Remembering resistance: Traversing the memoryscape of Sydney’s green bans movement

Abstract

From 1971 to 1974, the ‘green bans movement’ captured Sydney’s attention, for its novel coalitions holding up development for social, ecological or heritage reasons. The historical period has become part of a narrative that Sydney likes to tell about itself, told and retold everywhere from state funerals to union trainings. Cultural memory emerges in plaques, murals, buildings, place names across the city, and in films and stories, depicting the city. How does cultural memory structure our understanding of Sydney’s 1970s green bans? Memory can seal off the past or mobilise it in pursuit of a different future.