DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin
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Dystopian utopia between mountain and the sea? Second-home production along the Coastal Cordillera of Central Chile 1992-2012
Get PDFIn recent decades the expansion of the metropolitan areas in Central Chile has produced numerous forms, structures and functions. The amenities of the environment and local food and culture have been used to promote a utopia for future residents, which include many people who have purchased a second home. However in many cases the migrants have suffered frustrations. They found dystopia instead of the promised utopia. By intensifying the metropolization of Central Chile, the real estate sector has produced a space not unlike the spatial conditions the migrants hoped to escape. Pristine environments were transformed into polluted areas, suffering from rapid urbanization, noise, rubbish and an overload of visitors in formerly untouched areas. In this paper we analyse the socio-economic impact and the perception of second-home development. Many of the new apartments, flats and houses are used as second homes, introducing and enhancing new forms of multilocality. The infrastructure is designed for full occupation, yet during many periods of the year it is not used, and those who live there all year round seem lost in large areas devoid of life
Climate change, the green economy and reimagining the city: the case of structurally disadvantaged European maritime port cities
Get PDFThe concept of the New Environmental Politics of Urban Development (NEPUD) examines the impact of international and national environmental regulation on the politics of urban development. The NEPUD concept emerged from case studies of environmental governance in entrepreneurial cities. However, little is known about the concept’s relevance for less competitive cities, especially urban centres facing profound problems associated with economic decline, social deprivation and negative external images or ‘structurally disadvantaged cities.’ This paper examines how the NEPUD has played out within two structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities in Northern Europe, Hull (UK) and Bremerhaven (Germany). Both cities face serious social and economic challenges associated with long-term industrial decline, such as high unemployment rates, low skill levels, economic peripherality, and poor external images. Nevertheless, new opportunities opened up by climate change and the green economy have prompted political actors in Hull and Bremerhaven to build new alliances between local government, business and civil society and enhance governance capacities on climate change and green urban development. Highlighting similarities and differences between these two places, the paper reveals how climate change regulations provide opportunities for certain structurally disadvantaged cities to attract ‘green jobs’ and transform their external image
Urban sustainability as a political instrument in the Gulf region exemplified by projects in Abu Dhabi
Get PDFThe states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are highly urbanised. The urban areas in the Gulf are nationally and internationally the focal point of economic development and political attention. Gulf cities are under rapid transformation and spaces of social, economic, ecological and political conflicts. While such dynamics gave rise to a differentiated debate on the political and social dimensions of urban sustainability in postindustrialised countries elsewhere, the narrative differs radically for the Gulf region. Urban sustainability in the Gulf will be discussed in this paper along three case-studies from Abu Dhabi that relate to the terminological and practical inception, adoption and transformation of the concept: The selected examples are modern residential neighbourhoods, the Abu Dhabi Vision 2030, and the eco-city model of Masdar. In combination with the general urban planning history of the city, these projects allow to trace the concept of urban sustainability in time and to understand its adoption into the Arabic language and the interrelations of the term to the Gulf regions’ specific political, ideological, and socio-cultural structures. Based on the works of Gunder (2006), Davidson (2010) and Brown (2016) the case studies reflect the concept of sustainability reduced to ‘sustainable development’. As such, it is becoming an ‘empty signifier’ that can be applied or instrumentalised by the ruling elites. This paper argues that the concept of urban sustainability in the Gulf is a foreign ‘import’ that serves in situ as a political instrument controlled by the ruling elites to stabilise the existing hegemonic power structures and to legitimise the political order
Contesting sustainable transportation: bicycle mobility in Boston and beyond
Get PDFThis article traces the social and political aspects of cycling mobility in the Boston area. For some, attracting a certain desirable demographic by investing in bicycle infrastructure is problematic because it could lead to gentrification. Not investing in low-income neighborhoods, however, could be seen as a perpetuation of an unjust distribution of resources. While the bicycle is a common cost-efficient choice among low-income residents, it also symbolizes a privilege for new urban elites, although for very different reasons. Drawing on interview data gathered between 2015 and 2016 with city officials, cycling associations, and transportation planners, the article details the different narratives that unfold in the construction of bicycling infrastructure: First, bicycling has often been conceptualized in the rhetoric of Boston city officials in terms of economic growth. The promotion of cycling helps satisfy the city’s ostensible need to attract or retain a well-educated, young and mobile workforce for whom good bike infrastructure is a criterion when choosing places to work and live. Second, some have observed that bicycle infrastructure in the US is often included in neighborhoods that are undergoing processes of gentrification or have recently been gentrified. Third, bicycle infrastructure improvements have been met with suspicion or resistance by residents in neighborhoods where displacement – or the fear of it – is an issue. This article shows that bicycle mobility in the US is charged with social dynamics which influence the way bicycle mobility is conceptualized, both as a social practice and as a political strategy.
Belo Monte: Actors and arguments in the struggle over Brazil’s most controversial Amazonian dam
Get PDFThe reservoir of Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam was filled in December 2015. The dam’s planning, licensing and construction had rolled inexorably forward despite opposition from local victims of this development and from a wide array of other actors. Logical, legal and ethical arguments had less effect than the political and business forces prioritizing the dam. Part of the environmental destruction and human-rights violation at Belo Monte was apparently financed by taxpayers in North America and Europe with funds passed through Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) from development policy loans (DPLs) to Brazil by the World Bank. This opens the opportunity for World Bank reforms to eliminate loopholes allowing funding through financial intermediaries. The human and environmental cost of Belo Monte should also give pause to governments and financial institutions in promoting dams as their primary response to energy issues
Sitting on a ticking bomb? A political ecological analysis of conservation conflicts in the Alto Nangaritza Valley, Ecuador
Get PDFThe Alto Nangaritza Valley in southeastern Ecuador constitutes one of the most important hotspots of biodiversity worldwide. Concerns about the exploitation of natural resources in this area have led to the creation of different types of conservation areas and policies during the last 30 years. These territorially-based conservation measures have provoked a series of conflicts between the conservation advocates and the Ecuadorian authorities on one side, and the local population who relies on the exploitation of natural resources on the other side. We analyze these conservation conflicts from a political ecological point of view, beginning with an introduction to the historical context, and then we consider the role of changing national development and spatial transformation priorities in these conflicts. Finally, in the face of the neoextractivist path that Ecuador has taken, we advocate even power relations between resource extraction and conservation policies
Contested extractivism: actors and strategies in conflicts over mining
Get PDFThis article focuses on the question of how the worldwide emergence of conflicts over mining, and particularly in Latin America, can be explained. It aims at systematizing contemporary conflicts over mining. Based on existing case studies and our own research in Colombia, it investigates the issues at stake in conflicts over largescale mining, the strategies which local actors apply, and the factors influencing their actions. The analysis combines theoretical concepts from the study of contentious politics with concepts from spatial theory. The empirical examples demonstrate that conflicts over mining are embedded in overriding processes of transformation in which global processes (the resource boom) come together with national politics and the symbolic and material meaning of specific locations. Political opportunity structures – political programs, institutions, laws, regulations, changes in government and regimes – are pivotal for local conflicts. Protest actors search for allies, responsibilities and solutions on the local, national, or transnational scale. An important characteristic of conflicts over mining is the particular meaning of specific places. This is shaped by the physical-material existence of resource deposits and at the same time by various cultural attributions. In this article, it is demonstrated that both these dimensions of place are relevant to the demands and strategies of collective actors
Sustainability of the remaining agricultural Commons in the Brazilian Northeast: challenges beyond management
Get PDFAbstractThis article examines fundos de pasto (FPs) – a land use system that combines individual and collective appropriation of resources, evaluating its prospects in a rapidly modernizing economy. FPs are ancient and commonly held agricultural and animal husbandry lands located in the Brazilian Northeast Region. Aggressive land grabbing practices in the 1970s and 1980s and resistance of FP communities led to the formal acknowledgment of FPs. Data were obtained via individual interviews, workshops with stakeholders, archival materials from government agencies, and secondary studies. Our findings reinforce the perception of sustainability and higher resistance of these communities in years of severe droughts. Despite their secular sustainability, FPs have been under pressure that may lead to overgrazing, such as reduced grazing areas (on account of land grabbing), population growth, larger herds credit operations that stimulate the substitution of native grazing vegetation, and increasingly serious droughts. Our findings also indicate the existence of tensions between economic development and the sustainability of common resource use systems associated with the conservation of extensive areas. Understanding these tensions requires attention to the dimension of farmers’ political organization, a perspective that goes beyond the measurement of social capital