Showing papers on "Urban geography published in 2008"

Economic Geography: The Integration of Regions and Nations

Abstract: Economic Geography" is the most complete, up-to-date textbook available on the important new field of spatial economics. This book fills a gap by providing advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the latest research and methodologies in an accessible and comprehensive way. It is an indispensable reference for researchers in economic geography, regional and urban economics, international trade, and applied econometrics, and can serve as a resource for economists in government."Economic Geography" presents advances in economic theory that explain why, despite the increasing mobility of commodities, ideas, and people, the diffusion of economic activity is very unequal and remains agglomerated in a limited number of spatial entities. The book complements theoretical analysis with detailed discussions of the empirics of the economics of agglomeration, offering a mix of theoretical and empirical research that gives a unique perspective on spatial disparities. It reveals how location continues to matter for trade and economic development, yet how economic integration is transforming the global economy into an economic space in which activities are performed within large metropolitan areas exchanging goods, skills, and information."Economic Geography" examines the future implications of this evolution in the spatial economy and relates them to other major social and economic trends. It provides a complete introduction to economic geography and explains the latest theory and methodologies. It covers the empirics of agglomeration, from spatial concentration measurement to structural estimations of economic geography models. It includes history and background of the field and serves as a textbook for students and a resource for professionals.

Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography

Abstract: Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the groping quest for a new way of life is the only thing that remains really exciting. Aesthetic and other disciplines have proved glaringly inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest indifference. We should therefore delineate some provisional terrains of observation, including the observation of certain processes of chance and predictability in the

Lost in space: population growth in the American hinterlands and small cities

Abstract: The sources of urban agglomeration and the urban hierarchy have been extensively studied. Despite the pivotal role of the hinterlands in theories of the development of the urban hierarchy, little attention has been paid to the effect of urban agglomeration on growth in the hinterlands, particularly in a developed, mature economy. Therefore, this study examines how proximity to urban agglomeration affects contemporary population growth in hinterland U.S. counties. Proximity to urban agglomeration is measured in terms of both distances to higher-tiered areas in the urban hierarchy and proximity to market potential. Particular attention is paid to whether periodic changes and trends in underlying conditions (e.g., technology or transport costs) have altered population dynamics in the hinterlands and small urban centers. Over the period 1950-2000, we find strong negative growth effects of distances to higher-tiered urban areas, with significant, but lesser, effects of distance to market potential. Further, the costs of distance, if anything, appear to be increasing over time, consistent with various recent theories stressing the importance of how new technology affects the spatial distribution of activity in a mature urban system, while factors associated with the New Economic Geography are of lesser importance. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Queering the Map: The Productive Tensions of Colliding Epistemologies

Abstract: Drawing on and speaking to literatures in geographic information systems (GIS), queer geography, and queer urban history, we chronicle ethnographically our experience as queer geographers using GIS in an action-research project. We made a map of sites of historical significance in Seattle, Washington, with the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project. We detail how queer theory/activism and GIS technologies, in tension with one another, made the map successful, albeit imperfect, via five themes: colliding epistemologies, attempts to represent the unrepresentable, productive pragmatics, the contingencies of facts and truths, and power relations. This article thus answers recent calls in the discipline for joining GIS with social-theoretical geographies, as well as bringing a spatial epistemology to queer urban history, and a cartographic one to queer geography.

Landscape as Urbanism

Abstract: viii Chapter 1 – Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Case Studies 8 · City of Culture of Galicia 9 · Fresh Kills Park Project 11 · Rebstockpark Master Plan 13 · Tanghe River Park 15 Chapter 3 – Trinidad and Tobago 18

Urban (Homo)Sexualities: Ordinary Cities and Ordinary Sexualities

Abstract: This article appraises the current state of research on urban sexualities and suggests some underexamined areas of research that might productively be explored further This review primarily focuses on studies of gay space and urban homosexualities, as this remains the largest body of work on urban sexualities within geography I argue that this work has got caught in a trap of concentrating on the production of gay identities and spaces within small areas of a relatively small set of cities, against which all other spaces are implicitly assessed Drawing on recent post-colonial debates within urban geography, this article argues that it is time for sexual geographers to expand their horizons and move beyond this hierarchy of metropolitan gay centres, to study a broader range of sexualities and spaces in ‘ordinary cities’ assessed on their own terms To this end, the article considers work on gay domestic spaces in suburban Australia, and the interaction of local homosexualities with transnational ‘gay’ identity in Chengdu, China This work offers productive examples of studying gay space across the whole city and attending to urban homosexualities outside of the world cities of the Global North

Benefits of Urban Green Space for Improving Urban Climate

Abstract: Urban settlements transform the natural environment so greatly that people tend to see the city only as an employment site, and economic and cultural center. Thus a growing number of people prefer to reside in greener suburbs or rural areas. This results in increased automobile commuter traffic, accompanied by traffic jams, accidents, stress, and ever more damage to the environment. Concepts of sustainable development or the ecological city represent strategies for changing these negative trends. The purpose for doing so is principally the well-being of a city’s residents. Often this entails bringing more of the natural environment back into the city, because urban green space fulfills several critical functions in an urban context that benefit people’s quality of life. There is a broad consensus about the importance, and therefore the value, of urban green space in cities as currently constructed, in addition to its value in planning ecological cities. Steadily growing traffic and urban heat not only damage the environment, but also incur social and economic costs. As we explain further, we can save costs even by making small changes to existing situations. Furthermore, we maintain and show that an integrated approach is needed for designing and maintaining urban green space. The main thesis of this chapter, therefore, is as follows: To provide sufficient quality of life in high-density cities, it is important to maintain and restore an urban green space system; moreover, urban green space and a comfortable urban climate also produce social and economic benefits.

Editorial—Toward a Comparative (Re)turn in Urban Studies? Some Reflections

Abstract: (2008). Editorial—Toward a Comparative (Re)turn in Urban Studies? Some Reflections. Urban Geography: Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 405-410.

Resurgent Metropolis: Economy, Society and Urbanization in an Interconnected World

Abstract: An urban problematic is identified by reference to the essential characteristics of cities as spatially polarized ensembles of human activity marked by high levels of internal symbiosis. The roots of the crisis of the classical industrial metropolis of the twentieth century are pinpointed, and the emergence of a new kind of urban economic dynamic over the 1980s and 1990s is discussed. I argue that this new dynamic is based in high degree upon the growth and spread of cognitive-cultural production systems. Along with these developments have come radical transformations of urban space and social life, as well as major efforts on the part of many cities to assert a role for themselves as national and international cultural centers. This argument is the basis of what we might call the resurgent metropolis hypothesis. The effects of globalization are shown to play a critical role in the genesis and geography of urban resurgence. Three major policy dilemmas of resurgent cities are highlighted, namely, their internal institutional fragmentation, their increasing character as economic agents on the world stage and the concomitant importance of collective approaches to the construction of localized competitive advantage, and their deepening social disintegration and segmentation.

Toward a Landscape Ecology of Cities: Beyond Buildings, Trees, and Urban Forests

Abstract: Human population growth and urbanization are two dominant demographic trends in our time (Brown, 2001). World population has continued to grow exponentially for the past several decades, and reached 6.2 billion in 2002, with a current annual increase rate of almost 80 million (Earth Policy Institute, 2002). The proportion of the total world population that is urban was only a few percent in the 1800s, but it increased to 14% by 1900, rapidly jumped to about 30% in 1950 (Platt, 1994a; Wu and Overton, 2002), and is passing 50% now. Evidently, as the world’s human population has increased exponentially, so has the proportion of people living in cities (Fig. 2.1). It has been projected that 60% of the world’s population will reside in urban areas by 2025 (Platt, 1994a). In 1800, there was only one city, Beijing, in the entire world that had more than a million people; 326 such cities existed 200 years later (Brown, 2001). The urban population is growing three times faster than the rural population (Nilsson et al., 1999), and we are now witnessing a historically unprecedented and monumental, global-scale, rural-to-urban transition. To quote Lester Brown (2001), “For the first time, we will be an urban species!” At a more regional scale, urban people already account for more than two thirds of the European population today. In the United States, 74% of the population resided in urban areas in 1989, and this number will increase to more than 80% by 2025 (Pickett et al., 2001). The historical record so far has shown that both the number of mega-cities as well as the number of urban dwellers have increased much faster in developing countries than in developed countries. For example, nearly 40% of the population of the Asia-Pacific region is now urban, and the region contains 13 of the 25 largest cities of the world. It has been estimated that by 2015 about 903 million people in Asia will live in cities with a population of over one million people (cf. Wu and Overton, 2002). While the world’s urban population is projected to rise to 60% by 2025, nearly half of these people will reside in the Asia-Pacific region. Undoubtedly, urbanization will continue to have significant impact on the environment as well as on economic, social, and political processes at local, regional, and global scales. Urbanization has profoundly transformed many natural landscapes throughout the world, and contributed significantly to the current crisis of biodiversity loss and deterioration of ecosystem services. Although cities cover less than 2% of the

The Post-Social Turn: Challenges for Housing Research

Abstract: In an editorial entitled ‘Living Room’ for the journal Urban Geography (Vol. 25, 2004) Susan Smith made reference to the ‘tired state of housing studies’. Smith argued that the ‘post-social turn’ in sociology and cultural geography has largely gone unnoticed by housing researchers and because of this, the radical implications of its epistemology have yet to be explicitly addressed. This post-social turn, elsewhere referred to as Science and Technology Studies, Actor Network theory, feminist technoscience and post-humanism, calls on researchers to decentre the human as the nucleus of social life and in turn recognize the significance of non-human actors (e.g. animals, technology and material artefacts) within social analysis. While in recent years housing scholars have begun to embrace post-structuralist accounts of social life, including discursive and constructionist theories, there has only been limited engagement with post-social assumptions and concepts. In view of this gap, this paper reviews recent ...

Who's Serving Whom? Partners, Process, and Products in Service-Learning Projects in South African Urban Geography

Abstract: The literature on service learning in geography courses has established and substantiated the importance and usefulness of such projects for student learning. In this paper the assumption is questioned that similar sets of benefits accrue to ‘community’ participants, those involved who are located outside the university context. The research undertaken demonstrates that projects, and the research or ‘service’ that they produce, are embedded in more complicated sociopolitical terrain that reflects not only the relationship between university and community, but also the complex ways in which organizations link to ‘communities’ and residents with complex local identities and interests. Analysis of this topography demonstrates the context-specific structuring of partnerships, research processes and the consequent diverse ‘after-lives’ of any research products that are produced.

Empathy and Emulation: Life Satisfaction and the Urban Geography of Comparison Groups

Abstract: Departures from self-centred, consumption-oriented decision making are increasingly common in economic theory and are well motivated by a wide range of behavioural data from experiments, surveys, and econometric inference. A number of studies have shown large negative externalities in individual subjective well-being due to neighbours' incomes. These reflect the role of nearby households as comparison groups acting in individuals' reference-dependent preferences over income or consumption. At the same time, there are many reasons to expect positive spillovers from having prosperous neighbours. We combine high-resolution geographic data from three Canada-wide social surveys and the 2001 census to disentangle the spatial pattern of reference groups in urban areas and to identify channels of positive and negative spillovers on life satisfaction. We find evidence of significant effects of others' income at different scales and are able to reject a number of alternative explanations for the findings.

Shrinking cities : effects on urban ecology and challenges for urban development

Abstract: Cities in highly industrialised countries have grown over time, yet the phenomenon of shrinking cities occurs in many regions. Urban shrinkage has various impacts on urban ecology, which can be observed on urban brownfield sites in particular. The integration of brownfield sites with sustainable urban development must be managed, and this presents new challenges for urban planners. The introductory chapters of this publication give an overview of urban ecology concepts and how research in this field is affected by urban shrinkage. The following sections are concerned with botanical aspects of shrinking cities, perception of nature in the context of shrinkage and discussion of aspects of urban planning with reference to several regional examples. The book concludes with an examination of urban shrinkage during the life cycles of city archetypes.

What is a city? : rethinking the urban after Hurricane Katrina

Abstract: This book offers cutting-edge thinking on contemporary urban spaces.The devastation brought upon New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee system failure has forced urban theorists to revisit the fundamental question of urban geography and planning: What is a city? Is it a place of memory embedded in architecture, a location in regional and global networks, or an arena wherein communities form and reproduce themselves?Planners, architects, policymakers, and geographers from across the political spectrum have weighed in on how best to respond to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The twelve contributors to "What Is a City?" are a diverse group from the disciplines of anthropology, architecture, geography, philosophy, planning, public policy studies, and sociology, as well as community organizing. They believe that these conversations about the fate of New Orleans are animated by assumptions and beliefs about the function of cities in general.They unpack post-Katrina discourse, examining what expert and public responses tell us about current attitudes not just toward New Orleans, but toward cities. As volume coeditor Phil Steinberg points out in his introduction, "Even before the floodwaters had subsided...scholars and planners were beginning to reflect on Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous aftermath, and they were beginning to ask bigger questions with implications for cities as a whole."The experience of catastrophe forces us to reconsider not only the material but the abstract and virtual qualities of cities. It requires us to revisit how we think about, plan for, and live in them.

Revisiting Urban Planning in the Transitional Countries

Abstract: Dr. Sonia Hirt is an Assistant Professor of urban affairs and planning at the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg where she teaches courses in planning theory and practice, urbanization and development, and European cities. She has held multiple post-doctoral fellowships such as those from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the American Association of University Women, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She has published in a variety of urban planning, urban geography and urban design journals. Comments may be sent to the author by e-mail: shirt@vt.edu.

World Cities and Global Change: Observations on Monumentality in Urban Design

Abstract: A prominent urban geographer presents a sweeping review essay on monumentality in the urban design of world cities. After outlining a number of the large, grand urban plans and projects of the past and present, he focuses on the four components of monumental urban design: comprehensive conceptions of legible urban form; iconic buildings; integrated urban transportation hubs; and planned downtown and midtown redevelopment projects. Concentrating on the trends prevailing at present and over the near future, the author notes factors that may exert a special impact on emerging world cities in Russia and China and argues for the importance of process in the geography of monumentality. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, R51, R53. 14 figures, 37 references.

The evolution of the geographical concentration of tertiary sector activities in Europe

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to measure the concentration of tertiary activities in Europe. Usually, these sectors are depicted as ‘invisible goods’ by international economics theories. However, the expansion of the tertiary sector in developed economies, liberalisation and an increasing number of studies argue that services have a serious influence upon the economy, most notably in the field of economic geography. This study measures the concentration of tertiary sector activities, breaking this field down into 21 distinct sectors. This research shows that Knowledge Intensive Business Services are highly concentrated, and are becoming even more so. This result points towards the desirability of explicitly including these activities in New Economic Geography models.

Monumentality in Urban Design: The Case of Russia

Abstract: A prominent American urban geographer and observer of the Russian urban scene provides an overview of grand planning and monumental urban design in Russia and the former Soviet Union through the lens of four themes outlined in a previous paper by Larry Ford (2008). In the process, he adds two more themes relevant to Russia and the former USSR: town building and architecture intended to define and legitimize state power, and the shaping or remodeling of society to reflect a regime's ideology. Noting the obstacles in the West to getting large urban projects planned, accepted, and completed, he argues that monumental urban landscapes appear to demand some degree of sustained, centralized, authoritarian leadership. The latter has been present in Russia and the USSR during much of the past millennium, including the present, but the emergence of new commercial/corporate forces in urban land development also bears scrutiny in studies of the processes promoting urban monumentality. Journal of Economic Literature,...

Is there a link between fractal dimension and residential environment at a regional level

Abstract: Fractal dimension is used to measure the spatial arrangement (morphology) of built-up areas within a Nuts1 region (Wallonia, Belgium) and, more particularly, to test to what extent fractal dimension is related to some variables commonly used in urban economics/urban geography to characterise built environment, housings and residential choice (such as land price, housing rentals, history of urbanisation, type of housing). Special attention is put on the link with the perception of the built environment by households. A multivariate analysis concludes the paper. It is shown that fractal indices differ from other indicators and are very useful for characterizing and understanding built landscapes, as well as for modelling and planning urban realities.

Cultural industry as a result of new city tertiarization

Abstract: The article introduces a new form of economic activities, which has attracted much attention during the past years. This new form is cultural industry, a term which defines a certain part of tertiary activities, the importance of which is rapidly gaining in importance within cities. The term cultural industry includes all highly specialized services, which provide products and services, that have a higher symbolic than material value and trade with intellectual property rights. The article provides precise definitions of cultural industry and an empirical presentation in the case of Ljubljana. Furthermore the article also implies possible consequences of cultural industry on the economic and spatial development of cities.

Advancing sustainable urban development in China

Abstract: Chinese urban life is improving rapidly in line with the country’s economic growth. However, public services are not able to meet the needs of the improving urban life due to insufficient urban infrastructure. How to provide good public services is a question that needs to be considered further, as well as how to continue sustainable urban development in China. This paper examines the current state of urban development and investment conditions in China. The characteristics of urban infrastructure construction and the associated problems are also investigated. Considering the conditions of urban development in China and similar experiences worldwide, the utilisation of underground space for urban infrastructure construction is suggested as the main direction for sustainable development. Underground utilities, utility tunnels and stormwater systems are recommended for rationalising urban infrastructure construction and city flood prevention, as well as for providing new water resources. In addition, genera...

Introduction—the Policing of Immigration

Abstract: (2008). Introduction—the Policing of Immigration. Urban Geography: Vol. 29, Policing Immigration, pp. 1-3.

The Mediated Metropolis as Medium and Message

Abstract: Cities and communication have been historically inseparable, and the new communication technologies and globalization are changing the boundaries of multicentered, multicultural and multimediated urban regions. The `communicative city' is a medium with a traditional local and internal geographic space and place, while conveying its message into a virtual external cyberspace. The impact of social divergence and media convergence on urban identity raises questions about consensus, community and the `communicative' function of the city if it is digitized, dematerialized and deterritorialized in a new urban geography.

On Schools of Thought, Comparative Research, and Inclusiveness: A Commentary

Abstract: This article offers a critique of the common practice of labeling an institution or group of people as a distinct school of thought, ideology, or methodology, and calls for more open, inclusive, and comparative research in urban geography. The former argument highlights the negative effects of within-group dialogue and its inherent exclusionary tendencies, whereas the latter stresses the role of context and contingency in understanding our cities. Examples are drawn from the experience and characteristics of North American cities to illustrate the crucial importance of national institutions, politics, culture, and geography in shaping those cities, and the challenges involved in writing theory and defining an inclusive research agenda.