ABSTRACT
In disputes over urban development, such as the one over Rouse Hill, arguments frequently hinge not on what is, but on what could be. This chapter explores a class of images that were used in the Rouse Hill project and are frequently used in planning and growth debates; describing the future of an urban development with the name or picture of another place. This form of synecdoche and metaphor taps into cultural and subcultural understandings of other places, with these understandings shaped at least in part by media images. This a common politics in urban development and urban design as people try to understand, explain and persuade; verbally or visually evoking Manhattan, Paris, Beirut, Hong Kong, or Disneyland as an image of the future (e.g. Peattie 1991, 36).
