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Blue-green infrastructure and socio-spatial changes: A study of urban wetlands restoration, housing development and gentrification in London using census data
No full textWhile blue-green infrastructure (BGI), such as urban wetlands, can offer multiple benefits, including public health improvements, social cohesion, and positive environmental impacts, they can inadvertently lead to green-blue gentrification; a phenomenon that remains under examined, for example in cities like London, UK. In London, neighbourhood surrounding the Woodberry and Walthamstow wetlands have experienced social-spatial changes over the past two decades that are worthy of study. Analysis of UK census data from 2001, 2011 and 2021 and GIS analysis tracked changes in population composition nearby (0–300 m) and in the wider area (301–1000 m) surrounding the wetlands indicates that within 300 m of these wetlands, there has been a rise in non-deprived, university-educated residents and a decrease in socially rented housing, compared to 1000 m away. This suggests that nearby private (re)development in tandem with BGI projects may be contributing to green gentrification. As governments continue to promote BGI to address environmental and societal challenges, it is important for urban planners and policymakers to implement strategies to prevent displacement. This includes ensuring that the benefits of BGI are equitably distributed and that vulnerable populations are protected from involuntary relocation
Crafting counterhegemony: A reflection
No full textAs a precious white commodity so entangled with the material culture of European empires, porcelain lends itself to discussions of ideological whiteness as a focus for anti-racist practice. Although a notoriously difficult clay to work with, being sensitive, fragile and friable – much like whiteness itself – raw porcelain’s haptic, therapeutic qualities make it an apt tool for crafting counter-hegemony. In collaboration with participants at workshops and ‘happenings’, a deliberately decolonial methodology is employed to ‘imagine otherwise’ as a praxis of resistance to envision and build a socially just future. These occasions encourage a witnessing of plural perspectives – listening, hearing, holding and embodying others’ voices, experiences and feelings – elevating sensation as a powerful tool for knowledge creation. This chapter reflects on one such event, a ‘Decolonial Dreaming Dinner’, where guests were invited to a special meal and gifted bespoke handmade porcelain plates decorated with quotes from African diaspora writers. The work centres communion and futurity, inspired by Fred Moten’s concept (after Denise Ferreira da Silva) of the condition in which we live being one of ‘difference without separability’ – craft and clay in the service of social justice
Conclusion. Bridging Creativity and Sustainability: Lessons from live experiences, film, and fashion
No full textIn this concluding chapter, the editors of the book reflect on the insights developed through a two-year collaborative editorial project that has led to the publication of two volumes on responsible consumption and production in the creative and cultural industries. Bringing together research on a variety of cultural sectors including live experiences, tourism, arts, film, and fashion, the chapter highlights the sector’s potential to drive change towards a more sustainable future. The discussion examines key themes that have emerged across the two volumes, including the role of CCIs in driving sustainable transitions and their broader social and political significance; the influence of policy, funding, and international standards; social entrepreneurship; environmental challenges facing CCIs; concepts of post-growth, green and regenerative approaches; and social issues such as equity, equality and social justice, as well as barriers to achieving sustainability. It also considers the transformative power of events, artistic expression, and creative entrepreneurship in driving positive change in wider society. As the global sustainability agenda evolves, this chapter calls for stronger institutional frameworks, policy interventions, and educational strategies to embed culture as a fundamental component of sustainability
The Revenge of the Straight Line: Smooth and Striated Space in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon
No full textThis paper explores the philosophical, spatial, and narrative significance of the straight line through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concepts of striated and smooth space, applied to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon. Striated space—structured, hierarchical, and measured—is contrasted with smooth space—fluid, nomadic, and emergent. These spatial modes are exemplified through artistic, musical, and cartographic practices, such as Paul Klee’s wandering lines and John Cage’s aleatoric compositions.
The essay positions the Mason-Dixon Line as both a literal and metaphorical striation of space, marking the imposition of Enlightenment rationalism and colonial order onto the American landscape. Yet, Pynchon’s narrative complicates this binary, depicting the line not only as a tool of abstraction and domination but also as a cross-section that reveals cultural, political, and metaphysical complexity. The novel blends science, fable, and politics, using the line to explore tensions between mapping and lived experience, order and chaos, representation and embodiment.
Critically, the essay challenges the privileging of smooth space over striated space in post-Deleuzian thought, questioning whether anti-representational approaches inadvertently deny the pragmatic and ethical value of judgement, reason, and representation. It argues for a more dialectical understanding of spatial categories and highlights the potential of rational tools—like the straight line—to serve emancipatory, rather than solely oppressive, purposes. Ultimately, the paper suggests that Pynchon’s work, while sceptical of Enlightenment rationalism, offers a nuanced perspective that embraces complexity, ambiguity, and the interplay between order and freedom
Balancing on a Tightrope: Pre-Accession Policy and Pursuit of EU Values
No full textIn the wake of the Russian full scale invasion Ukraine applied for the membership of the European Union. It was shortly followed by Moldova and Georgia also expressing a desire to join the EU. Almost overnight the EU enlargement became a geopolitical matter forcing the EU and its Member States to revive the stalled rapprochement of the Western Balkan countries and to process the applications of aspirants from Eastern Europe. Bearing in mind that all contemporary candidates have a checkered history of compliance with the rule of law standards, the question emerges whether the geopolitical desiderata should trump EU values and thus open the door for fast accessions. This article argues that this dilemma is not new and that the EU has been balancing on a tightrope for many years now. The analysis shows the evolution of pre-accession policy and claims that the EU is procedurally well equipped to pursue its values listed in Article 2 TEU. While candidates cannot be forced into accession against their will, the EU’s allure, combined with resolutely used conditionality and benchmarking, may bear fruit. While there is no guarantee of success, the EU should pull its weight as the failure of its pre-accession policy would further exacerbate the threats posed by the Russian neo-imperialism
Disentangling the Schema Turn: Restoring the Information Base to Conceptual Modelling
No full textIf one looks at contemporary mainstream development practices for conceptual modelling in computer science, these so clearly focus on a conceptual schema completely separated from its information base that the conceptual schema is often just called the conceptual model. These schema-centric practices are crystallized in almost every database textbook. We call this strong, almost universal, bias towards conceptual schemas the schema turn.
The focus of this paper is on disentangling this turn within (computer science) conceptual modeling. It aims to shed some light on how it emerged and so show that it is not fundamental. To show that modern technology enables the adoption of an inclusive schema-and-base conceptual modelling approach, which in turn enables more automated, and empirically motivated practices. And to show, more generally, the space of possible conceptual modelling practices is wider than currently assumed. It also uses the example of bCLEARer to show that the implementations in this wider space will probably need to rely on new pipeline-based conceptual modelling techniques. So, it is possible that the schema turn’s complete exclusion of the information base could be merely a temporary evolutionary detour
The right to the campus- sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in India universities
No full textUniversity spaces are manifestations of ongoing societal gendered power struggles. Hence, any attempt to transform gendered power relations or introduce new practices related to Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) within existing Higher Education (HE) institutions involves creating new gendered rules and practices. Following Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell, this paper argues that to accomplish the above, it is crucial to develop a comprehensive understanding of how and for what purpose university spaces are created, operated, and hence can be transformed Utilising Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a conceptual framework, this research develops a feminist spatial analysis of university campuses in India. Drawing from empirical data collected in the form of forty interviews with students, members of staff, and activists from universities in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Delhi in North India, this paper explores how these campuses are shaped as training grounds to serve the interests of patriarchy, the state and the neoliberal labour market. This creates an environment where gendered surveillance, moral policing and SGBV against women and queer people are not only ingrained in the fabric of the space but also an acceptable norm. Following this, the paper explores how students and staff navigate these university campuses every day and the negotiations they undertake to challenge the normalised SGBV. Finally, inspired by student movements, this paper discusses how patriarchal gender norms and SGBV are being continuously challenged by the emergence of intersectional politics of gender justice
A Multilingual App for Studying Children’s Developing Values: Introducing a New Arabic Translation of the Picture-Based Values Survey and Comparison of Palestinian and Jewish Children in Israel
No full textAlthough over 250 million people speak Arabic as their first language, only a minuscule fraction of developmental science studies Arab children. As values are a core component of culture, understanding how values develop is key to understanding development across cultures. Little is known about young Arab children's values. We developed an Arabic version of the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS-C) and implemented it in a multilingual application, adapted for five-year-olds by recording the instructions and value item captions. We then compared the results in Arabic to those from the more established Hebrew version, with Hebrew-speaking children as a comparison group. A pilot study (N=63) provided preliminary support that the measure is working well in Arabic and Hebrew. In Study 2, 400 5-12-year-old children reported their values (50% in Arabic, 50% in Hebrew) in a preregistered study. Multidimensional Scaling analyses revealed structural patterns that closely correspond to Schwartz's (1992) theoretical structure in both languages. Replicating past findings, power values were less important than benevolence in both cultural groups, and girls ranked self-enhancement values lower than boys (but not in Hebrew speakers). We further explored age and cultural differences in value development. Value consistency increased with age in both cultures, peaking at age 9-10. Cultural comparisons revealed several differences in value importance between the two cultures, and lower value consistency and coherence in Arabic-speaking children. These results establish a tool for studying value development in Arab children, and more broadly, understanding the basic motivations driving populations that were hardly studied before
Co-creating with Feral Landscapes: Delineating a useful definition and ontology of (re)wilding for the architectural fields
No full textThe term “rewilding”, or “wilding” as preferred here, has seen an extraordinary success in contemporary society and has been used in a baffling range of fields. Yet these practices share a radical paradigm shift towards a regenerative engagement with ecosystems and species, a loosening of control leading to promising ecological and economic results in rural areas, although not without problems. These practices acknowledge the capacity for ecological and biological life to self-generate, and as a result, let go of control, to co-create landscapes with its agency. These action based research and trials echo and embody the simultaneous rise of dynamic and vitalist philosophies such as new materialism, eco feminism, and modern animism.
A diagram locating various case studies in relation to degrees of control/wildness and scale shows that (re)wilding seems to be broadly used in society and in the field of landscape architecture as a reduction of control on ecosystems from an existing state. This allows them to become wilder. Feral landscapes is proposed as a type of wilding where ecosystems and species are primarily left to emerge, but not entirely, and thus are equally wild and domestic.
Humans in feral landscapes act as meta ecosystem engineers, yet our disturbance is limited so that ecosystems are allowed to diversify and provide
Facemask memories: A qualitative approach to people’s construal of protective health behaviours
No full textBackground. Understanding how people construe new health behaviours is important for public health policy and pandemic preparedness. Research suggests that people are willing to adhere to facemask guidance over time, but that this willingness can depend on various factors. To understand people’s construal of mandated protective health behaviours, we explored a previously untapped source of knowledge – people’s memories from lockdown concerning facemasks – through the Value Belief Norm theory. Methods. The sample comprised 68 participants aged 18-72, 53% female, who spontaneously identified facemasks as a lockdown-related object in their prompted memories. Memories were elicited via three open-ended questions involving a general period-cue (i.e., lockdown). The analytical procedure involved 1) Inductive thematic analysis, 2) Theory-led thematic analysis. Results. Our thematic analysis showed that facemask wearing was predominantly viewed in self-enhancing, normative, and moral terms. Although participants’ responses were not uniformly positive, they showed acceptance and adherence to mandated facemask wearing in memories elicited >9 months after UK guidance announcement. This variability was further evident in expressions of contrasting values. Conclusions. The complexity and heterogeneity of the facemask memories revealed a storied and constructed nature of facemask memories, with a remarkable level of details and vividness. Our findings suggest that people’s values and individual beliefs contributed to various ways of sensemaking around facemask wearing. In the current exploratory research, the overall picture of the public response to health guidance was that of psychological resilience – people’s construed facemask-wearing as a protective health behaviour and supported its uptake. Future directions to enhance public health policy are discussed