Becoming Urban: A Social and Cultural Study of Urban Change in Brisbane

Abstract

Becoming Urban is a study of Brisbane’s emerging urbanism in its inner-city areas. Its focus is on the psychosocial and experiential dimensions of urban change. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Brisbane is poised on the brink of a significant period of its development as the city is transformed, both materially and imaginatively, from a regional town into an emerging global city. This transition has major social implications. The study rests on two main assertions: first, that Brisbane’s emerging urbanism is situated in a tension between its parochial, inward-looking past and its future - its development as a postmodern city, discursively framed as open, inclusive and tolerant to difference; and second, that Brisbane’s city space is significantly being reconfigured and that many people now inhabit the city in different ways than they did prior to urban regeneration. The growth in density and development of the inner city, of service amenities and cultural facilities means that new modes of engagement and ways of being in the city are offered and adopted. These new spaces and amenities are sites for increasingly differentiated forms of sociability, a mode of living which is representative of broader changes to the social structure (Bauman 2000; Maffesoli 1996). In its growth from regional town to an emerging global city, Brisbane’s new and recast spaces also present the opportunity for encounters with the Other and for the negotiation of difference. Underpinning both assertions is the understanding that the city is a discursive space, in which discourses inform the types of identifications and attachments that people develop with space and place. Thus the nexus between the discursive and the material city is a major theme of the thesis. A multi-method approach is used to explore the importance of the spatial in the formation of subjectivity, particularly as they relate to place attachment and the gendered nature of spatial relations and subjectivity. With its focus on subjectivity and experience, the thesis emphasises the role of imagination in the experience of place (Donald 1999). As such, it examines several contemporary texts of the city to explore the links between imaginative accounts of the city, identity and experience. These texts are framed around the common themes of place and identity, and the city as a place which offers a growth in sites for social interaction and participation. In addition to theoretical explorations of the city, the thesis includes analysis of qualitative data from residents who have recently moved into the case study area of Fortitude Valley, Newstead and New Farm, and from long-term residents who are experiencing rapid changes to their neighbourhoods. For this purpose, a short documentary ‘Everyone has Their Own New Farm’: Narratives of Neighbourhood Change, is included.