Alistair Sisson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3780146 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alistair Sisson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alistair |
| FAMILY NAME | Sisson |
| SIGNATURE | SISSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3101-6932 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 109 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Negotiating Transit-Oriented Development: Targets, Planning and Place
Urban planning has long been a point of tension between state and local government in New South Wales. This tension re-emerged in 2023 with the state government’s Transit Oriented Development (TOD) program, particularly its proposal to apply blanket upzoning across 37 railway and metro station precincts; local governments criticised the program for ignoring local conditions and planning priorities. This paper examines a process that emerged out o…
Affordable Housing in Australia: The Neoliberalisation of Subsidised Rental Housing
Australia, like many countries across the Global North, has experienced declining housing affordability in the wake of widespread neoliberal restructuring rolled out from the 1970s. Over this period, ‘affordable housing’—a new form of subsidised below-market rental housing—emerged as a policy response to growing housing inequality, while maintaining neoliberal policy logics. By tracing the post-war history of Australian housing policy, we examine…
Bloomberg's Global Mayoralty: Philanthropy and the ‘Crisis of Capacity’ in City Government
Bloomberg Philanthropies—the philanthropic organization of multibillionaire, CEO and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg—has become a palpably influential node in global networks of urban policy knowledge generation and mobility. This article examines the formative conditions, scope and operations of Bloomberg's philanthropically funded complex of urban policy influence. It begins by outlining Bloomberg Philanthropies' ecosystem of u…
Enacting urban governance innovation: Beyond Strategic Pathways to Incremental “Muddling Through
Bourdieu down under
Wilful ignorance at Waterloo: Public housing quality and political stigma in Sydney's largest estate renewal
Sydney's Waterloo estate is one of Australia's largest and most concentrated areas of public housing. There has been an almost two-decade-long effort to renew the estate, with successive governments persistently making the case that the demolition and mixed-tenure redevelopment must happen. In the process, the quality of the housing on the estate has been denigrated and misrepresented. This paper combines a detailed examination of the architectur…
How Can Scholarship Contribute to Housing Justice? Three Roles for Researchers
This article discusses three ways that research, within and outside academia, can contribute to housing activism.First, we discuss the role that documentation, using non-traditional methods such as film, art, and social media, can play in expanding the visibility of struggles and in politicizing people in the process.Second, we consider how a "politics of resourcefulness" can support activism, by channelling material support from universities and…
Public housing and territorial stigma: Towards a symbolic and political economy
This article illustrates how the stigmatization of public housing in Australia has been co-constituted by material and symbolic forces over several decades. Drawing on discourse analysis in conjunction with historical-institutional analysis of housing policy trajectories and the place of housing within political-economic change, it shows how territorial stigmatization can be understood as the product of media, policy and social scientific discour…
Calculating the system-wide supply impacts of social housing estate renewal: New Measures and Methods
Estate renewal has come to be touted as a means of improving social housing supply both qualitatively and quantitatively, replacing ageing and under-maintained dwellings and increasing the total stock of social housing. In this paper, we examine the latter claim. We develop novel measures and methods for calculating the social housing supply impacts of estate renewal, taking account of the reduction in supply caused by tenant relocations and dwel…
Innovating urban governance through ‘Challenges
In recent years, urban “Challenges”—competitions that solicit and reward novel solutions to urban policy problems—have become embedded within a wider program of governance innovations presented to city governments as effective means to solve complex urban problems. This paper offers an overview and critical evaluation of the uses of Challenges in contemporary urban governance innovation, based on an extensive analysis of existing Challenges and r…
Transmission and territory: Urban bordering during Covid-19
Innovating urban governance: A research agenda
Urban governance innovation is being framed as an imperative to address complex urban and global challenges, triggering the adoption of novel institutional forms, approaches and techniques. Urban political geographers are still some way off fully apprehending the dynamics of these innovations and their potential to reconfigure the composition and politics of urban governance. This paper suggests dialogue between urban political geography and publ…
Denigrating by Numbers: Quantification, Statistics and Territorial Stigma
A vibrant literature on territorial stigma has emerged over the past decade, detailing how particular neighbourhoods or districts have been discursively constructed as dangerous, depraved, deprived, dilapidated, and so on. Amidst this focus on the discursive, the role of numbers has been largely overlooked. In this article I argue that quantitative practices and statistical representations are central to the production of territory and to territo…
Territory and territorial stigmatisation: On the production, consequences and contestation of spatial disrepute
Territorial stigmatisation emerged over the past decade as the prevailing concept for understanding the phenomenon of disreputable places and the processes by which they are produced. Following the work of Loïc Wacquant, several studies have articulated its centrality to the neoliberal restructuring of capital and the state. Departing from Wacquant, several have also examined the various forms of resistance to territorial stigmatisation. In revie…
WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media
Showcasing stories of welfare beneficiaries in their own words, a recent Aotearoa (New Zealand)‐based campaign called “We Are Beneficiaries” used social media to create a space of contestation to the widespread stigmatisation of poverty. While existing literature strongly emphasises the role played by traditional media in constructing and reinforcing stigma, and has more recently begun to explore resistance and contestation, relatively few accoun…
Territory beyond terra
In human geography, ‘territory’ is at once a key term, a contested concept, and an unthinking synonym for space. It derives from the Latin terra, for land, but is linked also to territorium, land u
Property speculation, global capital, urban planning and financialisation: Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust redux
In this ‘Thinking Space’ essay we revisit Maurie Daly’s 1982 book Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust, fuelled by concern for how Australian cities are being transformed by financialised real estate. Daly's insights remain highly relevant to Sydney and other cities around Australia and the world today. Poorly planned densification, inflated property markets, land speculation, and housing poverty are all outcomes of the (global) capitalist intersection of fi…
Stretching stigmatised territory
Stigmatised places – particularly those that are represented as dangerous, deprived or depraved – have attracted the attention several generations of scholars from various disciplines. Recent schol
The geopolitics of real estate: Reconfiguring property, capital and rights
The various crises of land, housing and property around the world attract plenty of popular and academic attention in the form of (more-or-less) detailed analyses of local and contemporary conditio
Territory and territorial stigmatisation: On the production, consequences and contestation of spatial disrepute
Territorial stigmatisation emerged over the past decade as the prevailing concept for understanding the phenomenon of disreputable places and the processes by which they are produced. Following the work of Loïc Wacquant, several studies have articulated its centrality to the neoliberal restructuring of capital and the state. Departing from Wacquant, several have also examined the various forms of resistance to territorial stigmatisation. In revie…
Innovating urban governance: A research agenda
Urban governance innovation is being framed as an imperative to address complex urban and global challenges, triggering the adoption of novel institutional forms, approaches and techniques. Urban political geographers are still some way off fully apprehending the dynamics of these innovations and their potential to reconfigure the composition and politics of urban governance. This paper suggests dialogue between urban political geography and publ…
Public housing and territorial stigma: Towards a symbolic and political economy
This article illustrates how the stigmatization of public housing in Australia has been co-constituted by material and symbolic forces over several decades. Drawing on discourse analysis in conjunction with historical-institutional analysis of housing policy trajectories and the place of housing within political-economic change, it shows how territorial stigmatization can be understood as the product of media, policy and social scientific discour…
Property speculation, global capital, urban planning and financialisation: Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust redux
In this ‘Thinking Space’ essay we revisit Maurie Daly’s 1982 book Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust, fuelled by concern for how Australian cities are being transformed by financialised real estate. Daly's insights remain highly relevant to Sydney and other cities around Australia and the world today. Poorly planned densification, inflated property markets, land speculation, and housing poverty are all outcomes of the (global) capitalist intersection of fi…
Denigrating by Numbers: Quantification, Statistics and Territorial Stigma
A vibrant literature on territorial stigma has emerged over the past decade, detailing how particular neighbourhoods or districts have been discursively constructed as dangerous, depraved, deprived, dilapidated, and so on. Amidst this focus on the discursive, the role of numbers has been largely overlooked. In this article I argue that quantitative practices and statistical representations are central to the production of territory and to territo…
Transmission and territory: Urban bordering during Covid-19
Enacting urban governance innovation: Beyond Strategic Pathways to Incremental “Muddling Through
Innovating urban governance through ‘Challenges
In recent years, urban “Challenges”—competitions that solicit and reward novel solutions to urban policy problems—have become embedded within a wider program of governance innovations presented to city governments as effective means to solve complex urban problems. This paper offers an overview and critical evaluation of the uses of Challenges in contemporary urban governance innovation, based on an extensive analysis of existing Challenges and r…
How Can Scholarship Contribute to Housing Justice? Three Roles for Researchers
This article discusses three ways that research, within and outside academia, can contribute to housing activism.First, we discuss the role that documentation, using non-traditional methods such as film, art, and social media, can play in expanding the visibility of struggles and in politicizing people in the process.Second, we consider how a "politics of resourcefulness" can support activism, by channelling material support from universities and…
WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media
Showcasing stories of welfare beneficiaries in their own words, a recent Aotearoa (New Zealand)‐based campaign called “We Are Beneficiaries” used social media to create a space of contestation to the widespread stigmatisation of poverty. While existing literature strongly emphasises the role played by traditional media in constructing and reinforcing stigma, and has more recently begun to explore resistance and contestation, relatively few accoun…
Bloomberg's Global Mayoralty: Philanthropy and the ‘Crisis of Capacity’ in City Government
Bloomberg Philanthropies—the philanthropic organization of multibillionaire, CEO and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg—has become a palpably influential node in global networks of urban policy knowledge generation and mobility. This article examines the formative conditions, scope and operations of Bloomberg's philanthropically funded complex of urban policy influence. It begins by outlining Bloomberg Philanthropies' ecosystem of u…
Stretching stigmatised territory
Stigmatised places – particularly those that are represented as dangerous, deprived or depraved – have attracted the attention several generations of scholars from various disciplines. Recent schol
The geopolitics of real estate: Reconfiguring property, capital and rights
The various crises of land, housing and property around the world attract plenty of popular and academic attention in the form of (more-or-less) detailed analyses of local and contemporary conditio
Stretching stigmatised territory
Stigmatised places – particularly those that are represented as dangerous, deprived or depraved – have attracted the attention several generations of scholars from various disciplines. Recent schol
Territory beyond terra
In human geography, ‘territory’ is at once a key term, a contested concept, and an unthinking synonym for space. It derives from the Latin terra, for land, but is linked also to territorium, land u
Property speculation, global capital, urban planning and financialisation: Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust redux
In this ‘Thinking Space’ essay we revisit Maurie Daly’s 1982 book Sydney Boom, Sydney Bust, fuelled by concern for how Australian cities are being transformed by financialised real estate. Daly's insights remain highly relevant to Sydney and other cities around Australia and the world today. Poorly planned densification, inflated property markets, land speculation, and housing poverty are all outcomes of the (global) capitalist intersection of fi…
Territory and territorial stigmatisation: On the production, consequences and contestation of spatial disrepute
Territorial stigmatisation emerged over the past decade as the prevailing concept for understanding the phenomenon of disreputable places and the processes by which they are produced. Following the work of Loïc Wacquant, several studies have articulated its centrality to the neoliberal restructuring of capital and the state. Departing from Wacquant, several have also examined the various forms of resistance to territorial stigmatisation. In revie…
WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media
Showcasing stories of welfare beneficiaries in their own words, a recent Aotearoa (New Zealand)‐based campaign called “We Are Beneficiaries” used social media to create a space of contestation to the widespread stigmatisation of poverty. While existing literature strongly emphasises the role played by traditional media in constructing and reinforcing stigma, and has more recently begun to explore resistance and contestation, relatively few accoun…
Denigrating by Numbers: Quantification, Statistics and Territorial Stigma
A vibrant literature on territorial stigma has emerged over the past decade, detailing how particular neighbourhoods or districts have been discursively constructed as dangerous, depraved, deprived, dilapidated, and so on. Amidst this focus on the discursive, the role of numbers has been largely overlooked. In this article I argue that quantitative practices and statistical representations are central to the production of territory and to territo…
Innovating urban governance: A research agenda
Urban governance innovation is being framed as an imperative to address complex urban and global challenges, triggering the adoption of novel institutional forms, approaches and techniques. Urban political geographers are still some way off fully apprehending the dynamics of these innovations and their potential to reconfigure the composition and politics of urban governance. This paper suggests dialogue between urban political geography and publ…
Innovating urban governance through ‘Challenges
In recent years, urban “Challenges”—competitions that solicit and reward novel solutions to urban policy problems—have become embedded within a wider program of governance innovations presented to city governments as effective means to solve complex urban problems. This paper offers an overview and critical evaluation of the uses of Challenges in contemporary urban governance innovation, based on an extensive analysis of existing Challenges and r…
Transmission and territory: Urban bordering during Covid-19
Bourdieu down under
Wilful ignorance at Waterloo: Public housing quality and political stigma in Sydney's largest estate renewal
Sydney's Waterloo estate is one of Australia's largest and most concentrated areas of public housing. There has been an almost two-decade-long effort to renew the estate, with successive governments persistently making the case that the demolition and mixed-tenure redevelopment must happen. In the process, the quality of the housing on the estate has been denigrated and misrepresented. This paper combines a detailed examination of the architectur…
How Can Scholarship Contribute to Housing Justice? Three Roles for Researchers
This article discusses three ways that research, within and outside academia, can contribute to housing activism.First, we discuss the role that documentation, using non-traditional methods such as film, art, and social media, can play in expanding the visibility of struggles and in politicizing people in the process.Second, we consider how a "politics of resourcefulness" can support activism, by channelling material support from universities and…
Public housing and territorial stigma: Towards a symbolic and political economy
This article illustrates how the stigmatization of public housing in Australia has been co-constituted by material and symbolic forces over several decades. Drawing on discourse analysis in conjunction with historical-institutional analysis of housing policy trajectories and the place of housing within political-economic change, it shows how territorial stigmatization can be understood as the product of media, policy and social scientific discour…
Calculating the system-wide supply impacts of social housing estate renewal: New Measures and Methods
Estate renewal has come to be touted as a means of improving social housing supply both qualitatively and quantitatively, replacing ageing and under-maintained dwellings and increasing the total stock of social housing. In this paper, we examine the latter claim. We develop novel measures and methods for calculating the social housing supply impacts of estate renewal, taking account of the reduction in supply caused by tenant relocations and dwel…
Bloomberg's Global Mayoralty: Philanthropy and the ‘Crisis of Capacity’ in City Government
Bloomberg Philanthropies—the philanthropic organization of multibillionaire, CEO and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg—has become a palpably influential node in global networks of urban policy knowledge generation and mobility. This article examines the formative conditions, scope and operations of Bloomberg's philanthropically funded complex of urban policy influence. It begins by outlining Bloomberg Philanthropies' ecosystem of u…
Enacting urban governance innovation: Beyond Strategic Pathways to Incremental “Muddling Through
Negotiating Transit-Oriented Development: Targets, Planning and Place
Urban planning has long been a point of tension between state and local government in New South Wales. This tension re-emerged in 2023 with the state government’s Transit Oriented Development (TOD) program, particularly its proposal to apply blanket upzoning across 37 railway and metro station precincts; local governments criticised the program for ignoring local conditions and planning priorities. This paper examines a process that emerged out o…
Affordable Housing in Australia: The Neoliberalisation of Subsidised Rental Housing
Australia, like many countries across the Global North, has experienced declining housing affordability in the wake of widespread neoliberal restructuring rolled out from the 1970s. Over this period, ‘affordable housing’—a new form of subsidised below-market rental housing—emerged as a policy response to growing housing inequality, while maintaining neoliberal policy logics. By tracing the post-war history of Australian housing policy, we examine…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (10 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Business (5 works) · Corporate governance (5 works) · Geography (5 works)