The politics of greening unceded lands in the settler city

ABSTRACT

Urban greening is a buzz term in urban policy and research settings in Australia and elsewhere. In a context of settler colonial urbanism, like Australia, a first fact becomes clear: urban greening is always being practiced on unceded Indigenous lands. Recognising this requires some honest reckoning with how this latest urban policy response perpetuates dispossessory settler-colonial structures. In this paper, we listen to the place-based ontologies of the peoples and lands from where we write to inform understanding the city as an always already Indigenous place – a sovereign Aboriginal City. In so doing, the paper tries to practice a way of creating more truthful and response-able urban knowledge practices. We analyse three distinct areas of scholarly research that are present in the contemporary literature: urban greening and green infrastructure; urban political ecology; and more-than-human cities. When placed in relationship of learning with the sovereign Aboriginal City, our analysis finds that these scholarly domains of urban greening work to re-organise colonial power relations. The paper considers what work the practice and scholarship of ‘urban greening’ might need to do in order to become response-able and learn to learn with Indigenous sovereignties and ontologies.     

Hydroelectric Infrastructure and Potential Groundwater Contamination in the Brazilian Amazon: Altamira and the Belo Monte Dam

Heavy investments in hydroelectric development are occurring throughout the Amazon Basin, which holds 42.2 percent of Brazil’s hydroelectric potential. The Belo Monte dam is the most recent and largest project in this region. The prevalence of septic systems in the Amazon, coupled with the widespread use of water wells and rising water table from filling the reservoir, create sanitation and health concerns for upstream communities. Using spatial analytical data and terrain analyses, we identify high-risk locations within the most densely populated neighborhoods in Altamira, Belo Monte’s host city. The purpose of this research is to develop a heuristic for identifying areas susceptible to groundwater and well contamination in relation to existing and proposed hydroelectric projects. Altamira’s city center persists as a high-risk location for contamination of wells because of its population density and relatively low elevation compared to other parts of the city. The methods, tools, and analyses presented in this article provide a framework that can be used to identify vulnerability to groundwater and drinking well contamination. The results presented here can guide implementation of public health and sanitation efforts in areas affected by large hydroelectric projects to avoid future water quality crises. Key Words: Belo Monte, groundwater contamination, hydroelectric infrastructure, risk assessment, spatial and terrain analyses.     

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.     

Subversive formalization: efforts to (re)form land,labor, and behavior in a carioca favela

ABSTRACT

State entities in Brazil have rolled out numerous programs to “integrate” precarious settlements into the so-called formal city of Rio de Janeiro. Two of the most visceral integration projects in Rio’s favelas have been infrastructural upgrading and public security via military police occupation. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and policy analysis, in this paper I trace how these projects attempt to formalize land, labor, and behavior in a complex of favelas called Complexo do Alemão. Inspired by postcolonial urban approaches to formalization, I argue that formality/informality as it operates through these projects is, in part, a performative distinction deployed by the state, echoing elite and popular socio-spatial imaginaries. I add, however, that non-state actors are also involved in their own practices of formalization. Residents themselves are re-making diverse forms of property, employment, and behavior through processes of subversive formalization, informed by their geographically-embedded and historical relationships with one another.     

Imagining the Dirty Green City

ABSTRACT

The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode of urban purification, much effort in the name of the green city inverts and reproduces dualistic understandings of natural and built space. In response, we disrupt the normative dialectics of purity and dirt that sustain this dualism to expose the untidy but fertile ground of the green city. We draw together Ash Amin’s four registers of the Good City – relatedness, rights, repair and re-enchantment – with the artworks of the Australian visual ecologist Aviva Reed. Our work seeks to enrich the practice of more-than-human urbanism through ‘dirt thinking’ by imagining the transformative possibilities in, of and for the dirty green city.     

GEO-Teach: A Preservice Teacher Preparation Program in Geography

Abstract

GEO-Teach is a project funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Preservice Education (FIPSE). The project aims to develop a model preservice curriculum at the secondary level. It incorporates the newly published National Geography Standards and merges content with pedagogy through partnerships with faculty in education and other social and behavioral sciences to deliver the curriculum. School teachers act as mentors to students in the program.     

Capturing Farmers’ Knowledge: Testing the Analytic Hierarchy Process and a Ranking and Scoring Method

Abstract

Integrating local and Indigenous knowledge into land-use planning and the assessment of ecosystems services requires reliable, quantitative data. We tested two approaches to obtain such data by quantifying farmer opinion of different land-covers in Eastern Panama using (1) the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and (2) a simpler ranking and scoring technique. Both methods produce a set of numerical values reflecting the ability of land-covers to deliver ecological and socio-economic criteria. We present our experience with both methods and offer recommendations for researchers looking to quantify landholder opinion. The AHP survey was relatively long (on average it took 19?min to complete per criterion) and we faced problems with inconsistent responses. In contrast, the ranking and scoring method was much quicker (only 3?min per criterion) and therefore may be more suitable for gathering more data from a larger number of farmers.     

Introduction: Geographic Contributions to Agrobiodiversity Conservation

Abstract

Since the period of bank deregulation in the 1980s, deferred deposit loan operations, better known as payday lenders, have become commonplace in the landscapes of many American cities. At the same time, traditional banking facilities have become less common, especially in the inner city. Growing disparities in the type of and accessibility to credit in the inner city has generated calls for greater regulation to curb practices by payday lenders that critics claim disproportionately affect poor and minority consumers. Payday lenders argue that they serve communities neglected by traditional banks. This article analyzes the site-location strategies of banks and payday lenders in metropolitan Louisiana, and in Cook County, Illinois, and finds that disenfranchised neighborhoods are simultaneously targeted by payday lenders and neglected by traditional banks. The implications these findings have for public policy and for ongoing discourses on the urban condition, race, and class are briefly discussed.

     

Transformations of the Spatial Hegemony of the Courtyard in Post-Soviet St. Petersburg

Abstract

The courtyard is a space that existed before, during, and now after the Soviet period in Russian urban history. Noting the change in the courtyard's formerly hegemonic position on daily trajectories illustrates both Harvey's and Lefebvre's suggestions for uncovering the way that spaces articulate social values. A particularly revealing case study occurs in the struggle over including courtyards in a Chinese developer's project for a new multi-use district outside St. Petersburg. A brief history of the courtyard in Soviet planning allows subsequent analysis of the ways in which the city administration, the Chinese design team, and Russian planners deployed the courtyard as a spatial code for social meaning in design discussions. Examining the change in function and conceptualization of the courtyard shows how different groups in post-Soviet Russia seek to retain or redeploy concepts of the “collective” as they attempt to remake St. Petersburg as a successful “world” city.     

GEOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES OF SETTLEMENT AND THE 2000 CENSUS: A CHALLENGE FOR GEOGRAPHERS

Through a close examination of the case of Virginia v. Hicks—from Kevin Hicks's arrests for trespassing on streets near a Richmond, Virginia, public housing project in 1998 and 1999 to the unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding these arrests on the grounds that no harm was done to the First Amendment—this paper explores how the rights of private property are made, through the judicial process, to "trump" other kinds of rights and interests. It examines the implications of both dominant property practices and discourses and a more general judicial anti-urbanism for city life. The paper shows that one of the things at risk given the judiciary's love affair with private property rights is the right of some people simply to be present in public space. By implication, the paper argues that legal geographies need to examine more than just final court decisions (as is often the case), but also uncover the full legal history—the strange twists and turns—of the cases examined.     

Residential mobility trajectories and integration in Douala and Bafoussam,Cameroon

Abstract

This study examines how migrant households relocate their homes in two Cameroonian cities over the course of lifetimes or even generations. The central claim is that homeownership is the ultimate sign of integration into city life. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods (218 interviews, 30 focus groups and a household survey, sample size 686), the study argues that three key factors explain why people move: the quality of housing they can affords, the proximity to a workplace and the potential for homeownership. Three residential model trajectories are identified. The first describes a journey from being a new migrant who is a guest of family or friends in the city centre to being a married family with kids owning a home in the urban periphery. The second model continues that journey by returning back to the city centre in pursuit of more convenient, high-status home location (if finances permit). A third model describes moves to sites all over the city later in life as older individuals seek to maximize family income in the way they use multiple properties. Understanding residential mobility patterns has the potential to lead to a better public policies and more effective private investments in the housing sector.     

Cyborg urbanization beyond the human: the construction and ruination of the Matinha gasworks site

ABSTRACT

Work on cyborg urbanization has unveiled the way in which the city is produced through hybridizations of the human and non-human. However, less attention has been given to the ways by which non-human actors entangle each other without human mediation. On the other hand, literature on urban ruination has explored the agency of the non-human in landscape transformation, however few works have established the link between the processes of ruination and urban transformation. In this article, we bridge these two literatures and argue that it is possible to extend the concept of cyborg urbanization to include urban transformation processes that are conducted by non-human actors, namely vegetation.

We explore these missing links through an exploration of the Matinha Gasworks site, located in the Eastern Zone of the city of Lisbon, Portugal, and deactivated in 2001. It is a vacant land, with several ruined derelict constructions of a gasworks. We draw upon archival work, remote sensing techniques, and post-phenomenological fieldwork to explore the 80-year long process of construction and ruination of the Matinha Gasworks site. Our findings highlight the accumulation of distinct temporalities, scales, matters, and subjectivities in the production of the urban.     

We Are All Makers: The Method of Keyword Selection in Teaching and Learning Human Geography

Abstract

Geographers continue to engage in public debate “inside the Beltway” by participation within and through federal agencies and through the National Research Council. Several examples illustrate the level and kind of this engagement, which has been concentrated on environmental and spatial data and analysis themes. Most professional geographers have the opportunity to engage in this form of public debate through participation in the activities of the National Research Council. The level of this participation has been surprisingly strong, given the small size of the community of professional geographers, and has helped to shape both U.S. and international research agendas relevant to geographic research. Participation, however, is concentrated in a few programs and individuals, raising questions about the sustainability of geography's voice in this public activity.

     

Urban greening,property and more-than-human commoning

ABSTRACT

Urban greening is about bringing vegetation into cities in ways that produce flourishing urban ecologies whilst also making cities more liveable for human inhabitants. We focus here on greening that is done through the maintenance or establishment of gardens, parks, urban forests and informal spaces. We argue that in contexts with established property law systems, such as Australia, making urban ecologies through greening is shaped heavily by relations of property tied to land. This includes constraining the extent to which urban greening can contribute to socio-ecologically just cities. We suggest that progressing greening that is more attentive to the geographies and temporalities of more-than-human life requires us to trouble the hold of property over greening. To do this we explore the possibilities opened up by the lens of urban commons/commoning. We engage with the emerging concept of more-than-human commoning as a way of attuning urban greening to nonhuman agency and affordances. We also grapple with the risk of obscuring or concealing difference between humans in the way commoning makes room for more-than-humans, especially in the context of settler-colonialism. We conclude by calling for a more overt politics of urban greening that encompasses diverse human and more-than-human experiences of the city.     

Modelling population retention in Australia’s Northern Territory – how do current forms of migration contribute to population turnover and retention?

ABSTRACT

In the past, population growth in Australia's Northern Territory, as in other peripheral parts of high-income countries, has been driven by internal labour migration and migration from outside of Australia. These have been contributing to the high population turnover experienced in peripheral areas. Since 2010, the Northern Territory has experienced low (and even negative) population growth, and public policy is currently focused on migration as a lever to reverse this trend. However, the extent to which the characteristics of migrants influence the potential for longer-term population growth is poorly understood. This paper uses a new method to analyse the contributions of various types of migrants to both population turnover and retention. Two major sets of findings emerge: First, the significance of separating newer in-migrants from longer-term residents when analysing migration patterns; and secondly, the contribution of age, gender, Indigenous status, international origin, wages and industry of employment to the Northern Territory's population turnover. The research suggests that current forms of migration favour people who are likely to stay for only short periods, and have high wage demands. The main policy inference is that long-term population growth will likely not eventuate unless new forms of migration can be stimulated.     

Contingent Urban Geographies of Violent Crime: Racial Segregation and the Impact of Public Housing in Atlanta

Neighborhood variations in crime incidence rates are most commonly interpreted through the lens of social disorganization theory, or a "communities and crime" perspective. This approach typically articulates explanation for crime by focusing on the characteristics of communities—a unitary scale most commonly equated with neighborhoods. We argue that this perspective fails to recognize the importance of broader urban geographic contexts, and offer an extension that sees geographically contingent processes functioning at multiple scales simultaneously. We develop this perspective applied to the "spread effects" of public housing on violent crime in surrounding neighborhoods: these spread effects are conditioned by the nature of the urban contexts through which they operate. Specifically, deeply divided and racialized patterns of residential segregation at least partially define the contexts that condition public housing's effect on crime. We examine our perspective using early 1990s block group data for the City of Atlanta and find substantial evidence in support of our perspective. In particular, we find that Techwood Homes, the nation's first federally constructed public housing project, exerted different geographic spread effects in predominantly White than in predominantly Black portions of the city. By failing to recognize the complexity and contingency of public housing's geographic effect on crime in surrounding neighborhoods, previous approaches substantially overestimate crime in White areas, and underestimate crime in Black areas.     

Identifying and Preventing Biopiracy in Australia: patent landscapes and legal geographies for plants with Indigenous Australian uses

There are legal and moral imperatives to protect biological resources and the ‘traditional knowledge’ associated with them. These imperatives derive from complex legal geographies: international law (such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol), State and federal laws, Indigenous customary law, codes of ethics and research protocols. This paper reports on a ‘patent landscape’ analysis of patents that refer to Australian plant species for which there is Indigenous Australian knowledge. We have identified several patents of potential new biopiracy concern. The paper highlights the way in which actors can gain private property monopolies over biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, even though there are overlapping sovereign rights and Indigenous rights claims. Regulatory gaps need to be closed nationally to fully govern the diverse human–plant bio-geographies in Australia. Further, Indigenous laws and governance have largely been ignored by these actors. We suggest that the introduction of ‘disclosure of origin’ requirements in patent applications, sui generis Indigenous knowledge protections, the development of biocultural protocols, and a more nationally consistent system for ‘access and benefit-sharing’ are required to ensure more ‘fair and equitable’ use of plants and Indigenous knowledge in/from Australia, and to ensure the recognition of Indigenous rights to knowledge.     

A ferry making waves: A demonstration project ‘doing’ institutional work in a greening maritime industry

ABSTRACT

The objective of the article is to show how the demonstration project and battery ferry Ampere has contributed to a greening of public ferry procurement in Norway. Building on theories on demonstration projects in transition studies and institutional work, the author argues for a more integrated focus than hitherto on the dynamic interplay of materiality, organization, and discourse in demonstration projects, and how the agency of actor networks and the materiality connected to demonstration projects can affect institutional change accompanying transition processes. This is done by conceptualizing Ampere as a ‘performing project’: a complex of discursive and organizational strategies of framing and lobbying deployed by the actor networks connected to it and its materiality. Methodically, the author draws on semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The results suggest that Ampere’s ‘performance’ has contributed to changes in national and regional ferry procurement practices and been vital for an emerging maritime battery niche.     

Problem-Based Inquiry on World Water Problems in Large Undergraduate Classes

Abstract

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a project-based course—World Water Problems—that was introduced within the framework of introductory undergraduate geography education. The aims of the course were twofold: (1) to cultivate in students a world geographic perspective on water problems; and (2) to conduct an original research project on the search for detailed appraisals, or ex-post evaluations, of completed water projects and programs. The project involved problem-based inquiry and learning through several interrelated tasks including: hypothesis testing, systematic electronic library and database searching, corresponding with water resources experts; and synthesizing of results. Evaluation of the project, and the course more generally, was achieved through a questionnaire administered to the students and a focused in-class discussion. Overall, the students' comments about the course project demonstrate learning in the form of greater knowledge of world geographic regions and water sectors as well as enhancement of database search skills and critical thinking.