Legal Geographies—Governing Through Law: Rightsbased Conflicts and Property Development in Shanghai

This article examines recent legislation on the mandatory practice of government adjudication and its impacts on community residents' legal challenges to chaiqian (demolition and relocation) in Shanghai. In recent years, rights-based grievances over community displacement have become a major source of social conflict in urban China. The new legislation represents the Chinese state's efforts to establish a law-based model through which to govern an increasingly rights-conscious society. It is argued that the mandatory practice of government adjudication has smoothed out the conflict-laden property development process by establishing a legalized channel for affected residents to express their claims of rights and interests. Yet, at the same time, legislative practice has also reinforced the government's control in defining social interests to which residents' individual rights are subordinate.     

Legal Geographies—Controlling Sexually Oriented Businesses: Law,Licensing, and the Geographies of a Controversial Land Use

In this article, we explore both a neglected geography (the location of sexually oriented business) and a neglected instrument of sociospatial control (premises licensing). Arguing the former is increasingly shaped by the latter, we suggest that licensing provides a flexible means by which the state is able to reconcile the growing demand for "adult entertainment" with concerns about community standards, urban aesthetics, public safety, and property prices. We demonstrate this through an examination of the role of UK licensing legislation in controlling the location and visibility of such controversial businesses in London's West End. It is demonstrated that, in this case, licensing has encouraged the "upscaling" of sex-related businesses while reducing their overall number and visibility. We conclude that licensing, as a means of controlling contentious urban land uses, constitutes a "field of governance" whose legal geographies remain to be adequately theorized and explored.     

Legal Geographies—The Right to Spaces for Social Dancing in New York City: A Question of Urban Rights

As municipalities have enforced laws meant to enhance "quality of life" in gentrifying neighborhoods, controversies have erupted over the legitimacy of such laws. This study investigates one such controversy in New York City. It focuses on how the denial by the courts of social dancing as constitutionally protected mode of expression has led to the judicial endorsement of the municipality's cabaret law regulating the spaces for social dancing, despite the questionable legitimacy of this regulation. The study also draws out two implications for urban activism associated with movements making claims for "the right to the city": first, that we should take seriously activities such as social dancing and the spaces that enable them, which are invaluable to urban life but are not constitutionally protected; and second, that we may use the notion of "urban rights" as a principle to protect these activities and spaces from gentrification and questionable governmental regulations.     

A Review of “Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature,Technology, and the Sustainable City”

California sage scrub (CSS) is a highly threatened vegetation community in coastal Southern California, 90 percent of which has been lost. Understanding CSS recovery is critical to its survival. This study compares long-term effects of grazing, cultivation, and mechanical disturbance in Southern California by tracking the extent of exotic grassland in two valleys in the Santa Monica Mountains over sixty years using aerial image analysis. Native shrubs returned to the grazed valley over one and one-half times faster than they did in the cultivated valley. Cultivation might result in a type conversion of CSS to exotic annual grassland that resembles a new steady state.     

“The Corner of Avenue A and Twenty-Third Street”: Geographies of Street Numbering in the United States

The designation of streets by number is one of the hallmarks of North American urbanism, yet very few studies have examined the geographies of street numbering in U.S. cities and towns. This article provides one of the first comprehensive, nationwide assessments of the spatial distribution of street numbering and lettering practices across the United States. Drawing on data collected from Google Maps, census records, state almanacs, and related sources, we analyze the proportion of incorporated places in all fifty U.S. states that have adopted some form of street numbering or lettering; the regional variation in the prevalence of alphanumerical systems of street designation and the relationships between the occurrence of street numbering, population size, and date of incorporation. In doing so, the broader aim of this study is to undertake the empirical groundwork needed to develop a more nuanced critical theory of the social production of calculable space.     

“Enough Wandering Around!”: Life Trajectories,Mobility, and Place Making in Neoliberal Academia

This article analyzes the life trajectories of twelve early-career geographers in relation to their life–work experiences in an increasingly neoliberal academia and its constant demands of hypermobility. Using (auto)ethnographic research methods, it delves into the manifestations and effects of the pervasive myth of the detached, always ready-to-move scholar. We analyze the role of mobility in imaginaries and practices of academia and its close relationship with privilege and precarity. Our findings show how academic work is inescapably located despite the systematic erasure of the bodies, places, and networks that scholars are part of. By taking into account the centrality of place making in academic experience, our conclusions point to more comprehensive ways in which academic mobility can be understood, reflected on as part of geographers’ professional training, and transformed.     

A Review of: “Urban and Regional Technology Planning: Planning Practice in the Global Knowledge Economy”

Haiti and other developing countries have increasingly turned to emigrant remittances as a potential source of development capital. There is a vigorous debate in the development community about the impacts of remittances, however, with concerns about dependence challenging the optimism about a potential new development engine. Based on interviews with forty-two remittance recipients in Haiti and forty-five corresponding senders in New York State, we find that the remittance economy in Haiti is indeed productive and has the potential to generate employment and other important development benefits. That said, there are important limitations created by broader political–economic conditions and deeply entrenched inequalities.     

Research Note—A New Method for Mapping Population and Understanding the Spatial Dynamics of Disease in Urban Areas: Asthma in the Bronx,New York

Determining an accurate depiction of population distribution for urban areas in order to develop an improved "denominator" is important for the calculation of higher-precision rates in GIS analyses, particularly when exploring the spatial dynamics of disease. Rather than using data aggregated by arbitrary administrative boundaries such as census tracts, we developed the Cadastral-Based Expert Dasymetric System (CEDS), an interpolation method using ancillary information to delineate areas of homogeneous values. This method uses cadastral data, land-use filters, modeling by expert system routines, and validation against various census enumeration units and other data. The CEDS method is presented through a case study of asthma hospitalizations in the borough of the Bronx in New York City, in relation to proximity buffers constructed around major sources of air pollution. The analysis using CEDS shows that asthma hospitalization risk due to proximity to pollution sources is greater than previously calculated using traditional disaggregation methods.     

“A Mirror and a Lamp”: The Role of Power in the Rural Landscape Trajectory of the Ovens Region of Australia

Power relationships structure discourse and its influence on policy and rural land use planning, but little research has examined how this might be observed in the dynamics of rural landscape transition. In a qualitative case study of the Ovens catchment, Victoria, Australia, discursive power is observed through sites of tension between informant interpretations of past, present, and future landscapes and contemporary local decision making. Three main tensions and an observation emerged that suggest discourse and power can be observed through the transfer and support of social memory narratives. We conclude that the identification of tensions between stakeholder perceptions of the past, present, and future of their landscape; awareness of the influence of those interpretations on current decision making; and attention to social memory narratives can provide invaluable insights for those seeking to understand local relationships of power.     

‘Borehole Race’ and the Dilemma of Governing the ‘Ungoverned’: Understanding the Urban Political Ecology of Groundwater Exploitation in Nigeria

Groundwater exploitation is an essential aspect of the numerous processes of transforming the urban natural environment for human gains. We use the political ecology of borehole exploitation in Nigeria’s urban environment to understand the micro-and macro-level processes mediating the transformation and changes in urban “groundwater scape”. The fieldwork processes depend on field counting of borehole distribution, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, and a review of secondary literatures. We argue that the social and environmental changes arising from the exploitation of groundwater bespeak the active and continual manifestation of the interplay of combustible interests and power friction among institutional agents within the permissible range of the natural environment. Such dynamic power relations engender a pattern of socio-natural transformation consistent with Swyngedouw’s notion of urban metabolism- “a series of interconnected heterogeneous and dynamic but contested and contestable processes of continuous quantitative and qualitative transformations that re-arranges humans and non-humans in new and often unexpected ways”.     

“A Place of Pain and Gain”: Exploring the Dynamics of Resistance in the Creation of Sengwe Tshipise Wilderness Corridor,Southeast Zimbabwe

This article examines the relationship between place attachment and resistance during participatory planning of the Sengwe Tshipise Wilderness Corridor, located in southeast Zimbabwe, a region that falls within the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area. Field research was conducted from July to December 2013 using 69 semistructured interviews, seven focus-group discussions, and analysis of secondary data. By following the dominant narratives articulated by villagers affected by this Corridor, we illustrate the multiple ways in which place attachment becomes part of everyday politics of resistance. Results show that a strong place-based identity is at the center of narratives deployed by villagers displaced by war, conservation, and veterinary fencing restrictions. Through deploying this place-based identity, communities collectively influenced both the spatial extent of the corridor and institutional governance arrangements. This article contributes to debates on the role of community agency in the implementation of transfrontier conservation areas.     

A Review of: “Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life”

Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache

Foote, Kenneth E. Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy

Harries, Keith and Cheatwood, Derral The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America

Larkham, Peter J. Conservation and the City

James, Preston E. and Martin, Geoffrey J. All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas

Meir, Avinoam As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev

Ruddick, Susan M. Young and Homeless in Hollywood: Mapping Social Identities

Smith, Neil The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City