Pub Date : 2017-07-12DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17719461
L. B. Pollans
The disposal of municipal solid waste can be costly and environmentally destructive. This article asks why, given many alternatives, most waste material is still disposed of in landfills or incinerators. Building upon the ‘modes of governing’ framework proposed by Bulkeley, Watson, and Hudson as a means of identifying and interpreting the relationships among the many actors and artefacts that constitute a municipal solid waste management system, this article explores the barriers to transitioning between modes. The case of solid waste management in Boston, Massachusetts illustrates how key factors – limited enforcement of existing policy, institutional and physical fragmentation, financial incentives, and the vested interests of the private sector – protect the disposal mode of governing. Meanwhile, the actors most interested in moving towards more sustainable waste management techniques lack access to decision-making processes and daily operations, limiting their ability to influence policy and practice. The analysis of barriers suggests an alternative way of classifying modes – dominant, incremental, visionary, and aspirational – that explicitly captures the relative entrenchment of each mode, while also opening up the framework for application in other geographies, and for other systems that may or may not share similar governmental rationalities, technologies, or capacities.
{"title":"Trapped in trash: ‘Modes of governing’ and barriers to transitioning to sustainable waste management","authors":"L. B. Pollans","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17719461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17719461","url":null,"abstract":"The disposal of municipal solid waste can be costly and environmentally destructive. This article asks why, given many alternatives, most waste material is still disposed of in landfills or incinerators. Building upon the ‘modes of governing’ framework proposed by Bulkeley, Watson, and Hudson as a means of identifying and interpreting the relationships among the many actors and artefacts that constitute a municipal solid waste management system, this article explores the barriers to transitioning between modes. The case of solid waste management in Boston, Massachusetts illustrates how key factors – limited enforcement of existing policy, institutional and physical fragmentation, financial incentives, and the vested interests of the private sector – protect the disposal mode of governing. Meanwhile, the actors most interested in moving towards more sustainable waste management techniques lack access to decision-making processes and daily operations, limiting their ability to influence policy and practice. The analysis of barriers suggests an alternative way of classifying modes – dominant, incremental, visionary, and aspirational – that explicitly captures the relative entrenchment of each mode, while also opening up the framework for application in other geographies, and for other systems that may or may not share similar governmental rationalities, technologies, or capacities.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"20 2 1","pages":"2300 - 2323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78012684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-10DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17718372
Sara Forsberg
The growing young middle class in India is often portrayed as encompassing a ‘global sensitivity’. International mobility is one strategy for middle class families to gain a positional advantage on a competitive labour market. Negotiating place attachment and global horizons may create a range of possibilities often attached to discourses of individualization and self-realization. This paper analyses young people’s dispositions towards mobility in the transition from education to work by drawing on Bourdieu’s central concepts of symbolic capital and habitus. Interviews with students in higher secondary school in Kerala’s state capital Thiruvananthapuram, southwest India, covered broad themes like future expectations, skills and knowledge, everyday whereabouts and family life which were discussed in relation to a perceived activity space. I argue that young people’s future aspirations are shaped in a profound way by the history of Kerala’s in and out migration, and draw attention to differences within the middle class where transnational capital distinguishes rather than unifies ‘Indian youth’. Furthermore, this paper unpacks the complex, variegated images of different cities, countries and regions as symbols of cultural or economic capital in Malayali students’ expectations of their future education and employment.
{"title":"Educated to be global: Transnational horizons of middle class students in Kerala, India","authors":"Sara Forsberg","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17718372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17718372","url":null,"abstract":"The growing young middle class in India is often portrayed as encompassing a ‘global sensitivity’. International mobility is one strategy for middle class families to gain a positional advantage on a competitive labour market. Negotiating place attachment and global horizons may create a range of possibilities often attached to discourses of individualization and self-realization. This paper analyses young people’s dispositions towards mobility in the transition from education to work by drawing on Bourdieu’s central concepts of symbolic capital and habitus. Interviews with students in higher secondary school in Kerala’s state capital Thiruvananthapuram, southwest India, covered broad themes like future expectations, skills and knowledge, everyday whereabouts and family life which were discussed in relation to a perceived activity space. I argue that young people’s future aspirations are shaped in a profound way by the history of Kerala’s in and out migration, and draw attention to differences within the middle class where transnational capital distinguishes rather than unifies ‘Indian youth’. Furthermore, this paper unpacks the complex, variegated images of different cities, countries and regions as symbols of cultural or economic capital in Malayali students’ expectations of their future education and employment.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"118 1","pages":"2099 - 2115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86038177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-07DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17718838
Giovanni Fusco, M. Caglioni, K. Emsellem, M. Merad, Diego Moreno, Christine Voiron-Canicio
The concept of uncertainty has fostered in the last decade’s fundamental and applied research in different disciplinary fields. Couclelis (2003) clearly demonstrated the pervasiveness of uncertainty in the production process of geographical knowledge. The paper shares this epistemological point of view. Pragmatically, its goal is to show how questions of uncertainty arise in the praxis of geographic research. It suggests that scientific work can be enriched, and not hindered, by addressing uncertainty in knowledge. The paper discusses eight domains within the activity of the geographer, where questions of uncertainty arise: geographic information, geographic definitions, the explanation of geographic phenomena, the complexity of spatial systems, geosimulation, the representation of spatial knowledge, subjectivity in spatial phenomena, and planning. Within each domain uncertainty issues are identified as well as their possible interrelations.
{"title":"Questions of uncertainty in geography","authors":"Giovanni Fusco, M. Caglioni, K. Emsellem, M. Merad, Diego Moreno, Christine Voiron-Canicio","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17718838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17718838","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of uncertainty has fostered in the last decade’s fundamental and applied research in different disciplinary fields. Couclelis (2003) clearly demonstrated the pervasiveness of uncertainty in the production process of geographical knowledge. The paper shares this epistemological point of view. Pragmatically, its goal is to show how questions of uncertainty arise in the praxis of geographic research. It suggests that scientific work can be enriched, and not hindered, by addressing uncertainty in knowledge. The paper discusses eight domains within the activity of the geographer, where questions of uncertainty arise: geographic information, geographic definitions, the explanation of geographic phenomena, the complexity of spatial systems, geosimulation, the representation of spatial knowledge, subjectivity in spatial phenomena, and planning. Within each domain uncertainty issues are identified as well as their possible interrelations.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"82 1","pages":"2261 - 2280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76337076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-07DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17718375
W. Qi, G. Abel, Raya Muttarak, Sheng-Bin Liu
We adapted the chord diagram plot to visualize China’s recent inter-provincial migration during 2010–2015. The arrowheads were added to present the direction of the flows. This method allows us to show the complete migration flows between 31 provinces in China including the direction and volume of the flows. The spatial component was also clearly depicted in the plot using four color palates representing four regions in China (i.e. East, Center, West, Northeast) and arranging the 31 provinces in an approximate geographic order. Besides that, we extend the chord diagram plot to describe China’s bilateral net migration during 2010–2015.
{"title":"Circular visualization of China’s internal migration flows 2010–2015","authors":"W. Qi, G. Abel, Raya Muttarak, Sheng-Bin Liu","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17718375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17718375","url":null,"abstract":"We adapted the chord diagram plot to visualize China’s recent inter-provincial migration during 2010–2015. The arrowheads were added to present the direction of the flows. This method allows us to show the complete migration flows between 31 provinces in China including the direction and volume of the flows. The spatial component was also clearly depicted in the plot using four color palates representing four regions in China (i.e. East, Center, West, Northeast) and arranging the 31 provinces in an approximate geographic order. Besides that, we extend the chord diagram plot to describe China’s bilateral net migration during 2010–2015.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"109 1","pages":"2432 - 2436"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80756893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-05DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17718373
K. Saguin
Urban socioecological risk, like other urban metabolic processes, embodies relations between the city and the non-city. In this paper, I trace the production of urban risk within and beyond the city through the lens of the hazardscape using the case of Metro Manila and Laguna Lake in the Philippines. Building on recent interventions in urban political ecology that seek to map the terrains of extending urban frontiers, I examine the processes that construct city and non-city spaces in urbanization through flood control. I synthesize narratives of the material-discursive production of risk mediated by infrastructure with histories of landscape and livelihood change in an urban socioecological frontier to make two related arguments. First, discursive constructions of city and non-city and the material flows that connect them shape the production of urban ecological risk, with material consequences for non-city vulnerabilities. Second, infrastructure plays an important mediating role in the production of hazardscapes. The intersection of flows of water, discursive urban imaginaries in state plans, and livelihoods in Metro Manila and Laguna Lake exemplifies metabolic relations that reveal the spatio-temporal connections of cities with landscapes that make their functioning possible.
{"title":"Producing an urban hazardscape beyond the city","authors":"K. Saguin","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17718373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17718373","url":null,"abstract":"Urban socioecological risk, like other urban metabolic processes, embodies relations between the city and the non-city. In this paper, I trace the production of urban risk within and beyond the city through the lens of the hazardscape using the case of Metro Manila and Laguna Lake in the Philippines. Building on recent interventions in urban political ecology that seek to map the terrains of extending urban frontiers, I examine the processes that construct city and non-city spaces in urbanization through flood control. I synthesize narratives of the material-discursive production of risk mediated by infrastructure with histories of landscape and livelihood change in an urban socioecological frontier to make two related arguments. First, discursive constructions of city and non-city and the material flows that connect them shape the production of urban ecological risk, with material consequences for non-city vulnerabilities. Second, infrastructure plays an important mediating role in the production of hazardscapes. The intersection of flows of water, discursive urban imaginaries in state plans, and livelihoods in Metro Manila and Laguna Lake exemplifies metabolic relations that reveal the spatio-temporal connections of cities with landscapes that make their functioning possible.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"23 1","pages":"1968 - 1985"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84409140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-06-28DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17717725
A. Meah, Peter Jackson
This paper addresses the social and cultural significance of convenience food, often regarded as among the least healthy and most unsustainable of dietary options, subject to frequent moral disapprobation. The paper focuses, in particular, on the relationship between convenience and care, conventionally seen in oppositional terms as a culinary antinomy. Informed by a ‘theories of practice’ approach, the paper presents empirical evidence from ethnographically-informed research on everyday consumption practices in the UK to demonstrate how convenience foods can be used as an expression of care rather than as its antithesis. The paper uses Fisher and Tronto’s theorisation of caring about, taking care of, caregiving and care-receiving to draw out the dynamics of this morally contested social practice.
{"title":"Convenience as care: Culinary antinomies in practice","authors":"A. Meah, Peter Jackson","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17717725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17717725","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the social and cultural significance of convenience food, often regarded as among the least healthy and most unsustainable of dietary options, subject to frequent moral disapprobation. The paper focuses, in particular, on the relationship between convenience and care, conventionally seen in oppositional terms as a culinary antinomy. Informed by a ‘theories of practice’ approach, the paper presents empirical evidence from ethnographically-informed research on everyday consumption practices in the UK to demonstrate how convenience foods can be used as an expression of care rather than as its antithesis. The paper uses Fisher and Tronto’s theorisation of caring about, taking care of, caregiving and care-receiving to draw out the dynamics of this morally contested social practice.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"4 1","pages":"2065 - 2081"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73306936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-06-28DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17717724
Phil Emmerson
Despite the range of subjects tackled by affective and emotional geographers, laughter has received relatively little attention. Those who do discuss laughter, do so for the most part in terms of the “humorous” moments that precede it. This paper proposes a distinctly different approach: shifting focus away from humour to foreground laughter as an analytical category. Through this, I argue that we can understand laughter as a phenomenon in its own right, without reducing it to humorous intentionality (even when there is humour present). This allows further analytical precision within discussions of laughter particularly around the ways in which it affects bodies and spaces. The paper first discusses laughter as more-than-representational; as having transpersonal and atmospheric spatialities, capable of affecting and being affected beyond its relationship with humour. The refrain is then deployed as a conceptual means through which we can grasp laughter’s indeterminate capacities to generate spaces, atmospheres and subjectivities. Drawing on insights from three months of ethnographic research spent working in nursing care homes, I illustrate these conceptions of laughter in terms of the ways it can enact, disrupt, and reconfigure different relationships between bodies and space. This case study thus prompts discussion of the ethical implications of thinking laughter in this manner, particularly the need to develop an ethos for laughter that remains open to its potential for multiple (and often unexpected) outcomes.
{"title":"Thinking laughter beyond humour: Atmospheric refrains and ethical indeterminacies in spaces of care","authors":"Phil Emmerson","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17717724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17717724","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the range of subjects tackled by affective and emotional geographers, laughter has received relatively little attention. Those who do discuss laughter, do so for the most part in terms of the “humorous” moments that precede it. This paper proposes a distinctly different approach: shifting focus away from humour to foreground laughter as an analytical category. Through this, I argue that we can understand laughter as a phenomenon in its own right, without reducing it to humorous intentionality (even when there is humour present). This allows further analytical precision within discussions of laughter particularly around the ways in which it affects bodies and spaces. The paper first discusses laughter as more-than-representational; as having transpersonal and atmospheric spatialities, capable of affecting and being affected beyond its relationship with humour. The refrain is then deployed as a conceptual means through which we can grasp laughter’s indeterminate capacities to generate spaces, atmospheres and subjectivities. Drawing on insights from three months of ethnographic research spent working in nursing care homes, I illustrate these conceptions of laughter in terms of the ways it can enact, disrupt, and reconfigure different relationships between bodies and space. This case study thus prompts discussion of the ethical implications of thinking laughter in this manner, particularly the need to develop an ethos for laughter that remains open to its potential for multiple (and often unexpected) outcomes.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"15 1","pages":"2082 - 2098"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82353615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-06-26DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17717067
G. Galster, Lena Magnusson Turner
Planners have long advocated for “social mix” in neighborhoods without clear evidence that such mixing is stable over time. Indeed, if some groups perceive an intolerable discrepancy between their own economic status and that of their neighbors they may leave the neighborhood, thereby frustrating planners’ goals. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of Oslo household intrametropolitan residential mobility employing a panel model with fixed effects for both households and neighborhoods and interactions for status groups, which provides estimates of plausible causal effects. We theoretically and empirically identify two dimensions of intraneighborhood status discrepancy that prove important predictors of leaving a neighborhood, though impacts differ strongly depending on household income status as defined by Oslo-wide standards. More extreme relative standing above the neighborhood median income promotes exit (especially for low- and middle-status households), suggesting a status signaling motive. For high-status households, being below the median neighborhood income proves influential for out-mobility, suggesting a relative deprivation motive. The overall status composition of the neighborhood is a powerful mobility influence for both low- and high-status households, suggesting a strong preference for homophily. Results imply that policy-generated introduction of low-status households will encourage the exit of high- and, to a lesser degree, middle-status neighbors.
{"title":"Status discrepancy as a driver of residential mobility: Evidence from Oslo","authors":"G. Galster, Lena Magnusson Turner","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17717067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17717067","url":null,"abstract":"Planners have long advocated for “social mix” in neighborhoods without clear evidence that such mixing is stable over time. Indeed, if some groups perceive an intolerable discrepancy between their own economic status and that of their neighbors they may leave the neighborhood, thereby frustrating planners’ goals. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of Oslo household intrametropolitan residential mobility employing a panel model with fixed effects for both households and neighborhoods and interactions for status groups, which provides estimates of plausible causal effects. We theoretically and empirically identify two dimensions of intraneighborhood status discrepancy that prove important predictors of leaving a neighborhood, though impacts differ strongly depending on household income status as defined by Oslo-wide standards. More extreme relative standing above the neighborhood median income promotes exit (especially for low- and middle-status households), suggesting a status signaling motive. For high-status households, being below the median neighborhood income proves influential for out-mobility, suggesting a relative deprivation motive. The overall status composition of the neighborhood is a powerful mobility influence for both low- and high-status households, suggesting a strong preference for homophily. Results imply that policy-generated introduction of low-status households will encourage the exit of high- and, to a lesser degree, middle-status neighbors.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"21 9","pages":"2155 - 2175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91405254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-06-16DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17714797
A. Hastings, N. Bailey, G. Bramley, M. Gannon
That contemporary austerity is being realised to a large extent in and through cities is a growing theme in urban scholarship. Similarly, the concern that the economically marginalised are disproportionately impacted as ‘austerity urbanism’ takes hold drives a significant body of research. While it is clear that substantial austerity cuts are being downloaded onto cities and their governments, the evidence on whether it is the most disadvantaged fractions of the urban population which suffer as a consequence remains thin. Moreover, the mechanisms by which the downloading to the poor occurs are unclear. This paper identifies how austerity cuts are transmitted to the poor and marginalised in the context of severe cuts to the spending power of English local government. It identifies three transmission mechanisms and shows how these operate and with what outcomes, drawing on empirical evidence at the English national and local city levels. The paper provides robust evidence from national data sources and from in-depth, mixed-method case studies to show that the effects of austerity urbanism are borne most heavily by those who are already disadvantaged. It also demonstrates the importance of identifying the specific mechanisms by which downloading on to the poor occurs in particular national contexts, and how this contributes to understanding, and potentially resisting, the regressive logic of austerity urbanism.
{"title":"Austerity urbanism in England: The ‘regressive redistribution’ of local government services and the impact on the poor and marginalised","authors":"A. Hastings, N. Bailey, G. Bramley, M. Gannon","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17714797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17714797","url":null,"abstract":"That contemporary austerity is being realised to a large extent in and through cities is a growing theme in urban scholarship. Similarly, the concern that the economically marginalised are disproportionately impacted as ‘austerity urbanism’ takes hold drives a significant body of research. While it is clear that substantial austerity cuts are being downloaded onto cities and their governments, the evidence on whether it is the most disadvantaged fractions of the urban population which suffer as a consequence remains thin. Moreover, the mechanisms by which the downloading to the poor occurs are unclear. This paper identifies how austerity cuts are transmitted to the poor and marginalised in the context of severe cuts to the spending power of English local government. It identifies three transmission mechanisms and shows how these operate and with what outcomes, drawing on empirical evidence at the English national and local city levels. The paper provides robust evidence from national data sources and from in-depth, mixed-method case studies to show that the effects of austerity urbanism are borne most heavily by those who are already disadvantaged. It also demonstrates the importance of identifying the specific mechanisms by which downloading on to the poor occurs in particular national contexts, and how this contributes to understanding, and potentially resisting, the regressive logic of austerity urbanism.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"18 1","pages":"2007 - 2024"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88021850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-06-12DOI: 10.1177/0308518X17713992
Nick Henry, Jane Pollard, Paul Sissons, Jennifer Ferreira, Mike Coombes
In 2013, the UK Government announced that seven of the nation’s largest banks had agreed to publish their lending data at the local level across Great Britain. The release of such area based lending data has been welcomed by advocacy groups and policy makers keen to better understand and remedy geographies of financial exclusion. This paper makes three contributions to debates about financial exclusion. First, it provides the first exploratory spatial analysis of the personal lending data made available; it scrutinises the parameters and robustness of the dataset and evaluates the extent to which the data increase transparency in UK personal lending markets. Second, it uses the data to provide a geographical overview of patterns of personal lending across Great Britain. Third, it uses this analysis to revisit the analytical and political limitations of ‘open data’ in addressing the relationship between access to finance and economic marginalisation. Although a binary policy imaginary of ‘inclusion-exclusion’ has historically driven advocacy for data disclosure, recent literatures on financial exclusion generate the need for more complex and variegated understandings of economic marginalisation. The paper questions the relationship between transparency and data disclosure, the policy push for financial inclusion, and patterns of indebtedness and economic marginalisation in a world where ‘fringe finance’ has become mainstream. Drawing on these literatures, this analysis suggests that data disclosure, and the transparency it affords, is a necessary but not sufficient tool in understanding the distributional implications of variegated access to credit.
{"title":"Banking on exclusion: Data disclosure and geographies of UK personal lending markets","authors":"Nick Henry, Jane Pollard, Paul Sissons, Jennifer Ferreira, Mike Coombes","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17713992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17713992","url":null,"abstract":"In 2013, the UK Government announced that seven of the nation’s largest banks had agreed to publish their lending data at the local level across Great Britain. The release of such area based lending data has been welcomed by advocacy groups and policy makers keen to better understand and remedy geographies of financial exclusion. This paper makes three contributions to debates about financial exclusion. First, it provides the first exploratory spatial analysis of the personal lending data made available; it scrutinises the parameters and robustness of the dataset and evaluates the extent to which the data increase transparency in UK personal lending markets. Second, it uses the data to provide a geographical overview of patterns of personal lending across Great Britain. Third, it uses this analysis to revisit the analytical and political limitations of ‘open data’ in addressing the relationship between access to finance and economic marginalisation. Although a binary policy imaginary of ‘inclusion-exclusion’ has historically driven advocacy for data disclosure, recent literatures on financial exclusion generate the need for more complex and variegated understandings of economic marginalisation. The paper questions the relationship between transparency and data disclosure, the policy push for financial inclusion, and patterns of indebtedness and economic marginalisation in a world where ‘fringe finance’ has become mainstream. Drawing on these literatures, this analysis suggests that data disclosure, and the transparency it affords, is a necessary but not sufficient tool in understanding the distributional implications of variegated access to credit.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"49 1","pages":"2046 - 2064"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85707314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}