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Space II
Full text linkSpace is a key geographical concept. Along with other
core concepts such as place, landscape, scale, mobility,
nature, and environment, it helps define the discipline
as one that is explicitly spatial in its focus and thinking.
Unsurprisingly then, geography is often described as
a spatial science. As such, while human geographers
are interested in social, political, cultural, economic,
and environmental issues and undertake historical analyses,
they do so cognizant of the role of space in shaping
the world around us and using theories and methods
that illustrate why space and spatial processes matter.
This article details how thinking about space has evolved
significantly since the 1950s, focusing in particular
on how theorists have conceptualized the ontology of
space. To illustrate the differences between the various
ways of thinking about space, an example of how cities
are understood within different ontological frameworks
is used
Radical Theory/Critical Praxis: Academic Geography Beyond the Academy?
Full text linkAbstract included in text
Thinking about maps
Full text linkGiven the long history of map-making and its scientific and scholarly traditions
one might expect the study of cartography and mapping theory to be relatively
moribund pursuits with long established and static ways of thinking about
and creating maps. This, however, could not be further from the truth. As
historians of cartography have amply demonstrated, cartographic theory and
praxis has varied enormously across time and space, and especially in recent
years. As conceptions and philosophies of space and scientific endeavour
have shifted so has how people come to know and map the world.
Philosophical thought concerning the nature of maps is of importance
because it dictates how we think about, produce and use maps; it shapes our
assumptions about how we can know and measure the world, how maps
work, their techniques, aesthetics, ethics, ideology, what they tell us about
the world, the work they do in the world, and our capacity as humans to
engage in mapping. Mapping is epistemological but also deeply ontological
– it is both a way of thinking about the world, offering a framework for
knowledge, and a set of assertions about the world itself. This philosophical
distinction between the nature of the knowledge claims that mapping is able
to make, and the status of the practice and artefact itself, is intellectually
fundamental to any thinking about mapping.
In this opening chapter we explore the philosophical terrain of contemporary
cartography, setting out some of the reasons as to why there are a diverse
constellation of map theories vying for attention and charting some significant
ways in which maps have been recently theorized. It is certainly the case that maps are enjoying something of a renaissance in terms of their popularity,
particularly given the various new means of production and distribution.
New mapping technologies have gained the attention of industry, government
and to some extent the general public keen to capitalize on the growing
power, richness and flexibility of maps as organizational tools, modes of
analysis and, above all, compelling visual images with rhetorical power. It
is also the case that maps have become the centre of attention for a diverse
range of scholars from across the humanities and social sciences interested
in maps in-and-of-themselves and how maps can ontologically and epistemologically
inform other visual and representational modes of knowing and
praxis. From a scientific perspective, a growing number of researchers in
computer science and engineering are considering aspects of automation of
design, algorithmic efficiency, visualization technology and human interaction
in map production and consumption.
These initiatives have ensured that mapping theory over the past twenty
years has enjoyed a productive period of philosophical and practical
development and reflection. Rather than be exhaustive, our aim is to
demonstrate the vitality of present thinking and practice, drawing widely
from the literature and signposting relevant contributions among the essays
that follow. We start the chapter by first considering the dimensions across
which philosophical differences are constituted. We then detail how maps
have been theorized from within a representational approach, followed by
an examination of the ontological and epistemological challenges of postrepresentational
conceptions of mapping
The relational articulation of housing crisis and activism in post-crash Dublin, Ireland
No full textIn this chapter, we look at the evolving relationships between the commodifi cation of housing and the role of activism in the Irish context. We draw on the periodizations of Manuel Aalbers (2015), with respect to the changing role of housing, and Margit Mayer (2013), with respect to social movements as shaped by neoliberalism, to unpack the ways in which the particular character of housing systems both creates specific crises and necessitates specific con tingent and conjunctural responses from activist movements. In line with her
long-standing interest in urban social movements and politics, urban scholar Mayer (2013, 5) has suggested the need to consider how contemporary activ ism responds to, and is shaped by, the impact of the different waves of the neoliberalization of cities because ‘urban protests and the claims made on urban development address—and correspond with—specifically neoliberal designs and enclosures’. In her periodization, she highlights four phases: Fordist/Keynesian norms (up to the early 1980s); roll-back neoliberalization in the 1980s; roll-out neoliberalization in the 1990s; and the current phase marked by the triumph of austerity and the financialization of the economy. Building on Mayer’s argument, we analyse the strategies developed by hous ing activists in Ireland as a response to different waves (and crises) in the neoliberalization of housing. To account for the evolution of the housing sec tor, we also draw upon the periodization of housing developments proposed by Aalbers (2015) who distinguishes between (a) the pre-modern period; (b) the modern/Fordist period; (c) the flexible neoliberal period; and (d) the late neoliberal/postcrisis one
Living labs and vacancy in the neoliberal city
Full text link© 2017 Elsevier Ltd This paper evaluates smart city (SC) initiatives in the context of re-using vacant property, focusing on the role of living labs (LL). LL utilise Lo-Fi technologies to foster local digital innovation and support community-focused civic hacking, running various kinds of workshops and engaging with local citizens to co-create digital interventions and apps aimed at 'solving’ local issues. Five approaches to LL are outlined and discussed in relation to vacancy and gentrification: pop-up initiatives, university-led activities, community organised venues/activities, citizen sensing and crowdsourcing, and tech-led regeneration initiatives. Notwithstanding the potential for generating temporary and independent spaces for transferring digital competences and increasing citizens' participation in the SC, we argue LL foster largely a form of participation framed within a model of civic stewardship for 'smart citizens’. While presented as horizontal, open, and participative, LL and civic hacking are rooted often in pragmatic and paternalistic discourses and practices related to the production of a creative economy and a technocratic version of SC. As such, by encouraging a particular kind of re-use of vacant space, LLs are used actively to bolster the Smart City discourse, as part of the more general neoliberalization of urban political economy. We discuss these approaches and issues generally, drawing on previous fieldwork and with respect to a case study of Dublin, Ireland
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