On The Waterfront: Globalization and Urbanization in Singapore

Although many cities aspire to "global-city status," few have been as explicit as Singapore in its quest to create urban landscapes to project its global aspirations. This paper presents the case of the Singapore River development zone as a "hyper-symbol" of Singapore's global urbanism. By creating a world-class riverfront not unlike the acclaimed waterfronts of London, Sydney, or San Francisco, Singapore's urban planners hope to project the city as a venue worthy of world-class tourism and leisure activities, an important node in international circuits of capital, and a vibrant city for both foreign visitors and local residents. Our paper, however, also argues that local forces and influences play a significant role in the waterfront's development. The Singapore River landscape is the negotiated outcome of both globalism and localism—a dialectical landscape formed by dominant global influences on the one hand, and emerging local processes on the other. Fieldwork comprising a questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews, and on-site observations provide evidence of such global-local interactions. The paper contends that the challenges at the river are symptomatic of the broader Singapore experience as the city-state grapples with issues of national identity, local empowerment, and community rights in the midst of a global convergence of tourists, capital, people, and cultures.     

Industry Clusters and Sydney's ITT Sector: northern Sydney as ‘Australia's Silicon Valley’?

This paper examines the claim that the North Ryde–North Sydney arc is Australia's ‘Silicon Valley’, seeking firstly to identify the empirical validities behind the claim, and secondly to ask how the documented patterns might be explained. The paper evidences the fact that this area indeed provides the pre-eminent site for Australia's information technology and telecommunications (ITT) sector. However, examination of this industry suggests that its expansion in Sydney has been motivated primarily by the increasing centrality of advanced producer services within the high-order business sector. It is Sydney's attributes for multinational business, as opposed to the propulsive dynamics of local clustering per se, which appears to explain the spatial concentration of these activities. Thus, it is the urbanisation economies of Sydney more than the localisation economies of the ITT sector which account for the growth of this sector in the city. Nevertheless, localisation economies are sporadically significant, suggesting that Sydney's ITT sector is to a certain extent a hybrid product of the two types of economies.     

BITNET: A TOOL FOR COMMUNICATIONS AMONG GEOGRAPHERS*

BITNET is a telecommunications network for higher education. The network's general characteristics, services, the availability of BITNET to academic geographers, and their use of the system are examined. Although more than 80% of geography faculty in the United States and Canada are at BITNET-supported institutions, a survey of AAG Specialty Group chairs suggests that geographers' actual use of BITNET is relatively low.     

A Note On Spatial Autocorrelation

BITNET is a telecommunications network for higher education. The network's general characteristics, services, the availability of BITNET to academic geographers, and their use of the system are examined. Although more than 80% of geography faculty in the United States and Canada are at BITNET-supported institutions, a survey of AAG Specialty Group chairs suggests that geographers' actual use of BITNET is relatively low.     

The empty rhetoric of the smart city: from digital inclusion to economic promotion in Philadelphia

Smart city initiatives have been adopted by cities worldwide, proposing forward-looking, technological solutions to urban problems big and small. These policies are indicative of a digitized urban condition, where social and economic exchange rely on globalized telecommunications networks, and governance strategies follow suit. Propelled through events such as IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge, the smart city acts as a data-driven logic urban change where widespread benefit to a city and its residents is proposed, masking the utility of these policies to further entrepreneurial economic development strategies. In this article, I present a case study of the Digital On-Ramps initiative that emerged from IBM’s policy-consultation in Philadelphia. The initiative proposed a social media-style workforce education application (app) to train up to 500,000 low-literacy residents for jobs in the information and knowledge economy, but even as the city’s mayor declared the project a success, it did not meet expectations. This essay argues that the rhetoric of intelligent, transformative digital change works much more to “sell” a city in the global economy than to actually address urban inequalities.     

Derivation of topographic variables from a digital elevation model given by a spheroidal trapezoidal grid

Digital elevation models (DEMs) given by spheroidal trapezoidal grids are more appropriate for large regional, sub-continental, continental and global geological and soil studies than square-spaced DEMs. Here we develop a method for derivation of topographic variables, specifically horizontal (k) and vertical h (k) landsurface curvatures, from spheroidal trapezoidal-spaced DEMs. First, we v derive equations for calculation of partial derivatives of elevation with DEMs of this sort. Second, we produce formulae for estimation of the method accuracy in terms of root mean square errors of partial derivatives of elevation, as well as k h and k (m and m respectively). We design the method for the case that the v kh k v Earth's shape can be ignored, that is, for DEM grid sizes of no more than 225 km. We test the method by the example of fault recognition using a DEM of a part of Central Eurasia. A comparative analysis of test results and factual geological data demonstrates that the method actually works in regions marked by complicated topographic and tectonic conditions. Upon increasing DEM grid size, one can produce generalised maps of k and k. Spatial distributions of m and m h v kh k v depend directly on the distribution of elevation RMSE. Areas with high values of m are marked by low values of m, and vice versa, areas with high values kh k v of m are marked by low values of m. Data on m and m should be utilised k v kh kh k v to control and improve applications of k and k to geological studies. The method h v developed opens up new avenues for carrying out some 'conventional' raster operations directly on geographical co-ordinates.     

Aquaculture and the Postproductive Transition on the Maine Coast

Aquaculture is the global food system's fastest growing sector. The postproductive transition—the shift away from commodity production toward more consumption‐oriented land uses—is common in many coastal areas as well. This paper examines the intersection of these trends in a U.S. state, Maine, with expanding aquaculture and extensive coastal, rural economic and demographic change. It examines interactions between coastal landowners and aquaculture farmers at aquaculture lease hearings in the state's three main aquaculture regions. Landowners are often uncertain about aquaculture because it is new and unfamiliar. Farmers use lease hearings to educate coastal landowners about farm operations, and farmers respond to concerns by altering their operations to fit landowners’ priorities. However, comparative analysis of the three regions reveals divergent histories and geographies leading to different levels of conflict. This study shows the value of applying rural postproductive transition theory to coastal regions and aquaculture development.     

Assembling/Worlding Cities

This article explores the assembling and worlding of cities as both aspirational and evaluative processes in which cities are assembled, compared, and “positioned.” These practices involve the global circulation of expertise, best practices, models, and technologies related to how best to develop and govern cities. From specific examples from the authors' research, it is argued that the two distinct but overlapping notions of assembling and worlding help us conceptualize the contemporary urban–global condition. Building on the article's insights, we end this Urban Pulse with some questions for future global urban studies.     

The Permeable City: Toronto's Spatial Shift at the Turn of the Millennium

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urban governance restructuring, and global, national, and local action through a case study of the Toronto city‐region. The Toronto city‐region recently underwent a massive reorganization of its governance structures, functions, and jurisdictional boundaries. This restructuring raises questions about why these changes occurred at this particular juncture in the region's history. Why did the city that had always been known in the academic and political discourse as the “city that works” stop “working”? What global and national forces might have accounted for such a radical restructuring? And what did local action contribute? These questions are explored in both historical and contemporary contexts by drawing on insights from regulation theory, urban regime theory, and an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism. This approach informs the role that institutions — regardless of their origin or territorial scope — play in sustaining a local accumulation system, and how this “local” accumulation grounds a national regulatory mode and regime of accumulation. The approach also explores the relationship between regime and regulation theories in the context of policy formation and institution building. The study concludes that the current policy set is incapable of resolving the region's crisis tendencies. Notwithstanding external forces, the current policy set is not inevitable. Globalization does not predetermine all spatial‐economic outcomes.     

全球重构中尺度重组及其地域性管制实践研究

为解释20世纪70年代以来的全球重构现象,西方人文地理学经历了尺度转向并开展了尺度重组的理论和实证研究。“尺度重组”的常见含义有三类:抽象层面的社会建构基础上尺度的历史演变、具体层面的国家或城市尺度重组以及政治斗争视角的行动者对尺度的运用。这一概念具备4个基本要素或特征,即尺度的社会建构和动态演进、尺度重组同政治斗争的关联性、尺度重组的路径依赖性以及尺度重组同其他空间维度的关联性。基于当前理论和实证研究,尺度重组的典型地域性管制实践可归纳为行政权限调整、行政区划调整、地方增长极的培育和跨边界区域合作。     

LOCAL STATE DYNAMICS AND GENTRIFICATION IN INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA

This article seeks to demonstrate that the creation of the rent-gap is not the only important variable which structures patterns of neighborhood gentrification in North American cities. A case study of Indianapolis, Indiana, between 1980 and 1986 illustrates the influence of the local state as an alternative variable. Its influence, directed toward the aim of transforming the downtown area for more affluent users, was twofold. First, government regulated upgrading, via the construction of rules and ordinances, to ensure the process's inevitable success. Then, to direct its spatial unfolding, subsidies were targeted to stimulate the production of gentrified dwellings. Thus, government provided investors the power to fulfill their redevelopment objectives and subsidized their operations. The end product of "politicizing" the marketplace was to shape its dynamics, and, ultimately, its market outcomes.     

“HANDS ACROSS THE SEA”: THE MASONIC NETWORK,BRITISH IMPERIALISM,AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC WORLD

ABSTRACT. From Montreal to Madras, from Barbados to Burma, the lodges of Freemasons dotted the landscape of the British Empire from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. Together with the British grand lodges under whose authority they met, these lodges constituted a vast network that extended across the oceans and linked Freemasons in Britain's colonies to the metropole and to each other. In this article I use the fraternity to demonstrate how the age of empire can serve as a laboratory for studying transoceanic networks, institutions, and identities. Looking first at the broad imperial context, I demonstrate how the global Masonic network developed and describe its functions during the long nineteenth century. I then focus on the British North Atlantic as a case study of the brotherhood's role in connecting people on various sides of a particular ocean basin by offering practical services and encouraging an “imperialist” identity that helped consolidate the British Empire.     

"Power Geometries

Feminist contributions to the geographical literature on capitalist restructuring have tended to emphasize the importance of examining women's experiences vis-a-vis those of men. This research in progress report on the telecommunications service industry in New Zealand suggests that assuming the relative homogeneity of ‘women’ as an analytical category, then assessing the experience of women against those of men using national data, may no longer be satisfactory in a context in which production, finance and labour markets have been internationalised.     

Geography,the Integrating Discipline: Explaining China's Population-Driven Geopolitics to Students

Abstract

This article demonstrates geography's role as an integrative discipline and its utility in connecting students to the world around them. A case study links China's demography and its geopolitics to the lives of U.S. students. The relationship of China's population pressures to its resulting economic growth, need for economic resources, and geopolitical efforts are examined using the concepts and holistic capabilities that are the academic strength of geography.     

GERMAN GREAT–POWER RELATIONS IN THE PAGES OF SIMPLICISSIMUS, 1896–1914*

ABSTRACT. Wilhelmine Germany had a powerful economy and, after 1898, began construction of a fleet to challenge Great Britain's global power. This article analyses Germany's cultural “will to power” in the period through the eyes of the avant‐garde, Munich‐published weekly magazine Simplicissimus as it examined the series of security crises between 1896 and the outbreak of war in 1914. The magazine was no fan of Wilhelmine militarism, its principal artist having been jailed for criticism of the kaiser, but it showed a deep support for Germany's rise to power on moral grounds. Many illustrations dealt with global power projection through the navy and the need for a suitable security partner within Europe. Its illustrators depicted Great Britain as an immoral world power only Germany might check and France as its preferred security partner to keep Europe at peace.     

Environmental and political implications of Vietnam's water vulnerabilities: A multiscale assessment

Vietnam's low‐lying areas of the Lower Mekong Basin are prone to floods, salt water inundation, and riparian competition with upstream neighbours. Vietnam's opening to the global economy, accompanied by industrialization and a rapidly growing population, impose multiscale (global, regional, local) stresses on urban and rural water systems resulting in water contamination and groundwater overdraft. Water vulnerability is a function of both natural and social hazards and depends on the scope of capital investment, political and ideological institutions, managerial capacity and governance. Water distribution and riparian ecosystem health are also hydropolitical issues related to dam‐building activity by Vietnam and its transboundary neighbours, Laos, Cambodia and particularly China, whose territory contains the source of the Mekong River. A multiscale assessment of Vietnam's interlinked water vulnerabilities indicates that the resilience of the country's social‐ecological water system rests on peaceful resolution of regional transboundary conflicts based on shared economic interests and on improved managerial practices of local authorities.     

Implementing the Slow Life in Southwest Ireland: A Case Study of Clonakilty and Local Food

Cittaslow is an Italian‐based global network of towns and cities that grew out of the Slow Food movement. Cittaslow and Slow Food reject the standardization of culture and taste that has accompanied globalization. Instead, they focus on strategies that foster a sense of place that is derived from a town's unique environmental and cultural setting: its terroir. Clonakilty, a small town located thirty miles southwest of Cork, is Ireland's first and only “slow city.” This paper examines how a sense of place is conveyed in the town's restaurants through the selection of menu items and locally produced food. The results indicate that independently owned restaurants are more likely to embrace Cittaslow's efforts at conveying a sense of place than restaurants in hotels and pubs. Nearly all of the town's restaurants serving Irish food use locally available food suppliers.     

‘The law is not for the poor’: Land,law and eviction in Luanda

This article investigates how an existing two‐tiered land tenure system creates a hybrid space that blurs, and essentially questions and problematizes the boundaries of the formal/informal divide as presented within Angolan political and legal discourses. It showcases how urban formality and informality exist alongside each other in Luanda and how people take recourse to both formal and informal channels in attempts to secure housing, land tenure and livelihoods in the city. Through case studies, the article describes how small‐scale farmers in Luanda's northern municipality of Cacuaco lost their lands to urban development in 2009–10 and the ensuing circumstances in which formal rights and informal land tenure became intermeshed and ambiguous. As the case studies illustrate, a gap exists between the legal code and practice on the ground. This gap is represented in how Angola's postconflict land strategy, with its forced evictions and demolitions of houses and neighbourhoods, often with little or no compensation, is at odds with the Angolan Land Law, which states that land may only be expropriated by the state or local authorities for specific public use and must be justly compensated.     

Getting Globalized: Urban Policy and Industrial Displacement in Williamsburg,Brooklyn

We hypothesize that as the "global city" label becomes ever more central to a city's identity, local urban government policy increasingly supports those economic sectors that city leaders see as being congruent with the global and increasingly undermines sectors that serve primarily local markets. Through an in-depth study of small-scale manufacturers in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City, we examine the extent to which and the ways in which local policy undermines otherwise healthy locally oriented businesses. We find that the City's assumption that urban manufacturing is a dying breed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, largely via the City's own treatment of its manufacturing businesses. Through a lack of enforcement of zoning codes, zoning variances and rezoning initiatives, and more quotidian policies of harassment over noise and other quality of life complaints, the City is making it more difficult to do business for small-scale manufacturers. These policies then create a conventional wisdom that sees the City as a difficult place to start and grow a business.     

The Geography and Area Studies Interface from the Second World War to the Cold War

Disciplinary geography's history represents an important source for contemporary debates over the status of geographical knowledge across the social sciences. This article argues for a reorientation of geography's history by examining its interface with the development of area studies in the United States. It investigates the epistemological and institutional transformations that occurred in the decades before and after the Second World War as the regional concept transmuted into area studies. The article finds that although geography's regional concept shaped the spatial constructions of area studies, the latter's imaginative geographies fixed the regional concept along geopolitical visions of the nation‐state and Cold War regional blocs that continue to occlude social scientific attempts to redraw the borders of the world.