Resisting mothers,making gender: teenage girls in the United States and the articulation of femininity

Much of the feminist literature on teenage girls in the west has tended to polarize around the issues of girls' gendered agency and victimization. In contrast, this article explores the ambiguous relationship between gender resistance and compliance. I argue that while girls clearly articulate their own agency, they do so through a reliance on gendered and heterosexual norms, identities, and categories. The article draws on examples from my research with girls in South Carolina, USA, in particular girls' narratives about their mothers. I suggest that girls situate their gendered practices and evaluate femininity in part via evaluations of their mothers' gender, sexual and nurturing practices. Mothers often stand in as representatives of normative and traditional femininity for the girls; yet girls do not realize that they reproduce, rather than resist, aspects of femininity, even as they criticize generational differences and their mothers' versions of feminine and gendered behaviors.     

Picturing the city: young people's representations of urban environments

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students' drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people's representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people's experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.     

Public religion and urban space in Europe

Conflicts related to demographic and cultural change in Europe regularly find their expression in struggles over the presence and visibility of religious buildings and groups. As this editorial argues, these conflicts can best be understood from a postsecular perspective that takes into account overlapping and diverging histories of state-formation and secularization. The papers collected for this special issue on public religion and urban space demonstrate that many of the difficulties that European societies face in accommodating religious diversity stem from historically formed relationships between national political identities and religious identities. In many European cases, secularization did not entail a fundamental separation between religion and politics but the formal establishment of one single national church or two competing ones, but territorially based national churches. One of the consequences of these types of establishments is that certain religious traditions are generally described and experienced as fitting with the nation and others are not. The contributors to this special issue show in detail that the struggles of contemporary religious movements in Europe to become present in the public domain are related to commonly accepted understandings of where and how religion should manifest itself in the urban environment, based on the public life of religious traditions that are considered part of the nation.     

Dystopian space in colonial representations and interventions: Sierra Leone as 'the white man's grave'

This paper explores the power of dystopian imaginations. It does so by examining the form and function of dystopias in colonial contexts, both in general and through one particularly salient and significant colonial dystopia, which was known widely in imperial England as 'the white man's grave'. A detailed analysis of the form and function of dystopian accounts of Sierra Leone, with particular attention to Richard Burton's negative appraisal of the colony, illuminates a particular form of geographical colonial discourse, and clarifies some of the power relations more generally associated with dystopian representations and interventions.     

Dystopian space in colonial representations and interventions: Sierra Leone as 'the white man's grave'

This paper explores the power of dystopian imaginations. It does so by examining the form and function of dystopias in colonial contexts, both in general and through one particularly salient and significant colonial dystopia, which was known widely in imperial England as 'the white man's grave'. A detailed analysis of the form and function of dystopian accounts of Sierra Leone, with particular attention to Richard Burton's negative appraisal of the colony, illuminates a particular form of geographical colonial discourse, and clarifies some of the power relations more generally associated with dystopian representations and interventions.     

The conservation and management of historic urban space

In practice, the care of historic urban space is dominated by planning professionals whose bias is towards the broad remit of the conservation of the built heritage; it remains the exception for other professions to take an active role in the protection of spatial elements of the historic townscape. Neither do these areas enjoy the same degree of statutory protection as their built counterpart, even though they may have played an equally important role in the evolution of our towns and are an integral part of the urban form. This study is the first stage of the author's on‐going research into the value of historic space within the modern urban environment and the level of protection afforded it by the planning system. The results of this pilot study are used to suggest a professional and statutory framework, based upon inter‐disciplinary co‐operation, from which the full value of townscapes may be safeguarded in the future.     

Queers in the American City: Transgendered perceptions of urban space

This paper explores the complex relationship between transgendered people and cities in the USA, and, in particular, their relationship with queer spaces within those cities. Some have argued that queer spaces occur at the margins of society and constitute a safe haven for LGBT oppressed by the hetero-normative nature of urban areas. Data from a survey of 149 transgendered individuals indicate that although queer spaces provide a measure of protection for gender variant people, the gendered nature of these spaces results in continued high levels of harassment and violence for this population. The author argues that the strongly gendered dimensions of these spaces suggests that a discursive re-visioning of gender is needed to create more transgender friendly urban spaces.     

Public space and memories of migration: erasing diversity through urban redevelopment in France

This article examines the meaning of public space and impact of heritage-led urban redevelopment in a diverse neighbourhood in Montpellier, France. It traces the relocation of a North African market from a central city plaza in favour of French antiques, and the resulting contestation over what constitutes local heritage, who has the capacity to determine how public space is used, and the seeming erasure of migrant identities and memories from an important community site. The paper considers how urban areas are re-imagined through a change in the materiality of public space, and outlines the role of outdoor markets in defining the social function of such spaces. The paper examines the intertwining of physical erasure (urban redevelopment and the removal of a diverse food market) and cultural erasure (the loss of certain community memories), and how these processes speak to broader debates about French national identity, cultural heritage, and the meanings attached to public spaces.     

Interpreting urban space through cognitive map sketching and sequence analysis

Traditionally, analysis of sketch maps of urban areas has focused on the interpretation of hand‐drawn renditions of features that are most familiar to individuals. Few researchers have investigated the sequence that sketchers use to identify features on the urban landscape and how these features are linked together to form a coherent ‘picture’ of an area. This article builds upon previous research by exploring the sequential pattern of sketch map creation. Two research questions are proposed, namely, can a repetitive sequential order in element inclusion be identified for different individuals sketching the same urban environment? If so what features are mapped in which order to create the sketchers' image of the city? Findings suggest that three distinct groups of cognitive maps exist, namely, sequential, spatial and hybrid, and that the map elements of each group are organised in a distinctive manner with paths and landmarks as principal elements. It is suggested that insights into this process provide more substance to understanding how individuals interpret and structure urban space and use this information to navigate both known and new environments.     

Performing space across time: a 520-year anniversary in a western Ukrainian village

Abstract

Festivals and celebrations have special significance for the foundation of community and collective memory. They are part of social practice and, at the same, also reveal much about current and historical social structures, traditions and rituals. Festivals contrast with everyday life, taking participants away from it; celebrations, conversely, celebrate and reinforce social hierarchies, the role of individuals in the community and the characteristics of the community. This is clearly demonstrated in this contribution on the example of the festivities of two western Ukrainian village communities celebrating 520 years of existence. The communities’ notable peculiarity lies in the fact that they were founded as a single village. Due the partitioning of Poland along the Zbru? River, however, the two sides were situated in Austria-Hungary and Russia, respectively. In the interwar period, they were located in Poland and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Second World War, they were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Although they did not have borders for the first time in 150 years, they nevertheless continued to exist as independent villages. Given this starting point, a celebration of the 520th anniversary of the founding of these communities obviously has very complex historical contexts within different past state regimes. The following analysis of the village festival will first demonstrate how such a celebration was achieved. Further, it will examine the extent to which a socio-spatial demarcation was reproduced just as efforts were simultaneously made to eliminate it. The village is a striking example of the manifestation of the experience and perception, design and imagination of present and past spaces.     

Monumental urban space and national identity: the early twentieth century new plan of Thessaloniki

This paper is a contribution to the study of the ideological production of urban space through the analysis of the meaningful structure of the early-20th-century new plan of the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, and an examination of the ideological function of the plan for its producers as well as for the Greek public. The plan was prepared by a team led by the French architect Ernest Hébrard working in close connection with Greek government officials. It was partially implemented, and has been considered the first major urban intervention in Europe after World War I. The paper combines a historical geographical perspective with insights from the theory and methodology of semiotics. Through a holistic and meticulous analysis of the plan, its urban, aesthetic, nationalist and orientalist aspects are retraced and compared to the identity notions of the Greek politicians and the public.     

Global flows and everyday violence in urban space: The port-city of Buenaventura,Colombia

Buenaventura, Colombia's rapidly expanding Pacific port, is simultaneously a city of violence. Focusing the linkages between local violence and the port economy, this contribution explores the role the port's global interconnections play for Buenaventura as a site of violence. In which ways does everyday violence shape urban spatial practices, particularly movement? How do every day coping strategies, reacting to a violent context, produce urban space? I suggest an analysis that links the production of urban space through everyday practices to the notion of violence as inherent to urban power relations on the one, and to the role of global flows of goods in urban space on the other hand. The main argument is that, global interconnections through the port are not decoupled from, but rather constitute a condition for violence in Buenaventura, particularly in neighbourhoods next to port terminals. This urban space is constituted both by daily violence and by stretching along global supply chains. Both violence and the secured, off-access port spaces shape, transform and limit inhabitants' mobility, while they enable global flows. I identify coping strategies such as mapping safe spaces, accompaniment, adaptation of movement to zig-zag patterns, and organised spatial strategies. The article contributes to recent debates on violence and the everyday, and urban space shaped by violent global-local encounters.     

Circulation,modernity, and urban space in 1960s Beirut

In this essay, I explore the role of circulation in Beirut’s urban space and society in the early 1960s. Drawing primarily from the Lebanese francophone newspaper L’Orient, I show how the rise of automobility in postcolonial Beirut brought with it the imposition of certain kinds of moral and civic geographies that prescribed how citizens should use and move through the city. I argue that the newspaper’s narratives about matters of infrastructure and traffic law abidance reveal concerns with not just how people moved through the city, but with the everyday configuration of a rational, modern, biopolitical order.     

Screening the 'other' Paris: Cinematic representations of the French urban periphery in La Haine and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er

The emergence of the cinéma des banlieues in France during the mid-1990s reflected a more general socio-political identification with the run-down cités of the disadvantaged urban periphery as emblematic sites of fracture sociale. This article aims to consider the spatial representation of the Parisian banlieue found in two such films, La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er (Richet, 1997). It will question the extent to which the aesthetic and ideological differences between the two films can be explained by the relationship of the respective filmmakers to the banlieue, or whether, given the media (mis)representation of the banlieue in the 1990s, the disadvantaged urban periphery remained destined to be represented on screen as the space of the marginalised 'other'.     

Light railways and the rural–urban continuum: technology, space and society in late nineteenth-century Belgium

Combining the literature on ‘city systems’ and its intermediary spatial categories with the discourse on ‘socio-technical’ hybrids, this article examines whether the early rural–urban condition in Belgium was the planned spatial outcome of infrastructure policy. More specifically, it analyzes the dialectic between the conception of light railways and the geographies of power, tracing its impact on the spatial organization of the territory. In 1911 the British sociologist Seebohm Rowntree stated that Belgium had gone further than any country in supplying its working class with gardens. The dense Belgian railway network encouraged workers to commute between land and labour, travelling from their homes in the healthy countryside to work in urban factories and mines. Despite the agricultural crisis and accelerating industrialization in nineteenth-century Belgium, infrastructure policy had resulted in a peculiar territorial balance between city and countryside by transforming agricultural labourers and farmers into industrial workers without forcing them to leave their ancestral villages. Rather than nostalgically clinging to a disappearing countryside, the government harnessed the modern technology par excellence, combining rails, steam and state management, to safeguard the country as well as to facilitate modern dynamic. Countryside preservation and accelerating industrialization were reconciled in a reshaped configuration that rendered the countryside and its inhabitants simultaneously rural and urban, traditional and modern. As most literature situates the genesis of rural–urban landscapes after the First and Second World War, this article on late-nineteenth-century Belgium adds a further facet to the recently growing international research on hybrid territories within the fields of urbanism and geography.     

The Civic Survey of Greater London: social mapping,planners and urban space in the early twentieth century

This paper examines work conducted between 1915 and 1919 by a group of architects and planners based at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The project, called the Civic Survey of Greater London, and the substantial collection of maps and diagrams that resulted from it are currently unknown in histories of mapping and planning, thus this paper offers a preliminary account and analysis of the work. The paper begins by assessing the development of surveying and mapping techniques in the nineteenth century with the aim of situating the Survey within broader historical trajectories. The following section of the paper examines the immediate context for the Survey, in particular the place of Patrick Geddes and his ideas. The third part of the paper focuses on the work of the Survey itself. The fourth part draws out key analytical threads in dialogue with a number of the maps of the Survey. The emphasis placed here is on exploring lines of continuity between the Civic Survey of Greater London and earlier techniques of representation and governmentality. The concluding section reflects briefly on the reasons for the Survey's subsequent relative obscurity and the importance of the project for later traditions of surveying.     

Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social Centers

In the 1970s, Italy experienced a difficult transition from Fordism to a flexible accumulation regime. The resulting changes in production relations led to the disappearance of traditional public spaces and meeting places such as open squares, workplaces, party offices or the premises of groups involved in the antagonistic, ie anti‐capitalist and anti‐fascist, movement. Within this context, in the 1980s and 1990s, these groups managed to create new social and political spaces by setting up Self‐Managed Social Centers (CSAs), ie squatted properties which became the venue of social, political and cultural events. Over 250 Social Centers have been active in Italy over the past 15 years, especially in urban areas. Their organizational modes are examples of successful direct democracy in non‐hierarchical structures and may provide alternative options to the bureaucratic organization of so many aspects of social and political life. Point number one on a Social Center's agenda is a daunting task: it must renovate and refurbish privately or publicly owned empty properties and turn them into public spaces open to the general public. For this task it relies exclusively on collective action, ie cooperative working modes which do not come under the provisions governing regular employment contracts and can thus be used to combat marginalization and exclusion processes which are becoming more and more dramatic in our cities. An analysis of the evolution of this original Italian movement provides the opportunity to address a number of issues associated with alternative practices to neoliberal globalization.     

Hollywood's insidious charms: the impact of American cinema and television on the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Using various archival documents, memoirs, diaries, periodicals and more than 70 personal interviews with contemporaries of the events, this essay is an attempt to show the paradoxes of the cultural Cold War in Soviet consumption of the American visual media – films and television from the United States.