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.     

MYTHOLOGIES OF THE GRID IN THE EMPIRE CITY, 1811–2011*

In this article, I examine the performative dimensions of historical narration as a form of modern mythmaking by reconsidering conventional narratives on the “origins” of Manhattan's grid street plan of 1811. The historical mythology of the grid espoused in canonical readings of the Plan of 1811 relies extensively on a rearticulation of the official explanation that the grid's designers provided in a foundational text known as the “Commissioners’ Remarks”. I argue that such accounts result in an extraordinarily narrow and formulaic interpretation of the utilitarian motives and intentions behind the city's grid plan, one that reinforces a form of “morphological essentialism”. To support this argument, I shift the focus of attention beyond the “Commissioners’ Remarks” in order to complicate readings of the intentionality that gave rise to the 1811 street plan. I conclude by suggesting that the mythic search for the “origins” of the grid in the realm of founding intentions can most effectively be challenged by drawing attention to the proliferation of countermyths of gridded space.     

THE WOLVES AND LAMBS OF THE CREATIVE CITY: THE SUSTAINABILITY OF FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCERS IN LONDON

ABSTRACT. The sustainability of creative producers‐businesses and individuals‐depends in part on the state of the urban environment, especially the one of the street. Relationships with the street differ among creative producers with different power positions and levels of embeddedness in street life. Thus an approach to the sustainability of the creative city needs to move beyond the simplistic ideals of “mixed use” and “vitality” to an understanding of the complexity and continuity inherent in the production of creative spaces with respect to the multiple transactions of both the strong and weak stakeholders involved‐the “wolves” and “lambs.” The example used in this article, which draws on evidence from interviews with producers, is the film and television industry in Camden Town, London, in relation to the “experience” economy.     

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.     

HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MARTIN BUBER'S PHILOSOPHY*

Humanistic geography represents a duality of reason and feeling, science and ethics. As a scientific approach, it is concerned with uncovering the truth regarding people's experiential relationship with place. It does not regard the phenomena under consideration as merely an object of research, rather it bears an ethical message of concern for those objects, be they human beings, nature or place. This study expands on the ethical dimension conveyed by humanistic geography via Buber's work, trying to show that his dialogical philosophy and humanism is a logical extension of this message. I seek to convey an action-oriented frame of reference for geographers that may lead to a shift from passive reflection about people and place, to an active role in making Buber's “perfect space’ possible.     

农村劳动力转移就业的时空路径——以安徽省4个样本村为例

借鉴时间地理学理论与方法,提出农村劳动力转移就业时空路径概念。以安徽省4个样本村为例,使用ArcGIS、SPSS等软件进行数据分析,得出农村劳动力转移就业时空路径的基本类型与特征:① 农村劳动力依据时空路径特征可分为稳定型、逐步稳定型、漂泊不定型、回流型、逐步开拓型、断续型六种类型;② 4个样本村劳动力打工时空路径演化有明显的地域差异;③ 21世纪初期是农村劳动力全面接受打工就业方式的时期,就业行业主要集中在建筑业、制造业、服务业,“老家亲戚、朋友”是最重要的打工媒介;④ 农村劳动力在打工地和家乡间的流动节律有“春节型”、“节假日型”、“休息日型”、“每日型”四种类型;⑤ 农村劳动力转移就业具有明显的空间指向和粘性特征,家乡是重要的结点空间,社会经济地理位置是地域差异形成的重要原因。     

PLACE INVADERS: CONSTRUCTING THE NOMADIC THREAT IN ENGLAND*

Over the centuries, the image of nomads threatening sedentary ways of life has been a common pejorative representation. In order to understand what geographies underpin narratives about nomads, I examine how social theory and media representations invoke the image of nomads. Both media and academic representations are buttressed by limited understandings of place and space, framing nomads as the quintessential “place invaders.” Focusing on nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England provides a contemporary example of this process. British media representations construct nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England as out‐of‐place and threatening. Deconstructing essentialist geographical conceptions allows us to avoid reproducing the common image of placeless nomads, reveals how people utilize place to render others inferior, and highlights the fact that conflicts between nomadic and sedentary ways of life are not intractable and natural. Adopting a more nuanced understanding of place can challenge the dominant trope of nomads as place invaders.     

Size Matters to Lesbians,Too: Queer Feminist Interventions into the Scale of Big Data

How can we recognize those whose lives and data become attached to the far-from-groundbreaking framework of “small data”? Specifically, how can marginalized people who do not have the resources to produce, self-categorize, analyze, or store “big data” claim their place in the big data debates? I examine the place of lesbians and queer women in the big data debates through the Lesbian Herstory Archive's not “big” enough lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) organizing history data set—perhaps the largest data set known to exist on LGBTQ activist history—as one such alternative. In a contribution to critical data studies, I take a queer feminist approach to the scale of big data by reading for the imbricated scales and situated knowledge of data.     

THE ARTIST AS GEOGRAPHER: RICHARD LONG'S EARTH ART

The sculptor Richard Long practices a variety of art based largely on taking walks around the countryside. He documents his expeditions by making his route on a map, taking a representative photograph, or making a word “poster.”Assemblages of rocks or other materials are exhibited in galleries. His work shows a subtle understanding of esthetic aspects of the landscape in developing an artistic sense of “place”from which geographers may learn much about perception.     

CYBERSPACE AND VIRTUAL PLACES

ABSTRACT. Computer networks are often described in terms that imply a virtual space or place: electronic frontier, cyberspace, and information superhighway have been used to indicate computer networks as a whole; cafés, dungeons, and virtual offices are some of the “places” people refer to as being in or on networks. The use of this language, which I collectively call “virtual-place metaphors,” indicates three broad metaphorical themes: virtual architecture, electronic frontier, and cyberspace. The metaphors encourage control, surveillance, and capitalist expansion through computer technologies—and also evasion and resistance through computer technologies.     

SEA PEOPLE OF THE WEST*

ABSTRACT. Two thousand years ago, or thereabouts, a double canoe sailed on a northeast tack (or maybe a southeast tack) from a Homeland (Hawaiki) among the islands of Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji. After a voyage of 7,000 kilometers, which bypassed the many as yet uninhabited islands of the central Pacific (such as Tahiti) and the stretch of the seventy atolls of the Tuamotu that spread umbrellalike across the eastern entry of the Pacific, the canoe landed on islands that the Spaniards in 1595 were to call “the Marquesas.” The descendants of these first settlers call their islands “Fenua'enata” (Land of the People). Here I tell the story of this first beach crossing after what I consider to be the most remarkable voyage of discovery and settlement in all of human history. These first settlers (shall we say a dozen adults?) brought the animals and food plants that would make their island inhabitable. More mysteriously, these voyagers were—in body, mind, and spirit—all that we have come to call “Polynesian” in the great triangle of Hawai'i, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). “Sea of Islands” is the name the descendants of this first voyage prefer to call that great triangle. I here celebrate a Sea People's mastery of their Sea of Islands.     

Place ontologies and a new mobilities paradigm for understanding awareness of vulnerability to terrorism in American cities

There is increasing evidence that people interpret their risk from environmental hazards through places—such as urban neighborhoods. At the same time, heightened levels of mobility are theorized to be leading to a so-called “placeless society” and possibly nullifying theories of locality-based risk perception. The purpose of this study is to combine environmental risk-hazards scholarship with work in urban geography to explore the following question: is perception of vulnerability to terrorism influenced by place and mobility, and if it is, what is the relationship? Drawing on interviews with 93 householders in Boston, Massachusetts, I demonstrate that people perceive vulnerability via understanding the transportation environment as a place—not simply a conduit—and that these perceptions reflect larger societal structures, such as wealth and gender disparities, that combine with (im)mobility and human subjectivity to amplify or attenuate a person’s sense of vulnerability. These findings bring an understanding of subjective experience to the geography of transportation systems, which has not yet been theorized within the urban disaster literature.     

RECONSTRUCTED PRODUCTION LANDSCAPES IN THE POSTMODERN CITY: APPLIED DESIGN AND CREATIVE SERVICES IN THE METROPOLITAN CORE

Applied design and creative services are central to the formation of metropolitan landscapes and urban culture (both in historical and contemporary contexts), as well as to the production of the full range of industrial and consumer goods. More specifically, applied design firms are essential to the development of advanced industrial systems, and facilitate the operation of flexible production regimes by (1) enabling production differentiation in segmented markets, (2) improving productivity, (3) promoting production synergies, (4) enhancing short-run customized production, and (5) contributing to the condensing of longer-run style cycles. A case study of design and creative services firms in Vancouver discloses that such firms exhibit important commonalities with other producer services industries (e.g., intermediate market orientation, clustering propensity, divisions of labor). At the same time, firms engaged in the production of design may be differentiated from “mainstream” business or corporate service firms in terms of (1) location and milieu, with a clear affinity for the CBD fringe and inner city, rather than the CBD proper; (2) function, with an emphasis on creativity as both raison d'etre and operating characteristic; and (3) services-goods interface (design services are not “arms length” from goods production, like most business services, but are directly concerned with the style, configuration, and identity of end products). Finally, the clustering of design and creative service firms exemplifies the “internal specialization of the production spaces of the large metropolis” (Scott, 1988), although empirical evidence from the Vancouver case asserts the significance of sociocultural, as well as economic, features of agglomeration. [Key words: design, production, inner city, clustering, agglomeration.]     

COMMUNITY,SOCIETY, AND THE INDIVIDUAL

ABSTRACT. “Community” is a good warm word frequently invoked by citizens, social workers, and politicians. “Society,” by contrast, is more ambivalent, invoking something elitist and exclusive, as in the expression “high society.” The word “individual,” or “individualism,” often connoting selfishness and bracketed with society, is even more suspect in our time. I plead for a restoration of balance and esteem among the three terms as a necessary step toward acquiring a fuller understanding of the human condition and potential.     

BAVARIAN LEAVENWORTH AND THE SYMBOLIC ECONOMY OF A THEME TOWN

ABSTRACT. Theme towns are an often‐overlooked but significant form of tourism in rural areas. Many a small town across the United States, faced with a declining resource‐based economy, has turned to “theming” as an economic‐development strategy. In hopes of creating an alluring landscape, the built environment is radically transformed, and a variety of invented traditions are instituted. This article explores one such place‐Leavenworth, Washington‐that “went Bavarian” in the 1960s and is widely viewed as a success story. We examine four interrelated concepts that produce the symbolic economy of Leavenworth: emulation of other theme towns, authenticity, visual difference, and place marketing. After discussing each, we turn to the questions of how residents are affected by tourism and what it is like to live in Leavenworth.     

CONSTRUCTING AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN SPACE IN ATLANTA,GEORGIA*

Recognizing the connections between the construction of urban space and racial identity, this article explores an urban redevelopment scheme launched in 2004 by Big Bethel ame Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Known as the “Renaissance Walk,” Big Bethel's project is a $45 million dollar redevelopment plan to turn an adjacent city block into a mixed‐use development. By looking at the racialization of place from the perspective of those who live, work, and organize along Auburn Avenue, one of the most historically significant African American business corridors in the United States, I contend that Big Bethel's redevelopment project is emblematic of contemporary black counterpublic spaces and links the redevelopment project undertaken by Big Bethel with African American identity positions.