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This week’s class discussion reshaped my understanding of the relationship between cities and Indigenous peoples, powerfully challenging the simplified narrative that treats the city as an “assimilation machine”. For a long time, an urban imagination that equates “advancement” with “cultural uniformity” has granted legitimacy to assimilationist discourse (University of Queensland, 2025). That discourse has then been operationalized through seemingly neutral planning tools—such as functional zoning, design-control regimes, and public order management—so that standardized ways of living are continually reinforced . The direct consequence is a compression of sociocultural diversity, while Indigenous communities are systematically marginalized in the process: their philosophies, rituals, kinship networks, and senses of place are excluded because they do not easily fit into homogenized urban space (Greenop & Memmott, 2013). Contrary to stereotype, Indigenous peoples do not “belong only to the periphery.” The city itself is a site where Indigenous culture and identity are continually produced .

Take Musgrave Park in South Brisbane as an example. Historically, it has been a core venue for Indigenous ceremony, gathering, and political expression, and its public character endures today (Greenop & Memmott, 2013). Yet under contemporary urban governance, it is managed as a multipurpose public space. On the one hand, events such as the NAIDOC Week Family Fun Day make Indigenous cultural performance and community services highly visible, creating a form of peak visibility. On the other hand, the logic of event permitting and commercial festivals tacitly regulates who may be seen, when, and in what ways . The paradox of this arrangement is that the heightened visibility during festivals can, to some extent, obscure the insufficient recognition of Indigenous people’s everyday presence as natural, rightful urban subjects. Their continued presence still depends largely on “permitted displays” limited to specific times and places. Thus, the core issue is not whether Indigenous peoples belong in the city, but how we redefine the city itself and its governing logic. Only by moving beyond a mode of inclusion that grants visibility at discrete cultural moments—by resetting the city as a genuinely plural, co-governed, and culturally safe place that recognizes Indigenous historical pathways, place memory, and ongoing everyday presence—can we shift from “assimilation” or “periodic display” toward true integration and coexistence (University of Queensland, 2025; Greenop & Memmott, 2013).

To make cultural visibility part of the everyday, urban planners must first gain a deep understanding of local cultural geographies. Practically, participatory GIS can be adopted to map “Indigenous cultural spatial layers,” clearly marking gathering places, residential areas, and ceremonial routes of different groups, so that spatial decisions systematically identify and respect these local ties . At the policy level, a cultural impact assessment mechanism should be established to incorporate Indigenous rights and interests into development approvals, using measurable indicators to limit encroachment on cultural sites. More importantly, planning processes must embed sustained intercultural negotiation, ensuring effective participation by Indigenous communities and the concrete incorporation of their feedback into design and implementation. In this way, urban governance can move from symbolic inclusion to structural co-governance .

Reference list:

Greenop, K., & Memmott, P. (2013). Aboriginal identity and place in the intercultural settings of metropolitan Australia.

University of Queensland 2025, Marginalisation and the Indigenous City (lecture slides), SOCY2340: Marginalisation and the Indigenous City, The University of Queensland.

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Brisbane NAIDOC 2024: Musgrave Park Family Fun Day Poster

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Brisbane NAIDOC 2024: Musgrave Park Family Fun Day Poster

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Archival photograph showing the tent city during protests at Musgrave Park around the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

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Archival photograph showing the tent city during protests at Musgrave Park around the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

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Everyday Musgrave Park—contrasting peak-event visibility with ordinary, less visible daily presence.

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Everyday Musgrave Park—contrasting peak-event visibility with ordinary, less visible daily presence.

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 NAIDOC Week Musgrave Park Stage and Audience

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 NAIDOC Week Musgrave Park Stage and Audience

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A place where local indigenous people hold ceremonies in Xining, China

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A place where local indigenous people hold ceremonies in Xining, China

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Community and Culture at Musgrave Park — NAIDOC Family Fun Day

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Community and Culture at Musgrave Park — NAIDOC Family Fun Day

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Participatory GIS “Indigenous cultural layers” (gathering places, residential clusters, ceremonial routes) to inform spatial decisions.

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Participatory GIS “Indigenous cultural layers” (gathering places, residential clusters, ceremonial routes) to inform spatial decisions.

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Link: Indigenous Cultural Mapping: literature review, models, methods and data management.

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Cities and the environment were the focus of this week’s discussion. As urban boundaries expand, vast tracts of land are developed, and city building itself consumes large quantities of natural resources. Urban areas worldwide account for 71% of total carbon emissions. It is therefore necessary to control the environmental impacts of cities. Cities across the globe have recognized their environmental footprint and the growing frequency of extreme weather. Since 2005, organizations such as the World Mayors Council on Climate Change and the Urban Climate Change Research Network have been established. These initiatives and the associated body of research indicate that we have begun to actively intervene in the urban drivers of climate change (Rosenzweig, 2010).

However, in many less developed countries, governments lack the capacity to strike a balance between urban development and environmental protection; they may still be grappling with basic subsistence issues, and often lack comprehensive waste-management systems and stringent regulations on industrial effluents. Consequently, many large corporations have seized this opportunity, siting factories in countries with relatively lax environmental governance to take advantage of cheap labor while ignoring the environmental impacts of industrial waste. Strengthening environmental management in these countries is therefore crucial to protecting the global environment. Meanwhile, as the climate changes, the frequency of extreme weather events is increasing. Some poorer cities, constrained by inadequate infrastructure, are ill-equipped to withstand storms, floods, and other natural disasters. For example, it is estimated that with a one-meter rise in sea level, approximately 3.6 million people in Kolkata, India, would face displacement (Rosenzweig, 2010). In short, the overconsumption of natural resources driven by urban development degrades the environment, which in turn increases the frequency of extreme weather events; these events then repeatedly damage urban infrastructure.

Queensland has also introduced measures to mitigate the climate impacts of its cities. Q Design is a principled framework developed to enhance urban sustainability in Queensland, containing many provisions that respond to the local climate and protect ecological systems. For instance, architectural design that incorporates semi-open spaces can utilize natural daylight more efficiently—an approach well suited to Queensland’s subtropical climate that also reduces energy consumption. This demonstrates a synergistic relationship between urban development and environmental protection: urban growth can leverage local climatic characteristics to alleviate its negative environmental impacts (Lowe, 2020). Beyond planning and design, the promotion of green energy is also vital. Analyses show that over the past two decades, electricity use in Queensland has grown faster than the population. Accordingly, expanding the use of sustainable urban energy can effectively reduce cities’ adverse impacts on the environment (Lowe, 2010).

Lowe, I. (2010). Climate will strangle growth—if we don’t! In B. Gleeson & W. Steele (Eds.), A climate for growth: Planning South-East Queensland (pp. 75–83). St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press.

Lowe, I. (2020). Sustainable cities? In Ecological Economics: Solutions for the Future (Section II: Big picture solutions, Ch. 2, pp. 52–66).

Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W., Hammer, S. A., & Mehrotra, S. (2010). Cities lead the way in climate-change action. Nature, 467, 909–911.

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QDESIGN

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The synergy between environment and city.

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Timelapse – Google Earth Engine

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2000 Las Vegas Satellite image

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2022 Las Vegas Satellite image

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A scene of a ceremony held by local indigenous people in Xining, China

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A scene of a ceremony held by local indigenous people in Xining, China