R. Alan Walks

Bio: R. Alan Walks is an academic researcher from University of Toronto. The author has contributed to research in topics: Metropolitan area & Suburbanization. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 31 publications receiving 2022 citations.

New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

Abstract: His ethical framework needs more fine-tuning for at least two reasons. First, this ethical framework seems to be disconnected from the issues discussed in the book. Instead of showing how the ethical framework can guide us to better cope with issues such as authenticity, privacy, surveillance, and digital divide, the author indulges in a rather abstract philosophical discussion for its own sake in the final chapter. And second, although the pleasure of mapping cannot be denied, it is a stretch to elevate ‘‘pleasure’’ to be a guiding ethical principle directing our mapping practices in the real world. In weaving his argument about the pleasure principle applied to mapping, Crampton draws heavily on McWhorter’s (1999) work on societal pressure for sexual normalization. The political parallel between mapping versus sexual practices is tenuous at best, or may not even exist. If our future mapping effort is indeed guided by the pleasure principle, those with power and privilege may well indulge themselves to meet their own idiosyncratic psychological needs for the sake of pleasures, which will result in the perpetuation of inequity and divide what the framework aims to eradicate. Therefore, the proposed ethical framework has perhaps created a new set of problematics (if I can borrow from the Foucauldian vocabulary). However, we are reminded by Crampton that ‘‘as long as cyberspace is a problem, we will always have something to do’’ (p. 15), which is indeed a comforting thought for all of us in academia.

Ghettos in Canada's cities? Racial segregation, ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in Canadian urban areas

Abstract: Recent literature suggests a growing relationship between the clustering of certain visible minority groups in urban neighbourhoods and the spatial concentration of poverty in Canadian cities, raising the spectre of ghettoization. This paper examines whether urban ghettos along the U.S. model are forming in Canadian cities, using census data for 1991 and 2001 and borrowing a neighbourhood classification system specifically designed for comparing neighbourhoods in other countries to the U.S. situation. Ecological analysis is then performed in order to compare the importance of minority concentration, neighbourhood classification and housing stock attributes in improving our understanding of the spatial patterning of low-income populations in Canadian cities in 2001. The findings suggest that ghettoization along U.S. lines is not a factor in Canadian cities and that a high degree of racial concentration is not necessarily associated with greater neighbourhood poverty. On the other hand, the concentration of apartment housing, of visible minorities in general, and of a high level of racial diversity in particular, do help in accounting for the neighbourhood patterning of low income. We suggest that these findings result as much from growing income inequality within as between each visible minority group. This increases the odds of poor visible minorities of each group ending up in the lowest-cost, least-desirable neighbourhoods from which they cannot afford to escape (including social housing in the inner suburbs). By contrast, wealthier members of minority groups are more mobile and able to self-select into higher-status ‘ethnic communities’. This research thus reinforces pleas for a more nuanced interpretation of segregation, ghettoization and neighbourhood dynamics.

The Social Ecology of the Post-Fordist/Global City? Economic Restructuring and Socio-spatial Polarisation in the Toronto Urban Region:

Abstract: Numerous authors have asserted that globalisation and occupational changes associated with post-Fordist economic restructuring have led to a growth in intraurban social disparity and even polarisat...

Gentrification, Social Mix, and Social Polarization: Testing the Linkages in Large Canadian Cities

Abstract: Gentrification in the form of "neighborhood revitalization" is increasingly touted as one way of decreasing the social exclusion of residents of poor inner-city neighborhoods and of increasing levels of social mix and social interaction between different classes and ethnic groups. Yet the gentrification literature also suggests that the process may lead to increased social conflict, displacement of poorer residents to lower quality housing elsewhere, and, ultimately, social polarization. Much of this hinges on whether gentrifying neighborhoods can remain socially mixed, and whether neighborhood compositional changes result in more or less of a polarized class and ethnic structure. However, the impact of revitalization and gentrification on levels of social mix, income polarization, or ethnic diversity within neighborhoods remains unclear and under-explored. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between the timing of gentrification, changes in the income structure, and shifts in immig...

Mapping the Urban Debtscape: The Geography of Household Debt in Canadian Cities

Abstract: Vulnerability resulting from debt is part and parcel of the risk society and a salient characteristic of current neoliberal times under financialized global capitalism. Rising indebtedness increases the susceptibility of homeowners to housing and labor market restructuring, and if the degree of leverage is very high, can threaten the solvency, living standards, and social stability of local communities. However, very little is understood regarding how levels of household indebtedness are spatially distributed within or across cities, and how private debt maps onto the geography of race, class, housing, urban form, and other social variables, especially outside of the United States. It remains unknown whether and how higher and unsustainable levels of indebtedness might be associated with urban growth, decline, suburbanization, gentrification, immigration, racialization, and/or greying. This article examines the spatial distribution of household debt in Canadian cities at multiple scales of analys...

Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Abstract: (1995). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. History of European Ideas: Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 721-722.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.