Tribulations of Transition

“The black man needs to reflect that he has been America's most fervent Christian—and where has it gotten him? In fact in the white man's hands, in the white man's interpretation … where has Christianity brought the world? It has brought the non-white two-thirds of the human population to rebellion …Only one religion—Islam—had the power to stand and fight the white man's Christianity for a thousand years! Only Islam could keep white Christianity at bay.” (Malcolm X 1965, 449) “At the beginning of the Gulf War the allies went to great lengths to stress that Islam was not an issue, that many Muslim states were fighting on the allies side … The longer war went on, the clearer it became that this part of the war had been lost … What is actually happening is that Islam is becoming the central ideology of the Third World against the first. For long it seemed that Leninism or Maoism would play that role, but it is now clear that Islam has won the race.” (Johnson 1991, 7)     

Constructing Alterity in Ile De France?

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine whether the Walt Disney Company has manufactured a landscape “other” to French culture around its parks in the Eastern Paris Basin. Val d'Europe is contentiously constructed by three main groups, not just one enterprise: the French state, the Walt Disney Company and local and regional governments, as well as by present and future residents, within the constraints of a contract based on French laws. The Company's investment has been a tremendous boost to the French state's project but did not lead to Disneyfication of the Briard landscape of agricultural lands in the Eastern Paris basin. In Val d'Europe the French state did not abdicate its authority in favor of commoditization of Paris as a global metropolis. The French state and French culture were never “weak” and overwhelmed.     

Policy Boosterism,Policy Mobilities,and the Extrospective City

Abstract

This study develops the notion of “policy boosterism,” a subset of traditional branding and marketing activities that involves the active promotion of locally developed and/or locally successful policies, programs, or practices across wider geographical fields as well as to broader communities of interested peers. It is argued that policy boosterism is (1) an important element of how urban policy actors engage with global communities of professional peers and with local residents, and (2) a useful concept with which to interrogate and understand how policies and policy knowledge are mobilized among cities. A conceptualization of policy boosterism and its role in global-urban policymaking is developed by combining insights from the burgeoning “policy mobilities” literature with those of the longstanding literature on entrepreneurial city marketing. It is supported by illustrative examples of policy boosterism in Vancouver: the city's Greenest City and Green Capital initiatives, the use of the term “Vancouverism” among the city's urban design community, and demonstrations of new urban technologies during the 2010 Winter Olympics that were used to market a particular vision of the city's governance to people from elsewhere, but also—crucially—to local audiences. The article concludes by highlighting four foci that might frame future work at the intersections of policy boosterism and policy mobilities.     

The Geographic Imperative

Abstract

With the publication of Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994 in October 1994, geography has taken a big stride forward in demonstrating to teachers the breadth and significance of its discipline. This talk focuses on three aspects of geographic reality in the lives of teachers and students, under the title of “The Geographic Imperative.” Consideration of the Imperative and three axioms is intended to support the fullness and classroom utility of the Geography Standards.     

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.     

THE TORONTO STAR FRESH AIR FUND: TRANSCENDENTAL RESCUE IN A MODERN CITY, 1900–1915

ABSTRACT. The Toronto Star newspaper began rescuing poor children from the city's hottest, smokiest, and smelliest neighborhoods in 1901. The Fresh Air Fund, like park and playground planning, assumed that proximity to nature modified both health and behavior. Evoking transcendentalism—the idea that providential nature could move humanity into higher forms of existence—the Star sent children to the countryside near Toronto, albeit temporarily, assured of producing tangible health benefits. It also expected “nature” to convert the antibourgeois immorality of poor children into something more tolerable.     

Training Teachers for the Study of Home Geography,A Field Lesson for a Summer Institute

Abstract

1960 Report on Jamaica. British Information Services, 845 Third Ave., New York 22, N.Y., 1963. iv and 477 pages with table of contents, photographs, graphs and bibliography. $3.50.

George W. Hoffman. The Balkans in Transition. D. Van Nostrand Co., Princeton, N.J., 1963. 124 pages. $1.45.

Stephen W. Sears and Marvin W. McFarland. Air War Against Hitler's Germany. American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1964. 154 pages including index. $3.95.

Olive TV. Burt. Wind Before the Dawn. John Day Co., New York, 19G4. 192 pages. $3.50.

Los Angeles Geographical Society. Day Tours: Geographical Journeys in the Los Angeles Area. Glenn Cunningham, Editor. Pacific Books, Palo Alto, California, 1964. 277 pages. Maps. $3.95.

Editorial note: In answer to inquiries, other Highlighting features on Southeast Asia topics which have appeared in The Journal of Geography are: (1) “Federation of Malaysia,” May, 1963, 230–231, (2) “Indonesian Panism,” May, 1964, 232–233, (3) “Disintegrating Laos,” September, 1964, 284–285, (4) “Splitting Wedge of Communism,” October, 1964, 334–335 and (5) “Cambodia's Three Sea Outlets,” November, 1964, 382–383.

John H. Bradley. World Geography. Fourth Edition. Ginn and Co., Boston 17, Mass., 1964. 619 pages with table of contents, list of maps, maps, illustrations, photographs colored and black and white, bibliography, statistics, study guides and index. For high school grades 9–12. $6.20.

Atlas of Florida. Compiled by Erwin Raisz and associates; text by John R. Dunkle. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, Fla., 1964. 52 pages with maps, graphs, diagrams, sketches, photographs and fold-in rear cover pocket map. $7.50.

Frank R. Brandenburg. The Making of Modern Mexico Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964. 379 pages with index $8.95.

A. V. Hardy and F. J. Monkhouse. The Physical Landscape in Pictures. Cambridge University Press, American Branch, 32 E. 57th St., New York, 1964. 92 pages with table of contents, preface and 92 black and white photographs. $1.75 paperbound.

Mary F. Horkheimer and John W. Diffor (eds.). Educators Guide to Free Films. Educators Progress Service, Randolph, Wis., 1964. 631 pages. $9.00.

Marton Pecsi and Bela Sarfalvi. The Geography of Hungary. Collet's, 44–45 Museum St., London, 1964. xii and 299 pages, black and white illustrations and two colored insert maps. About $4.55.

Stephen H. Longrigg. The Middle East: A Social Geography. Aldine Publishing Co., Chicago, 1962. 291 pages. $6.95.     

Shrinking ‘Smart’?: Urban Redevelopment and Shrinkage in Youngstown,Ohio

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of the much-heralded Youngstown 2010 Plan and the enacting of a program of “controlled” or “managed” shrinkage. It is argued that while the program of redevelopment has had an impact on Youngstown and its national image, it represents an exclusionary project that has centered on redeveloping downtown areas and neglected many city neighborhoods which continue to experience high levels of unemployment, vacancy, and crime. The analysis is situated in relation to the contemporary literature on “shrinking cities.” Youngstown's experience raises critical questions regarding the nature of the challenges facing shrinking cities, the constraints on actions available to them due to state and federal funding, and the coherence of the concept of “smart shrinkage.”     

The Geography

Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in the following paper have been written in the form of a letter or conversation between a dissertation advisor and an advanced graduate student in medical geography. It emphasizes the pervasive qualities of the health component of human behavior, and hopefully transmits aspects of human behavior that are taking hold in medical-ecological research. It attempts to suggest what at least one practicing medical geographer thinks a major facet of the field will be like as it matures. The holistic perspective that it envisages seems to be taking hold in neighboring disciplines—or perhaps “interdisciplines”as they might someday be called. The speculative quality of the presentation is intended to serve as a possible springboard for professional interaction.     

Twenty-Second European Congress of the Regional Science Association

Abstract

In his article, “Whither Geography?,” Jay R. Harman raised a number of important issues regarding the nature and direction of geographic scholarship. In this response I critically address some of those issues and offer an alternative perspective. In doing so, I support Harman's desire for the discipline to “help answer deep human questions” but argue that rather than reinforce the vitality and legitimacy of the discipline, a market-based approach of the sort he advocates could instead potentially undermine such objectives and compromise disciplinary integrity by discouraging critical inquiry. While acknowledging the influence of “the market,” I defend a place for critical inquiry within the discipline.     

G. Stanley Hall,Child Study,and the Teaching of Geography

Abstract

G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924), founding president of Clark University, was a leader in the child study movement and a significant figure in psychology and education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hall had pronounced opinions on many educational subjects, including the teaching of geography. His criticisms and program for the reform of school geography were based on a mix of European ideas of heimatkunde or “home geography,” developmental or “genetic” psychology, and his work in the child study and nature study movements. This article traces Hall's involvement with geographic pedagogy from the 1880s through World War I, including his sponsorship of the first American Ph.D. dissertation in the teaching of geography, completed at Clark in 1906.     

State territorialization,neoliberal governmentality: the remaking of Dafen oil painting village,Shenzhen, China

ABSTRACT

After being showcased during Shanghai EXPO2010, Dafen village has been put forward as an example of “best practice” governance that has transformed a backward urban village into an art cluster. Behind this glorified image is a continuously re-constructed social landscape. In this study, we adopt the approach of state territorialization, drawing insights from the Foucauldian concept of governmentality as disposition of things—in particular people and their relations to land. At issue here is how the dynamic process of territorialization, combined with the Chinese version of moral citizenship, serves the remaking of subjects, landscape, and their relations. In Dafen village, the experiment of fabricating conditioned welfare within China’s welfare system conjures up a new hukou arrangement and new forms of inclusion and exclusion. By exercising the technology of self-regulation, the state seeks temporal and fragile alignments with selected social groups. The outcomes are contingent and frequently take the form of new configurations of power.     

THE MOST PERFECT EXAMPLE OF AN ALIEN ECOLOGY EVER CONSTRUCTED

Much science-fiction literature is based upon the creation and exploration of alternative environments. Stanley G. Weinbaum's short story, “Parasite Planet,”introduces an unusual environment that may be wrong in the light of recent evidence on Venus but still stimulates the geographical imagination.     

Strategic Positivism∗

Many “sociological”factors can account for the initial acceptance and continued persistence of W. M. Davis's Geographical Cycle. Such factors include Davis's attractive and forceful presentation of the cycle and the role of the cycle as a unifier of the discipline of physical geography, to name two. An analysis of the scientific character of the cycle, in the light of Karl Popper's criteria for demarcating between science and non-science, suggests that persistence of the cycle can also be attributed to a “logical”factor, the irrefutability of the central concept, stage.     

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.     

STATE PARKS AND JIM CROW IN THE DECADE BEFORE BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION

African Americans had access to only a small number of state parks in the Jim Crow South. Between the end of World War II and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, however, state park officials oversaw a relative expansion in the construction of facilities available to southern blacks. Emphasizing developments leading up to that landmark court ruling, I note that this trend did not indicate waning support for segregation among whites. Rather, this relative expansion was part of a strategy to protect Jim Crow by demonstrating that the “separate‐but‐equal” principle was being successfully achieved by southern park agencies. This intensified construction was largely a reaction to increasingly successful legal action in federal courts by the naacp generally; and officials in the state agencies hoped—unsuccessfully—to avoid challenges to state park segregation. After the Brown decision, several border states integrated their park systems, but most agencies displayed the reactionary defiance that characterized most white Southerners as the civil rights movement grew.     

The Spatial Dialectics of Modernity and Retail Affect at Abasto Shopping,Buenos Aires,Argentina

Abstract

The paper is about the political life of a building: the Abasto. Located in what was called the “most porteño” neighborhood in the first part of the 20th century (“porteño” is someone from central Buenos Aires) when it functioned as the city's main food market, the Abasto became a massive shopping mall in 1998 amid rapid neoliberal restructuring. This paper charts the political life of this building in two steps. First, by drawing on theories of socio-spatial dialectics, this paper charts the history of the Abasto as an urban object in a wider political landscape of porteño modernity. Second, by incorporating recent theories of affect and presenting findings from field work carried out at the mall in 2010 and 2011, this paper develops a framework for understanding the politics of consumption in a “post-neoliberal” urban landscape.     

THE GEOGRAPHY PLACEMENT SEMINAR: A COURSE SYLLABUS

This article examines linkages between recent domestic out-migration from immigrant gateway metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan migration gains, based on data of the 1990 census, 1996 Current Population Survey, and population estimates for the 1990–1996 period from the Bureau of Census. Our analysis of these data suggests that there is a mirror image of migration patterns between high immigration metropolitan area losses and nonmetropolitan area gains. This is especially evident in the West with the relationship between Los Angeles and San Francisco areas' losses on the one hand, and the region's nonmetropolitan gains on the other. While pre-elderly and elderly retirees have contributed to these nonmetropolitan gains, much of it is attributable to the destination choices of suburban-like populations—Whites with children, not college educated, and with lower incomes—that have been leaving high immigration metropolitan areas. This new, more dispersed form of “White flight” holds the potential for reinvigorating smaller, nonmetropolitan communities, but creating, as well, new demographic divisions across space.