Regulation of space in the contemporary postcolonial Pacific city: Port Moresby and Suva

Abstract

Abstract: National development problems in the weak states of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have resulted in external intervention. However neo‐liberal development strategies have not resolved development problems and may have further weakened state structures. In both capital cities rural‐urban migration, rising urban unemployment, and the expansion of squatter settlements and the informal sector have all continued in recent years. The numbers of beggars, street kids and prostitutes have increased, as has domestic violence and crime. Governments have opposed all these trends, by regulation and intolerance, violence, routine repression and eviction, rather than by pro‐poor policies. Settlers, prostitutes, beggars, street kids and market vendors have been evicted and moved on, on the ideological premise that that their true place is in rural areas, and that their urban presence challenges and threatens notions of urban order. Moral regulation, social exclusion and moral panic have divided ‘good citizens’ from marginal and possibly criminal others, intensifying social divisions within the cities. Sustainable urban development has proved difficult to achieve.