The moral high ground in Albany: rhetorics and practices of an ‘Olmstedian’ park, 1855–1875

The mid-nineteenth century park movement represented a reaction to the tensions of growing, industrializing urban spaces. Parks provided a concrete way of aligning moral agendas with the built urban form, and a vehicle for varied and sometimes contradictory elite and middle class concepts of the purposes of public space. This paper describes conflicting strands in the rhetorics and practices of the ‘Olmstedian’ Washington Park in Albany, NY, placing them in the broader context of park ideologies. Contradictory strands in its discourses and moral agendas were never resolved, but they accomplished their fundamental purpose of creating a rhetorical space for civic leadership, and exclusive residential and public spaces for the middle class. Park regulations clearly expressed the culture of ‘refinement’ which accompanied the emergence of middle class sensibilities in the era before the electric streetcar. The park realigned elite residential development and guided Albany's subsequent social geography.     

Empire, emigration and school geography: changing discourses of Imperial citizenship, 1880–1925

The state school curriculum, and geography in particular, played a role in encouraging emigration to the colonies, if not in actually educating for emigration. Emigration was an implicit and explicit topic in school geography, and was increasingly endorsed after the 1885 Revised Instructions to inspectors of schools which explicitly sought the promotion of emigration to young people as an “honourable enterprise”. Early-twentieth century school geography texts were part of the broader imperial discourse which valorized the settler Dominions over the tropical colonies and portrayed them as the good citizen's choice for emigration. The 1922 Empire Settlement Act represented the British government's most direct intervention in supporting out-migration from Britain, but texts at this time were generally less jingoistic than some of their forerunners, in keeping with the changed attitudes in post-World War I Britain.     

Notes on Contributors

By the end of the century, and under pressure from new scientific theories of minds and emotions, the languages in which the Victorians understood the relationship between inner feeling and moral action came under great pressure. At the same time, the established association between aesthetic and moral value was being challenged by aestheticism's espousal of ‘art for art's sake’. This essay examines one very distinctive response to these issues: Vernon Lee's development of the concept of ‘empathy’. Lee offers empathy as a scientifically verifiable process which explains why beauty matters to us. She also seeks to use it to mediate a new position capable of acknowledging the power of aestheticism's critique of Victorian moralism, while re-establishing moral action as central to aesthetic experience.     

“Loyalty” in National Socialism: A contribution to the moral history of the National Socialist period

This article is based on the assumption that core concepts of National Socialism—different from Marxism—turn not on economic, but on moral concepts, or categories heavily related to such concepts as honour, loyalty, decency and comradeship. The article investigates National Socialism from the standpoint of moral judgments, and turns this investigation into part of a moral history. It further is concerned with the continuing impact of National Socialism beyond the military, political and ideological defeat of 1945; the moral historical approach can show how this influence continues at a level hitherto relatively unexamined. The moral history of National Socialism involves more than a shift of perspective. It opens up a specific, barely explored, field of research. This draws upon a variety of sources, especially films (Hotel Sacher—1939 and Downfall—2004 are discussed). The examination is directed to the concept of loyalty within this framework; it is a concept of virtue, which is moreover suited to illuminate some aspects of the functioning of Nazi morality, and its subsequent influence.     

‘Partially provided’: geography at the University of Toronto, 1844–1935

In universities, as in everyday life, there is a fundamental need for geographical knowledge, even when no formal departments exist to provide instruction. This need was true in the University of Toronto during the decades before Griffith Taylor was appointed in 1935 to the first university Chair in geography in English‐speaking Canada. Using matriculation and annual university course examinations, university calendars and the papers of President Falconer and Professors James Mavor and Harold Innis, I trace the development of geography at the University of Toronto from the mid‐nineteenth century to the arrival of Taylor. Courses taught in selected aspects of physical and human geography in the Departments of Geology, Political Economy and History are particularly significant. Underlying this instruction, and also the desire to establish a geography department, was an acute awareness of the fundamental importance of geography to help understand a large regionally complex homeland, and a wider world.     

Regional Differences in High and Technical School Demand in Melbourne, 1951–1985

Over half of all young people in Australian government schools do not complete secondary education and leave school without any formal qualification. This paper uses a regional framework to examine long-term trends in retention rates in different areas of Melbourne and concludes that in both older established and newly urbanized parts of the city the post-war transformation of government high schools into a mass system has failed to break down barriers based on social area. Marked regional differences were found in demand for high school, as well as a long downward trend during the 1970s (despite recession). Technical schools have displayed comparatively minor regional differences and retention rates grew during the 1970s. This suggests that the academic curriculum of high schools continues to be culturally selective. In addition to residential differentiation, important structural features, such as the relative over-supply of technical school places, were identified as contributing to regional trends.     

An ecology of postcoloniality: disciplining nature and society in Malaya, 1948–1957

This paper examines the territorialization of the Malayan rainforest by the British colonial authorities during the Malayan Emergency in the decade prior to political independence in 1957. Through the events of the Emergency the Malaysian rainforest was constructed as a space of fear and violence in opposition to the orderly rule of the state. Disassociation from the forest was the visible criterion of good or bad, and the struggle over land became recast as a moral struggle between good (the state) and bad (the Communists). The military campaign in the forest was accompanied by legislation designed to control and discipline the Malayan population in the urban areas especially those expelled from the forests and forcibly incarcerated in the ‘New Villages’. The result was an ecology that allowed the most efficient monopoly of violence by the state and of the means to discipline its subject-citizens.     

Urban makeovers,homeless encampments,and the aesthetics of displacement

ABSTRACT

This paper brings together geographic literature on homelessness and theories of aesthetics to analyse how city beautification projects in contemporary American cities promote the displacement of homelessness. Based on research conducted in Fresno, California, I argue that the seemingly innocuous realm of aesthetics often undergirds anti-homeless politics. In Fresno, officials sought to create a visual landscape that was conducive to middle-class consumption and leisure, such that the project of building a desirable city was deeply influenced by market pressures. In turn, homeless encampments were framed as unpleasant objects that must be removed to make way for economic opportunities. Efforts to reinforce this ‘live play work’ aesthetic resulted in a politics of displacement and criminalisation. Yet people who resided in encampments championed an alternative aesthetic practice grounded in reuse, survival and collective appropriation of urban space. Thus, the example of Fresno shows that aesthetic norms not only reinforce revanchist politics, but simultaneously present the possibility of resistance.     

论颓废美的道德性——波德莱尔的文化道德观解读

颓废美以丑恶为美的原则不仅在美学上有别于传统的美学理念,在道德上也有悖于传统的道德观念。由颓废美表现出来的颓废道德观也很难为众人所接受。如果我们从文化道德的角度而不是从实践道德的方面去审视颓废美的道德性,就能发现其存在的真实性、丰富性和现代性的特性,颓废美的道德观因之而具有其存在的合理性。     

Governing the passions: Sketches on Lodovico Antonio Muratori's moral philosophy

Muratori has often been portrayed as a moral philosopher who represented the traditional neo-Aristotelian mainstream of Italian intellectual life in the early part of the eighteenth century. His loyalty to Christianity as a basis from which societies ought to be reformed has determined his reputation as a ‘pre-enlightened’ thinker. Yet, it is argued here that not only was Muratori very much in touch with the state of the art of early eighteenth-century moral philosophy, but also that he was really a historian with political interests who came to develop a renewed Christian moral philosophy as a tool to respond to the political challenges of the time. Fallen man's preference for self-preservation to natural freedom prepared him for engaging in increasingly sociable contexts that required further self-disciplining and moral improvement. Thus, man cultivated his fallen condition into prudence and ultimately developed a capacity both for charity and for functioning in modern commercial societies.     

‘We don't do dots ‐ ours is lines’ — Asserting a Barkindji Style

ABSTRACT This paper offers an ethnographic exploration of the assertion of a ‘Barkindji style’ art: why this matters and to whom it matters. Focusing particularly on the Darling River area of Wilcannia and on the period from the 1980s to the present, the increasing interest in art‐making by local Aboriginal people is considered. Through a dialogue with artists, artworks, and others, the work examines the changing form, design and content of art and the role of art in defining ideas of Barkindji Aboriginal culture and tradition. Invocations by key cultural brokers to produce work that is seen to ‘belong to us’ is explored in terms of the cultural, political, and personal work that this involves; particularly as this intersects with ideas of artistic freedoms versus artistic direction by cultural brokers. The paper discusses the personal considerations and tensions that come to bear in the processes connected with production of art and its making. In so doing, this paper engages with, and extends, the work of Tacon et al. (2003), Cooper (1994), Kleinert (1994) and Morphy (2001) as this pertains to art ‘styles’ and material culture from what is widely referred to as south‐eastern Australia.     

Toronto Inc? Planning the Competitive City in the New Toronto

This paper analyses recent developments in urban planning in the City of Toronto. A municipality of 2.4 million inhabitants that makes up the inner half of the Greater Toronto Area, the City of Toronto was consolidated from seven municipalities in 1998. Planning practice, discourse, and "vision" in the new City of Toronto are shaped by the city's bid for the 2008 Olympics, related proposals for waterfront redevelopment, and preparations for a new official plan. In the context of comparative debates on trends in local governance, we see current planning strategies in Toronto as one of several strategic sites in which Toronto is consolidated into a "competitive city." Historically, the formation of the competitive city in Toronto must be seen as a result of the impasse of postwar metropolitan planning in the early 1970s, the sociospatial limitations of downtown urban reform politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and the neoliberal restructuring and rescaling of the local state in the 1990s. Theoretically, we draw on the global city research paradigm, regime and regulation theory, and neo-Gramscian urban political theory to suggest that planning the competitive city signals shifts in the sociopolitical alliances, ideological forms, and dominant strategies that regulate global-city formation. These constellations and strategies threaten to reconstitute bourgeois hegemony in Toronto with a series of claims to urbanity.     

Moral landscapes and manipulated spaces: gender, class and space in Victorian reformatory schools

This paper provides a comparative study of two Victorian reformatory schools; the Philanthropic Society farm school for boys at Redhill, Surrey, and Red Lodge girls' reformatory in Bristol. Situating the study within the context of broader Victorian assumptions about forms of human settlement and association most likely to foster "morally acceptable" behaviour, it explores contemporary ideas about the location and design of these environments of moral reform. It suggests that dominant ideologies of class and gender were central considerations in determining the location and design appropriate to each institution.     

Manipulating the metonymic: the politics of civic identity and the Bristol Cenotaph, 1919–1932

The city of Bristol was one of the last major cities in Great Britain to unveil a civic memorial to commemorate the Great War 1914–1918. After Leicester (1925), Coventry (1927) and Liverpool (1930), Bristol's Cenotaph was unveiled in 1932, 14 years after the Armistice. During that lapse, its location, source of funding, and commemorative function were the focus of widespread disagreement and division in the city. This paper examines the nature of these disputes. The authors suggest that the tensions in locating a war memorial may have their origins in historic enmities between political and religious factions in the city. By examining in detail the source and manifestations of these disputes, the authors offer a detailed exemplar of how memory is shaped and controlled in British urban spaces.     

“Reckless,cavalier, dismissive,petty and vengeful”?: The impact of municipal constituency change on candidate diversity

The demographic composition of electoral districts has an important influence on the identities of candidates because they affect the political opportunity structures of ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups. The 2018 municipal election in Toronto, Canada provides a unique opportunity to examine how changes to electoral districts impacted the participation of visible minority candidates. At the end of the initial nomination period, the right-wing populist provincial government of Doug Ford reduced the number of city council wards from 47 to 25, which also affected the boundaries of school board districts. Candidates and aspirants then had the opportunity to re-register in the new constituencies. This change constitutes a natural experiment that allows us to isolate the impact of district structure on the relationship between demographics and candidate ethnicity. Using logistic and Poisson regression modeling, we compare the proportion and number of Visible Minority and White candidates before and after consolidation. Contra expectations, we did not find any effect on minority candidates, but show some evidence that consolidation reduced opportunities for Whites. We trace this unexpected finding to the geographic patterns of ethnic settlement.     

Isabelle of France,queen of England— a reconsideration

In speaking of historiographical attitudes towards Edward III, Professor May McKisack points out “a problem of historical reputation” (1960:1). If, indeed such a problem exists, it is not unique to Edward III. Indeed McKisack's analysis applies also to the case of Edward's mother, Isabelle of France. The political interplay between Isabelle of France, Edward II, the English nobility and the townsmen raised some enigmas surrounding the queen: a stranger of French birth in England, just ten years before the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War, Isabelle succeeded in uniting all the vital powers of the kingdom under her flag and in bringing about an unprecedented action—the deposing of the king of England. Contemporary sources ascribe an indescribable beauty to Isabel, also devotion and moral strength. Yet contrasted to the figure emerging from the contemporary sources, often in violent contrast to it, is the she-wolf image, perpetuated by research in the context of Isabelle's activities. The wide gap separating the she-wolf from the charming figure of the sources creates a paradox, even a challenge, which requires explanation.     

Art,Transformation, Liberation: Balzac's Eugénie Grandet

Balzac's works about actual artists like Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu have long been studied to derive the author's ideas about the artistic creative process. Eugénie Grandet also deals with art, however, even though there is not a real artist in it. In telling the story of Eugénie and her cousin Charles, Balzac suggests his views on the effects of beauty created by artful arrangement as opposed to the beauty in nature uncrafted by human art.     

Toronto,an American city: Aspects of its postwar planning, 1940–1960

Toronto is conventionally considered quite unlike “American cities.” This article does not fundamentally challenge this convention, but does suggest that differences between Toronto and American cities may be overdrawn and that Toronto may have more American elements than is generally recognized. The evidence presented in this study comes from three episodes in Toronto’s postwar planning history: creation of an ambitious postwar master plan in 1943–44, formation of metropolitan government and planning in the mid-1950s, and the design and construction of the iconic suburban neighborhood of Don Mills also in the 1950s. All three show strong American planning connections. The article then offers some reasons why these American planning ideas did not produce an “American city,” and concludes by challenging the view that it is due to Canada having a fundamentally different urban culture.     

JAPANESE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT IN CANADIAN CITIES and REGIONS, 1985–1993

The location and type of Japanese property investments in Canada are examined as a case study of the increasing globalization of property markets and the remarkable rise of Japanese international investors in the late 1980s. Unpublished official statistics and company interviews indicate investment patterns had uneven implications for Canada's cities and regions. Even though Toronto is often seen as Canada's world city, Japanese investors as a whole overlooked the commercial potential of its property markets. The majority of their real estate investments took advantage of Japanese tourism growth in Pacific Canada and were associated with hotels and golf courses in Vancouver and its surrounding region. The author stresses the importance of Japanese perceptions, as well as local opportunities and constraints, in shaping the geography of Japanese real estate investment in Canada. L'emplacement et le type des investissements japonais au Canada sont examinés comme étude de cas sur la globalisation croissante des marchés de biens et la mon-tée remarquable des actionnaires internationaux japonais à la fin des années 80. Les statistiques officielles non-publiées montrent des implications inégales dans les villes et les régions du Canada. Bien que Toronto soit considéré souvent comme la ville mondiale du Canada, les actionnaires japonais dans ?ensemble ont négligé son potentiel commercial. La majorité des investissements sur les biens immobiliers ont pris avantage de la croissance du tourisme japonais au Canada Pacifique, et fut liee aux hotels et terrains de golf à Vancouver et dans les environs de la ville. ?auteur souligne ?importance des perceptions japonaises, aussi bien que les occasions et contraintes locales, en façonnant la géographie de leur investissement de biens au Canada. Mots-clés: investissement de biens au Canada; actionnaires japonais; investissements immobiliers