84. Infrastructure Governance

City Road Podcast

Join us for a series of conversations about transforming infrastructure governance. Our shared futures and community well-being are shaped by urban infrastructure such as for transport, green space, water, social, and digital services. While many public discussions revolve around which infrastructure projects should be prioritised, there is growing recognition that questions of governance are critical to achieving the social, ecological, and place-based transformations we need to address the climate crisis. In this series, we shine a light on some of the key challenges and opportunities for transforming the way we think about and do infrastructure governance, such as: - Who should be involved in decision making? - How can we better collaborate with communities? - How do we address planning on unceded Indigenous land? Episode 1: Transformation of what? This first episode sets out some of the big questions and challenges for thinking about how to transform infrastructure governance. It looks at the research agenda informing the work of the Infrastructure Governance Incubator. The discussion includes findings from a systematic literature review of the topic, which reveals a need for more research focused on reckoning with settler coloniality and planning on unceded First Nations land, the societal end goals of infrastructure, and how we understand, and do, governance integration to better link strategic planning with actual infrastructure delivery. These questions not only challenge our understandings of what infrastructure is meant to achieve and how we deliver it, but who is involved in setting agendas and priorities. Guests Associate Professor Tooran Alizadeh, Research lead of the Henry Halloran Trust Infrastructure Governance Incubator at the University of Sydney Dr Rebecca Clements, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Henry Halloran Trust Infrastructure Governance Incubator at the University of Sydney Production This podcast series is sponsored by the Infrastructure Governance Incubator, a three-year (2020-2023) collaborative research platform—funded by the Henry Halloran Research Trust—across three universities (The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne, and Monash University), and in partnership with Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) NSW & Victoria. Audio recording and editing by Mikayla Scolaro and Dallas Rogers.