Linking Theories of Service-Learning and Undergraduate Geography Education

Abstract

Service-learning, or community-based experiential learning is receiving much deserved attention as an alternative or addition to the traditional university lecture. This approach to learning not only establishes valid linkages between the university and the community or public sector, but allows course participants to practice responsible citizenship while acquiring practical work experience. The main objective of this article is to establish the theoretical linkages between undergraduate geography education and service-learning. It is argued that community service-based learning is allied with pragmatic and constructivist theories, and may enhance undergraduate geographic education. Second, some of the strategies employed to establish effective university-community partnerships and offer students “hands-on” experience are introduced. In an upper-division land use planning course, the class first compiled a draft comprehensive plan that was adopted by the planning commission of a recently incorporated municipality, then assisted with plans for open space preservation and environmental protection in the community. A review of the course objectives and the planning project exemplifies the benefits of service-learning and its appropriate application to geography.     

基于活力特征分析的城市安置社区公共空间研究——以苏州城区6个安置社区为例

由“散居”到“集居”,安置社区面临社会关系重建的巨大压力。基于公共空间活力内涵,采用AHP-模糊综合评价法,构建了城市安置社区公共空间活力评价模型,以苏州市6个安置社区为例,对3种安置模式的社区公共空间活力特征进行定量评价和比较。发现：① 不同安置模式的社区公共空间活力存在明显差异。尽管异地安置社区的公共空间的设施完备、类型多样,但是其公共空间的社会活力度最低。对于公共空间活力提升,社区公共空间背后的社会属性比其物质属性更为重要。②公共空间因子活力度与关注度存在不匹配现象。基于“社会-空间”辩证互动逻辑,提出安置社区公共空间活力营造策略： 对于今后安置社区,适宜“村内小集居+跨村大聚居”的安置模式,通过最大程度维系原有“熟人社区”群体的社会边界,提升公共空间活力,减轻社区社会关系重建的压力;对于现有安置社区,可根据公共空间因子活力度和关注度的匹配关系,划分公共空间改造的优先级,采用差别化的改造策略,提升公共空间活力及其改造资金的使用效率。     

Creating public space,creating ‘the public’: immigration politics and representation in two Copenhagen parks

ABSTRACT

Contestations over immigration, citizenship, and belonging play out every day in urban public space. In this article we study the design processes and use of two Copenhagen parks, Superkilen and Mimersparken, to explore the creation of public space and the “public” in Denmark. Who is part of the Danish “public”? What right do immigrant residents have to shape public space and their neighborhoods? How are the boundaries of Danish national identity policed and contested in public space in Copenhagen? The Danish government has increasingly moved toward far-right anti-immigrant stances, even while Copenhagen promotes a multicultural vision of a diverse and cosmopolitan city. Superkilen and Mimersparken illustrate the shortcomings of Copenhagen’s multiculturalism: though Copenhagen celebrates immigration, it left little space for residents to make meaningful decisions as political actors. In the case of Superkilen and Mimersparken, designers’ stylized idea of immigration is more celebrated than the actual presence of immigrant residents.     

基于公共空间价值建构的社区规划——以广州北京街3个传统社区为例

在公共空间价值研究中,社会行动理论提出基于“场域”空间结构化的社会行动研究框架,并为公共空间价值建构提供了实践论方法。在西方国家出现的公共空间价值危机背景下,社区逐渐成为构建公共空间价值的重要载体,社区规划因其社会行动本质,逐步成为重构社区公共空间价值的重要手段。目前我国社区规划的实践作为城市规划制度体系框架之下的局部探索创新,很难适应公民社会背景下不断成长的社区行动需要。本文借鉴新制度主义理论,以广州市北京街盐运西、流水井、龙藏3个传统文化社区为实证研究对象,从“组织”和“场域”两个分析视角,探讨社区运行空间构建和社区振兴行动方法,试图搭建我国面向公共空间价值需求的社区规划体系。研究显示,上述社区在商业文化的冲击下,面临着社区异质性加深、社区资本降低、社区行动障碍等问题,建设更包容开放、更有活力的可持续社区则成为社区居民的普遍愿望和需求。     

The intimate city: violence,gender and ordinary life in Delhi slums

In this paper I argue for an expansion of the horizons of urban geography through a notion of the intimate city. I focus on the slum as a space where the violence of an exclusionary city is woven into its intimate material and social conditions, but where this violence is also domesticated and rendered as part of the everyday. I illustrate through three stories of intimate lives of slum women that everyday life in the slum requires the production of (1) an urban subject who shows agency not by resisting but by living with intimate violence; (2) an urban subjectivity involved in acquiring knowledge of one’s bodily terrain in order to limit this violence; and (3) an urban citizenship that argues for a “right to intimacy” as a way to claim a right to the city. This paper calls for a recasting of the public/private divide in urban geography in order to understand how violence circulates through and contravenes the boundaries of public/private, city/slum, tradition/modernity.     

Gendering Marine Conservation: The Politics of Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries Access

Drawing on ethnographic case studies from Madagascar, this research shows that multiple marine conservation projects have institutionalized inequitable access to marine recourses along gendered lines. Despite discursive and institutional shifts toward more “collaborative” and “community-based” conservation programing, there is a deficiency of women’s nominal as well as effective participation in community management organizations. This research shows that conservation organizations’ focus on proximate drivers of marine resource use, or a politics of picking the “low-hanging fruit,” over ultimate drivers such as global commodity chains, places disproportionate emphasis on marine spatial enclosures and restricting specific, and gendered, harvest methods. To address gender bias concerning access to and control over natural resources, we must go beyond the rhetoric of “community involvement” to address gendered inequalities in conservation decision making, and whose interests are served by conservation projects.     

民族旅游地区家空间的主客角色冲突研究——以丽江白沙村为例

以社会角色与角色冲突的相关理论为指导,以云南丽江白沙村当地纳西族居民家的微观空间为研究对象,对当地居民与游客在互动过程中的角色冲突质性进行了研究。研究发现,当地少数民族居民与汉族游客在家空间的互动过程中,双方各自存在角色内冲突的现象,同时彼此之间也存在两种角色间冲突现象。互动双方在处理这些角色冲突的过程中,既反映出当地居民对经济利益的诉求,也反映出当地居民与游客在家空间中的地位与权力关系。     

A Tripartite Conceptualisation of Urban Public Space as a Site for Play: Evidence from South Bank,London

Public space is a feature of the urban built environment that has received increasing attention in recent years. Discussion has focused on the theoretical decline of public space, as private and institutional forces take on increasing influence. At the same time, many such “in-between spaces,” even privately owned ones, are used and experienced as public on a daily basis. Few studies, however, have explored how spaces understood as public are used and practised as such. To address this gap in the literature this paper draws upon ethnographic data collected on the “South Bank” in London (United Kingdom) to argue that “play” is a recurrent trait of sociospatial practices enacted in public space. Three interrelated typologies of playful practices in public space are discussed: child's play, plays on meaning, and play as simulation.     

COSMOPOLITANISM: THE MEDITERRANEAN ARCHIVES†

The existing postcolonial literature privileges the British and French imperial/colonial history that mirrors the ongoing debate on the relationship among cosmopolitanism, universalism, and imperialism. These debates take for granted the Kantian and Hegelian hierarchy of European civilizations, hence marginalizing the southern shores of Europe and the broader Mediterranean space. Drawing on Mignolo's notion of “border thinking” and on Isin's account of the city as a “difference machine,” I address the issue of how imperialism, colonialism, and cosmopolitanism come together and relate to each other in the context of the Mediterranean (allegedly) cosmopolitan cities. In particular, cosmopolitanism is read as the outcome of the reciprocal adjustment of interior and exterior borders in the making of modernity/coloniality in the Mediterranean. Focusing on the Ottoman millet system, my main claim in this article is that cosmopolitanism worked as a peculiar dispositif within the urban difference machine, enabling the city to sustain the tension between different accounts of citizenship.     

Geography's Profile in Public Debate “Inside the Beltway” and the National Academies*

Geographers continue to engage in public debate “inside the Beltway” by participation within and through federal agencies and through the National Research Council. Several examples illustrate the level and kind of this engagement, which has been concentrated on environmental and spatial data and analysis themes. Most professional geographers have the opportunity to engage in this form of public debate through participation in the activities of the National Research Council. The level of this participation has been surprisingly strong, given the small size of the community of professional geographers, and has helped to shape both U.S. and international research agendas relevant to geographic research. Participation, however, is concentrated in a few programs and individuals, raising questions about the sustainability of geography's voice in this public activity.     

TENDING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES AND FOOD CITIZENSHIP IN TORONTO'S COMMUNITY GARDENS*

ABSTRACT. Scattered throughout the city of Toronto are more than no community gardens, sites of place‐based politics connected to the community food‐security movement. The gardens, spaces where passions for plants and food are shared, reflect the city's shifting cultural landscape and represent an everyday activity that is imbued with multiple meanings. Toronto's community food‐security movement uses gardens as one strategy to regenerate the local food system and provide access to healthy, affordable food. Three garden case studies expand on the complexities of “food citizenship,” illustrating the importance of that concept to notions of food security. The gardens reveal the role gardeners play in transforming urban spaces, the complex network of organizations working cooperatively and in partnership to implement these projects, and the way in which social and cultural pluralism are shaping the urban landscape.     

We Are All Makers: The Method of Keyword Selection in Teaching and Learning Human Geography

Abstract

Geographers continue to engage in public debate “inside the Beltway” by participation within and through federal agencies and through the National Research Council. Several examples illustrate the level and kind of this engagement, which has been concentrated on environmental and spatial data and analysis themes. Most professional geographers have the opportunity to engage in this form of public debate through participation in the activities of the National Research Council. The level of this participation has been surprisingly strong, given the small size of the community of professional geographers, and has helped to shape both U.S. and international research agendas relevant to geographic research. Participation, however, is concentrated in a few programs and individuals, raising questions about the sustainability of geography's voice in this public activity.

     

The battle over the commons in port cities

ABSTRACT

The zone of intersection between land and sea within an urban context has long been viewed as a special type of urban commons. The well-researched port-city interface, however, tells a rather tragic story about the use and management of this valuable resource. This study asks how four major regulatory-institutional issues in the interface – land ownership, activities allowed in port area, planning autonomy, and public access – affect the ability of ports and cities to preserve elements of “commons” in urban coasts? Furthermore, it assesses if and how Elinor Ostrom’s principles for overcoming commons-related tensions, could contribute to the management of port-city conflicts over land-uses in the Mediterranean urban coastline and the various questions that may derive from such an application. For these purposes the study combines a comprehensive literature review with the analysis of planning regulation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews of key-stakeholders in seven port cities across three Mediterranean countries. The common experience in these different cases suggests that through a strategy involving scaling-down spatial decisions or governance, and built-in mechanisms for spatial cooperation, ports and the cities that host them can find a new joint path, which will strengthen local synergies and the quality of urban, public space.     

Accessing Flexibility: A Historical Institutional Analysis of Water Use for Oil and Gas Development in Colorado

US Mountain West Water access and allocation institutions have a history of adapting policy and practice to increase flexibility for diverse water uses. We examine how flexible access has developed over time and space by operationalizing the historical institutional (HI) theoretical and methodological framework. We trace historical water access for oil and gas (OG) development in Colorado, working from contemporary water right data to examine historical critical events, policies, and political contexts. OG water use has iteratively shaped water governance institutions in the top OG producing regions of Colorado, Weld, and Garfield Counties. The analysis suggests that to more accurately capture institutional change and continuity in resource allocation systems, an analysis of informal institutions is an essential theoretical contribution to the HI framework. While increased flexibility makes multiple uses easier, policies favor the most economically lucrative beneficial uses and generate issues of transparency, an important consideration for the public’s resource. Future practices of flexibility are contingent on market structures and institutional access mechanisms shaped during previous government policy processes, illuminating the value of the HI framework to inform future water policy.     

The Role of Biogeography in Education

Abstract

Urban change, university growth, and partial cultural realignment within the student-youth community contiguous to the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado have all contributed to the development of a youth ghetto. As an analytical framework for community analysis, a five-part ghetto model is applied to the community including (1) spatial enclave, (2) minority status, (3) inferior status, (4) lack of choice, and (5) social disorganization. Increasing importance of non-students in the youth ghetto combines with substandard housing, drug abuse, and rising crime as all-important ingredients in a ghettoization process that has resulted in urban blight for most neighborhoods adjacent to the Universty, and community disfunction (University Hill Riot, May 21-23, 1971). As a stabilizing force the University and the larger community are the likely candidates to initiate measures to effect a reversal in the trend. Until this is done the future of both remains uncertain.     

Public places and empty spaces: dislocation,urban renewal and the death of a French plaza

This article examines the dislocations produced when competing understandings of public space come into contact. Focusing on Montpellier, France, where an urban renewal program has seen portions of the city-centre renovated, the article considers the breaking apart of a North African commercial cluster under the guide of French heritage protection. Arguing that such action is tiedto municipal urban politics and wider trajectories that place diverse identities in a separate category, I trace the process through which a plaza encompassed in the urban renewal program has been labelled as “empty” and “dead” space. Suggesting that the relocation of a well-used outdoor food market is an instance of public space being deliberately emptied of its social and civic function, I argue that such sites are better defined as “municipal spaces”, entities that are firmly in the realm of the state, rather than ones within the purview of diverse publics.     

Not In The Same World: Topological Youths,Topographical Policies

Public attitudes continue to portray youths in Western societies as being passive and disengaged. Critical scholars are largely unanimous in that the misrecognition of and disrespect for young people's everyday experiences and activities form a major reason why they appear detached from politics and public life. Contributing to this debate, this paper traces the everyday experiences of some Finnish urban youths, and argues that their lived worlds differ notably from the worlds of the public administration that seeks to address youths as active citizens. Based on these findings, the paper proposes the pragmatically oriented concepts of “issue publics” and “topological connectives” for rethinking youth participation and democratic life more broadly.     

NEGOTIATING DUALISMS: WOMEN, LOCALITY AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN OAXACA CITY, MEXICO

This paper examines the validity of the public/private and reproductive/productive dichotomies commonly adopted in the analysis of gender and employment. It considers three aspects of the dualisms: spatial division, activity patterns and the construction of identities. The discussion is based on fieldwork undertaken in three districts of Oaxaca City, Mexico, between 1992 and 1995. While recognising the usefulness of spatial dualisms within Mexican cities, the paper seeks to identify the ways in which class and location within the urban space affect the construction of the boundary between “public” and “private”, women's “employment” experiences, and women's identities.     

THE LOS ANGELES COAST AS A PUBLIC PLACE

ABSTRACT. In the public‐space discourse Los Angeles is usually portrayed as more “anti‐city” than city. Its landscape is overrun by houses, “private‐public” squares and plazas, theme parks, shopping malls, and so on and lacks inclusive public places. Yet this discourse has essentially disdained to contemplate a major public space that contradicts its general thesis: the Los Angeles coast. The coast is meaningful public place in two specific senses. First, it symbolizes Los Angeles as a whole and therefore provides a basis for regional public identity. Second, Angelinos themselves take the coast seriously as a public place, and they have striven to make it inclusive in practice.