Australindia: the geography of imperial desire

A tradition of imperial geographical fantasy fuses India and Australia. This paper discusses the strategic role these utopian proposals played in imperial erotics, in aiding the foundational ambition of empire, which is to connect. The proponents of these geographical hybrids (T.J. Maslen, W. Pickering and Thomas Livingston Mitchell) occupied very different positions in Greater Britain's colonial administration and the minority knowledges represented by their speculative overlays of India onto Australia circulated in very different cultural circles. The insider/outsider status of these ex-army, turned surveyors suggests a more complex ecology of alternative discourses circulating in the imperial imaginary: as proposals for future places, the schemes discussed in this article were fictions that aestheticized invasion, making it a metaphor for ultimate unity.     

Traces of empire: Architectural heritage,imperial memory and post-war reconstruction in Sarajevo and Beirut

ABSTRACT

Beirut and Sarajevo share a long Ottoman past followed by urban expansion under the protectorate of further imperial rule – of the French and Habsburg Empires, respectively, as well as a recent experience of urban warfare, segregation, and post-war reconstruction. This article examines how the architectural heritage of empires in the two cities has been transformed, reimagined and mobilized through urban post-war reconstruction by a number of actors: local authorities and politicians, architects, international organizations and investors. Discussing the tensions between the memory of empire and contemporary nation-building processes, the essay argues that the politics of memory and amnesia surrounding the recent wars shape and reconfigure the memory and heritage of empire. Moreover, it reflects how the reshaping of urban space acts both as an arena and as an enhancer of the politics and practices of memory and amnesia.     

Recovering the street: relocalising urban geography

This paper explores how audio walks can help learners re-experience and rethink the nature of urban geography. Urban thinking has increasingly begun to explore the city not from above, but from below; from the street rather than from the elite and in everyday rather than extraordinary ways. The intention has been to reveal the many stories, movements and people that constitute the urban fabric. Drawing on work undertaken in a third year, urban geography module at the University of South Wales, this paper examines how audio walk creation can assist students in comprehending the urban environment as a space that is rich in history, society and culture.     

Constructing gender,constructing the urban: A review of Anglo-American feminist urban geography

This essay explores the changing shape of Anglo-American feminist urban geography, through a discussion of material published in Gender, Place and Culture and elsewhere over the past decade. We contextualize this discussion in relation to the development of feminist urban studies since the 1970s, showing its enduring commitment to work across traditional analytical divides that obfuscate crucial aspects of the mutual constitution of gender and the urban. Focusing on two thematic areas--affective experiences of urban space, and the making of urban public spaces--we examine how this commitment is expressed in recent contributions to feminist urban geography. Both bodies of work successfully challenge a divide between scholarship that focuses on how cities constrain, disadvantage and oppress women, and scholarship that focuses on how cities liberate women. However, we are disturbed by a seeming bifurcation between work concerned with issues of recognition and work focusing on issues of redistribution, with the former being well represented in Gender, Place and Culture and the latter more likely to be aired in 'mainstream' journals. We conclude by reflecting on our lack of perspective on the trajectories of feminist urban geography outside of the Anglo-American context and ask whether the boundaries within which our review has been conducted are themselves gendered.     

Veblen goods and urban distinction: The economic geography of conspicuous consumption

A fundamental observation of 21st century cities is that they have become great centers of consumption. In this paper, we seek to understand the geographic variation in consumer behavior. Using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE), we analyze how consumption differs across 21 major U.S. metropolitan areas, and the association between urban characteristics and consumption. We extend previous geographic analysis of consumption to include luxury goods that are socially visible (conspicuous consumption) and luxury goods that are relatively less visible (inconspicuous consumption). Our analysis shows that conspicuous consumption is more sensitive to an urban context than is inconspicuous consumption.     

Using cultural geography to engage contested constructions of ethnicity and citizenship in Sydney

Much of the critique of the 'cultural turn' erroneously assumes that politics and representation are mutually exclusive. An examination of constructions of ethnicity and citizenship in two Sydney case studies demonstrates the deeply politicized nature of representations. Case study materials are drawn from anti-mosque politics and from discourses surrounding a suburb associated with Indo-Chinese-Australians. Representations are both expressive and constitutive of citizenship. Cultural minorities are compelled to engage in representational battles. Media research and cultural studies theory indicate that audience empowerment offers strategic political promise. Suggestions for empowering cultural minorities in their representational battles, and a research agenda, are articulated.     

Geo-centric education and anti-imperialism: theosophy, geography and citizenship in the writings of J. H. Cousins

While much has been written of the complicity of geography with British Imperialism and projects of the nation state, the focus of this paper is the educational writings of James H. Cousins who advocated geography as a source of ordered knowledge, mystic insight, and resistance to imperialism. Cousins' formulation of nationhood in his writing on national education, his scheme of geographical education and his concern of ideal citizenship are discussed in order to explore his attempt to develop a Theosophical geographical imagination of non-hierarchical difference and global spiritual unity.     

Identity,contingency and the urban geography of 'race'

Traditional research in urban geography concerned with issues of 'race' has focused on a series of substantively important issues, yet with conceptual foundation inadequate to the task. Specifically, this body of work has employed outdated and theoretically limited conceptions of identity without sufficient consideration to the importance of historical and geographic contingency. I argue in this essay that topics of traditional concern to urban geography gain new relevance and importance when they are reconsidered and reworked from a social constructivist perspective that takes seriously the importance of identity and contingency. I illustrate my argument with discussions of two aspects of my current research agenda. First, I discuss how research on urban residential segregation gains considerably from a more sensitive encounter with multifaceted notions of identity that explicitly address geographic contingency. Second, I review recent empirical research on US mortgage-lending markets that demonstrates the geographic and class contingency of discrimination. The paper ends with a call for research that employs multiple methodologies.