Enacting immanent potentialities: Tcheb‐tchib strategies at the centre of the urban fringe in Nouakchott,Mauritania

The urban fringe areas of Nouakchott, the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, have become virtual epicentres of informal property speculation, as the state‐owned land that people illegally inhabit becomes an increasingly valuable commodity in the wake of urban redevelopment plans and vast infrastructural development projects. By applying ingenious ‘poaching’ strategies based on anticipation, the marginalized, impoverished people inhabiting these areas appropriate and manipulate space in order to survive. In their attempt to counter the state's technologies of governance through what is commonly known as tcheb‐tchib, a form of creative improvisation, they become a driving force in the dynamic and contested reconfigurations of the urban landscape. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork focusing on the strategies of former nomads who are now sedentarized on the urban fringe, this article conceives large‐scale urban renewal as a dynamic process that generates an emergent space of immanent potentiality that the urban poor attempt to strategically appropriate and enact to make the most of a potentially destructive process.     

Fishing in a congested sea: What do marine protected areas imply for the future of the Maltese artisanal fleet?

Inshore artisanal fishing in Malta is under intense spatial competition as the coastal zone is fragmented by multiple uses and designations including maritime transport, infrastructure, industrial fisheries, aquaculture, tourism and recreation. This research, adopting a grounded visualization methodology, explains how the artisanal fishing sector has undergone and been affected by ‘spatial squeezing’. Our results show that artisanal fishermen have been forced to give up fishing grounds or co-exist with other uses to the point where the ability to fish is becoming increasingly challenging. These difficulties might escalate with the advent of the marine protected areas (MPAs) which encompass nearly half of the inshore fishing zones. Since there does not seem to be effective MPA consultation mechanisms that elicit the real social, cultural and economic value of artisanal fishing grounds, fishermen feel threatened, alienated and disempowered. This study urges for a more holistic approach to spatial marine planning and accentuates the need of realizing the dependency of the artisanal sector on the inshore zones in the implementation of conservation measures, such that the prolonged existence of the coastal fishing communities is not jeopardized.     

State‐led talent return migration programme and the doubly neglected ‘Malaysian diaspora’: Whose diaspora,what citizenship,whose development?

This paper questions the assumptions of ‘diaspora’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘development’ underlying diaspora strategies targeting a specific pool of overseas Malaysian ‘talent’ migrants. I examine the Malaysian state's discursive attempts to construct a carefully contained economic ‘diaspora'—the ‘Malaysian diaspora'—through its talent return migration programme. In this process, there is a portion of the ‘Malaysian diaspora’, especially non‐bumiputeras (sons of soil), who are doubly neglected and excluded: first, from access to full and equal citizenship (which arguably contributed to their emigration in the first place); and second, from eligibility and recognition to participate in Malaysia's talent return migration programme. However, recent political activism calling for electoral reform and overseas voting rights challenges state‐constructed visions of the ‘diaspora’ and their expected roles in advancing ‘development’. This paper concludes by highlighting questions raised by the Malaysian case, linking these explicitly to how diaspora strategies—as they have been conceived, practised and contested—challenge the broader Migration and Development paradigm.     

Suburban gentrification? Examining the geographies of New Urbanism in Atlanta’s inner suburbs

Since the 1990s, Atlanta’s inner suburbs have experienced rising rates of poverty alongside growing racial/ethnic diversity. ? Meanwhile, on the built landscape, high-end (re)development projects incorporating New Urbanist features such as pedestrian accessibility, compact densities, and mixed land uses have become increasingly common. Although practitioners suggest that these developments promote social inclusivity and enhanced “livability,” individual cases suggest that some New Urbanist projects may be gentrifying underserved communities of color. This paper tests the extent of this concern by examining Atlanta's inner-suburban geographies of New Urbanism using a logit model. Results indicate that neighborhoods with older housing stock, more renters, lower incomes, lower rents relative to home prices, and higher Latino populations in close proximity to inner-suburban downtowns are most likely to be targeted for New Urbanist (re)development. Thus, despite the optimistic language, New Urbanism in this region appears to be serving as the inner-suburban face of gentrification.?     

Current Convenience,Desperate Deforestation: Ghana's AdjustmentProgram and the Forestry Sector

Since the early 1980s, most Sub-Saharan African countries have resorted to structural adjustment programs to reform their ailing economies. Adjustment, however, may provide a convenient means for governments of the adjusting economies and international capital to meet their current economic and political interests, usually by sacrificing the physical environment, with huge environmental costs for the adjusting country. This paper uses Ghana's forestry sector, which has been characterized by a dramatic increase in woodexports since adjustment, to demonstrate a direct link between adjustment and environmental destruction. Ghana's dramatic increase in wood exports, involving a rapid and extensive deforestation, results from the government's need to meet its increasing external debt service obligations, and is exacerbated by the series of massive local currency devaluation required under adjustment “to get prices right.” The systematic reduction in government revenue from devaluation to amortize the increasing debts, keeps the government and indebted wood processing firms on a treadmill of export-based extraction/deforestation.     

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Structural Adjustment Programs and Uneven Development in Africa: The Case Of Ghana

Since 1983, Ghana has been undergoing World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). The implementation of the SAPs, it is claimed, has arrested Ghana's economy from complete collapse, resulted in consistent growth in GDP averaging 6% over the past decade, reduced inflation levels, created budget surplus, and increased export earnings. Compared to the 1970s, these are the best of times indeed. But while these SAPs‐derived improvements in the national economy have been recorded at the macro level, the benefits at the micro level are a matter of considerable debate. This study revisits the issue of socioeconomic and spatial disparities that have characterized Ghana since colonial times, emphasizing the period from 1983 when Ghana's SAPs began. It examines current patterns of socioeconomic disparities with emphasis on the distribution of, and access to, health, education, basic services, and the like. The study focuses on urban‐rural as well as interregional disparities in the country.     

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Structural Adjustment Programs and Uneven Development in Africa: The Case Of Ghana

Since 1983, Ghana has been undergoing World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). The implementation of the SAPs, it is claimed, has arrested Ghana's economy from complete collapse, resulted in consistent growth in GDP averaging 6% over the past decade, reduced inflation levels, created budget surplus, and increased export earnings. Compared to the 1970s, these are the best of times indeed. But while these SAPs-derived improvements in the national economy have been recorded at the macro level, the benefits at the micro level are a matter of considerable debate. This study revisits the issue of socioeconomic and spatial disparities that have characterized Ghana since colonial times, emphasizing the period from 1983 when Ghana's SAPs began. It examines current patterns of socioeconomic disparities with emphasis on the distribution of, and access to, health, education, basic services, and the like. The study focuses on urban-rural as well as interregional disparities in the country.     

Industrial Land Development and Manufacturing Deconcentration in Greater Jakarta

Abstract

Industrial land development has become a key feature of urbanization in Greater Jakarta, one of the largest metropolitan areas in Southeast Asia. Following Suharto's market-oriented policy measures in the late 1980s, private developers have dominated the land development projects in Greater Jakarta. The article investigates the extent to which these private industrial centers have effectively reduced the domination of Jakarta in shaping the entire metropolitan structure. The analysis indicates that major suburban industrial centers have captured most of the manufacturing employment that has dispersed from Jakarta. The industrial centers have now increasingly specialized and diversified. It is likely that a polycentric metropolitan structure will emerge in the future.     

Fighting Over Forest: Toward a Shared Analysis of Livelihood Conflicts and Conflict Management in Ghana

Conflicts undermine forest-based livelihoods for the rural poor. Conflict management is key to preventing such conflicts. This article analyzes actor perceptions of forest- and tree-related conflicts and conflict management in Ghana's high forest zone. It also assesses a phased methodology that promotes shared problem definition and ownership of recommendations on conflict resolution strategies through the presentation and discussion of findings from document analysis, surveys, interviews, and focus-group discussions at a workshop with forest professionals held in Kumasi, Ghana. The study found that conflicts are inherent in forest-based livelihoods due to policy and legislative failures and institutional deficiencies, perceived goal incompatibility, opportunities for interfering with the attainment of one another's goals, and environmental scarcity. Ongoing forest governance reforms in Ghana should consider the stepwise conflict management model developed by the workshop participants involved in this study, but expand it to include the views of other stakeholder groups.     

Grandiose plans,but insignificant outcomes: the development of colonial ports at Twofold Bay,New South Wales

In the nineteenth century, a succession of claims was made that the ports of Twofold Bay, on the New South Wales South Coast, would contest Sydney's dominance. This paper examines the period between 1820 and 1920 to explain why the ports of Twofold Bay—Boydtown and Eden—never sustained their challenge to Sydney's economic hegemony. These small ports provide an interesting insight into the economic marginalisation of localities by the process of colonisation. Twofold Bay is examined within Rimmer's spatial model of port development. Uneven port development is examined as the geographical expression of several colonisation processes; firstly, the emergence of a port hierarchy (or dominance ranking); secondly, changes in the organisation of maritime space; and thirdly, improved internal accessibility.     

The Politics of Eminent Domain: From False Choices to Community Benefits

Large-scale urban redevelopment projects catalyze moments of peril and opportunity. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision affirming economic development as a public use under the takings clause of the Constitution, these perils and opportunities have again become a site of major contestation. An unusual alliance of libertarian property-rights ideologues and civil-rights organizations has joined forces to challenge the use of eminent domain in urban economic development. In this article, I analyze the history of these alliances and their implicit reinforcement of deeply reactionary constructions of property. I conclude with an evaluation of two emergent models—community benefit agreements and community equity shares—that provide promising community tools for alternatives to homeowner rule and neoliberal urban renewal.     

The application of GIS in the lands sector of a developing country: Challenges facing land administrators in Ghana

The Government of Ghana is about to take steps under its Land Administration Project to initiate the adoption of geographical information systems (GIS) in the administration of land. This paper identifies some of the challenges for Ghana's leading lands agency, the Lands Commission Secretariat, and highlights problems such as the paucity of reliable data sets and lack of standards. One of the major planning issues in Accra is that of building encroachments, for which no digital information is currently available. The paper reports on a pilot study to record encroachments on public land and demonstrates the type of inconsistencies that are apparent between the planning and cadastral data sets that do exist. The paper emphasizes that appropriate applications of GIS in Ghana's land sector are those that consider the political, social and institutional contexts within which GIS is to be operationalized.     

Knowing into oblivion: Clearing wastelands and imagining emptiness in Vietnamese New Urban Zones

Lands cleared for Vietnamese New Urban Zones are commonly described as ‘wastelands’ (??t hoang) in need of development. But clearing these lands in Vietnam's densely populated urban areas requires evicting large numbers of urban residents. How is it possible to render populated spaces as empty wastelands? This paper juxtaposes new ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City against historical scholarship on Vietnamese concepts of ‘clearing the wasteland’ and colonial civilizing projects of mise en valeur. In doing so, the article describes these concepts as parallel legitimizing strategies that effectively enable developers and planners to render previously occupied and utilized lands as empty, uninhabited wastelands. The article shows that the same narrative structure used in these earlier contexts is used to justify current urban development projects.     

论中国自然资源的稀缺性和渗透性

随着中国国民经济的快速增长,自然资源稀缺对社会经济发展的制约日益显现。从多角度对自然资源进行综合评价,已成为资源利用研究的热点。本文根据1997年、2002年、2007年中国投入产出表计算各自然资源部门的感应度系数,由此分析中国自然资源的渗透性,结果表明：石油和天然气、耕地和煤炭资源在国民经济各部门中的渗透性最强。论文...     

Adaptive Management of Urban Ecosystem Restoration: Learning From Restoration Managers in Rhode Island,USA

Urban aquatic restoration can be difficult to accomplish because of complications like industrial pollutants, population density, infrastructure, and expense; however, unique opportunities in urban settings, including the potential to provide benefits to many diverse people, can make urban restoration especially rewarding. The success of urban restoration projects—even those focused primarily on ecological targets—depends on community involvement and managers considering community needs. However, research on the social barriers to urban restoration and strategies managers use to overcome them is relatively rare. This work attempts to fill that gap by presenting barriers for aquatic restoration projects in urban settings and strategies to overcome them. Building from interviews with restoration managers involved in urban aquatic restoration projects in Rhode Island, we contribute through an adaptive management approach: identifying and synthesizing the lessons learned from managers’ work in urban settings. Ultimately, we suggest potential for double- and triple-loop learning by disentangling and critiquing the frames and policy/power structures that influence decision making in urban aquatic restoration.     

‘Development’, resistance and the geographies of affect in Oecussi: Timor‐Leste's Special Economic Zone (ZEESM)

In 2013, it was announced that Timor‐Leste's Oecussi enclave would become the site of a special economic zone. Arid, and inhabited mostly by semi‐subsistence farmers from West Timor's Meto ethno‐linguistic group, the plan entails remaking the enclave as an industrial, transport and tourism hub. To facilitate this, in mid‐2015 the authorities began the process of clearing hundreds of indigenous gardens and homes from land slated for mega‐projects intended to make the region attractive to foreign investors. In this paper, I describe how, for many Meto, land tends to be experienced as a spiritually mediated ‘geography of affect’ (Lea & Woodward, 2010) in which questions of place, belonging, spirituality and personal fortune cannot easily be divided, a reality that raises questions about the suitability of the plan's vision of globalized and investment driven ‘development’. Drawing on Scott, I argue that in Oecussi, spirits associated with the land are not apolitical, but are sometimes perceived as acting to protect locals against powerful outsiders – a characteristically Meto ‘weapon of the weak’ that is in keeping with their previous encounters with colonial regimes.     

TAIWANESE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT AND TRADE WITH THAILAND

Thailand has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and an important factor contributing to this phenomenal growth is foreign direct investment (FDI). Taiwan's investment in Thailand, led by small and medium sized companies in labour intensive and relatively low technology industries, has increased dramatically since 1986. While Western multinational companies have been interested in using FDI to expand their markets in the host country, Taiwanese FDI — in a pattern similar to Japanese FDI of the 1970s — has been taking place in selected developing countries to lower production costs and export manufactured products to third country markets. Taiwan's exports to Thailand have also shown a marked increase since the Taiwanese government allowed large scale FDI in 1986. Although small at the global scale, Taiwanese investment in Thailand has contributed to an increasingly integrated East Asian economy.     

Unbracketing the multiplicity of trauma in North Kivu,Democratic Republic of Congo

As international health organizations have increasingly acknowledged the global burden of psychological trauma, global health experts have sought to appraise and organize the treatment of trauma through objective, neutral forms of classification and calculation. Rather than see trauma as a singular thing whose biological, social and psychological formation is bracketed by expert perspectives, this paper focuses on how psychological trauma is enacted—that is, brought into being and sustained—in particular contexts and practices. If trauma can be made and unmade in practices, rather than assumed to be a stable thing, then these practices become a matter of concern rather than fact for geographers. We take as our empirical focus the province of North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where trauma has become a matter of growing local, national and international concern. Working with and beyond the conceptual work of Annemarie Mol, we demonstrate how different ‘versions’ of trauma uneasily co-exist in the region. Interrogating these versions, we explore the tensions that arise from attempting to explain and summate the incidence of trauma that is not singular or stable but is, instead, emergent and enacted in a variety of practices.     

Problems of Artisanal Marine Fishermen in Ghana: The Way Ahead

Marine fishing is an important traditional economic activity of the coastal communities in Ghana and contributes over 80 per cent of the total fish catch. The traditional sector accounts for over 75 per cent of the marine catch. The small-scale artisanal marine fishing communities, which contribute less than 30 per cent of the traditional sector landings, are generally characterised by low levels of production and, hence, low incomes, poor living conditions and chronic indebtedness. Based on field data on artisanal fishing communities in the Ahanta West and Gomoa districts, this paper summarises the chronic problems of artisanal fishermen that perpetuate their precarious existence in the coastal environment. Overcoming the problems of these increasingly marginalised and migrant communities calls for the provision of supplementary employment opportunities, improved social services and the formation of solidarity groups to enhance access to micro credit. These would require technical and management training as well as support services from government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).     

CREATING NARRATIVES OF PLACE AND IDENTITY IN “LITTLE SWEDEN,U.S.A.”*

ABSTRACT. In Lindsborg, Kansas—“Little Sweden, U.S.A.”—the streets are lined with shops offering “An Adventure in Swedish Tradition,” and residents put on numerous festivals throughout the year highlighting Swedish folk customs. Such ethnic tourist towns have become increasingly widespread in the United States over the past thirty years. Tourists tend to perceive these places as towns where folk culture has been passed down unchanged for generations, while academics tend to dismiss residents' ethnicity as crass commercialism. Neither view is correct. Ethnicity and tradition are not static but constantly invented and reinvented. Modern folk ethnicity, among European Americans in particular, is simply the most recent incarnation of this process, one that attempts to recover ties to a specific, small‐scale landscape and history. This article explores the changing nature of the narratives of ethnicity and place‐based identity that the residents of Lindsborg have used to create a place for themselves in American society.