Who will leave? Oil,migration, and Scottish island youth

"Using survey data from high school students of Scotland's Shetland and Orkney Islands (affected by North Sea oil development), we explore relations between intentions to migrate and individual background, aspirations, and attitudes. Attitudes toward oil development do not predict migration intentions. Instead, migration intentions are predicted by essentially the same variables identified in other studies, in areas where energy development was not occurring. Thus, we found no evidence that oil development fundamentally changed young people's thoughts about leaving."     

A comfortable night out? Alcohol, drunkenness and inclusive town centres

The Licensing Act (2003) was enacted in England and Wales against the backdrop of media concern about 'binge Britain' and violent town centres avoided by 'social drinkers'. This paper responds to these concerns by asking how to create more inclusive urban centres at night. Findings from focus groups found it was not alcohol consumption or a reluctance to partake in urban life that was detracting residents. Using the notion of 'comfort', the paper instead reveals a strong desire for varied late-night experiences ranging from quiet local venues, to active streets and live venues.     

Does the invisible hand have a green thumb? Incentives, linkages, and the creation of wealth out of industrial waste in Victorian England

'Loop closing', that is, the creation of waste recycling linkages between different industries, has been hailed as a means of simultaneously achieving improved economic and environmental performance. As a result of the widespread assumption that traditional market incentives and institutions are not conducive to such an outcome, however, there remains a fair amount of scepticism as to what the capacity of business self-interest to promote this behaviour actually is. This article challenges the dominant negative perspective by discussing by-product development in one of the most market-oriented societies in human history, Victorian England. Building on nineteenth and early twentieth century writings on the topic, as well as a more detailed analysis of the development of valuable by-products from highly problematic iron and coal gas production residuals, a case is made that the search for increased profitability within the context of private property rights often simultaneously promoted economic and environmental progress in the long run, as well as on different geographical scales.     

Who owns the name? Fandom,social inequalities and the contested renaming of a football club in Timişoara,Romania

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in critical toponymy has raised questions about the impacts on urban residents of selling naming rights and the possibility of contesting the commodification of urban place names. This article examines these issues using Poli Timi?oara, the major football team of Timi?oara, Romania, as a case study. The cash-strapped local authority sold the naming rights for the team to raise revenue. However, when the club’s private owner was unable to finance the team, the local authority reacquired the naming rights of Poli, now under the name Asocia?ia Club Sportiv Poli (a new team with a small fan base). Drawing on the everyday narratives of fans, this article explores how the commodification of a local club name can cause social tensions. This is important for understanding urban residents’ access, or lack thereof, to social capital resources and how this leads to the manifestation of social inequalities which co-determine fans’ reactions and responses to the change in the name of a sports team. The findings suggest that commodifying names can mobilize serious contestations among partisan groups about who owns the name, although such contestations appear to be on uncertain ground because of post-communist urban practices of delayed economic restructuring.     

Who has long commutes to low-wage jobs? Gender,race, and access to work in the New York region

Geographies of home and work have changed as public investment has favored central and distant suburban locations and as income inequality has increased. These changes result in shifting geographies of advantage that (dis)benefit gender and racial/ethnic groups unevenly. We examine commuting differentials by gender and race/ethnicity based on combinations of wages and commute times using data for the New York region.We find that Black, Asian, and Hispanic women and men are concentrated in jobs that have long commutes and low-wages, and Black and Hispanic workers’ concentrations increased from 2000–2010.Although Asian men and women remain overrepresented in that category, their share decreased in the 2000's.The urban core has become a region of heightened advantage, as White men, and an increasing share of White women, commute short times to well-paid jobs. Disadvantage has expanded for Black and Latina women whose long commutes are not compensated by well-paid employment.     

Rural homes and urban dwellings? Gender,migration and the importance of tenure in Gaborone,Botswana

"The issue of return migration has been widely debated in African migration literature in view of strong rural-urban ties and urban growth based largely on in-migration. On the basis of fieldwork in Botswana, it is argued that there are important gender differences in terms of the commitment to rural and urban areas. It has been postulated in past studies that the decision to remain in towns depends in part upon urban tenure and it is argued that home owners are more likely than tenants to be permanent urban dwellers. Again, there are important gender differences and women appear to be more committed to the urban dwelling than men."     

Renaming and Rebranding within U.S. and Canadian Geography Departments, 1990–2014

Between 2000 and 2014, more than thirty geography departments adopted revised or new names, with some entirely dropping geography. Although renaming and rebranding efforts are not new to higher education, the rapid pace at which geography department names have changed raises questions about the discipline's identity and health. We examine the renaming trend within geography programs together with intended and unexpected factors as perceived by faculty. Specifically, we look at the renaming and rebranding trend within the context of four pillars offered by Pattison (1964 Pattison, W. D. 1964. The four traditions of geography. Journal of Geography 63 (5): 211–16.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to define geography's principal academic domains—earth-science, man–land, area/regional studies, and spatial traditions.     

Who Is More Willing to Pay for Green Electricity? A Case Study of Anyang City,China

Green electricity (GE) is of great importance for effectively combating climate change and global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The willingness-to-pay (WTP) for GE by end users has great influence on its widespread application, especially at the household level. Researchers have analyzed the mechanisms of residents’ WTP and predicted how much they could afford for GE. However, most of these studies have focused on developed (affluent) countries and regions, and residents’ WTP as well as the corresponding monetary amount of their WTP were not considered together in previous studies. In this study, we try to fill the gap of the inadequate research of residents’ WTP in underdeveloped areas through an analysis of the WTP of urban residents in a small Chinese city (Anyang). A total of 274 household-scale samples were collected by face-to-face interviews in December 2019. We found that approximately 60% of respondents gave a positive response to WTP, with an average value of 8.39 yuan per month. Educational attainment, per capita disposable income in the household, the length of residents’ time living in urban areas and the rate of neighbors’ approval of WTP are all positively correlated with the tendency of the residents’ positive response toward WTP. The three factors of per capita disposable income, the rate of neighbors’ approval of WTP and the degree of residents’ environmental concerns are positively correlated with the amount of residents’ WTP. More importantly, we demonstrated the existence of a weak “Herd Effect” in residents’ views of WTP. Finally, some suggestions for policymakers are given, such as raising household income through retraining and raising residents’ environmental awareness through education and community advertisements. This study also highlights that the widespread application of GE at the household level will be of great assistance to the GE industry overall. Therefore, the rising economic cost of GE should not be shared by the households in the long term.     

Left out? Observations on the RGS-IBG conference on social exclusion and the city

Summary On 29 October 1998, the RGS-IBG invited delegates to a conference entitled 'Social exclusion and the city', with Geoff Mulgan (founder of the think-tank Demos and a policy advisor to Prime Minister Blair) as the keynote speaker. The event was well attended, providing much useful insight into the government policies of the 'Social Exclusion Unit' and ongoing academic research into the processes and problems of 'social exclusion'. Here we provide some general observations on the conference and some suggestions regarding the possible directions of the debate on social exclusion and inclusion.     

The role of distance in peri-urban national park use: Who visits them and how far do they travel?

There is a sizable literature about the factors shaping park visitation and use – especially for urban parks, including (i) geographic (e.g. proximity), (ii) socio-cultural (e.g. population characteristics) and to a lesser extent, (iii) individual psychometric factors (e.g. attitudes and values). Yet comparatively little is known about how factors related to distance may affect peri-urban national park use, particularly outside the United States. This paper reports on research investigating distance-related factors affecting use of a peri-urban national park in Brisbane, Australia. This study found that older visitors live closer to the park while younger visitors travel further to use it. Surprisingly, travel distance did not vary with the type of recreational activities that users were conducting in the park. These results have implications for park planning and management including user demand for different recreational activities in peri-urban national parks. Results are useful for scholars using distance decay models to explain travel behaviour, evidencing the empirical veracity of the model in different places and across different service types. The findings are especially important for geographers because they demonstrate that assumptions about uniform park catchments may be unsupported and need to be empirically validated.     

Commodifying Legality? Who and What Counts as Legal in the Indonesian Wood Trade

This article examines how legality verification in Indonesia, as developed under the European Union (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), shapes who and what count as legal. A review of Indonesia’s evolving legality verification system and in-depth stakeholder interviews reveal a process of commodification driven by international demand for an interchangeable label of “legality.” This interchangeability is produced through a reduction of forest governance to a narrow set of legal standards and third-party, private auditing, which risks obscuring key governance challenges such as corruption and unclear tenure, and excluding most domestic and small-scale operators from economic and legal recognition. Given the market logic of legality licensing, it is more likely to “ratchet down” than “ratchet up” local access to, and benefit from, wood production, unless there is greater support and investment in legal and tenure reforms and improved local benefit capture.     

Think regionally,act locally?: gardening,cycling, and the horizon of urban spatial politics

In the contemporary American urban renaissance, formerly fringe efforts to produce place, conducted by longtime residents and “urban pioneers” alike, now shape mainstream urbanism. Gardening and bicycling are constitutive of contemporary excitement about the city, representing the reinvigoration of the urban neighborhood following the depredations of suburbanization. This paper draws on research in California cities to offer a sympathetic critique of these leading edges of progressive urbanism, arguing that advocates’ overwhelming focus on the local creates a scalar mismatch between the horizon of political action and the problems they hope to address. Even as supporters of gardening and cycling understand themselves as implicitly allied with struggles for the right to the city, their work to produce local space is often blind to, and even complicit in, racialized dynamics of accumulation and exclusion that organize metropolises. The result is a progressive urbanism largely disconnected from broader left struggles for spatial justice.     

Reaching critical mass? Theory, politics, and the culture of debate in children's geographies

A small but growing number of voices have begun to raise questions about the current direction of children's geographies as a subfield and its status within the wider discipline. This article intervenes in these emerging discussions to examine the status of debate itself within children's geographies. I argue that children's geographies over the past decade has operated primarily in a consensus-based mode, with a number of potential tensions and differences between practitioners masked as a result. I develop the example of notions of children's competent social agency, a core theoretical assumption that is rarely interrogated in much depth. In closing, I pose questions regarding several contemporary political issues concerning children's agency about which geographers have had surprisingly little to say. I suggest that explicitly addressing some of these vexing issues would contribute to a richer state of debate within children's geographies.     

The poorest and most vulnerable? On hazards,livelihoods and labelling of riverine communities in Bangladesh

Within the field of hazard research, vulnerability studies have been central to inducing a shift in the perspective on disasters as being primarily inflicted by geophysical events to that of apprehending disasters as destructive outcomes of particular social as well as hazardous environmental conditions. However, the inherent tendency within vulnerability studies to classify certain areas or people as 'vulnerable' may in some cases also serve to reinforce popular and/or ingrained prejudices, negative stereotypes and dubious explanations of the living conditions and fate of specific communities that become so labelled. The riverbanks and islands in river courses of Bangladesh have long been portrayed as home to the 'poorest' and most vulnerable communities, the widespread assumption being that people would only live in such riverine environments because they have no other options. Drawing on an examination of existing literature on char settlements in Bangladesh and data from a field site in the Jamuna River, this paper argues that the prevailing perceptions and labelling of char dwellers as 'vulnerable' people is based on a far too simplistic understanding of both rural migration patterns and the livelihoods obtained in these riverine areas.     

Use of fine-scale stratigraphy and chemostratigraphy to evaluate conditions of deposition and preservation of a Triassic Lagerst?tte, south-central Virginia

The rich, fossiliferous Triassic sediments exposed in the Virginia Solite Quarry include a 34-mm-thick “insect layer” that is notable for detailed preservation of soft-bodied invertebrate and vertebrate remains. We describe this unique Konservat-Lagerst?tte and use sedimentologic and geochemical analyses to interpret the environmental conditions necessary to preserve such delicate fossils. This work is among the first attempts to apply detailed geochemical/stratigraphic analysis to the study of Lagerst?tten and we report on a 332-mm-thick section that includes the insect layer and the rocks immediately below and above it. Our analysis successfully constrains various aspects of the depositional and diagenetic history of the Lagerst?tte and permits a detailed analysis of changing conditions prior to, during, and after deposition. Geochemical and sedimentologic analyses of the insect layer and surrounding lithologies reveal a change from siliciclastic-dominated layers (Unit 1) to dolomite-siliciclastic laminites above (Unit 2 and the insect layer), separated by a boundary dolostone layer that is traceable for over 200 m. We interpret this sedimentary shift as the initial stages in the transgression of a shallow, saline, alkaline rift-basin lake over lake margin deposits. The absence of bioturbation by plants and benthic organisms, as well as a lack of predation on the insects, is not explained by significant water depth, but is instead more reasonably considered a result of the chemistry of the water at the lake margin, affected by groundwater seeps, which provided F-, Mg-, and Ca-rich fluids. Although the initial conditions of preservation are remarkable, it is equally impressive that the fossils survived extensive diagenesis, e.g. dissolution of quartz and coarsening of dolomite.     

Hollowing out the state? Some observations on the restructuring of hospital services in New Zealand

Summary This study applies Jessop's idea of the 'hollowed-out' state to an analysis of the restructuring of hospital services in New Zealand. Decentralization of responsibility for the funding and provision of hospital services to regional and local levels has had distinct fiscal and political advantages for the state and is rapidly changing the geography of hospital provision.     

Beyond boundaries? Activism, academia, reflexivity and research

Summary In this paper, I draw on my own experiences to question some of the boundaries constructed around notions of activism and academia. Firstly, I introduce activism as a discursively produced concept with potential both to challenge and to support social exclusion. I propose an inclusive, reflexive view of activism that places us all as 'activists'. Using this understanding of activism and the work of feminist and other critical geographers, I consider the role of reflexivity within research and other activist projects. Drawing on my own experiences of activism, I then explore some of the boundaries that reproduce the academic-activist binary. I suggest such boundaries are actively constructed and may compromise the liberatory potential of academic research. I conclude the article by suggesting that a reflexivity grounded in the contingency of our lives can support activism within the academy and beyond.