State of Australasian Cities Special Issue 2: Transport, Livability and Justice Through a Local Lens

Abstract

This is the second special issue arising from the 10th State of Australasian Cities Conference (SOAC) hosted by a consortium of Melbourne-based universities: RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology. The special issue series comes about through constructive collaboration between the Australasian Cities Research Network (ACRN), which auspices SOAC, the Analysis and Policy Observatory (APO) an open access evidence platform for public policy resources, and the Editorial Board of Urban Policy and Research which draws regularly on the work reported via SOAC. The two special issues arising from SOAC 2021 comprise the first formal collaboration between these leading venues for Australasian urban scholarship, a welcome advance as our communities of researchers grapple with the problems and questions of just urban transformation in an era of chronic disruption. Alongside invited keynote addresses, such as the Public City lecture, debates and commentaries, the research articles were selected through nomination to the SOAC Peter Harrison Memorial award which is supported by the Fekner School at the Australian National University and recognizes papers which are judged to make a distinctive contribution to knowledge and capacity for the ecologically sustainable development of Australasian cities and regions. The papers collectively presented in this special issue cover three interrelated themes: sustainable urban transport, urban living, urban greening and the intertwined need for planning practices that support decolonization. In turn, they each contribute a perspective on urban questions that is informed by, or is reflective of, notions of ‘the local’, and how this is co-constituted in relation to the SOAC 2021 theme of just transitions in the COVID recovery era and the social, spatial and economic consequences for equity and inclusion. The local scale is where many urban dwellers observe and experience the multiple effects of urban transitions and change. This is also the scale where international, national and state policies are translated into on-the-ground practices and are thus important sites for urban research practices in a context of unceded Indigenous land and dispossession. This local theme was not required nor demanded of the individual papers, rather this strongly emerged as a cross-cutting thematic link across divergent foci on transport, live ability, greening and Indigenous justice. The remainder of this overview discusses these connections in more detail.