Re-visioning Sydney from the fringe : productive diversities for a 21st century city

The market gardening practices of Sydney’s culturally diverse inhabitants have long been neglected in the plans for growth of this aspiring global city. Yet in providing fresh food for the city and local employment such market gardens arguably contribute not only to Sydney’s globalising demographic and cultural fabric, but also to the city’s environmental sustainability. Encroaching urbanisation, however, currently threatens 52 percent of the (predominantly) migrant-run market gardens on Sydney’s peri-urban fringe. With a focus on economic and housing development, official plans for Sydney’s growth continue to deny the productive contribution that practices such as market gardening offer the city. These alternative land use practices are often (too easily) dismissed as the ‘cultural traditions’ of minority groups, separating them from the economic priorities seen as central to urban growth. The presence of multiple users and uses of land within the cityscape brings into question the narrow definition of ‘growth as development’ within urban planning – one that key urban scholars have recently and variously sought to critique and diversify. In thinking from and ‘with’ the urban ‘fringe’, this thesis argues for greater recognition in urban planning of the diverse groups who inhabit the conceptual and (often) physical periphery of the city. Through interviews with relevant migrant, Indigenous, Anglo-Celtic and governmental groups, this thesis examined the efficacy of sustainability and heritage discourses, mobilised by grower advocates, in protecting market gardeners against plans for urban development. Analysis of interview data and relevant governmental reports, plans and legislation found that within planning policy these discourses tend to figure the land uses of culturally diverse groups as marginal to the developmentalist agenda. More broadly conceived notions of ‘sustainability’ and ‘heritage’ are possible however, particularly ones that acknowledge that all inhabitants have a stake in the city – environmentally, economically and culturally. Taking this more comprehensive perspective on the land use values of market gardening, this research moves away from the narrow conceptions of diversity that are reproduced in multiculturalist and social cohesion discourses by noting the material contributions of the market gardeners livelihoods to Sydney’s character and future. This thesis suggests a way of re- conceptualising the common good of the city, viewing embodied practices such as market gardening as productive parts of a city seeking a sustainable future. ‘Thinking’ Sydney from its fringe, this thesis engages diversity in a vision for urban planning that is not just more inclusive in a standard liberal sense, but also more dynamic and alive to the challenges of 21st Century urbanism