Urban–agricultural water appropriation: the Hyderabad, India case

With the urbanisation drive comes steady growth in urban water demand. Although in the past this new demand could often be met by tapping unclaimed water sources, this option is increasingly untenable in many regions where little if any unclaimed water remains. The result is that urban water capture, and the appropriation of associated physical and institutional infrastructure, now often implies conflict with other existing uses and users. While the urbanisation process has been studied in great depth, the processes and, critically, impacts of urban water capture and appropriation are not well researched or understood. This paper undertakes a critical examination of the specific case of Hyderabad, one of India's fastest growing cities, to shed light more generally on the process of water capture by cities and the resultant impacts on pre-existing claims, particularly agriculture. It does this by examining the history and institutional response to Hyderabad's urban–rural water contest; how the results of that contest are reflected in surface and groundwater hydrology; and the eventual impacts on agriculture. The findings show that the magnitude, and sometimes even direction, of impact from urban water transfer vary in space and time and depend on location-specific rainfall patterns, the nature of existing water infrastructure and institutions, and farmers' adaptive capacities and options, notably recourse to groundwater. Broader consideration of the specific findings provides insights into policy mechanisms to reduce the possible negative impacts from the global, and seemingly inexorable, flow of water to the world's growing cities.     

Construing and constructing the South China Sea beyond state-led environmentalism: Vernacularizing geographical,geopolitical and sociotechnical imaginaries of territory

During the 2010s, the South China Sea (SCS) became a geopolitical flashpoint over the sovereignty of the Paracels and Spratlys. China envisioned its transformation of coral reefs into military bases and island cities as an SCS ‘green construction’ project. This article analyses how the SCS is discursively construed and practically constructed as maritime national territory, by mobilizing fishing legacies and extending state limits through ‘state-led environmentalism’ rhetoric. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in China, I show that state-led environmentalism is a hierarchical process that intermittently co-opts and excludes local populations to advance the state's territorial ambitions, which are anchored in geographical, geopolitical and socio-technical imaginaries of ‘maritime civilization’. Yet, I also show that in this process, the SCS emerges as spaces of vernacularized political claims. Thus, I argue that territory is not only a political technology of control but also vernacular practice through which universalizing discourses— whether on the Exclusive Economic Zone regime, sovereignty or nature—are adapted and modified.     

‘Locationally disadvantaged’: planning governmentalities and peri-urban agricultural futures

ABSTRACT

Peri-urban areas are the interface between urban and rural regions, with these regions traditionally acting as foodbowls for adjacent urban areas. This peri-urban agriculture provides a diverse suite of benefits to urban areas. Increasingly, however, peri-urban areas are being converted to residential uses, driven in part by higher land values secured for land converted for residential development. In Sydney, planning and development has tended to treat peri-urban areas as ‘suburbs in waiting’. Using a Foucauldian governmentality approach, this paper investigates the prevailing rationalities in metropolitan-level strategic planning documents—in particular A Plan for Growing Sydney and the Draft South West District Plan—and how these rationalities relate to peri-urban agriculture. Our analysis shows that the three overarching rationalities—the global city, the compact city and the sustainability agenda—frame the urbanisation of peri-urban agricultural lands as necessary and inevitable, and only integrate agriculture as part of the future of the city of Sydney when it can be rationalised within the ‘global city’ narrative. As a result, peri-urban areas are not considered to have unique planning needs, but are imagined as latent spaces that will enable Sydney to meet its housing and job targets through their future development.     

Coproducing urban space: Rethinking the formal/informal dichotomy

Providing an introduction to the special section ‘Close encounters: ethnographies of the coproduction of space by the urban poor’, this article sets out to argue that the image of ‘the informal’ as unruly, messy and dirty continues to inform urban planning around the world. As a reaction to this view, it contends that the informal and formal should be analysed as interconnected and that the informal sphere should be revalued. Urban development is studied as close encounters between established practices, with a locus and a history (tree‐like), and newly emerging, unstable and untraceable practices (rhizomatic). Contrary to the tendency in urban planning to conflate the formal with the tree and the informal with the rhizome, we argue that from the perspective of marginal urbanites, formal planning tends to be very arbitrary and frightening (rhizomatic), whereas informal practices can be very predictable and stable (arboreal). The article analyses residents of marginalized urban areas as inventive navigators who explore the changing physical, spatial and sociopolitical environment, avoiding threats and looking for opportunities, grounded in their everyday practices and life histories. The article concludes that marginal urbanites should be acknowledged as coproducers of urban space and that the right to ‘coproduce’ the city lies at the heart of the call for the right to the city.     

Another political ecology of civil society reflexiveness against urban industrial risks for environmental justice: The case of the Bisasar landfill,Durban, South Africa

The concerns of political ecology since its beginnings as a field have been predominantly set in rural areas with limited focus on urban industrial risks. Further, debates on the global South (often from Anglo‐American perspectives) have not fully appreciated the divergent and differentiated perceptions of urban risks and, therefore, everyday forms of resistance within civil society. Instead, work has mainly focused on civil society power relations against the state and industry that are driven by coherent populist political agendas. Against this setting, this paper's contribution aims to better contextualize ‘other’ third world localities in political ecology through a case study of urban industrial risks in the upper/middle income (as opposed to rural, low/lower middle income) country, South Africa. In doing so, the paper sheds light on the derelict aspect of civil society contestation, especially along class and ethnic lines, over urban landfill infrastructure as a livelihood resource or a health hazard. The paper draws upon frameworks of self‐reflexivity and reflexive localism as complementary to the mainstream political ecology to illuminate differentiated civil society reflexiveness and therefore, aims to advance the discussion of other political ecologies. The case study of the largest formal landfill site in Africa, the Bisasar landfill situated in Durban, highlights differences underlying power relations and constraints within civil society (in leadership, social networking, resources and mistrust) that have implications for mainstream political ecology notions of civil society coherence.     

Southeast Asian cities as co-producers of ecological knowledge in transnational city networks

In a polycentric world, cities increasingly bear responsibility for implementing climate policies. To do so, they establish transnational city networks (TCNs), which produce ambitious imaginaries of the future of cities, such as ‘smart cities’ or ‘resilient cities’, based on ecological knowledge. This paper analyses Southeast Asian (SEA) cities’ participation in TCNs. First, this paper presents city networks operating in SEA. Then, drawing on a case study of Quezon City, this paper shows how SEA cities often position themselves in the network as knowledge consumers rather than (co)producers and prefer to learn from cities in the Global North. This research also shows how TCNs—with limited success—seek to counter this neo-colonial knowledge flow model. The paper contributes to the literature on TCNs, arguing that the ongoing North–South imbalance needs to be addressed if networks are to promote viable models of future SEA cities. Identifying the patterns of knowledge flows inside TCNs, this study argues that networks should assist cities in imagining possible city futures beyond the experiences of the select world and global cities. TCNs should pay more attention to supporting their SEA members in looking ‘outwards’ to comparable cities worldwide rather than merely ‘upwards’ to global and mega-cities.     

Livelihoods and the transformative potential of cities: Challenges of inclusive development in Rustenburg,North West Province,South Africa

Urban geographers increasingly incorporate the potential of so‐called informal livelihood activities to provide resources that can be creatively managed in the transformation of urban space, particularly to the benefit of less well off and marginalized residents. This paper reports a case study in Rustenburg, North West Province, South Africa, where city managers began to promote inclusive development in the early 1990s, just prior to the formal dismantling of the apartheid system. The findings reveal that Rustenburg's urban transformation process, over a decade later, continued to reproduce repressive practices that limit the informal livelihood activities of the urban majority. Apparently efforts of well‐meaning city managers to implement a sustainable and inclusive development process are often rendered futile at the point of actually defining the constituents of urban socioeconomic transformation.     

Kenya's regional ambitions or China's Belt‐and‐Road? News media representations of the Mombasa‐Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway

Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), and its construction and financing by China, exemplifies the prominence accorded to mega‐infrastructural projects in contemporary economic development, as well as the dependence this has engendered on external loans. Alongside, multiple geographies intertwine in the SGR which is both a component of China's global ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), as well as an East African regional link between coastal Kenya and neighbouring landlocked countries. In most popular and academic analyses, the role of China is emphasized over the SGR's positioning within East Africa. Does this then lead to an undermining of the meanings that are attached to the SGR within Kenya? This article seeks to add Kenyan perspectives to the debate over China's infrastructural loans by examining the range of news media discourses that have emerged around the SGR. Utilizing the theoretical lens of South‐South cooperation and African agency, this study analyzes how material infrastructure becomes meaningful within the context of a political superstructure. For Kenya, this political superstructure is shaped not only by Kenya‐China relations, but also by infrastructural competitions within East Africa, as well as within Kenya itself.     

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.     

Competitive Productivism and Australia's Emerging ‘Alternative’ Agri-food Networks: producing for farmers' markets in Victoria and beyond

This paper advances the theoretical argument for moving beyond the conventional/alternative divide in the analysis of emerging ‘alternative’ agri-food networks (AAFNs). In order to understand how ‘place’, ‘nature’ and ‘quality’-based food networks emerge and develop, we argue that careful attention needs to be paid to the way in which specific political-economic environments shape the options available to farmers and consumers. Australia's ‘competitive productivism’ is the outcome of an export-oriented economy and a neoliberal political orientation, and this environment affects the development of AAFNs in various ways. Most notably, a case study of farmers that sell at farmers' markets in the State of Victoria shows that the competitive-productivist policies pursued by Australian governments entice some farmers who participate in AAFNs to develop their ideas into higher output businesses tailored to compete in emerging export markets. Other farmers deliberately choose to keep marketing through alternative channels despite competitive-productivist pressures to expand. These findings demonstrate the centrality to the experience of AAFN participants of negotiating productivist pressures, adding nuances to the story of the complex relations between AAFNs and conventional supply chains.     

Tensiti: a social and physical development in Lae,Papua New Guinea

The implementation of an ‘appropriate’ housing subdivision in Lae, Papua New Guinea represents a new approach in creating an acceptable environment for the urban poor. The unique hexagonal design of the Tensiti development and its aims and policy implications are discussed. It appears that at least some of the urban poor of Lae now live in a settlement which satisfies the demands of town planners, urban administrators and the realities of the settlers' basic needs and resources.     

The Coproduction of Peri‐Urban Space

Expanding beyond narrow approaches of understanding postapartheid space, this research analyzes the social relations contributing to land use patterns and livelihood decisions as manifestations of the coproduction of space. Drawing on a detailed livelihood and land‐change analysis case study of Polokwane, South Africa, it is argued that combinations of social processes across scales contribute to the production of peri‐urban South Africa and offer an uncommon mixed‐methods approach by combining qualitative ethnographic interviews, quantitative survey data, and land‐cover change detection. The peri‐urban interface is coproduced as individuals participate in multiple livelihood activities (wage labor, businesses, social programs) and changing land use patterns (residential, urban, mixed use) through negotiations at multiple scales—from macrolevel economic policy to local labor regimes.     

Energy solution or future pollution? Applying an energy justice perspective to coal seam gas in New South Wales

ABSTRACT

The emergence of an unconventional extractive industry of coal seam gas (CSG) in New South Wales, Australia has caused a range of social tensions. Although the industry has generally received strong support from state-level governments across Australia, an eclectic social movement has arisen in opposition. Critical questions of justice have emerged in these debates about CSG, particularly about the ‘winners' and ‘losers' that would emerge should large-scale CSG extraction be introduced into New South Wales. However, the question of justice in relation to CSG extraction is not altogether so simple. Actors on all sides of CSG development have mobilised the language of justice in their claims about this energy source in sophisticated ways and at different scales. In this paper, we draw upon ‘energy justice’ scholarship to tease out different energy justice dimensions of the CSG debate in New South Wales. We show how there are significant issues that will likely intensify regarding the recognition of different forms of knowledge, the access citizens have to forms of decision-making, and the risks that span geographic and temporal scales. We argue that it is vital to appreciate the significant and interrelated injustices faced by those challenging the industry.     

Decoding dispossession: Eviction and urban regeneration in Johannesburg's dark buildings

In January 2012 the residents of an inner‐city tenement building in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, were evicted on a court order. The building was situated in a post‐industrial neighbourhood in which thousands of South Africans and foreign nationals, many blind or disabled, live in unlawfully occupied buildings without access to water, basic sanitation, electricity and waste management services. Such buildings are known in policy discourse as ‘bad buildings’, and informally as ‘dark buildings’, invoking both a sense of developmental failure and spiritual insecurity. In this paper I analyse how urban renewal policies created social divisions and alliances not only among the residents of Chambers, which were channelled along nationalist lines, but also between the able‐bodied and disabled, and produced new social alliances. In particular, I document how a group of blind Zimbabweans experienced threats of violence and accusations of betrayal, as they were offered alternate accommodation by the evicting company because of their disability. I argue here that the pressures of private‐sector housing developments intersected with the insecurities and divisions of inner‐city social spaces and also fostered new alliances. Following the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I invoke the concept of ‘decoding dispossession’, proposing that ongoing evictions and dispossessions are characterized by simultaneous movements of ‘decoding and deterritorialization’ and ‘overcoding‐reterritorialization’.     

Simulating land-use dynamics under planning policies by integrating artificial immune systems with cellular automata

Cellular automata (CA) have been increasingly used in simulating urban expansion and land-use dynamics. However, most urban CA models rely on empirical data for deriving transition rules, assuming that the historical trend will continue into the future. Such inertia CA models do not take into account possible external interventions, particularly planning policies, and thus have rarely been used in urban and land-use planning. This paper proposes to use artificial immune systems (AIS) as a technique for incorporating external interventions and generating alternatives in urban simulation. Inspired by biological immune systems, the primary process of AIS is the evolution of a set of ‘antibodies’ that are capable of learning through interactions with a set of sample ‘antigens’. These ‘antibodies’ finally get ‘matured’ and can be used to identify/classify other ‘antigens’. An AIS-based CA model incorporates planning policies by altering the evolution mechanism of the ‘antibodies’. Such a model is capable of generating different scenarios of urban development under different land-use policies, with which the planners will be able to answer ‘what if’ questions and to evaluate different options. We applied an AIS-based CA model to the simulation of urban agglomeration development in the Pearl River Delta in southern China. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed model can be very useful in exploring various planning scenarios of urban development.     

空间认同:城市空间研究转向中的知识前沿、趋势与启发

中国城市化进程的快速发展,促使人们不断解构、调整和重构对城市空间的认同,这是城市化发展中不容忽视的新问题。以Web of Science（WoS）为数据源,对国外城市空间认同研究进行了分析和知识再现。研究发现：① 城市空间认同是人们对城市发展中社会经济认同、文化认同、集体认同、身份认同与情感认同的集合。作为重要的国民意识,城市空间认同主题是国外学者关注的重要领域,对该领域研究的本质上是对城市空间实践中人文主义空间诉求的知识表征;② 在2008~2017年的国外城市空间认同研究中,美国、英国、澳大利亚等国家具有明显优势,国际合作研究网络主要在美洲-欧洲、欧洲-澳洲,以及澳洲-欧美之间;国外城市空间认同研究高被引文献注重对“空间多中心性”“地方与连续性”“城市社区”“城市公民身份”“空间绅士化”“地方主义”等方面的讨论。③ 未来研究更加倾向在“认同”“空间”“城市”“地理”“政治”“地方”,以及“社区”等新主题方面。相比较而言,国内对城市空间认同的研究较为欠缺,随着中国城市空间实践不断推向纵深阶段,需要强化城市空间认同研究的“理论自觉”。     

Resident Attitudes to Farmland Protection Measures in the Northern Rivers Region,New South Wales

In-migration to popular ‘sea change’ and ‘tree change’ regions has produced conflicts between rural land users. In the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, new residential developments have been built on much of what was previously prime agricultural land, while farmers (in particular, those negatively affected by the deregulation of the dairy industry) have sought to secure retirement incomes by subdividing land for sale. Although developers, local councils and individual farmers sometimes see eye to eye on the mutual benefits of in-migration and population growth, land use has none the less become the subject of a hotly contested local political battle. Conflicts occur at the interface of growing urban developments and surrounding farmland, with new residents finding the sights, sounds and smells of rural production intrusive. More generally, there is considerable concern that the best farmland in the region may be lost to urbanisation and rural residential subdivision. This paper discusses the results of a survey that collected opinions from local residents about the pressures on the region's land uses by in-migration, the future role of farmland as both an economic and cultural landscape, and views on proposed measures to protect prime farmland in the region. Results highlighted a strong and consistent ‘pro-farmland’ and ‘pro-protection’ attitude throughout the region, and across social groups. Yet, variations emerged when respondents were asked about why they attribute value to agricultural landscapes. For some, ‘economic’ values dominated, while for others, value was attributed in ways that reflected an emerging ethos of ‘localism’ and village lifestyle. Although values differed, a clear message from this study is that the population of Australia's pre-eminent ‘sea change’ region strongly support measures to curb urban development and the more destructive consequences of a dynamic property market.     

Gatekeeping Night Spaces: the role of booking agents in creating ‘local’ live music venues and scenes

A complex relationship exists between music scenes and the infrastructure in which they are located. This article focuses on the rise and fall of the Oxford Tavern, a live music venue in the Australian city of Wollongong. Pivotal in this venue was the role that booking agents played in developing what they perceived as an inclusive, self-sufficient and vibrant music scene—by generating and then consistently implementing a strict philosophy on what music and which bands performed there. Bookings were not based on reputation, and potentially better known or more lucrative bands were regularly denied access in favour of ‘local’ bands socially connected to the music scene. These bands were authenticated as ‘local’ because of social and geographical proximity—not because of any innate musicological distinctiveness connected to Wollongong. This social geographical emphasis on ‘local’ and ‘original’ music transcended musical genre and subcultural style. Although in one sense ‘exclusionary’, gatekeeping also fostered bonds of community and belonging, creating a perceived haven for diverse local cultures within a monopolised urban nightscape. Such gatekeeping practices—explored here through interviews with booking agents and music scene participants—were pivotal to the longevity of the music venue and scene. Only when booking agents with a strong ‘local’ ethos were removed from the venue did it struggle to survive, and ultimately collapse.     

Ponga, Glass and Concrete

In accepting that Aotearoa is no-longer a rural nation there are exciting possibilities for the study of urban socio-cultural geography - the effects of urbanisation on the lives ofNewZealanders. Contemporary social geographical theories have combined with postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and feminism toproducea ‘new cultural geography’. We argue that this new cultural geography couldprovide important theoretical avenues for the development of an ‘indigenous’ New Zealand urban socio-cultural geography.     

The experimental governing of mobility and trade on the China‐Laos frontier: The Tai Lue case

This paper discusses the governing of subjects and objects' mobility in the context of trans‐border rice and corn trade on the China‐Laos frontier. It traces the attempts by a group of ethnic Tai Lue traders from China to assert themselves as ‘flexible subjects’ and economically triumphant actors on the Upper Mekong market in the era of economic regionalization. It illustrates how, between 2005 and mid‐2006, the traders' economic success relied on a variety of ‘border strategies’. ‘Border strategies’ include a gender‐balanced organization of trade, the instrumental deployment of trans‐border ethnicity, the appropriation of a Han style of business, the opportunistic reliance on the Chinese administration's ‘regime of graduated mobility’, and the enactment of a ‘war‐machine’ against Lao state agents. Yet, in late 2006, a new wave of state authoritarianism, enmeshed in corporate accumulation processes, inhibited the traders' success. The paper suggests that, unlike what some defenders of globalization and transnational theories maintain, in the age of economic regionalization, the alleged flexibility and increased mobility of subjects and objects across the borders of the Greater Mekong Subregion remain conditional on an unpredictable mechanism of loosening and tightening. This is part of a long‐applied governing pattern of ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ on the Sino‐Lao frontier.