Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.     

RACIALIZED TOPOGRAPHIES: ALTITUDE AND RACE IN SOUTHERN CITIES*

ABSTRACT. This study examines altitudinal residential segregation by race in 146 cities in the U.S. South. It begins by embedding the topic in recent theorizations of the social construction of nature, the geography of race, and environmental justice. Second, it focuses on how housing markets, particularly in the South, tend to segregate minorities in low‐lying, flood‐prone, and amenity‐poor segments of urban areas. It tests empirically the hypothesis that blacks are disproportionately concentrated in lower‐altitude areas using gis to correlate race and elevation by digital elevation‐model block group within each city in 1990 and 2000. The statistical results confirm the suspected trend. A map of coefficients indicates strong positive associations in cities in the interior South‐where the hypothesis is confirmed‐and an inverse relationship near the coast, where whites dominate higher‐valued coastal properties. Selected city case studies demonstrate these relationships connecting the broad dynamics of racial segregation to the particularities of individual places.     

Water wars in the Middle East: a looming threat

This paper explains how hydropolitical dynamics and spatial variables almost triggered a water war between Israel and Lebanon because the latter was building a pump on the Wazzani Spring, a tributary of the Jordan River. The convergence of a regional drought, history of violent confrontations between the two riparians, distrust, varying development needs and territorial disputes almost culminated in a war between these east Mediterranean neighbours. While most international water disputes in the Middle East will be resolved peacefully, some are likely to trigger violent confrontations threatening political stability in the Middle East in the next few decades.     

The Organization of Production in High Technology Industries: An Empirical Assessment*

Recent attention given to the concept of vertical integration and disintegration of production processes has identified the existence of a continuum, with small, flexibly specialized producers at one end and large, mass production units at the other end. Firms along the continuum constantly strive for the optimum combination of economies of scale and scope. This paper attempts to identify the organizational characteristics of high technology firms in one industrial complex of the U.S. Manufacturing Belt. A principal components analysis is performed on a number of theoretically relevant variables for a sample of high technology establishments in Northeast Ohio. The results indicate that the region contains a variety of organizational forms ranging from isolated workshops to large, vertically integrated assembly plants. These findings conform to expectations derived from recent conceptualizations in the literature. Additional empirical research will further enhance understanding of the processes that shape the organization of production in territorial complexes.     

'Just sustainability': the emerging discourse of environmental justice in Britain?

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of 'just sustainability' provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.     

国外国土开发整治与规划的经验及启示

本文简要回顾了20世纪以来国外国土开发整治与规划的过程，总结了国外在国土规划方面取得的经验：即国土规划的权威性、系统性、针对性、可操作性、实效性和参与性等特点。在此基础上，结合我国国情，针对当前面临的形势，提出发展和完善我国国土规划的基本思路：重视国土规划；将国土规划纳入规范化、法制化的轨道；强化国土规划的系统调控和管理等。     

‘Boundary’ in Ancient Persian Tradition of Statehood

It is universally accepted that the need for defining precise lines of separation and points of contacts between states is the byproduct of the emergence of nation-states and ‘world economy’ in the 19th century Europe. Nevertheless, it is hard to overlook the fact that these modern notions are rooted in periods prior to the emergence in Europe of nation-states. There are indications that ancient civilizations were familiar with the notion of ‘state’ in connection with the concepts of territory and boundary. Ancient texts reveal that this basic principle existed in ancient Persian literature in respect of matters of state, territory, and boundary. Similarly, the likelihood exists that these Persian notions could have influenced Roman civilization. It is widely believed that a combination of ancient Greco-Roman and Persian civilizations is a major contributor to what culturally constitutes ‘West’. Later in the Sassanid period the inter-linked notions of state, territory, and boundary developed substantially, coming quite close to their contemporary forms. On the other hand, considering that ‘justice’ was the corner stone of ancient Persian Political philosophy, the idea that ancient Persian spatial arrangement might have contributed to the evolution of the concept of democracy in the West may not be too difficult to contemplate.     

Sustainability schizophrenia or “actually existing sustainabilities?” toward a broader understanding of the politics and promise of local sustainability in the US

As an approach to development, many see capitalism as reaching across an enormous range of scholarly domains and political interests. For some time geographers and others have begun to conceptualize capitalism as less of a system of intrinsic economic logic and more a collection of social and discursive relationships. By bringing capitalism into the “discursive world” these commentators and others have provided the theoretical ground for an exploration of alternative economic forms, especially those that are more socially and ecologically just. This paper makes an argument for putting sustainable development through the same theoretical scrutiny. Drawing on examples from the US we recruit the concept of “actually existing sustainabilities” from Altvater’s concept “actually existing socialisms” as an entry point to this conversation. Our purpose is to show that the potential for sustainability in the US exists in current local policies and practices if we rethink how we frame it.     

Urban re-generations: afterword to special issue on the politics of urban greening in Australian cities

ABSTRACT

‘Urban re-generations' is written as an afterword to the special issue of Australian Geographer on ‘The Politics of Urban Greening in Australian Cities'. The collection prompts a deep questioning of reparative and regenerative work associated with greening, green spaces and green infrastructures. The climate-driven 2019-2020 bushfire crisis and COVID-19 have amplified the visibility of the more-than-human connectivity of our cities and the deep underlying structures of social and environmental inequity underpinning a variety of urban green spaces and agendas. Inspired by the articles in this special issue, the afterword explores how we might call back the grammars and practices of regeneration from their service to the neo-liberal, settler-colonial city and instead nurture reparative de-colonial practices that aid in the collaborative work of re-composing, becoming into better relation with, and working in modes of situated historical and cultural difference, with green and just cities.     

A hybrid approach to modeling territorial control in violent armed conflicts

Territorial control is central to the understanding of violent armed conflicts, yet reliable and valid measures of this concept do not exist. We argue that geospatial analysis provides an important perspective to measure the concept. In particular, measuring territorial control can be seen as an application of calculating service areas around points of control. The modeling challenge is acute for areas with limited road infrastructure, where no complete network is available to perform the analysis, and movements largely occur off road. We present a new geospatial approach that applies network analysis on a hybrid transportation network with both actual road data and hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data representing on‐road and off‐road movements, respectively. Movement speed or restriction can be readily adjusted using various input data. Simulating off‐road movement with hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data has a number of advantages including scalability to small or large study areas and flexibility to allow all‐directional travel. We apply this method to measuring territorial control of armed groups in Sub‐Saharan Africa where inferior transport infrastructure is the norm. Based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Data (GED) as well as spatial data on terrain, population locations, and limited transportation networks, we enhance the delineation of the specific areas directly controlled by each warring party during civil wars within a given travel time.