Unsettling subjectivity across local, national, and global imaginaries : producing an unhappy consciousness

This article analyzes the complex and subtle dynamics involved in producing and representing the global-local nexus in everyday life. Its socio-historical context is the destabilization of the current globalization system – and its associated global imaginary – marked by the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, continuing with the populist explosion in the mid 2010s, and climaxing in the 2020 Global Coronavirus Pandemic. But rather than mischaracterizing the current context as “deglobalization”, we describe it as a contemporary intensification of what we have been calling the “Great Unsettling”. This era of intensifying objective instability is linked to foundational subjective processes. In particular, we examine the production of an “unhappy consciousness” torn between the enjoyment of global digital mobility and the visceral attachment to the familiar limits of local everyday life. In doing so, we rewrite the approach to the sources of ontological security and insecurity

Principles for Better Cities: Towards Sustainable Development in Metropolitan Regions, Precincts and Places

This document was commissioned by the Sustainable Cities Collaboratory and the City of Berlin to guide cities through the complexity of creating vital, sustainable, productive and relational places to live. It is one of the outcomes of the Metropolis project ‘Sustainable Cities Collaboratory’ led by the City of Berlin

Antarctic Cities. Volume 3, Antarctic Connectivity Index

The Antarctic Connectivity Index is an innovative and comprehensive instrument developed through a collaborative project involving a number of universities, agencies and cities. It provides an evidence-based means of showing the various levels of connectivity of cities as they engage with Antarctica. This Antarctic Connectivity Index seeks to understand the level and nature of the connections of cities across the world to the Antarctic region. For the purposes of this index, the concept of ‘the Antarctic region’ includes Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the sub-Antarctic region. The notion of ‘connectivity’ is used in the deeper historical meaning of the condition of being ‘joined together’ from the Latin conectere, to bind or establish a relationship—rather than the contemporary thinning out of the concept as the establishment of a mediated communications channel. This mean that the connectivity is understood across a range of domains—ecological, economic, political, and cultural—rather than limited to communications technologies and other infrastructural means of connection. The Index has been refined through comparative international case studies, surveys and research into current publicly available indicators. As a result of this process, we are at the beta-stage of developing a comprehensive instrument to gauge a city’s current status as an ‘Antarctic city’. The index is intended as a guide to thinking and practice as citizens of these cities contribute to Antarctica’s future. We are keenly interested in the activities of the Antarctic gateway cities and their transition to become Antarctic custodial cities. At the same time, this index is intended to have a global reach and allow for any city to evaluate its connections to the Antarctic. In setting up the index and its variables we have included consideration of cities other than the five gateway cities to bring in different kinds of relations to the Antarctic that are generally applicable

Antarctic Cities. Volume 4, Principles for Antarctic Connectivity

Principles for Antarctic Connectivity brings together the values associated with the Antarctic Treaty System in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It is an initiative to bring together cities together in ways that outline a common vision, narrative and priorities. Antarctica is one of four internationally recognized global commons along with the atmosphere, the high seas and outer space. These are all areas that have historically been guided by the principle of the common heritage of humankind. However, there is no comprehensive charter of principles for Antarctic engagement. The present charter ‘Principles for Antarctic Connectivity’ seeks to provide such a set of guidelines. The continent is governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, a complex set of arrangements developed to regulate relations between states with interests and territorial claims in the region. There are five main articles to the treaty that have a principle-like quality (see Appendix 1 for a summary of all the articles): 1. No military use shall be made of Antarctica, though military personnel and equipment may be used for peaceful purposes. 2. There will be complete freedom of scientific investigation. 3. Antarctic Treaty Nations will exchange plans for their scientific programmes. Scientific data will be freely available and scientists will be exchanged between expeditions where practical. 4. All territorial claims are put aside for the duration of the Treaty. No activities under the Treaty will affect claims to sovereignty of any part of Antarctica made by any nation. 5. Nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal are banned from Antarctica. As of today, 29 states are ‘consultative parties’ to the Treaty. They demonstrate their interest in Antarctica by carrying out substantial scientific activity there. The Treaty articles are geographically directed towards activities in Antarctica. This charter, by comparison, is not geographically contained but pertains to all activities that have a bearing on the Antarctic region

Antarctic Cities. Volume 2, Urban Sustainability Profiles

The sustainability profiles of the participating cities were developed by the Antarctic Cities project based on the premise that the cities needed to map and understand their own sustainability in order to understand their capabilities for custodianship. They needed to understand their own strengths and weaknesses — ecologically, economically, politically and culturally — in order to reach out to Antarctica without a false sense of what was possible and without romanticizing what custodianship entails. Put in more general terms, care beyond one’s borders is strengthened by a culture, politics and economy of local care. The profiles are one means of providing an evidence-based understanding of where that care is best directed. In order to map the sustainability of the Antarctic cities in a way that allowed qualitative comparison across these urban regions — municipalities that collect data in relatively incommensurable ways and along quite different variables — we needed a method that could variably integrate data and statistics into a qualitative assessment framework. Hence, we chose the Circles of Sustainability approach.1 The Circles approach offers such an integrated method for practically responding to complex issues of sustainability, resilience, adaptation, and liveability. It is used to guide the cities through the difficult process of responding to complex or seemingly intractable problems and challenges associated with building long-term sustainability. The approach builds upon the strengths of a research program developed in association with Metropolis, the UN Global Compact Cities Programme, World Vision and a number of other key international organizations. It was developed through practical engagement in cities around the world including Berlin, Melbourne, Milwaukee, New Delhi, Porto Alegre, San Francisco, and Valletta, to name a few.2 The Circles of Sustainability profile process is intended as a way of developing an interpretative description of the sustainability of an urban region and its immediate hinterland. Here sustainability is understood in relation to local, national, and global processes: ecological, economic, political and cultural. The Circles of Sustainability process is considered part of the more general Circles of Social Life assessment process, which includes considerations of vitality, productivity, relationality and sustainability (including resilience and adaptation).3 This meant that the other elements of the work — the Connectivity Index and the Principles of Antarctic Engagement — could be developed using the same matrix of variables. The sustainability profile template is intended as way of developing a more comprehensive understanding of an ‘urban region’—in this case, Hobart. By responding to the questions in the Urban Profile Question it is possible to generate a clear and simple graphic representation of the sustainability profile of that region. Examples are shown in Figure 1 (next page) for representative cities around the world. The Urban Profile process works on the basis of a four-domain model. Each domain is divided into seven perspectives (as set out in Table 1 below), and seven questions are asked about each perspective (see the questionnaire that follows in this document)

Closing the Loop on Waste: Community Engagement, Cultural Diversity, and Shared Responsibilities in Waste Management in Canterbury-Bankstown

This Closing the Loop on Waste report contributes to a broader in-depth project being undertaken by Canterbury-Bankstown City and a range of partners that aims to deliver improvements in customer service and organisational efficiency for waste management. This project has four major milestones: 1. Build strong relationships with customers, partners, universities and community groups; 2. Develop data products using newly deployed technology devices to collect information on dumped waste, and contamination; 3. Collect and provide data to measure, benchmark and enable future service improvements; and 4. Innovate in conjunction with universities and other partners develop new products. The contribution of this report is to collaborate with Council in the development of a community-engagement study focused around current community sentiments towards waste and Council waste management services. This part of the project aimed to support Council to engage with culturally diverse communities and identify a range of platforms and engagement methods

Planning Cultural Infrastructure for the City of Parramatta: A Research Report

Parramatta is dramatically changing, cultural practices are shifting, and the demands on cultural infrastructure are becoming increasingly complex. This report provides the necessary research and information to assist the City of Parramatta in determining its strategic priorities regarding the development of cultural infrastructure in the City. There are three components of the report - Audit, Benchmarking, and Needs Analysis. Part 1 of this report provides an audit of Parramatta’s cultural infrastructure, its patronage and future needs and trends. It provides a realistic assessment of the gaps in existing cultural infrastructure and facilities in Parramatta and of how the cultural needs of its current and future populations are met. Part 2 of this report provides key data regarding a selection of relevant national and international cities for comparison with Parramatta. Part 3 of this report describes the specific short-term and medium-term needs for investment and planning required to bring Parramatta’s cultural infrastructure profile to that of world-class regional cultural capital

Overcoming the new Tordesillas divide

As one author in the present anthology reminds us, the first fleet to arrive in Australia in 1788 came via Rio de Janeiro. It was common practice, at least until the 1820s, for ships traversing the Atlantic and Indian oceans from Portsmouth to Botany Bay to stock up on supplies in Brazil. Put in more dramatic terms, we might say that Australia was settled via Latin America. The vagaries of being tied to different empires - Britain, on the one hand, and Portugal and Spain on the other - slowed relations between the two continents, but the histories of the two lands were both linked and divided by that same phenomenon

Globalization and the great unsettling

Across the globe, the period since the middle of the twentieth century can be characterized by an ontological unsettling of both the human and planetary condition. Notwithstanding earlier premonitions of global upheaval felt by intellectuals from Karl Marx and Mary Shelly to Friedrich Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot, the years that followed the dropping of the Atomic Bomb ushered in an unsettling of unprecedented depth and spread. It became a global condition. After a brief period of self- assured confidence during the 1950s in the capitalist West, and despite a continuing dance between hope and despair across the following decades, arguably the world as a whole descended into an uneven state of upheaval. It is indicative that one of the most cited poems across the course of the twentieth century is best known for its last two lines concerning the end of the world

Alternative paradigms for sustainability : decentring the human without becoming posthuman

In the emerging realisation of the precariousness of the human condition an increasing urgency surrounds discussions of sustainability. Much of this urgency centres on attempts to find alternative paradigms for life on this planet. The dominant developmental paradigm currently assumes the centrality of modern, human-centred, market-driven, economic growth as the basis of human flourishing, marginally off-set by ameliorative efforts to take the environment into account. Responses swirl through public discourse and practice. This chapter addresses two such alternative paradigms. The first is posthumanism, coming out of a critical postmodernism mixed with a new materialities discourse. The second is the Triple Bottom Line approach, much more conventional ‒ hardly a paradigm break at all. Both these alternatives, it is argued, are flawed