Andrea's Baggage: Reading (in) Laforet's Nada

One overlooked feature of Andrea's arrival in Barcelona at the beginning of Nada is the old and battered suitcase that she drags with her to her relatives’ apartment. It is filled almost entirely with books, books that—we may assume—she has read and plans to read again. Reading, it is clear, has played a large part in her intellectual and psychological formation as a teenager, but one of the strands of her overall maturation process during the forthcoming year will involve achieving a greater understanding of the distortions involved in how people (including her) see life through the optic of literature and literature through the optic of life. Gradually disabused of her overly literary adolescent imaginings, then, she eventually becomes a writer—of the text that is Nada—who is well aware of the traps that reading and writing hold.     

The City Hotel as Landscape Artifact and Community Symbol

The dingo, a distinct variety of dog, is generally considered to have been the only domestic animal present in Australia when Captain James Cook explored that continent's eastern coast in 1770. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that a variety of pig was introduced to Australia from neighboring New Guinea, perhaps at a time prior to Cook's visit, and that a feral pig population existed on Queensland's Cape York Peninsula. Such evidence includes the carrying of pigs in the traditional Torres Strait trading system, the depiction of pigs in the Aboriginal rock art of the Cape York Peninsula, the presence of a typically New Guinea parasite in the Cape York feral pig population, the fact that these Cape York pigs are today quite similar in physical size and appearance to the pigs of New Guinea, the presence of prominent longitudinal stripes on newly-born piglets in both northeastern Australia and New Guinea, and finally the existence of a New Guinea-Torres Strait word for pig in the language of Aborigines living at Princess Charlotte Bay on the Cape York Peninsula.     

Photo Essay: The Rio Grande Borderland

The Rio Grande border of the United States and Mexico is over 1,000 miles long. This presentation of that border is by means of a photo essay interpreting the physical, economic, political, and cultural complex that has evolved. These photos were all taken in 1990 on a reconnaissance that followed both sides of the border for the entire distance from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Numerous crossings of the border were made at official and non-official points. Informal field interviews were conducted on both sides of the border with government officials, agricultural workers, tourists, farmers, industrial managers, factory laborers, retirees, undocumented migrants, beachcombers, shoe-shiners in the plaza, sportsmen, clergymen, children, and loafers. The photos with an accompanying text are presented in an order that is conducive to a comprehension of the salient aspects of the physical and human geography and the complex social issues found in the borderland. The final photos and text are on the maquiladoras and the international interplay of history, markets, labor, and technology resulting in striking structural change.     

Inter-actor Trust in the Planning Process: The Case of Transit-oriented Development

Inter-actor trust (or the absence of it) plays an important role in complex planning processes. Trust has received much attention in management science, but surprisingly little in planning literature despite the similarities between the two and its increasing importance in ensuring coordination between multiple, heterogeneous actors in delivering developments. This paper aims to explore the role of trust in coordination in transit-oriented developments processes, based on literature research and two empirical case studies in the region of Toronto in Canada and the province of Zuid-Holland in the Netherlands. This research suggests that in both planning contexts trust is an important element in achieving successful outcomes. Trust was often identified at a personal level as something which can bridge differences between organizations, but that can be hindered by a history of distrust between organizations. The building of trust between stakeholders seems dependent on a commitment to building a good relationship early and openness throughout. Breaches of trust, as long as they are not fatal for the relationship, can lead to a stronger trust relationship in the long term. Trust, however, is not just an individual or organizational matter: the broader institutional context was also found to have pronounced impacts on the ability of trust to take root.