Metropolitan Governance in Sydney: A Case of ‘Joint Decision-Making’

This article analyses metropolitan governance arrangements in contemporary Sydney. Debate about the efficacy of these arrangements typically degenerates into an argument about the pros and cons of institutional consolidation. The article moves beyond this dispute, drawing on the concept of ‘actor-centred institutionalism’ to argue that Sydney's urban sprawl, combined with its rigid institutional setting, has produced what can be described as a ‘joint decision system’ of governance. Effective metropolitan governance in Sydney mainly depends on the ability to reach negotiated agreements within this system. However, a rising level of conflict between the New South Wales State government and local councils located within metropolitan Sydney increases the likeliness of undesirable blockades within the joint decision system. The article concludes that a cautious exercise of new overriding powers by the State government is crucial to promoting more effective metropolitan governance in Sydney.     

“Godforsaken hole called … called …”: place,nation, and spatial crisis in Beckett’s fiction and drama

This essay explores how the figuring of place throughout the fiction and drama of Samuel Beckett registers and critiques narratives of place in Irish nationalist discourse. The Irish place-names of Beckett’s texts are read in relation to a toponymic re-territorialisation in post-independence Ireland, a process which enervated place identities synonymous with a Protestant culture and history. In this way, the essay argues that the celebrated “placelessness” of Beckett’s work and the collapse of spatial agency experienced by his protagonists is informed by the construction of nation-space in the country of the author’s early life. The preponderance of scatological place-names in the Beckett oeuvre is approached in these terms and read as a mode of resistance to the self-sacrifice to nation demanded in emplacement.     

So many Glasgows: From ‘personality of place’ to ‘positionality in space and time’

This paper investigates place and positionality in the regional novel against a background of evolving trends in geographical scholarship of place and placelessness. In re‐examining the representation of Glasgow in the urban regional novel, it proposes that a qualitative difference exists between rural and urban epistemologies which relates to the profoundly temporal essence of ‘cityness’. Aspects of both multi‐dimensionality in urban time‐space and of the city as the locus for working‐class oppression are reviewed in the context of a selection of urban imaginings.     

‘Any place to raise children is a good place’: children,housing and neighbourhoods in inner Newcastle,Australia

Neighbourhoods are important spaces of interaction for children. This paper explores the perceptions of residents from seven suburbs in the inner area of Newcastle, Australia concerning what makes a good neighbourhood for children. Key factors identified by residents include the types of dwellings found in the neighbourhood (with detached houses being seen as preferable for children) and the quality of neighbourhood resources. Another important feature was social interactions within the neighbourhood, including interactions between children and adults and interactions between groups of children. The paper examines how different features of neighbourhoods interact to create adult perceptions about whether a neighbourhood is appropriate for children. The paper also points to the ways that children are seen to actively produce the neighbourhood in which they live.     

Fashioning a City of Culture: ‘life and place changing’ or ‘12 month party’?

The current trend in public policy is to valorise culture as a tool for social, economic and political transformation. This paper offers a direct contribution to debates that seek to unpack and problematise cities of culture. We adopt a more circumspect approach towards some aspects of the anticipated transformative powers of culture, and in particular the tendency to fetishize the economics of culture. Our empiricism is grounded in a detailed study of Derry~Londonderry as the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013. We question whether City of Culture was ‘life and place changing’ or a ’12 month party’, and reveal different interpretations of success. In our view there is more potential in viewing culture as a peace resource for overcoming divisions in a socially and culturally segregated city, rather than its ability to tackle entrenched economic problems. Moving beyond the specifics of the case study we also provide lessons for future cities of culture and more generalizable insights for the academic and policy literatures.     

‘Layered Networks’: Imperial Philanthropy in Birmingham and Sydney, 1860–1914

Traditionally, histories of philanthropy have adopted a nationalist focus. Influenced by new imperial history, this article seeks to move beyond national borders by placing metropolitan and colonial philanthropic practices in a single frame of analysis. This approach facilitates not only a comparison of philanthropic activities in two specific sites, Birmingham and Sydney, but a broader analysis of how philanthropic practices in both sites were shaped by ideas in constant flow between Britain, its colonies and the wider world. Evidence from various charities in Birmingham and Sydney reveal the existence of ‘layered networks’ spanning the local, national, imperial and global. As such, this article aims to extend the work of transnational/cross-border histories and geographical networks, by retaining a sense of the local.     

‘The house cannot stay empty’: a case of young rural Nepalis negotiating multilocal householding

Over the past few decades, the mobility of young people abroad for education and labour has been rapidly increasing in Nepal, which has impacted both rural communities and household life. Based on ethnographic field data from Eastern Nepal, this paper explores how multilocality affects the socio-spatial dimensions of householding, i.e. how siblings negotiate their roles as movers and stayers in relation to household obligations, individual aspirations and shifting socio-economic opportunities. This paper draws on and contributes to scholarly debates on how migration impacts social transformation in places, with a particular focus on the dynamics of multilocal householding. We argue that a common agreement between generations and siblings that ‘the house cannot stay empty’ reinforces the importance of the household as a meaningful place exercised through the maintenance of traditional intra- and intergenerational contracts and the practice of rotating presence and absence.     

‘A place to rest’: the role of transitional housing in ending homelessness for women in Calgary,Canada

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine the role of transitional housing in ending homelessness for women and (2) to explore how gender-specific experiences of homelessness may inform housing service delivery models. Using a participatory research methodology, photovoice, and focus group discussion, nine women with lived experience of homelessness were engaged over 10 weeks in a process of reflection and critical dialogue about their previous experiences in a YWCA transitional housing facility and their current YWCA permanent housing in Calgary, Canada. Through this process women revealed that the key aspects of transitional housing that helped them exit homelessness were the interplay of four important factors: safety, time, a community of women with similar experiences, and a supportive environment with access to appropriate services in which to recover from trauma. Although moving directly from homelessness to permanent housing may be appropriate for some women, findings from this study demonstrate that this may not be the case for all. Our results suggest that once permanently housed women, especially those with histories of trauma, struggle with the trade-off between the rules that kept them safe in transitional housing and living as independent, autonomous adults in the community.     

Have sex will travel: romantic ‘sex tourism’ and women negotiating modernity in the Sinai

Since the 1970s, studies on western women's ethnosexual tourist–local relationships have tended to focus on the beaches of the Caribbean and have come to one of two main conclusions – either they are no different from the overtly exploitative relationships of heterosexual male sex tourists or they are different because they involve a softer, caring element of romance. This article proposes that both positions have led to constrictive, circular research that highlights the racialised and economically disparate nature of these exchanges but mostly ignores the importance of imaginative and emotional geographies caught up in such relationships. Based on fieldwork interviews with men and women in the resorts of the South Sinai, Egypt, I argue that these encounters can be seen as examples of a modern subjectivity that are defined by and take place within imagined (fixed) constructions of landscapes, native third world masculinity (in this case Arab/Bedouin), femininity (white, heterosexual, western), freedom and love (spiritual and physical): all presented in some form of opposition to a particularist idea of modernity and viewed through a filter of selective (and spatially circumscribed) histories. By adding a geographical dimension, this article aims to open up the current debate on female sex tourism to a wider range of issues and reveal more of the conflicts, tensions and imaginations that make up these encounters.     

‘Ellie is the coolest’: class,masculinity and place in vehicle engineering students’ talk about literature in a Swedish rural town school

This article aims to show how boys in a vehicle engineering programme at an upper secondary school in Sweden use their reading and literature discussion in their identity construction and how the classroom is converted into a place where the boys create the social space that they are a part of. This article is written in the intersections between different disciplines, research fields, and theoretical and methodological perspectives, and it is argued that this approach makes it possible to exceed each respective limitation and present a more nuanced and far-reaching discussion about how children use literature discussions in the construction of identity and place.     

‘Safe spaces’ and ‘bad’ girls: ‘child marriage victims’’ experiences from a shelter in Eastern India

This article interrogates the politics of safety that underpin rehabilitative practices in a state-funded shelter run by an anti-trafficking NGO in Eastern India. It focuses on the experiences of a group of female adolescents, categorised as ‘child marriage victims’, residing at the shelter. The analysis of in-depth life history interviews collected over a two-week period in October 2014 reveals that the adolescents contest the legislative victimhood imposed on them. For them, their marriages and pre-marital relationships are an expression of romantic and sexual agency, in contravention of familial norms. In this context, the adolescents perceive the shelter as a punitive space and interpret their enforced stay for ‘protection’ and ‘rehabilitation’ as an extension of familial control and regulation of their lives. The protectionism-as-safety discourse rewrites their agency as victimhood and transforms the shelter into a site where everyday forms of gendered power inequalities within social relations in the household are authorised and reproduced by the state and NGO. The adolescents perceive themselves as ‘bad girls’ and adopt various strategies to insist on their rehabilitation into ‘good girls’ to secure release from the shelter often by enacting the ‘victimhood’ expected of them. This allows for unique expressions of agency in an otherwise constrained context but hinders relationships of solidarity with other residents. Overall, the article highlights the need to challenge the ways in which patriarchal norms continue to spatially govern and discipline the expression of female sexuality and agency through 'safe spaces' in India.     

Feminicide as ‘act’ and ‘process’: a geography of gendered violence in Oaxaca

Feminicide in Mexico is most notoriously associated with the serial deaths of women in and around Ciudad Juárez. A 2005 congressional investigation expanded, nonetheless, the geographical scope of feminicide, arguing that the phenomenon was present throughout the country. One location that was identified early on as also experiencing a high rate of feminicide was the state of Oaxaca, in the southern part of Mexico. Inscribed within this shifting geopolitical terrain, this article draws on an understanding of feminicide as both act and process in order to offer a critical portrayal of feminicide in Oaxaca. Beginning with a discussion of the profiles of feminicide in Oaxaca, the analysis moves out to explore the multifaceted processes that enable feminicide to occur. In so doing, we also explore how feminicide intertwines with other forms of social and political violence in Oaxaca. From an ethical-moral terrain, this article joins a broader movement in certain corners of feminist geography that is concerned with ‘making bodies count’ and the politics of witnessing acts of violence.     

‘Green cities’ going greener? Local environmental policy-making and place branding in the ‘Greenest City in Europe’

A growing number of cities around the world have taken advantage of their green image of the purpose of place branding. In the research literature, it is suggested that these practices are motivated by place-based competition over financial and social capital, combined with more holistic motives of sustainable urban development. However, although an increasing number of green cities are engaged in place branding, few studies have researched the impact of place branding on environmental policy-making in a city, building up to the question: how is local environmental policy-making affected by green place branding? Addressing this issue, this paper critically investigates how the continuity of local environmental policy-making is affected by place-branding practices. To tackle this task, the paper firstly develops an analytical framework aiming to understand how green cities emerge and become famous based on their policy-making. Secondly, using that framework, this paper present an in-depth case study of a city branding itself as the ‘Greenest City in Europe’. Drawing on the growing body of work on green cities, this paper investigates the ‘understudied’ practice of using policy for the purpose of place branding as well as the impact of place branding ‘on the environment’.