Green Bans, Red Union The Saving of a City

At the height of the building industry boom in the 1970s a remarkable campaign stopped billions of dollars worth of indiscriminate development that was turning Australian cities into brutalist concrete jungles and destroyed their heritage buildings. Enraging developers and politicians but delighting many in the wider community, the members of the NSW Builders Labourers' Federation risked their jobs to preserve buildings, bush and parkland. Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann open a window on a period when Australian workers led the world in innovative and effective forms of environmental protest. A timely new introduction reconsiders the impact of the now iconic green bans movement at a moment when workers' organisations around the world are fighting back against overdevelopment and global warming more strongly that ever before.