Polycentricity as spatial imaginary: the case of Helsinki City Plan

The paper analyses with a case study the use of a widely applied normative concept of polycentricity as spatial imaginary. The case study of Helsinki City Plan and the conflict over its city-boulevard scheme draws on qualitative content analysis of planning documents and expert interviews. It demonstrates the instrumental role of multiple interpretations of polycentricity in tension-ridden metropolitan and city-regional spatial planning. The conflict reveals how the conceptual ambiguity of polycentricity and the institutional vagueness of city-regional planning have together enabled advancing contradictory political aims under their guise. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the persuasive performativity and fluidity of polycentricity as a spatial imaginary in multi-scalar planning settings.     

中国城市群空间结构演化的影响因素分析——基于铁路客运的功能联系视角

以中国13个城市群为研究对象,采用铁路客运班次构造多中心指数来表征基于功能联系的城市群空间结构,在分析城市群空间结构演变基础上重点分析其影响因素。研究发现,基于功能联系视角的城市群空间结构总体呈单中心化趋势,但地区差异化明显,珠三角、山东半岛和闽东南城市群已表现出多中心化特征;城市群空间结构的多中心程度随经济发展水平的提高表现为先单中心后多中心的演变过程;城市群规模的增大和城市间联系加强促进了城市群向多中心方向演化;而面积小、三产比重高的城市群更有利于形成单中心的结构;政府干预作用对城市群空间结构影响并不显著。鉴于不同城市群空间结构演化趋势不同,未来政策取向应该遵从各个城市群自身规律。     

Geography's secret powers to save the world

The purpose of this paper, prepared to present at the 2018 joint Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) and International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference, is to suggest three strategies, framed as proposals, that geography and geography education can deploy to “save the world.” The first proposal is to expand explicit instruction in spatial thinking to close gender‐based achievement gaps. The second proposal is to apply research from the learning sciences to develop persuasive geography curricula and instructional materials. The third proposal focuses on ways social media and geospatial technologies can be employed in civic education, an idea termed “spatial citizenship.” The paper suggests a re‐envisioning of geography education with an enhanced focus on teaching for, in, and about a world that fully appreciates difference and acts on that appreciation.     

L'identification des zones calmes et un diagnostic d’équité environnementale à Montréal

Quiet urban areas are places with low noise levels that can help people to support physical and mental wellness. This paper has two objectives: to identify quiet urban areas in Montreal and to check for the presence of environmental inequities in access to such areas for vulnerable groups (children, older people, low‐income individuals, and visible minorities). Using a GIS‐based methodology, 2,282 quiet urban areas were identified in Montreal. The results of a mixed effects logistic regression model analysis showed that there are no major inequities in access to quiet urban areas for the population groups studied. The analysis did, however, revealed substantial spatial disparities in terms of the distribution of quiet urban areas across the boroughs and municipalities examined.     

Inside Checkpoint 300: Checkpoint Regimes as Spatial Political Technologies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

As a part of the architecture of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories, the Israeli government introduced in 2005 a series of so‐called terminal checkpoints as “neutral border crossings”, to minimise the impact of these barriers on Palestinian lives through a different design and the use of several machines, such as turnstiles and metal detectors. In this article, we analyse terminal Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem, framing it as a spatial political technology aimed at controlling the movement of Palestinians. More specifically, we investigate the interactions between Palestinian commuters, Israeli soldiers/security guards and the machines operating inside Checkpoint 300. We conclude by suggesting that Checkpoint 300 is a porous barrier whose regime is produced, reproduced but also challenged by such interactions, and that, despite the new “neutral design”, Checkpoint 300 is a place still filled with tension and violence, often exercised by the machines and their “decisions”.     

Homemaking and Mature Age Gay Men ‘Down-Under’: Paradox,intimacy, subjectivities,spatialities, and scale

The article investigates homemaking processes of mature age gay men living in a provincial Australian town. All too often the experience of older gay men living in non-metropolitan centres has slipped the attention of scholars. The article draws on interview data collected in Townsville (Queensland, Australia) from ten men over 40 years of age who self-identified as gay. These men were asked to explain why they live in Townsville, their understanding of home, and if they understand Townsville as home. We investigate the spatialised understandings of home articulated by these gay men, focusing on two mutually constituted geographical scales: Townsville-as-home and house-as-home, including the material objects within domestic space. For older gay men to call a provincial town home is an ongoing, complex process of reconciling multiple and contradictory subjectivities across different geographical scales. How older gay men constitute Townsville-as-home provides important insights about both non-heterosexual life in provincial centres and how to conceptualise home—as a paradoxical space, contested site, and as multiscalar.     

流动性视角下中国流行菜系的空间扩散格局及其文化地理逻辑

流动性的增强不但意味着人口、信息、资金流动强度增加,也意味着流动范围的扩大。在此背景下,以稳定的人口构成为基础的传统地域饮食文化区的边界也开始发生变化。同时,流动性也使多元地方饮食文化在空间扩散的基础上展开了互动与交融。本研究将除港澳台地区以外的中国全域作为研究区域,基于海量餐饮服务设施POI数据,运用核密度分析方法分析中国目前的流行菜系空间扩散格局并描述其特征,并从流动性视角阐释其形成与扩散的文化地理逻辑。研究发现,中国现流行的菜系主要包括川菜、湘菜、粤菜、东北菜、徽菜、云贵菜、西北菜、鲁菜;中国流行菜系的空间扩散格局具有差异明显、多中心发展的特点。其中,川菜、湘菜、粤菜数量多分布广;鲁菜、徽菜分布集中,扩散较少;东北菜、云贵菜、西北菜数量较少但分布范围广。这种流行菜系空间扩散格局背后的文化地理逻辑与流动性密不可分,人口、资金等的流动促使地方饮食文化在空间内扩散,同时也带来了地方饮食文化间的交融互构。     

Taphonomy of Burnt Burials: Spatial Analysis of Bone Fragments in Their Secondary Deposition

Examining recently excavated burnt burials, we explore the potential of spatial analysis to contribute to the understanding of changes that human body goes through during burning and relocation to the place of secondary deposition. Artificial heat decomposition of a body is a complex process that consists of several stages of intentional manipulation with the body. Each stage can be biased by several accidental factors which then significantly change the final archaeological record. We focussed on the post‐burning stage, especially the pathways of bone fragments to secondary deposition. We investigated spatial distribution and weight of bones in urns and pits and asked whether it is possible to observe their intentional arrangement. The trend of bone arrangement could be distinguished in most cases. Bones of peripheral parts of body were typically situated at the bottom; skull bones were usually concentrated in the upper part. However, the weight underrepresentation of all investigated burials was apparent. Deposition of selected burnt bones suggests their careful collection from the pyre and complex post‐mortem manipulation. Our detailed analysis aims to reconstruct particular steps executed during funeral rites of past populations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial Tactics in Criminal Courts and the Politics of Legal Technicalities

This paper documents court‐imposed bail and sentencing conditions with spatial dimensions, such as red zones, no contact conditions, curfews and prohibitions to demonstrate, issued in the context of criminal proceedings. These conditional orders, which are growing in importance and have a significant impact on the lives of marginalized groups of people, have not received the attention they deserve in the literature. As opposed to better publicized forms of spatial regulation such as legislation or policing strategies, these conditional orders are a distinctive form of spatial tactic that rely on ancient and routinized rules of criminal procedure and the practices of the courts. In order to understand this spatial tactic, and its impact on marginalized people's rights and uses of spaces, we argue that it is necessary to pay attention to the legal rationalities, knowledge and practices that sustain them.     

Geopolicing Race,Gender, and Class: How the Police Immobilise Urban Allochthones

City landscapes are ever-changing stages for the protagonists that pass through it. For police officers they serve as canvasses to positively and negatively code subjects. As such, geography matters to the body. Rather than taking geographic locations, crime statistics, predictive maps and human bodies as objective truths, I focus on the work of police officers, not in terms of an instrumental-rational “meeting of policy targets” or attempts to reduce crime, but the work required to make raced, gendered and classed geographical differentiations. This process culminates in geopolicing: the spatial imaginations and practices of police officers as to who, what and where to police and, of course, why. Geopolicing includes the aesthetic re-ordering and cleansing of urban “matter out of place”. Police officers perceive exclusionary territories in which landscapes racialised as white and identified as affluent are threatened by urban allochthones identified by class, race, gender, age and residential status. The findings are based on my ethnography among police officers in the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, between 2007 and 2011.