Placing Property: Theorizing the Urban from Settler Colonial Cities

Abstract

In the conspicuously geographical debate between ‘North’ and ‘South’ urbanism, settler colonial cities remain displaced. They are located in the ‘North’ but embody ‘South‐like’ colonial dynamics and are hence neither colonial nor postcolonial. Heeding the call to theorize from ‘any city’, this article aims to contribute to a more systematic theorization of the urban from settler colonial cities. In it we focus on the work property does to materialize the settler colonial city and its specific relations of power. We identify three faces of property—as object, as redress and as land—and use case vignettes from Israel/Palestine and Australia to consider how each register continues to inform the functioning of settler colonial cities. We find that, through property, dispossession and settlement are continuously performed and creatively enacted. At the same time, the performance of property reaffirms the endurance of Indigenous land systems amid ongoing colonization. The article makes a contribution to contemporary debates in urban studies about the importance of surfacing the specificities of urban experiences around the world, while further unsettling the dissociative nature of urban property.

After Gentrification: Social Mix, Settler Colonialism, and Cruel Optimism in the Transformation of Neighbourhood Space

“…Du Bois ; Fanon ; Wynter ) to reveal how the production of locality “involves the assertion of socially (often ritually) organized power over places and settings that are viewed as potentially chaotic or rebellious” (Appadurai :183–184). That is, when theorised from the vantage point of settler colonial cities, the desire to redevelop urban areas is not solely a manifestation of political‐economic restructuring, it is also a spatial and racial project to reimagine the city and whom cities are for (Blatman‐Thomas and Porter ; Porter and Yiftachel ; Shaw ).…”

“…The possibility of co‐existing is made precarious on various grounds. The production of locality for settler colonists involves dispossession of land and property, and at the same time disavows the presence of indigenous others (Blatman‐Thomas and Porter ; Veracini ). Settler colonialism operates to “displace people and their lifeways, livelihoods, memories” (Porter :388) and ultimately, the settler colonial relationship seeks to extinguish itself through processes of making existing neighbourhood residents either go away or except the new conditions upon which inclusion rests.…”

Geographies of land use: Planning, property, and law

“…Roy and others see a politics of hope in poor people's movements/practices of dwelling, resistance, and struggle, arguing that the global north and global south should be kept simultaneously in view, and that doing so can assist in the dismantling and/or subversion of liberal ideas of land use, property, citizenship, and rights (Roy, , ; Roy & Crane, ). Drawing on examples of ongoing settler‐colonial processes in Israel and Australia, Blatman‐Thomas and Porter () assert that viewing property instead as land “offers a more hopeful space” (p. 14). Thinking land relationally broadens understandings beyond the narrow confines of land use and property, assisting in the “important quest of unsettling the dissociative nature of property [...] and its presumed placelessness, contributing a reimagined politics of emplacement” (Blatman‐Thomas & Porter, , p. 14; see also Roy, ).…”

“…Drawing on examples of ongoing settler‐colonial processes in Israel and Australia, Blatman‐Thomas and Porter () assert that viewing property instead as land “offers a more hopeful space” (p. 14). Thinking land relationally broadens understandings beyond the narrow confines of land use and property, assisting in the “important quest of unsettling the dissociative nature of property [...] and its presumed placelessness, contributing a reimagined politics of emplacement” (Blatman‐Thomas & Porter, , p. 14; see also Roy, ).…”

Reciprocal Repossession: Property as Land in Urban Australia

“…This is due in part to the definitive nature of the land's liquidation. Property makes cities appear as fait accompli by masking the specific processes of colonisation, settlement and privatisation that yielded them in the first place (Blatman‐Thomas and Porter ; Jackson et al ).…”