (Secretary of the NSW BLF who took over from Mundey in 1973) negotiates with police in Victoria Street, Kings Cross, January 1974. The Victoria Street ban was another of the most high profile bans, and involved squats and barricades against developers and their hired thugs. For a great accounts of the squat, visit Ian Milliss' webpage, where there copies of a couple of great articles from the City Squatter that he wrote at the time.

Juanita Nielsen, Victoria Street resident and editor of the community newspaper Now!, disappeared in 1975 at the height of the conflict over Victoria Street.

Joe Owens (NSW BLF Secretary) and Bob Pringle (NSW BLF President) speak with BLs occupying a crane at Institute of Technology site, Broadway. The crane was being occupied in a dispute over coverage between the NSW Branch and the Federal Branch of the union, which launched an 'intervention' against the NSW leadership in 1974.

Joe Owens addresses a crowd, with Bob Pringle (NSW BLF President) looking on (on his right as you look at the picture)

Graffiti in Woolloomoolloo

Anti-expressway graffiti, Glebe

Col James, an architect/planner who worked closely with residents to develop People's Plans and who died recently, with Mary Kristensen, Woolloomoolloo, 1974. The green ban here bought previous time for the development of alternative plans which did not evict low income residents from the area. Col was funded by the Commonwealth Department of Urban and Regional Development to work with 'loo residents to come up with alternative development plans for the area.

NSW BLF Christmas Card, 1971, listing a range of causes to be supported in the following year. Right on...

Female BLs march at International Women's Day March 1974, Left to Right: Glenys Page, Lyn Syme, Rhonda Ellis, unidentified, Michelle Fraser, Janne Reed, Caroline Graham. The NSW BLF was very active on women's liberation issues, including the 'working in' of female workers onto building sites that I describe in more detail in the article.

'Moratorium for Black Rights' banner flying from crane. The NSW BLF were also very active supporters of Aboriginal rights. This included enabling activists from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to address workers on building sites to talk about their protest and raise money for their cause.

Broadsheet newsletter produced in support of the green bans, 1973

Broadsheet newsletter produced in support of the green bans, 1973. Here again, we see the explicit reference to the people. If you click on this picture, it should be large enough to read...

Master Building Association full page anti-BLF advertisement, 1973. During a very fractious dispute in 1973, the Master Builders Association took out several full-page newspaper advertisements against the NSW BLF. Coupled with editorials in some of those newspapers, these constituted a sustained attack on the goals and tactics of the union.

Master Building Association full page anti-BLF advertisement, 1973

Master Building Association full page anti-BLF advertisement, 1973

Master Building Association full page anti-BLF advertisement, 1973

Mick Fowler, one of the residents of Victoria St in Kings Cross, entertains a crowd at an anti-Gallagher rally. Norm Gallagher was the Secretary of the Federal Branch of the Builders Labourers Federation that expelled green ban activists from the union after working with the Master Builders Association to have the NSW Branch of the union deregistered.

Advertisement in support of NSW BLF, 1974. This advertisement exemplifies the way in which the union had become a 'pole of attraction' for many dissident groups in the process of alliance-building, to quote Sydney Gay Liberation activist Richard Wilson.

Protesters in support of NSW BLF outside Master Builders Association office, Sydney. Their banner reads "The Master Builders and Gallagher are colluding to destroy the only socially conscious union in Australia. NSW Builders Labourers care about people. So we care about NSW Builders Labourers"

Flyer advertising rally in support of NSW BLF, 1974

Builders Labourers for Democracy was formed by supporters to try to protect the NSW Branch against the Federal Branch intervenion

Advertisement taken out by expelled NSW BLF leadership after the Gallagher intervention

Badges in the Bob Pringle collection at the National Library, Canberra