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Washing Their Hands of It? Auckland Cities’ Risk Management of Formerly Horticultural Land as Neoliberal Responsibilisation

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Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning

Part of the book series: GeoJournal Library ((GEJL,volume 102))

Abstract

The scale of contemporary environmental risks suggests that they should be managed at the societal level, but neoliberal planning transfers some responsibility for their management to individuals. Devolution of these responsibilities ignores disparities in individual capacity to address or contest risk scenarios. Abandoning risk management to market forces disregards discrimination in planning processes, thereby ignoring the needs of socio-economic groups which are unable to participate equally within an increasingly marketised and scientised debate. Through an examination of a contaminated land crisis in the cities of Auckland, New Zealand, we illustrate how newly responsibilised individuals do not possess the financial resources to influence both their exposure to risk and risk management decisions. Obliging individuals to undertake risk avoidance measures in the absence of such resources has been employed by local authorities to evade responsibility and to reduce the cost of research and remediation. This not only responsibilises those who are least able to respond to problems which are not of their own making, it also fails to address the underlying causes of risk exposure.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Auckland, PB 92019, New Zealand

    Brad Coombes

Authors
  1. Cameron Smith
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  2. Brad Coombes
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Correspondence to Brad Coombes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. OTB Research Inst. Housing,, Urban & Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Tuna Tasan-Kok

  2. Dept. Social & Economic Geography, University of Lund, Sölvegatan 12, Lund, 223 62, Sweden

    Guy Baeten

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Smith, C., Coombes, B. (2012). Washing Their Hands of It? Auckland Cities’ Risk Management of Formerly Horticultural Land as Neoliberal Responsibilisation. In: Tasan-Kok, T., Baeten, G. (eds) Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning. GeoJournal Library, vol 102. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8924-3_8

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