Naming rights,place branding,and the tumultuous cultural landscapes of neoliberal urbanism

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, urban policymakers have increasingly embraced the selling of naming rights as a means of generating revenue to construct and maintain urban infrastructure. This practice of “toponymic commodification” first emerged with the commercialization of professional sports during the second half of the 20th century and has become an integral part of the policy toolkit of neoliberal urbanism more generally. As a result, the naming of everything from sports arenas to public transit stations has come to be viewed as a sponsorship opportunity, yet such naming rights initiatives have not gone uncontested. This special issue examines the political economy of urban place naming through a series of case studies that consider how the commodification of naming rights is transforming the cultural landscapes of contemporary cities. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the geographies of toponymic commodification as an emerging research focus within the field of critical urban toponymies and propose several theoretical approaches that can enhance our understanding of the commodification of naming rights as an urban spatial practice. We then discuss the main contributions in this special issue and conclude by exploring potential directions for future research on the geographies of urban toponymic commodification.     

Geologic and infrastructure factors for delineating areas for clean coal: examples in Texas, USA

Texas has a wide variety of areas that can be targeted for new clean-coal facilities. These areas are delineated by mapping spatial linkages between coal- and lignite-bearing formations, groundwater and surface-water resources, and CO₂ sinks in brine formations for long-term CO₂ storage or in mature oil fields with potential for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However, a variety of infrastructure factors make it feasible to also target numerous areas outside coal and lignite basins in Texas. These infrastructure factors include pipelines for delivery of CO₂ to subsurface sinks and delivery of coal-produced hydrogen to refineries, ease of connection to existing transmission lines, distribution of nonattainment areas where new clean-coal facilities could be constructed and be compliant with strict air-quality standards, and railroads that can transport coal and other feedstock to new clean-coal facilities. Primary regions in Texas where favorably co-located CO₂ source-sink factors related to coal and lignite trends include the Gulf Coast, the Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin, and the Fort Worth Basin. However, areas outside coal and lignite basins, particularly the Permian Basin where a new clean-coal facility is being planned, also have clean-coal potential because of existing CO₂ pipelines and proximity to EOR fields that can economically sustain new clean-coal facilities.     

Post-collisional adakitic volcanism in the eastern part of the Sakarya Zone, Turkey: evidence for slab and crustal melting

New geochemical and isotopic data for post-collisional Early Eocene and Late Miocene adakitic rocks from the eastern part of the Sakarya Zone, Turkey, indicate that slab and lower crustal melting, respectively, played key roles in the petrogenesis of these rocks. The Early Eocene Yoncal?k dacite (54.4 Ma) exhibits high Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios, low Y and HREE concentrations, moderate Mg# (44–65), and relatively high εNd and low ISr values, similar to adakites formed by slab melting associated with subduction. Geochemical composition of the Yoncal?k dacite cannot be explained by simple crystal fractionation and/or crustal contamination of andesitic parent magma, but is consistent with the participation of different proportions of melts derived from subducted basalt and sediments. Sr/Y correlates horizontally with Rb/Y, and Pb/Nd correlates vertically with Nd isotopic composition, indicating that Sr and Pb budgets are strongly controlled by melt addition from the subducting slab, whereas positive correlations between Th/Nd and Pb/Nd, and Rb/Y and Nb/Y point to some contribution of sediment melt. In addition to low concentrations of heavy rare earth elements (~2–3 times chondrite), a systematic decrease in their concentrations and Nb/Ta ratios with increasing SiO₂ contents suggests that slab partial melting occurred in the garnet stability field and that these elements were mobilized by fluid flux. These geochemical and isotopic signatures are best explained by slab breakoff and fusion shortly after the initiation of collision. Although the Late Micone Tavda?? rhyolite (8.75 Ma) has some geochemical features identical to adakites, such as high Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios, low Y and HREE concentrations, other requirements, such as sodic andesite and/or dacite with relatively high MgO and Mg# (>50), relatively high Ni and Cr, low K₂O/Na₂O (<0.4), high Sr (>400 ppm), for slab-derived adakites are not provided. It is sodic in composition and shows no traces of fractionation from dacitic parent magma. Low Nd and high Sr isotope ratios suggest derivation by partial fusion of calc-alkaline, juvenile crust with high Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios.     

Crowdsourcing urban form and function

Urban form and function have been studied extensively in urban planning and geographical information science. However, gaining a greater understanding of how they merge to define the urban morphology remains a substantial scientific challenge. Toward this goal, this paper addresses the opportunities presented by the emergence of crowdsourced data to gain novel insights into form and function in urban spaces. We are focusing in particular on information harvested from social media and other open-source and volunteered datasets (e.g. trajectory and OpenStreetMap data). These data provide a first-hand account of form and function from the people who define urban space through their activities. This novel bottom-up approach to study these concepts complements traditional urban studies to provide a new lens for studying urban activity. By synthesizing recent advancements in the analysis of open-source data, we provide a new typology for characterizing the role of crowdsourcing in the study of urban morphology. We illustrate this new perspective by showing how social media, trajectory, and traffic data can be analyzed to capture the evolving nature of a city’s form and function. While these crowd contributions may be explicit or implicit in nature, they are giving rise to an emerging research agenda for monitoring, analyzing, and modeling form and function for urban design and analysis.     

Radio images of four luminous blue variable stars

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to image four southern luminous blue variable stars: AG Car, He3-519, HR Car and WRA 751, at wavelengths of 3 and 6 cm, and resolutions of 1 and 2 arcsec respectively. With the partial exception of HR Car, all radio images show an unresolved stellar core surrounded by a large ionized gaseous nebula, and agree well with published H α and [N  ii ] optical images. The image of WRA 751 shows a stellar torus or disc. HR Car's radio image is unusual, and seems best explained by the presence of a hot binary companion.     

UBRI photometry of globular clusters in the Leo group galaxy NGC 3379

We present wide-area UBRI photometry for globular clusters around the Leo group galaxy NGC 3379. Globular cluster candidates are selected from their B -band magnitudes and their  ( U − B ) _o   versus  ( B − I ) _o   colours. A colour–colour selection region was defined from photometry of the Milky Way and M31 globular cluster systems. We detect 133 globular cluster candidates, which supports previous claims of a low specific frequency for NGC 3379.
The Milky Way and M31 reveal blue and red subpopulations, with  ( U − B ) _o   and  ( B − I ) _o   colours indicating mean metallicities similar to those expected based on previous spectroscopic work. The stellar population models of Maraston and Brocato et al. are consistent with both subpopulations being old, and with metallicities of  [Fe/H]∼−1.5  and −0.6 for the blue and red subpopulations, respectively. The models of Worthey do not reproduce the  ( U − B ) _o   colours of the red (metal-rich) subpopulation for any modelled age.
For NGC 3379 we detect a blue subpopulation with similar colours, and presumably age/metallicity, to that of the Milky Way and M31 globular cluster systems. The red subpopulation is less well defined, perhaps due to increased photometric errors, but indicates a mean metallicity of [Fe/H]∼−0.6.     

Evolutionary history of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1052

We have obtained Keck spectra for 16 globular clusters (GCs) associated with the merger remnant elliptical NGC 1052, as well as a long-slit spectrum of the galaxy. We derive ages, metallicities and abundance ratios from simple stellar population models using the recently published methods of Proctor & Sansom , applied to extragalactic GCs for the first time. A number of GCs indicate the presence of strong blue horizontal branches that are not fully accounted for in the current stellar population models. We find all of the GCs to be ∼13 Gyr old according to simple stellar populations, with a large range of metallicities. From the galaxy spectrum we find NGC 1052 to have a luminosity-weighted central age of ∼2 Gyr and metallicity of  [Fe/H]∼+0.6  . No strong gradients in either age or metallicity were found to the maximum radius measured  (0.3  r _e≃ 1 kpc)  . However, we do find a strong radial gradient in α-element abundance, which reaches a very high central value. The young central starburst age is consistent with the age inferred from the H  i tidal tails and infalling gas of ∼1 Gyr. Thus, although NGC 1052 shows substantial evidence for a recent merger and an associated starburst, it appears that the merger did not induce the formation of new GCs, perhaps suggesting that little recent star formation occurred. This interpretation is consistent with 'frosting' models for early-type galaxy formation.