Placing geographies of public health

Following the move to a 'post–medical' geography, a large amount of research has come to focus on public health issues. This paper explores these current geographies of public health and argues for the development of a more critical perspective. In particular, it draws on commentary that has emerged out of debates that have taken place within a body of literature usually identified as the critical 'new' public health. The paper goes on to argue that such scholarship offers crucial insights for the production of a critical geography of public health.     

The RGS, exploration and Empire and the contested nature of surveying

In 1879, the RGS started courses in practical surveying based on the methods used by navigators. Subsequently, RGS courses, increasingly under the influence of former members of the Survey of India, changed in character. At the same time as the nature of appropriate surveying was being negotiated within the RGS, the debate over the academic nature of geography also took shape. The development of the 'new' geography reflected the conflicts within the RGS Council over the meaning of scientific geography.     

Reflections on a White Discipline

Utilizing a partially autobiographical format, this article considers the practice and study of race within geography. I argue that the overwhelmingly white composition of the discipline has very real implications for both individual experiences and our intellectual production and disciplinary culture. I explore these issues by drawing on my own experiences as a Chicana within geography, and by examining the extent to which one area of research, environmental justice, has engaged questions of race and the consequences of that engagement. I conclude with some general remarks on what it might take to significantly diversify geography.     

Life After Death

Predictions of the death of impoverished and actively marginalized racial and ethnic communities are premature. Many core African American societies have been devastated by the state, capital, and cultural policies of the last two decades. Simultaneously, geography and the other social sciences have been mobilized in order to prevent a fuller understanding of these communities and of the need for social equity. The further development of several approaches is required to open geography and the other disciplines up for community‐building, rather than community destruction. The incorporation of research in the following areas holds out the promise of revitalizing both: human rights; the ethnic movements underlying restructuring; the social construction of regions; the reproduction of social power; building ethnic alliance; and indigenous knowledge systems.     

The Permeable City: Toronto's Spatial Shift at the Turn of the Millennium

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urban governance restructuring, and global, national, and local action through a case study of the Toronto city‐region. The Toronto city‐region recently underwent a massive reorganization of its governance structures, functions, and jurisdictional boundaries. This restructuring raises questions about why these changes occurred at this particular juncture in the region's history. Why did the city that had always been known in the academic and political discourse as the “city that works” stop “working”? What global and national forces might have accounted for such a radical restructuring? And what did local action contribute? These questions are explored in both historical and contemporary contexts by drawing on insights from regulation theory, urban regime theory, and an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism. This approach informs the role that institutions — regardless of their origin or territorial scope — play in sustaining a local accumulation system, and how this “local” accumulation grounds a national regulatory mode and regime of accumulation. The approach also explores the relationship between regime and regulation theories in the context of policy formation and institution building. The study concludes that the current policy set is incapable of resolving the region's crisis tendencies. Notwithstanding external forces, the current policy set is not inevitable. Globalization does not predetermine all spatial‐economic outcomes.     

BELGIAN SETTLEMENT AND SOCIETY IN THE INDIANA RUST BELT*

ABSTRACT. At first glance the industrial city of Mishawaka, near the northern border of Indiana, appears to be ethnically homogeneous. Closer examination, however, reveals the rich ethnic heritage of Mishawaka, as it does in so many other Rust Belt cities from Pittsburgh to Chicago. One of the most fascinating of these immigrant stories is the rise of Belgian Town, on Mishawaka's southwest side. This study examines residential, commercial, and social patterns of this evolving ethnic community during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Although industrial jobs attracted immigrants to the city, creation of a Flemish Catholic church provided the foundation on which to build a tightly knit Belgian community.     

北京城地域沿革及发展思考

位于华北平原北部的北京,东西北三面环山,形如海湾,中间为一小平原,是地质历史演变成的一块风水宝地。自春秋战国时期作为燕都蓟城,经秦、汉、晋、隋、唐、五代、宋(辽、金)等历代变迁,于金贞元年建都,至其后的元、明、清,多作为都城,先后定名为中都、中都永安府、大都、大都路总管府、北平府、北京、京师顺天府。自辽代起北京城范围比今北京大。北京城地域演变是社会经济发展和人们生活需求自然形成的,它应对现今城市规划布局、人才建设具有重要的参考价值。     

Papua New Guinea Highlands: palaeomagnetic constraints on terrane tectonics

Oblique convergence since the Early Cenozoic between the northward-moving Australian plate, westward-moving Pacific plate and almost stationary Eurasian plate has created a world-ranking tectonic zone in the eastern Indonesia–New Guinea–Southwest Pacific region (Tonga–Sulawesi megashear) that is notorious for its complex mix of tectonic styles and terrane juxtapositions. Unlike an ancient analog—the Mesozoic–Cenozoic Cordillera of North America—palaeomagnetic constraints on terrane motions in the zone are few. To improve the framework of quantitative control on such motions and therefore our understanding of the development of the zone, results of a palaeomagnetic study in the Highlands region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), in the southern part of the New Guinea Orogen, are reported. The study yields new insights into terrane tectonics along the Australian craton's active northern margin and confirms the complexity of block rotations to be expected at the local scale in tectonically intricate zones. The study is based on more than 500 samples (21 localities) collected from an interior and an exterior zone of New Guinea's central cordillera. The two zones are separated by the Tahin and Stolle–Lagaip–Kaugel Fault zones and collectively represent the para-autochthonous northern margin of the Australian craton. Samples from the interior zone, which in the study area comprises a cratonic spur of uncertain—probably displaced—origin, come from Triassic to Miocene sediments and subordinate volcanics of the Kubor Anticline, Jimi Terrane, and Yaveufa Syncline (16 localities) in the central and eastern Highlands. Samples from the exterior zone, which represent a basement-involved, Pliocene foreland fold-and-thrust belt, come from Middle Eocene to Middle Miocene carbonates and clastics (five localities) in the southern Highlands of the Papuan Fold Belt. Results permit us to constrain the tectonic evolution of the two zones palaeomagnetically. Using mainly thermal demagnetization techniques, three main magnetic components have been identified in the collection: (1) a recent field overprint of both normal and reverse polarity; (2) a pervasive overprint of mainly normal polarity that originated during extensive Middle to Late Miocene intrusive activity in the central cordillera; and (3) a primary component which has been identified in only 7 of the 21 localities (5 of 11 stratigraphic units represented in the collection). All components show patterns of rotation that are consistent within the zones, but differ between them. In the interior zone (central and eastern Highlands), large-scale counterclockwise rotations of between 30°+ and 100°+ have been established throughout the Kubor Anticline and Jimi Terrane, with some clockwise rotation present in the southern part of the Yaveufa Syncline. In contrast, in the Mendi area of the exterior zone (southern Highlands), clockwise rotations of between 30°+ and 50°+ can be recognized. These contrasting rotation patterns across the Tahin and Stolle–Lagaip–Kaugel Fault zones indicate decoupling of the two tectonic zones, probably along basement-involved faults. The clockwise rotations in the southern Highlands of the Papuan Fold Belt are to be expected from its structural grain, and are probably governed by regional basement faults and transverse lineaments. In contrast, the pattern of counterclockwise rotations in the Kubor Anticline–Jimi Terrane cratonic spur of the central and eastern Highlands was unexpected. The pattern is interpreted to result from non-rigid rotation of continental terranes as they were transported westward across the northeastern margin of the Australian craton. This margin became reorganised after the Middle Miocene, when the steadily northward-advancing Australian craton impinged into the westward-moving Pacific plate/buffer-plate system. Transpressional reorganisation under the influence of the sinistral Tonga–Sulawesi megashear became enhanced with Mio-Pliocene docking, and subsequent southward overthrusting, of the Finisterre Terrane onto the northeastern margin of the Australian craton.