Settler urban geographies of decommissioned prisons: an invitation to a discussion

Abstract

ABSTRACT As urban colonial prisons are becoming obsolete, cities must reckon with their enduring presence in landscapes that are continuously developing. Examining how decommissioned prisons are placed within urban development agendas in settler colonial cities, I consider the heritagisation of urban prisons as extractive; it captures and manipulates time through the juxtaposition of defunct carceral sites with the so-called “post” carceral city. This move is profitable for the city first since it generates “monopoly rent” from unique “cultural heritage” sites, and second since it “frees” urban land – now cleaned from its carceral past – for capitalist investment. Against this, the paper asserts that carcerality is a living structure of settler colonial cities. In these cities, racial capitalism has always been intertwined with punitive and extractive measures against Indigenous people, who remain unprecedently overrepresented in Australian prisons.