AbstractsGeography &GIS

Cities are an environmental time bomb consuming up to 80% of global material andenergy supplies and producing 75% of carbon emissions. The addition of 3 billionmore city-dwellers by 2050 will mean we have no chance of limiting climate change.Sustainable cities and urban lives are critical. Media has a social responsibility toeducate the community about what a sustainable city means. I have come to these issues as a filmmaker, questioning documentary and itspotential to communicate sustainability in action. I live in Fremantle, a port city inWestern Australia. In 2009 when a sustainability academic was elected Fremantle’sfirst green Mayor, it provided a rare opportunity to document a sustainability storyunfolding in the present about a subject currently trending world wide, that citymayors are the key change agents for sustainability. These questions are inextricably linked; the response to the first question iscommunicated through the response to the second. To make a digital documentary Iadapted the Prezi – a ‘cloud-based’ storytelling tool – to link 67 short YouTubefilms tracing the mayor’s journey over two and a half years to communicate hisnarrative as a ‘roadmap’. By utilising digital media as a research tool throughcinematic presentation (character and conflict), reflexivity (the role of ‘voice’ incinematic presentation), and the Prezi’s open architecture (which allows thestructure, organisation and management of knowledge), this thesis explores digitalmedia’s capacity to narrate history and change, especially the local politics ofsustainability.