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"Climate Threat and Urban Response: an Australian Perspective" 

By Prof. Brendan Gleeson

Venue: 4 pm, Feb 22 2008 at the Rocque Lab, Geog Dept, Rhetoric House, NUI Maynooth.

Brendan Gleeson is Professor of Urban Management at Griffith University, Australia. He is Director of the Urban Research Program. Brendan's scholarly interests include urbanisation, urban policy, children in the urban environment, climate change and sustainability. His most recent books were Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs (Allen & Unwin 2006), and Creating Child Friendly Cities (Routledge 2006, edited with N.Sipe).

Abstract

Climate change and energy insecurity are grave threats to the stability and sustainability of human society. This paper considers the meaning of this globally manifest, yet regionally differentiated, ecological threat for Australia's urban system. It also considers the twin ecological peril of oil depletion, whose impacts may intensify to great effect the social stresses likely to emerge as climates warm.

The paper intervenes in the debate that transfixes contemporary Australian urbanism: the sustainability of the suburban form in which most Australians live. This debate has over emphasised the environmental significance of urban form and failed to apprehend the deeper socio-cultural forces that drive the (over)consumption of nature.

The long condemnation of suburban living by Australian urban debate has tended to reflect this scientific failing. Australian planning thought and practice needs to loosen the grip of physical determinism on its environmental thinking if it is to accurately comprehend the sources of, and solutions to, ecological threat. New urban scientific evidence suggests planning's principal role in the fight against warming will be that of adaptation not mitigation. That is to say, there is no simple spatial fix for over consumption.