Elite Localism and Inequality: Understanding affluent community opposition to rail network expansion within the political economy of Sydney. Jarrod Avila Honours Thesis Submitted as a partial requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Political, Economic and Social Sciences (Honours) Political Economy University of Sydney 12thOctober 2016 1 Supervised by Susan Schroeder 2 Statement of originality: This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of another degree or diploma in any university, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due references is made in the text of the thesis. 3 Acknowledgements: ____________________________________ First and foremost I’d like to thank my supervisor, Dr Susan Schroeder. Her support, inspiration,and guidance were invaluable in the development of this thesis. I’d like to thank Kurt Iveson for his time, encouragement,and advice. I’d also like to acknowledge my gratitude to the Political Economy faculty as a wholefor all the helpful comments and suggestions I received from themat the research in progress sessions. *** I’d like to thank the political economy honours cohort for their company and wit.Particular thanks to Ilya, John, Andrei, Isla and Hugh, for all their helpful advice. A thanks to Siobhan, for all her patience and thoughtfulness, I have very much appreciated it. Finally I’d like toespeciallythank myparents, Cathy and Jake, for their kindness and their love. 4 Contents: _____________________________________________________________________________ Introduction:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6 Chapter 1: Literature Review-----------------------------------------------------------------------12 Political Geographic and New Institutionalist Approaches:-------------------------------------15 Marxian Approaches:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------17 Iveson’sApproach–Publics and the City:----------------------------------------------------------19 Localism, Elite Social Movements and Elite Localism:-------------------------------------------21 Chapter Two: Exclusivity and Accessibility–The Eastern Suburbs and Elite Localism-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------25 Making the Beaches Public: The Right to the Beach.----------------------------------------------27 Exclusivity and theBeach in the mid-late 20thCentury:----------------------------------------- 28 Opposition to Rail Expansion in the Eastern Suburbs:-------------------------------------------31 The Question of Accessibility: ------------------------------------------------------------------------34 TheConsequences of Elite Localism in the East:---------------------------------------------------35 Right to the Beach Revisited–Exclusivity and Elite Localism:--------------------------------- 38 Chapter Three: Racism, Xenophobia and Elite Localism–Elite Localism on the Northern Beaches-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------40 Race and Public Space in Sydney: An Overview.--------------------------------------------------41 The Northern Beaches Line:--------------------------------------------------------------------------43 Racism’s Role in Elite Localism:---------------------------------------------------------------------45 The Cronulla Riots:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 The Shadow of Cronulla:----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Chapter Four: The Impact of Elite Localism--------------------------------------------------52 Perspectives on Inequality in Sydney: --------------------------------------------------------------53 Elite Localism–Conceptual Contributions:--------------------------------------------------------56 Elite Localism–Policy Contributions:--------------------------------------------------------------58 Conclusion: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------65 Conclusion:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------66 Summary of thethesis:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------66 Reflections and further research opportunities:-------------------------------------------------- 68 Appendix 1–Comments from local Northern Beaches residents on an article about the proposed Northern Beaches line.-----------------------------------------------------------70 Bibliography:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------71 5 Introduction: _____________________________________ General Introduction: Affluent opposition to rail in Sydney. Sydney is a global city experiencing a surge in the expansion of public transport infrastructure (Transport for New South Wales, 2014). It is an unequal city, with a greater ratio of inequality between suburbs than any other major city in Australia (Baum,2008, p.16). This state of inequality has a long history. The colonial city was split between free, elite ‘exclusivists’ and poorer, rough ‘emancipists’ of convict origin, a rift that would begin the wealthy eastern Sydney/poorer western Sydney divide (Davison, 2006, p.745). From its historic origins to the present day, the presence and absence of public transport has served to entrench inequality in the city (Hurni, 2005, pp.1-5). Those areas with greater access to employment and education tend to be wealthier than those without, and public transportation is a key provider of accessibility and mobility in the city (Baum and Hassan, 1993, p.150). With this in mind, one would expect to see the best public transport links existing in the wealthiest suburbs. In a city experiencing a wave of major rail construction one could expect to see rail links to any wealthy areas lacking such connections prioritised by government and welcomed by residents. This is not the case. Residents of some of Sydney’s most affluent areas, the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Beaches1, have fiercely resisted government attempts to extend rail links into these suburbs (Casey, 2007; Kay, 2015). This resistance has taken the form of well attended protests, media campaigns and concerted legal actions. These were popular, organised and successful local movements, which succeeded in preventing rail expansion twice in the 20th century. They may yet succeed into the 21stcentury, through the ongoing anti- rail movement on the Northern Beaches (Kay, 2015). The first attempt at 1For the sake of concision and readability I have elected to capitalise ‘Eastern Suburbs’ and ‘Northern Beaches’. In this I follow the example of Transport for New South Wales, with the ‘Eastern Suburbs Line’ and the (proposed) ‘Northern Beaches Line’. 6 building an Eastern Suburbs Line was wound up in a flurry of legal action, terminating at Bondi Junction, far below its planned length (Gunn, 1989, p.503). A second attempt in the 1990’s to extend the line only to Bondi Beach failed, againin the face of staunch local opposition (Dinham, 1999, p.596; Enders and Jennett, 2008). These successful actions have led to serious consequences extending beyond the affluent suburbs in question to the city as a whole. The failure of the government attempt to extend the Eastern Suburbs Line to its planned dimensions helped bring down the Liberal Party state government of Premier Askin, bringing an end to an era of investment in the expansion ofrail infrastructure (Gunn, 1989, pp.455-457). We see here a series of affluent protests that have impacted the development of rail lines in the city of Sydney, affected the trajectory of transport policy in New South Wales, and contributed to the downfall of a government. Yet despite this, there has been no serious attempt to understand this phenomena of affluent opposition to rail lines from a scholarly perspective. We can see what is going on at the surface –affluent locals opposing rail lines – but the motivations, dynamics, effects and meaning of this phenomenon has not been investigated. When we take into account the effect these movements have had on rail policy and development, it is clear that they must have important relationships with the political economy of inequality in the city, but no scholarly work exists that investigates these relationships. Some criminologists have used these protests to discuss fear of ‘outsiders’ bringing crime into affluent suburbs (Enders and Jennett, 2008). While engineers and planners have tended to dismiss themas naught but the work of disgruntled NIMBY’s2, an unhelpful and indistinct analysis at best (Dinham, 1999). What is missing, and what is needed, is a serious investigation from a political economy perspective. This thesis aims to supply this. The following chapters will identify the dynamics, effects and meaning of this elite local opposition – 2A pejorative acronym of ‘Not in My Back Yard’, referring to stereotypically short-sighted and selfish anti-development locals. Usually deployed to describe opponents of rail lines, freeways, homeless shelters and the like. 7 this elite localism–and bring a level of clarity to the relationship between elite localism and inequality in the city. Theorizing elite localism: thesis aims and structure. Aims: This thesis will seek to investigate, identify and understand the phenomena of affluentlocal opposition to the expansion of rail networks. For the sake of brevity and accuracy I will use the term ‘elite localism’ to refer to this affluent local opposition through the thesis. This thesis does not aim to come to a neat solution to the problem of elite localism, or to prove a wider theoretical point through elite localism. Rather this thesis aims to develop a conceptualisation of elite localism that is useful for scholarship on the broader question of the political economy of inequality in the city, as well as for policymakers attempting to develop more equitable transport policy. Through these aims I align this project with an Australian tradition of spatial political economy that seeks to understand and respond to the questions of inequality and space in the city. Stilwell’s (1989) examination of ‘structural change and spatial equity in Sydney’ is a guiding example of this tendency, applying the concerns of political economy to events and developments in the city with questions of equity and inequality in mind. This tradition has long concerned itself with questions of public transport and accessibility, Stilwell and Hardwick’s (1973) examination of ‘social inequality in Australian cities’ includes a detailed analysis of the different effects of different kinds of infrastructure investments (railways versus highways) on the city. In a similar vein, Badcock (1995, pp.196-199) emphasizes the relationship between underinvestment in public transport and increases in inequality. This thesis aims to contribute to this tradition by identifying and analysing a phenomenon, elite localism, which has affected the development of transport policy and the shape of accessibility and mobility in the city. Chapter four in particular will apply the insights garnered from the case studies in the second and third chapters to this existing literature, drawing out the connections between the concept and reality of elite localism and the scholarly work mentioned in this section. 8 Along with making a theoretical contribution, this thesis aims to provide a conceptualisation of elite localism that is useful from a policy perspective. This does not entail creating a blank justification for all government developments (transport related or otherwise). I use the term policymaker in the broadest sense, inclusive of government and institutional actors like Transport for New South Wales, but not limited to them. Following Anderson’s (2014, pp.58-65) inclusion of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ policymakers, I include radical and activist groups and individuals in this ‘policymaker’ definition. In chapter four I will discuss how progressive, activist and radical groups can benefit from a detailed analysis of elite localism. This thesis is an attempt to identify and understand elite localism conceptually through investigating its historical development and consequences in the city of Sydney. Although the insights gleaned are applicable in a general sense, this thesis will concern itself with Sydney for every case study and example. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, when attempting a project of this scale, it is important to have established parameters. By restricting this analysis to Sydney the important goal of understanding elite localism does not get swamped in layers of necessarybut voluminous contextual explanations for different cities. Secondly, I follow Stilwell (1989, p.3) in describing Sydney as a ‘capital city’ in three ways, administratively as the seat of the NSW government, normatively as a beautiful and enjoyable location, and economically as a city whose development is shaped by private capital, in this sense ‘the capital city of Australia’.It follows that Sydney is in itself a space worth taking seriously and engaging with at the deepest level.This thesis will use this deep engagement to generate insights that are generally applicable, without compromising the integrity of its analysis of Sydney. Structure: After this introduction the thesis consists of four major chapters with a shorter conclusion. The first chapter is a literature review. In this chapter I will discuss the historical and theoretical sources that I have drawn on in the development of this thesis. I will outline the paucity of scholarship that deals directly with questions of elite localism and evaluate the usefulness of political geographic, Marxian, and elite social movement theories in developing a useful 9 conceptualisation of elite localism. This chapter will also include an extended discussion of the ‘Publics and the City’ thinking pioneered by Kurt Iveson (2011). This approach involves considering all ‘public’ spaces as necessarily contested by groupings of local ‘publics’, and allows for a nuanced understanding of how and why locals –local publics–conflict with the state and other publics over issues of access, ownership and exclusion. This ‘publics and the city’ approach forms the core methodology of this thesis. The second chapter is a case study of the Eastern Suburbs. This will include an extended historical account of the origins and development of Sydney’s publically accessible urban beaches, notably Bondi. This section will draw from Caroline Ford’s (2010) work on the subject and illustrate how local public action pressured government into making beaches accessible in the first place. This will be followed by a study of the elite localist opposition to the Eastern Suburbs Line. This case study will provide the core insights into the dynamics and importance of elite localism as a phenomenon, and through such insights significantly develop the concept of elite localism. The particular importance of local feelings of ownership over legally public spaces, notably beaches, will form a core theme of this conceptual development. This chapter argues that elite localism is a distinct, important phenomenon which has had lasting impact on the development of the city, and cannot be dismissed as wealthy NIMBYism or some variant of simple snobbery. The third chapter is a case study of elite localism on the Northern Beaches, centred on the elite local opposition to the Northern Beaches Line. This chapter will focus upon the relationship between racism, xenophobia and elite localism. This relationship is very clear on the Northern Beaches, where overt racial animus is present in commentary by local residents (in the form of letters to the editor/comments on articles). By exploring the relationship between elite localism and racism, this chapter will make the argument that elite localism can be motivated by racist attitudes, and that the effects of elite localism in hampering transport links and reinforcing suburban isolation have negatively contributed to the state of racism and xenophobia in Sydney today. As with the thesis as a whole, this chapter does not argue that elite localism is the only factor at play, but that it is a factor which has gone unnoticed and 10