89. Infrastructure on Unceded Land

City Road Podcast

How is infrastructure entangled with the legacies and ongoing processes of settler-coloniality? How might we give more meaningful attention to planning for Country and with Indigenous sovereignties?Cities in so-called Australia are built on unceded First Nations land. We talk about what this means for the way we understand and do infrastructure planning, and the responsibilities of planning professions. Asking these types of questions unsettles many governance assumptions, and prompts infrastructure professions to question ‘who gets to decide?’, ‘whose knowledge is prioritised?’, and ‘who benefits?’. Guests Elle Davidson, Aboriginal Planning Lecturer, Balanggarra woman from the East Kimberley and descendant of Captain William Bligh Associate Professor Tooran Alizadeh, Research lead of the Henry Halloran Trust Infrastructure Governance Incubator at the University of Sydney Dr Rebecca Clements, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Henry Halloran Trust Infrastructure Governance Incubator at the University of Sydney This discussion was informed by the research conducted as part of the Infrastructure Governance Incubator. This is a multi-university, multidisciplinary research platform funded by the Henry Halloran Trust, hosted by the University of Sydney in partnership with Monash University, the University of Melbourne, and Planning Institute of Australia (NSW and Victorian branches).