Brisbane’s Shrinking Public Realm (revisited):

Gentrification, privatisation and the social impacts of urban enclosures

BFU is proud to present a session in collaboration with the Right to the City Brisbane as part of the 24-hour “Instead of a Casino” occupation on Saturday 22/Sunday 23 April, 2017.

DETAILS:
Where? Queens Park, cnr Elizabeth and George St, CBD
When? 4.30pm, Saturday 22 April, 2017
What? Public lecture and discussion

The speakers:
Peter Walters is an urban sociologist from the School of Social Science at UQ. He teaches first year students what sociology is, and graduate students what sociology could be. He researches how we shape cities and how they shape us.

Lena Molnar is an early career researcher at the UQ School of Social Sciences working in urban and emotional sociology. Her honours thesis focused on retail gentrification in Brisbane’s streetscape. Lena has a background in fine arts, plays in a couple of bands and is a previous host of Radio Reversal on 4ZZZ.

Rob Shields’ work spans architecture, urban geography and sociology to bring interdisciplinary and global perspective to research on urban cultures, including the built environments of cities and the virtual social spaces of new media. At the University of Alberta’s City-Region Studies Centre, I teach and direct engaged, participatory research and design projects that leverage public curiosity and practice-based approaches. Notable publications include Places on the Margin; Lefebvre, Love and Struggle; The Virtual and Spatial Questions: Social Spatialization and Cultural Topology. Rob Shields also founded Space and Culture (an international peer-reviewed journal) and Curb (a Canadian planning magazine).

Marissa Dooris is an activist and a lawyer, interested in the fluid and messy spaces between law and justice. She has extensive experience working with marginalised communities in Brisbane, particularly through the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic and Sisters Inside. As a lawyer, activist and researcher, she is interested in the intersections between racism, poverty and violence, and the ways they shape our public realms.

Join us in the heart of the city to think about the future of the public realm, what it means to have a right to the city, and how we work toward building just cities and worthwhile futures.

We acknowledge that we will be gathering on unceded Aboriginal land. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and work to address the legacies and continuations of colonisation in our lives.

ALL WELCOME! ALL AGES!