Re-viewing the Entrapment controversy: Megaprojection, (mis)representation and postcolonial performance

Becoming the tallest building in the world in the mid-1990s, the Petronas Towers was the centre piece of an image of national progress and development that Malaysian authorities sought to project internationally. The release of Fox Movies' Entrapment in Malaysia in May 1999 provoked political outrage and popular disappointment at the way in which the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur had been spliced alongside riverside ‘slums’ filmed in the town of Malacca some 150 km away. This paper provides a critical reading of the spliced scene in the movie. At one level, the angry response of the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to the scene diagnoses a geopolitics of asymmetrical representational power. However, I show how Mahathir's criticism of Entrapment in Malaysia was as much a defence of domestic political legitimacy (and national economic investibility) as it was ‘opposition’ or ‘resistance’ to hegemonic ‘Western’ (mis)representation. In addition, while the material and symbolic work of reimaging Kuala Lumpur had sought to negate (neo)orientalist imaginings of ‘Asian’ cities, the controversial scene rendered visible environmental ‘underdevelopment’ that has no place in a modern (vision of) Malaysia. Entrapment thus performed something in inducing Malaysian cities and citizens to ‘clean up’ their act, to practice ‘fully developed’ ways of seeing, being and being seen. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Contesting Chinatown: Place-making and the Emergence of ‘Ethnoburbia’ in Brisbane,Australia

This paper juxtaposes the actual areas of settlement and settlement activities of Chinese migrants in Brisbane’s southern suburbs since the mid-1980s, with the concomitant, ‘government planned’ construction of the city’s Chinatown as an ‘exotic,’ ‘ethnic,’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ landmark. It argues that while the latter, as with Chinatowns in other Australian and world cities, has continued to appropriate the symbols of so-called ‘Chineseness’ to sell the locale to non-Chinese, the former, in recalling the notion of ‘ethnoburbia,’ significantly evinces actual Chinese migrants’ agency and role in place-making. In the process, these migrants have not only established a local, ethnically meaningful environment, but also challenged the still current metonymic Western image of the Chinese as preferring life in ‘ethnic’ urban enclaves that had its origin from early Chinese settlement and fundamentally detached from the lives of other ethnic groups per se. Indeed greater recognition and comprehension of such locales may go a long way to illustrate that many Chinese living in Australia today do not fit the territorial, place-based identity often associated with them in the imagination of mainstream society.     

Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

Impact of various synthetic vortices on cyclone track prediction

Sensitivity experiments are conducted for three cases of cyclones for investigating the impact of different vortex initialization schemes on the structure and track prediction of the cyclone using India Meteorological Department’s Limited Area Model. The surface wind and pressure profiles generated using Holland and Rankine initialization schemes differ from each other. These different generated profiles are compared with the actual data and the root mean square error (RMSE) was calculated between them. In case of the Holland vortex, ‘b’ is found to be equal to 1.5 and 2.0 respectively for two cases of very severe cyclonic storms in the Arabian Sea, namely 6–10 June 1998 and 16–20 May 1999 and 2.25 for the severe cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal. The ‘α’ parameter in Rankine’s scheme was found to be 0.5 for two cases and 0.4 for the third system. This shows that cyclones differ even if they attain the same intensity. The values of these parameters i.e. ‘b’ and ‘α’ are used for generating the synthetic wind data for individual cyclones and the same is used in the data assimilation system. The analysis and forecast generated for the above cases using the Holland scheme show that the simulated structure has characteristics closer to the actual storm; however, the Rankine scheme shows a weaker circulation. The mean track error for three cases in the Holland scheme is 93, 149, 257 and 307 km in 12-, 24-, 36- and 48-h forecast. The mean track errors for the Rankine scheme are 152, 274, 345 and 327 km, respectively, for the same period.     

The evolving narrative of the Darfur conflict as represented in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The New York Times</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Washington Post</Emphasis>, 2003–2009

News media influence local to global interactions between people, societies, and governments by producing place images. Representations of Africa in Western news media are heavily imbued with colonialist notions of cultural geography. In particular, Western news media have represented conflicts in Africa as ‘tribal’, a trope that erases geographic and historical context, and discourages actions that could prevent or reduce violent conflict. To determine if ‘tribalism’ remains important in coverage of African conflict, we use framing analysis to evaluate news on Sudan’s Darfur region in The New York Times and The Washington Post during 2003–2009. We find that these newspapers predictably relied on stereotypes related to tribalism to simplify Darfur’s geography and make the conflict meaningful to intended readers. Tribal portrayal of African war is inherently political, and, problematically, neither newspaper recognized that their use of the tribal narrative was parallel to the views of both the Sudanese government and external observers that challenged the actions of the Sudanese government. However, we also found that stereotypical representations became less prominent over time, apparently because reporters found that the initial, simplistic framing of the conflict did not match their encounters with geographic reality. We emphasize the decline in stereotypical tropes, because this suggests behind-the-scenes negotiation about representations in these news organizations. Recognizing voices that challenge stereotypical portrayals is necessary to developing place images that are geographically more accurate.     

Geospatial contour mapping of shear wave velocity for Mumbai city

Shear wave velocity is one of the most important input parameter in the analysis of geotechnical earthquake engineering problems, particularly to estimate site-specific amplification factor and ground response study. Dynamic in situ tests such as spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) or multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) are very expensive. Also due to lack of specialized personnel, these tests are generally avoided in many soil investigation programs. Worldwide, several researchers have developed correlations between the SPT ‘N’ value and shear wave velocity ‘V _s’, which are useful for determining the dynamic soil properties. In the present study, more than 400 numbers of soil borehole data were collected from various geotechnical investigation agencies, government engineering institutes and geotechnical laboratories from different parts of Mumbai city, which is financial capital of India with highest population density. In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop the correlation between the SPT ‘N’ value and shear wave velocity ‘V _s’ for various soil profile of Mumbai city and compared with other existing correlations for different cities in India. Using Geographical Information System (GIS), a geospatial contour map of shear wave velocity profile for Mumbai city is prepared with contour intervals of 25 and 50 m/s. The scarcity of database or maps of shear wave velocity profile for Mumbai city will make the present geospatial contour maps extremely useful and beneficial to the designer, practitioners for seismic hazard study involved in geotechnical earthquake engineering.     

Post-disaster assessment of hazard mitigation for small and medium-magnitude debris flow disasters in Bali,Indonesia and Jimani,Dominican Republic

This article explores whether past exposure to debris flow disasters with a human dimension (e.g. caused in part by deforestation) results in adaptive hazard mitigation and improved environmental and resource management practices in affected areas. When guiding hazard mitigation practice, the ‘adaptive hazard mitigation’ approach views mitigation as a multi-dimensional experiment, with the associated need for post-experiment monitoring, evaluation, learning and adjustment, and attention paid to multiple scales (Bogardi 2004). This article explores how the concept of ‘adaptive hazard mitigation’ has emerged, linking this ‘adaptive management’ used increasingly in resource and environmental management. Two case studies of disasters linked to human-induced environmental change are examined, and the mitigation responses of local communities, NGOs and Government agencies are documented. Data sources include secondary data (journal articles, web-based disaster reports and grey literature) on each disaster, key informant interviews (n = 8) and direct observation over the 2005–2006 period of post-disaster mitigation actions implemented after each disaster. The research indicates that in both case studies, a limited range of hazard mitigation actions was employed, including both structural and non-structural approaches. However, the research also found that causal factors involving human-induced environmental change (e.g. deforestation) were not addressed, and overall, the hazard mitigation strategies adopted lacked monitoring, learning and adjustment. In both case studies, responses to disaster were judged to be examples of ‘trial and error’ adaptation, rather than either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ adaptation.

A characterisation of the physical properties of soil and the implications for landslide occurrence on the slopes of Mount Elgon,Eastern Uganda

Soil properties of major landslides that occurred recently on the mid-altitude slopes of Mount Elgon, eastern Uganda were analysed. A mudflow, located at the Kitati protected forest site, and two deep debris flows on the Nametsi and Buwabwala deforested steep slopes (36°–58°) were surveyed. In order to test the hypothesis that ‘soils at the landslide sites are particularly ‘problem soils’ and thus prone to landslides’, the following analyses were undertaken: particle size distribution, Atterberg limits, shear strength and factor of safety (F_s). Soils at the Kitati and Buwabwala sites exhibited expansive potential, owing to clay contents well above 20%. A clay content exceeding 32% was identified at the Nametsi debris flow site implying an extremely high expansive potential of the soil. High liquid limits (LLs) at Kitati (59%) and Buwabwala (53%) meant that the soils qualified as vertisols susceptible to landslides. High plasticity indices (PIs) (averaging 33%) also confirmed the vertic nature of soils at the Nametsi debris flow site. Whereas the value of F _s  < 1 for the Kitati site signifies an inherently unstable slope, Nametsi and Buwabwala are supposedly stable slopes (F _s  > 1). Despite this finding, the stable sites could be described as only conditionally stable because of the interplay of various physical, pedological and anthropogenic factors. The results point to the fact that soils at the landslide sites are inherently ‘problem soils’ where slope failure can occur even without human intervention. Therefore, the hypothesis that soils at three landslide sites are inherently ‘problem soils’ and prone to landslides, is accepted.     

A Probabilistic Approach for Identifying Independent Remote Compressions in an Intraplate Region: The?Iberian Chain (Spain)

The discrimination between distinct remote compressions and multiple local stress deviations within a single compressive stress field has been carried out in the central-eastern Iberian Chain, by using structural criteria, computing palaeostress directions, identifying and ‘filtering’ stress deviations, and analysing time relationships. A probabilistic analysis based on a systematic comparison of real and expected frequencies of coexistence of two compressions is applied by means of the χ ² Test. This allows us to identify those tectonic compressions that behave as independent events from the probabilistic point of view. The results suggest that among five initially defined compression directions only three can be considered as representative of distinct (although partially superposed) externally applied intraplate stress fields: Iberian s.l. (NE-SW), Betic s.l. (NW-SE), and Pyrenean (N-S to NNE-SSW).     

Urban space, ethnic community, and national belonging: the political landscape of memory in Little Tokyo

The “Little Tokyo” neighborhood of Los Angeles was the center of pre-internment community life for Japanese immigrants and their children and is still considered the symbolic home of later generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research in Little Tokyo, I explore in this article how contemporary Japanese Americans have used and transformed this ancestral landscape in order to express, contest, and formalize collective memories of the Japanese American experience, particularly with regard to their place in the national body politic. Historical narratives inscribed at many places in Little Tokyo, both informal and institutional, project a narrative of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption in the context of internment and military service, articulating neatly with mainstream American tropes of overcoming hardship as a process of ‘earning’ citizenship and its benefits. However, such narratives are also contested by alternative interpretations and representations of these spaces that describe a special role for Japanese Americans in making demands of their government, rather than just sacrifices to it. The resulting debates, disagreements, and even occasional consensus around constructions of nation, identity, community, and belonging are rooted in the ‘sacred ground’ of Little Tokyo, gathering meaning and persuasive power through their connection to a symbolically dense site of shared memory. The multiple memory projects of this landscape reveal how Japanese Americans have envisioned their relationship to the concept of America, to each other, and to other communities with shared experiences in a diverse metropolis.

‘Think globally,act locally’: sustainable communities,modernity and development

This article sets out to explore the political relationship between the global and the local through the prism of the sustainable development. The ideal of sustainable communities is explored in the context of evolving political fictions that define alternative conceptions of modernity. While the article uses Ireland (reputedly the most globalised society in the world) as a microcosm of development, the context is firmly located within the wider sphere of European and planetary politics. It is argued that the ideal of sustainable communities offers the opportunity of reviving the civic republican tradition of democracy (the Ancient Greek agora) as a metaphor for the public sphere in the conditions of late modern society. The agora in Ancient Greece provided a site of political assembly, based upon participation (citizens’ engagement in decision-making) and deliberation (a process of reached argument). Today, concepts such as ‘participatory civility’ and ‘discursive democracy’ seek to revive these classical ideals, as the basis for building sustainable communities in a transforming modernity that searches for a new logic of development.     

Imagining the border and Southern spaces: Cinematic explorations of race and gender

For some time the US-Mexico border has been a symbol – and site – of conflict, collaboration, and transnational mobility. Related to the border, the topic of undocumented immigration, and Mexican migrants in particular, has received considerable attention in US mainstream media. Cinema in particular, provides a context for producing and interrogating discourses of nationalism, nativism, and fear. The cinematic examples I draw on illustrate an ongoing fear (and terror) about borders and border crossing of various forms. In this paper I explore how narratives of borders and nationhood are mapped onto immigrant bodies and border spaces through specific filmic representations. In order to undertake this study I focus on three cinematic examples exploring immigration at the US-Mexico border – Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star. I examine how concepts of borders, race, and gender, and tropes of ‘The South’ are reterritorialized around immigrant bodies and specific locales. I argue that an inability to control and ‘fix’ boundaries around possible ‘threats’ to specific US spaces and identities is counteracted by displacing this fear onto more easily marked targets that are viewed as posing challenges to US national (and personal) security, i.e., undocumented immigrants. At the same time, cinematic images illustrate that the threats and spaces for immigrants themselves become increasingly marginalized, blurred, and frequently erased. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Practically Applicable Central Limit Theorem for Spatial Statistics

Let {Z(s):s∈D⊆ℝ ^d } be a zero mean stationary random field observed at a finite number of locations. Lahiri (Sankhya Ser. A 65:356–388, 2003) proved spatial central limit theorems (CLT) for ∑ _i=1 ⁿ Z(s _i ) assuming a ‘nearly infill domain sampling’. Applications of his results depended on the underlying spatial sampling region and the design in a complicated fashion. The main objective of this paper is to provide CLTs that could be applied easily in practice. We present two main results assuming a ‘nearly infill domain sampling’ defined mainly in terms of dependence. Theorem 1 establishes a CLT for ∑ _i=1 ⁿ Z(s _i ) and Theorem 2 is obtained mainly for applications to density estimates. We report on a simulation study for illustrating a way of applying our results in practice.     

Low energy trajectories for the Moon-to-Earth space flight

The Moon-to-Earth low energy trajectories of ‘detour’ type are found and studied within the frame of the Moon-Earth-Sun-particle system. These trajectories use a passive flight to the Earth from an initial elliptic selenocentric orbit with a high aposelenium. The Earth perturbation increases the particle selenocentric energy from a negative value first to zero and then to a positive one and therefore leads to a passive escape of the particle motion from the Moon attraction near the translunar libration pointL ₂. This results in the particle flight to a distance of about 1.5 million km from the Earth where the Sun gravitation decreases the particle orbit perigee distance to a small value that leads to the particle approaching the Earth vicinity in about 100 days of the flight. A set of the Moon-to-Earth ‘detour’ trajectories is defined numerically. Characteristics of these trajectories are presented. The ‘detour’ trajectories give essential economy of energy (about 150 m/s in Delta V) relative to the usual ones.     

Ethnoscapes, entertainment and ’eritage in the global city: segmented spaces in Singapore’s Joo Chiat Road

This case study considers the early development and recent changes that have occurred in the vicinity of Joo Chiat Road, Singapore, which can be described as a ‘linear activity corridor’ linking the districts of Geylang, Katong and Marine Parade, immediately east of Singapore’s urban core. Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has declared Joo Chiat to be a ‘Conservation Area’, reflecting local-born Peranakan and Eurasian cultures, with similar status to other more central historic sites such as Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Little India and Emerald Hill. But the story of Joo Chiat has evolved along a somewhat different trajectory from the more prominent, tourism-related, heritage areas, with a multiplicity of interactions operating at the margins of the planning process. This has led to the spatial infusion of potentially discordant, globally related, ‘entertainment and recreational’ activities into an area of established urban identity and multiple attachments. When a policy of police containment was found to be inadequate in protecting local residents from undesirable impacts, changes were eventually brought about through a combination of neighbourhood activism and local political initiative. Through detailed land use inspections, press reports and strategic interviews, backed up by secondary sources, the study highlights the impingement of marginalised, potentially disruptive ‘global’ elements into a local heritage conservation area, and the importance of strong neighbourhood identity and community involvement as active components in the process of conflict resolution.     

The ‘subduction initiation rule’: a key for linking ophiolites,intra-oceanic forearcs,and subduction initiation

We establish the ‘subduction initiation rule’ (SIR) which predicts that most ophiolites form during subduction initiation (SI) and that the diagnostic magmatic chemostratigraphic progression for SIR ophiolites is from less to more HFSE-depleted and LILE-enriched compositions. This chemostratigraphic evolution reflects formation of what ultimately becomes forearc lithosphere as a result of mantle melting that is progressively influenced by subduction zone enrichment during SI. The magmatic chemostratigraphic progression for the Izu–Bonin–Mariana (IBM) forearc and most Tethyan ophiolites is specifically from MORB-like to arc-like (volcanic arc basalts or VAB ± boninites or BON) because SI progressed until establishment of a mature subduction zone. MORB-like lavas result from decompression melting of upwelling asthenosphere and are the first magmatic expression of SI. The contribution of fluids from dehydrating oceanic crust and sediments on the sinking slab is negligible in early SI, but continued melting results in a depleted, harzburgitic residue that is progressively metasomatized by fluids from the sinking slab; subsequent partial melting of this residue yields ‘typical’ SSZ-like lavas in the latter stages of SI. If SI is arrested early, e.g., as a result of collision, ‘MORB-only’ ophiolites might be expected. Consequently, MORB- and SSZ-only ophiolites may represent end-members of the SI ophiolite spectrum. The chemostratigraphic similarity of the Mariana forearc with that of ophiolites that follow the SIR intimates that a model linking such ophiolites, oceanic forearcs, and SI is globally applicable.     

Structural characteristics of the halite fabric type ‘Kristallbrocken’ from the Zechstein Basin with regard to its development

The Kristallbrocken are a characteristic centimetre- to decimetre-sized, laminated halite fabric type occurring in the Stassfurt Formation in the Zechstein Basin. Up to now, the nature of the Kristallbrocken, i.e. if they are relics of fine-grained, polycrystalline halite beds or clasts of ‘single crystal-layers’, as well as the deformation mechanisms of this halite type, were not clear from the literature. Drill core material from the salt deposit Teutschenthal at the southern rim of the Zechstein Basin now allowed investigating less intensely deformed samples for the first time. The deformational behaviour of these Kristallbrocken ranges from brittle to ductile, which is evidenced by fractured Kristallbrocken on the one hand and weakly bent or even folded Kristallbrocken on the other hand. Local X-ray texture measurements demonstrated that the Kristallbrocken are definitely single crystals and that they can be regarded as relics of formerly larger ‘single crystal-layers’ of up to several dm² in size. The folded Kristallbrocken clearly display by their single grain texture characteristics that their crystal lattice is bent, which was most likely enabled by a kind of flexural-shear folding, and did not develop after deformation from a fine-grained aggregate by recrystallisation. Due to their monocrystallinity, their originally large size, and the solid inclusions forming the internal lamination, the Kristallbrocken have clearly stronger rheological properties than the surrounding fine- to coarse-grained polycrystalline rock salt, and thus also deform by fracturing.     

Female newcomers’ adjustment to life in Toronto,Canada: sources of mental stress and their implications for delivering primary mental health care

Stress disorders and other mental ill health may be brought on by the disruption caused by resettlement. We examine female newcomers’ experiences of adjusting to a new place, metropolitan Toronto, Canada and a new health care system. We consider sources of mental stress experienced during adjustment. We frame this adjustment as a process that happens over place and through time. Thematic findings of interviews (n = 35) with female newcomers from five cultural-linguistic groups are reported. Sources of stress in adjusting to life in Toronto include: navigating a new place, personal safety concerns, adapting to a new lifestyle, and finding employment. Sources of stress in adjusting to a new health care system include: learning how to access care, not having access to specialists, and adapting to a new culture of care. We conclude by considering the implications of what newcomers report for the delivery of primary mental health care (i.e. ‘first contact’ care).     

Disentangling Shallow and Deep Processes Causing Surface Movement

Understanding and predicting surface movement is important both technically and for social reasons. The shallow processes contributing to subsidence include construction works, peat oxidation, clay compaction, and groundwater withdrawal; deep causes are hydrocarbon and salt production. We describe an inversion procedure we have devised to disentangle the deep and shallow causes of surface movement. It employs a Bayesian inversion scheme, using forward models and other ‘a priori’ information about shallow and deep compaction. Parameter estimation thus takes place at two different depths, thereby disentangling the deep and shallow compaction processes responsible for surface movement. The uncertainty in the surface measurements and ‘a priori’ estimates is naturally incorporated. Furthermore, spatial and temporal correlations can be taken into account through inclusion of the covariance matrix. The inversion scheme is demonstrated for two synthetic cases. The first combines a compacting gas field and a compacting shallow peat layer. We demonstrate that assumptions on the shape of the subsidence bowl are not necessary. We also show how neglecting either deep or shallow causes of subsidence can produce spurious results. The advantage of using the ‘a priori’ estimates of the compaction and the covariance matrix obtained by Monte Carlo simulations is demonstrated with a second synthetic example involving two polders and different depths of their water table. A robust solution is obtained for each polder unit, while a simpler (and faster) ‘a priori’ estimate based on the expected average clay thickness fails to reproduce the actual compaction. Monte Carlo simulations can also be applied to compaction in depleting gas reservoirs. Information on spatial correlations is often available, even when the absolute values of the ‘a priori’ compaction data are quite uncertain. Explicitly incorporating such ‘a priori’ known spatial correlations improves the result significantly.     

Mutual replacement reactions in alkali feldspars I: microtextures and mechanisms

Intracrystal microtextures formed by a process of mutual replacement in alkali feldspars record fluid–rock reactions that have affected large volumes of the Earth’s crust. Regular, ≤1 μm-scale ‘strain-controlled’ perthitic microtextures coarsen, by up to 10³, by a dissolution–reprecipitation process, producing microporous patch or vein perthites on scales >100 μm. We have developed earlier studies of such reactions in alkali feldspar cm-scale primocrysts in layered syenites from the Klokken intrusion, South Greenland. We present new hyperspectral CL, SEM images, and laser ICPMS analytical data, and discuss the mechanism of such replacement reactions. The feldspars grew as homogeneous sodic sanidines which unmixed and ordered by volume diffusion during cooling into the microcline field at ~450°C, giving regular, fully coherent ‘braid’ cryptoperthite. At ≤450°C the crystals reacted with a circulating post-magmatic aqueous fluid. The braid perthite behaved as a single reactant ‘phase’ which was replaced by two product phases, incoherent subgrains of low albite and microcline, with micropores at their boundaries. The driving force for the reactions was coherency strain energy, which was greater than the surface energy in the subgrain mosaic. The external euhedral crystal shapes and bulk major element composition of the primocrysts were unchanged but they became largely pseudomorphs composed of subgrains usually with the ‘pericline’ and ‘adularia’ habits (dominant {110} and subordinate {010} morphology) characteristic of low T growth. The subgrains have an epitactic relationship with parent braid perthite. Individual subgrains show oscillatory zoning in CL intensity, mainly at blue wavelengths, which correlates with tetrahedral Ti. Regular zoning is sometimes truncated by irregular, discordant surfaces suggesting dissolution, followed by resumption of growth giving regular zoning. Zones can be traced through touching subgrains, of both albite and microcline, for distances up to ~500 μm. At ≤340°C, the microcline subgrains underwent a third stage of unmixing to give straight lamellar film perthites with periodicities of ~1 μm, which with further cooling became semicoherent by the development of spaced misfit dislocations. Sub-grain growth occurred in fluid films that advanced through the elastically strained braid perthite crystals, which dissolved irreversibly. Braid perthite was more soluble than the strain-free subgrain mosaics which precipitated from the supersaturated solution. Some volumes of braid texture have sharp surfaces that suggest rapid dissolution along planes with low surface energies. Others have complex, diffuse boundaries that indicate a phase of coherent lamellar straightening by volume diffusion in response to strain relief close to a slowly advancing interface. Nucleation of strain-free subgrains was the overall rate-limiting step. To minimise surface energy subgrains grew with low energy morphologies and coarsened by grain growth, in fluid films whose trace element load (reflected in the oscillatory zoning) was dictated by the competitive advance of subgrains over a range of a few tens of mm. The cross-cutting dissolution surfaces suggest influxes of fresh fluid. Removal of feldspar to give 2 vol% porosity would require a feldspar:fluid ratio of ~1:26 (by wt). The late reversion to strain-controlled exsolution in microcline subgrains is consistent with loss of fluid above 340°C following depressurization of the intrusion. A second paper (Part II) describes trace element partitioning between the albite and microcline subgrains, and discusses the potential of trace elements as a low-T geothermometer. This paper and the Part II are dedicated in memory of J.V. Smith and W.L. Brown, both of whom died in 2007, in acknowledgement of their unrivalled contributions to the study of the feldspar minerals over more than half a century.