Planning Solidarity? From Silence to Refusal.

As the early hours of this new decade were greeted by a devastating bushfire in Australia, killing over one billion wildlife, destroying ecologically significant landscapes, and producing toxic air quality in Australia's two largest cities, Australia's Commonwealth Government continued governing without a credible climate policy. In the same cruel twist, housing policy can enable futures or extinguish livelihoods. To move beyond a critical practice, ignited when triggered by an exceptional event, towards something that might give new shape to the institutions that support practice, may require from planners new ways of performing our practice (see Chapman, this issue), as well as new ways I of thinking from i our practice and alternative ways of I being in i practice. Domestic students with existing support networks retreated to the family home, while others queued at government welfare offices seeking financial support, as international students lined up on University campuses and elsewhere for food. It outlined troubling behaviour, amounting to a "criticism of government policy" and "advocacy for public housing". [Extracted from the article]