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Aquest treball se centra a analitzar com contribueixen els festivals culturals en la creació d’espai urbà a través de l’estudi de la percepció que els residents tenen dels impactes sobre la vida diària de la ciutat d’un festival musical públic organitzat de manera continuada des de fa més de 28 anys, el Mercat de Música Viva de Vic. Mitjançant una anàlisi factorial exploratòria portada a terme amb les dades obtingudes en una enquesta feta a residents de la ciutat, es demostra que aquest festival influeix tant en la dimensió física com en la percebuda de la ciutat, i està afavorint la redefinició, l’expansió i el redescobriment tant de la vida social de la ciutat com del seu espai físic. Així mateix, en ser portador de significats nous, està provocant noves narratives de la ciutat i nous vincles dels ciutadans cap a ella.

This paper considers the significance of representations of rurality and displacement in relation to the concept of rural gentrification. Studies of rural gentrification have often drawn upon notions of the rural idyll, but have often neglected to consider the presence, or not, of displacement. It has been argued that this lack of attention reflects an absence of displacement connected with middle class in-migration, particularly in early decades of counterurbanisation. This paper aims to examine these arguments drawing on the research publications and archived materials stemming from a study by Ray Pahl of four villages in the English county of Hertfordshire in the early 1960s, alongside material generated from a questionnaire survey conducted in three of these villages. The research demonstrates continuities in processes of gentrification and displacement between the two studies, as well as the emergence of new forms of gentrification and the operation of diverse forms of displacement.

The paper discusses planning policies and urban politics, their relation to LGBT communities in the city, and their potential to promote spatial justice within the local planning policies. The paper briefly reviews the main theoretical issues discussed in the literature regarding the connection between planning and sexuality. It also reviews three theoretical concepts of justice that relate to planning policy and urban politics: distributive Justice, procedural justice and recognition. The case study of the Gay Center at Tel Aviv’s Meir Park is analyzed with reference to these three spatial justice concepts. The main argument is that the center is a clear example of distributive and procedural justice. However, when we analyze this case study in light of the concept of recognition, the findings are somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, the case of the Gay Center indicates growing recognition of Tel Aviv’s LGBT community. On the other hand, a queer analysis shows that this recognition is partial as it is limited to certain parts of the community and to spaces frequented by LGBTs in Tel-Aviv.

Homonormativity has become a hegemonic concept within geographies of sexualities, with critical scholars emphasizing exclusionary practices towards specific ‘unwanted’ subjects. However, the literature has ignored the role of one of the main sources of bias and discrimination for gay men: HIV-positivity. The paper seeks to start to fill this void by showing how the geographies of homonormativity and the migration paths of gay men living with HIV often overlap. The paper builds a diversified and situated account of homonormative spaces as spaces of (relative) privilege and inclusion by looking at the everyday practices and experiences of Italian and French gay migrants living with HIV in Barcelona, the Catalan capital. When considering everyday practices, the paper focuses on three characteristics usually associated with neoliberal homonormativity: individualism; privatization, domestication and sanitization of sexual life; exaltation of coupledom. Methodologically the paper results from fieldwork conducted in Barcelona in 2014, including 16 in-depth interviews with Italian and French gay migrants living with HIV.

This paper attempts to analyse the particular features of Chinese clustering in two southern European cities and the urban regeneration responses employed in the decade 2005-2015: Prato in Italy and Santa Coloma de Gramenet in Spain, which are among the cities with the highest rate of Chinese in-migration within their respective countries. The main aim is to show which urban regeneration policies have been adopted in both contexts and to evaluate, in comparative terms, how they have addressed the two local Chinese communities. The paper will argue that their form of clustering, developed since the 1990s, has featured a certain degree of social segregation and tensions with local communities. On the other hand, they have become two dynamic urban nodes in supra-local business networks, possibly demanding new forms of engagement in the governance system. The results show that the urban regeneration policies in place have partially failed to acknowledge the changing nature of their form of clustering, with the risk to exacerbate existing conflicts and to prevent beneficial mutual collaborations.

In this paper I look back over three decades of doing participatory action research and extract some lessons that bear upon the pressing issues of our time—namely, how to act in the face of unsustainable socio-economic growth trajectories and cascading environmental degradation. I start with my circuitous journey into action research and to the importance of human subjectivity to transformation processes. I then trace the thinking that shaped a postmodern feminist social research agenda. Next follows an account of developing a research design for poststructuralist participatory action research (PPAR) that foregrounds understanding ‘ways of living’ in place. Drawing on actual action research projects, the lessons that emerge concern the importance of 1) inventory and bearing witness to difference; 2) new techniques of resubjectivation that encourage transformation; and 3) shifting the action focus from human subjects to socio-technical assemblages in which humans, material infrastructures, habits and experimentation are interwoven. Throughout my three decades of involvement with action research I have learnt about the limits to the durability of subjectivity change and the need to work on support from wider ecosystems of governance, infrastructure, health and social expectation.

This paper discusses the recent occupation of the place de la République of Paris by the Nuit Debout movement, working with the assumption that it casts light on the shortcomings of French republican citizenship. Starting with the premise that space matters, it examines the major redevelopment project that the square underwent between 2008 and 2013, reflecting on the possible relation with the gentrification of the Eastern neighbourhoods of Paris. The paper then draws on what is known of the participants in the Nuit Debout movement to question its attempts, but ultimate failure, to fully include figures that were alien to the archetype of the French citizen, women, and people of colour. Despite efforts made to overcome the centralized nature of the movement and to reach out to the concerns of working-class peripheral neighbourhoods, the highly symbolic and central space of the place de la République spatially embodied the exclusionary nature, and violence, of the French public sphere.

La creixent complexitat de les dinàmiques socioespacials desenvolupades en l’àmbit metropolità incrementa la importància de la intersubjectivitat espacial a l’hora de comprendre globalment el fet urbà. Així, una de les variables que exerceix més impacte sobre l’imaginari social és la immigració. Per comprendre aquest fenomen, és necessari que es desenvolupi un enfocament analític que abordi holísticament la dimensió socioespacial intersubjectiva de l’imaginari sobre la immigració i el paper que té a la ciutat. Per això, proposem, en el present article, el concepte d’espai induït i, en concret, el desenvolupament d’una proposta metodològica basada en l’anàlisi del discurs, orientada a determinar el paper de l’imaginari social metropolità sobre immigració, en els processos de segregació residencial d’aquells barris que alberguen alts percentatges de població estrangera. Tot això, desenvolupat a l’àrea metropolitana de Sevilla, ha mostrat com l’espai induït realitza un paper crucial en el desenvolupament dels processos de segregació i estigmatització socioterritorial d’aquells àmbits percebuts socialment com a «barris d’immigrants».

The paper discusses changing conditions of care and domestic work in Greece in the context of the ongoing health crisis, which follows a long period of successive and simultaneous crises (financial, social, pandemic, refugee, war) and extreme neoliberal policies implemented to control them. The focus is on the burden that women (have to) assume in conjunctures which reinstate care (and domestic work) as “women’s work”, with particular emphasis in the periods of “lockdown” adopted by the government in order to control the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The general overview is supported by research in Athens and material from interviews with women who juggle with space and time as they struggle to care for the self and for others while adhering to personal goals and aspirations, as well as to the “social benefits” of previous decades of relative prosperity.

This paper examines social and economic disparities surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic within the context of neoliberal capitalism. The gendered, racialized, and other social inequities that were evident during this health crisis are linked to shifting work conditions and activities of labor and capital within the workplace and at the household level. The analysis draws from feminist economic geography to examine the social dimensions, spatial dynamics, and economic processes that are highlighted by changes in work and social relations during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion demonstrates how economic upheavals such as those that occurred alongside the pandemic are embedded in social reproduction, with particular emphasis on the precarity of labor and contested household dynamics. Furthermore, ongoing crises in neoliberal capitalism provide the conditions for social movements that challenge inequities and oppressive conditions for labor. The conclusion offers strategies for future directions of work that support inclusive and transformative ideals of feminist economic geography.

The paper starts from the premise that it is vitally important to recognize that the rapid rate of planetary urbanization is the main driver of environmental change. Indeed, the ‘sustainability’ of contemporary urban life (understood as the expanded reproduction of its socio-physical form and functions) is responsible for 80% of the world’s use of resources and most of the world’s waste. We wish to highlight how these urban origins are routinely ignored in urban theory and practice, and how feeble techno-managerial attempts to produce more ‘sustainable’ forms of urban living are actually heightening the combined and uneven socio-ecological apocalypse that marks the contemporary dynamics of planetary urbanization. This paper is, therefore, not so much concerned with the question of nature IN the city, as it is with the urbanization OF nature, understood as the process through which all forms of nature are socially mobilized, economically incorporated and physically metabolized/transformed in order to support the urbanization process. First, we shall chart the strange history of how the relationship between cities and environments has been scripted and imagined over the last century or so. Second, we shall suggest how the environmental question entered urban theory and practice in the late 20th century. And, finally, we shall explore how and why, despite our growing understanding of the relationship between environmental change and urbanization and a consensual focus on the need for ‘sustainable’ urban development, the environmental conundrum and the pervasive problems it engenders do not show any sign of abating. We shall conclude by briefly charting some of the key intellectual and practical challenges ahead.

L’objectiu principal de l’article és presentar una reflexió sobre els efectes més importants de la globalització econòmica en les migracions internacionals durant el segle xxi, amb la voluntat de fer una mirada sistèmica on es contempli el lligam amb altres fenòmens demogràfics —la fecunditat, la mortalitat, especialment la longevitat—, així com l’avenç amb els nivells d’instrucció, prenent sempre en consideració la relació amb el territori. A més, aquesta reflexió està pensada per posar en evidència metàfores com el «gran reemplaçament», que han segrestat la intel·lecció del fenomen, amb un enquadrament propici per als discursos d’extrema dreta. Els objectius concrets són explicar la pluralitat de perfils que ha acompanyat el creixement migratori durant la globalització, el paper de la revolució tecnològica en l’acceleració de la mobilització i l’assentament de la població immigrada i, finalment, la por del reemplaçament de la població. Per acabar, s’inclou un comentari sobre la contribució que la demografia com a disciplina pot fer per l’assoliment dels objectius del desenvolupament sostenible.

This paper is situated in the emerging literature on minority/immigrant internal migration which grew from questions about the population dynamics behind ethnic residential segregation. This work has revealed both that migration within Britain is creating ethnic mixing and that there are considerable ethnic differences in levels and geographies of residential mobility. This paper contributes to our understanding of these differences by examining how being a student is related to residential mobility for different ethnic groups. It suggests that different residential decisions and migration norms at the point of entry into higher education partly explain ethnic differences in mobility. Using 2001 Census microdata (Sample of Anonymised Records), the paper finds that minority ethnic students are less mobile than their White counterparts, that being a student increases the probability of migrating for White British and Chinese young adults but decreases the probability of migrating for Pakistani and Black African young adults, and particularly so for Pakistani females. Given that it is common to migrate away from home for University study in Britain, this raises questions about equality of access to Higher Education. The examination of mobility in relation to key life events in young adulthood enables debates about ethnic geographies to move beyond the concern with segregation. The paper concludes with challenges for further research and a discussion of the policy implications of the findings in the context of current changes to Higher Education funding in the UK.

The paper addresses a gap in the literature on childhood and/in post-socialism and uses everydayness as the conceptual means that links both themes. It presents a story of Lina, a seven-year old Roma girl from a deprived urban neighbourhood in Bratislava, and maps everyday encounters, practices and recognitions that imply what matters in Lina’s life. The paper stresses importance of ungrounded empirical inquiry, and through identifying complex and heterogeneous associations in Lina’s life, it highlights acknowledgment of both broader social situations (such as post-socialism), but also mundane and often unremarkable moments in children’s lives. The notion of post-socialism is thus situated within the ‘descaled’ geographies of Lina’s everyday life, rather than as an imposing social condition.

Since the second half of the 19th Century, centralised water and sanitation systems have been expanding all over the world. However, the limitations of this model are becoming increasingly obvious and, in recent times, a renewed interest for decentralised approaches is emerging owing to the capacity of decentralised systems to enhance water security and minimise environmental degradation. The decentralised alternatives explored in this paper include the use of rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse at the household level. This paper analyses the main distinctive features of decentralised water supply and sanitation systems and the main requirements to achieve a successful transition to decentralised water management.

In this paper, the authors reflect on the use of student-led fieldtrips as an example of feminist pedagogy in a feminist geography course, a joint course by the universities of Amsterdam and Groningen in The Netherlands. The paper is a co-production of three lecturers and one student of this course and therefore includes teachers’ as well as students’ views. The authors conclude that student-led fieldtrips are a successful means of bringing in an explicit feminist pedagogy in teaching gender geography. Students were able to help shape the course using their own everyday experiences and interests and were able to contextualize their experiences in relation to theory explored in the classroom. This result is particularly important within the context of geography teaching in Dutch universities in which an empirical and policy oriented focus and a masculine model of teaching and learning dominates.

In some countries, Geography is struggling to survive as a subject as other disciplines develop and absorb geographical thoughts and methods into them. The survival of Geography in schools and higher education institutions is critical to the understanding of world phenomena, particularly in view of the problems with climate change, global warming and globalisation among others. There is very little understanding of the importance and role of geography in modern societies. This paper looks at the role of the HERODOT thematic network as a toolbox for the promotion of geography. By analysing the current state of geography promotion across higher education institutions, the Network aims to provide a toolbox of materials to support teachers and academics, but also parents, students and the general public to understand the role of geography in society. This is achieved through a number of initiatives, particularly the development of the GEOCUBE. This paper concludes by arguing the importance of such Networks in providing tools for the promotion and awareness of geography.

This paper explores the theoretical and practical implications of characterizing heritage as an active and creative element of cultural landscape; specifically, as a spatial technique which plays a fundamental role in the bio-physical and socio-cultural process we call human ecology. We establish four analytical coordinates in order to better appreciate and handle the ecological dimension of heritage, among which are, besides the variable of material originality, the structural integrity of landscape, its functional continuity, and its value as representation and experience. We also suggest three levels for heritage aesthetics analysis, centered on the aesthetics of the technical-ecological process, the development of memory of urban ecology, and the experience of ecological space. The analysis of the restoration process of the Hangzhou hydrological heritage is used to illustrate the application of these concepts and methodology to communicate the active character of heritage in space, and the dynamism of landscape as an experience.

This paper aims to deepen the conversation about the potential relevance and importance of including reflection on the desire and sexuality of the researcher in research outputs. We critically scrutinise the exceptionalisation of sexual(ised) interactions in research: why is sexual(ised) contact between researchers and participants considered unethical or problematic, and what are the consequences of the avoidance of—and/or the (self-)censorship with regard to discussing—intimacy in the field? This discussion leads us to argue for an alternative ethical approach than that prescribed by institutional ethical protocols. The ethical approach that we envision is based on the premise that knowledge production never occurs apart from our bodies and that a research relationship is not fundamentally different from any other human relationship. What we propose is a relational research ethics that creates space for discussing openly and in dialogue with others the (potential) consequences of our actions as researchers/human beings within relationships of shifting power asymmetry.

Durà, Antoni; Camonita, Francesco; Berzi, Matteo i Noferini, Andrea (2018)Euroregions, excellence and innovation across EU borders: A Catalogue of good practicesBarcelona: UAB. Departament de Geografia, 254 p. ISBN ebook (PDF): 978-84-947903-9-3 ISBN paper 978-84-947903-8-6

Aquest article té com a objectiu analitzar el paper de la cooperació transfronterera local a les àrees de fronteres perifèriques. Específicament, ens preguntem si les sinergies entre les polítiques comunitàries de cooperació territorial europea (CTE), d’una banda, i les iniciatives transfrontereres locals, d’una altra, representen una estratègia territorial de desenvolupament endogen vàlida en aquestes àrees. Els territoris de frontera (borderlands) molt sovint coincideixen amb llocs geogràficament remots (ex. àrees de muntanya o zones rurals o costaneres), generalment allunyats dels principals centres econòmics i urbans de creixement. Els Pirineus constitueixen, en aquest sentit, una àrea d’estudi privilegiat. Des de finals dels vuitanta, en aquest espai transfronterer s’han generat molts projectes i compta, alhora, amb diferents organismes de cooperació regional i local. L’anàlisi del cas d’estudi de la Cerdanya proporciona les dades empíriques de suport de la nostra hipòtesi que la cooperació transfronterera local contribueix a la integració dels territoris fronterers perifèrics. L’estudi demostra com les relacions històriques de veïnatge, la forta identitat local i el fet de compartir necessitats comunes són factors fonamentals per al desenvolupament d’una cooperació transfronterera local d’èxit, estable, multitemàtica i de llarg termini.

Aquest article vol donar una perspectiva sobre el paper que ha tingut la Generalitat de Catalunya com a actor en matèria de cooperació transfronterera. L’anàlisi es basa en dos elements: per un costat, els projectes finançats pel fons INTERREG en les convocatòries III i IV (1999-2014), en què Catalunya ha participat com a actor; i per altre, les estructures de cooperació que ha impulsat i desenvolupat també durant els mateixos anys. L’estudi posa de manifest com especialment durant els anys 2003-2006 hi va haver un impuls destacat del conjunt d’iniciatives transfrontereres, tant en projectes finançats per INTERREG com en iniciatives de cooperació institucional. Quant als resultats, pel que fa als projectes en els quals participa Catalunya amb altres actors, fomenten especialment el desenvolupament econòmic i la gestió del medi ambient; i pel que fa a la cooperació institucional, tot i que han reeixit algunes iniciatives, calen encara esforços perquè es consolidi.

The intrinsic links between water and energy have produced a new concept known as water-energy nexus (WEN), which has been increasingly studied by scholars and global institutions since the 1990s. This paper provides a review of water-energy nexus studies in an interdisciplinary manner starting from two major approaches—water for energy and energy for water—which focus principally on quantitative studies, but also on policy and institutional dimensions. Many studies mention data collection, the lack of coordination between existing frameworks and the scale/boundary of the two resources as major challenges, whereas new technologies are seen as an opportunity for the nexus perspective. After identifying research gaps, the political ecology approach is proposed for a critical reflection on WEN. Additionally, water poverty and energy poverty (or fuel poverty) are also proposed as part of WEN studies in order to broaden their spectrum to include the demand-end perspective and introduce a social dimension in WEN.

Aquest article compara quatre iniciatives socialment innovadores als territoris de Sants i Nou Barris Nord (Barcelona). La principal tesi que es desenvolupa és que els estudis d’innovació social, a part d’atendre la dimensió territorial d’aquestes iniciatives, haurien de considerar també les dinàmiques de lideratge col·lectiu que s’hi desenvolupen. En aquest sentit, s’identifiquen tres pràctiques de lideratge que resulten especialment rellevants per entendre els impactes de la innovació social en termes d’eficàcia i escalabilitat: la reformulació del discurs, la construcció de ponts entre diferents grups i actors socials i l’alliberament d’energies humanes. Concloem que el context històrico-geogràfic té un paper fonamental a l’hora d’entendre tant el sorgiment com l’impacte d’aquestes iniciatives. Tanmateix, l’agència resulta igualment important, especialment quan les condicions contextuals són adverses. La dialèctica entre el context i l’agència, així com la construcció de capacitats comunitàries als barris, apareixen com a factors clau per al foment d’una innovació social realment transformadora.

El litoral de les regions de Múrcia i València ha patit grans transformacions territorials durant les últimes dècades, a causa de la forta expansió de les funcions residencials, turístiques i de servicis. El Pla Hidrològic Nacional (2001) i, en major grau, el Programa A.G.U.A. (2004) van apostar per la dessalinització d’aigua marina a gran escala per a garantir demandes urbanes, turístiques i inclús agrícoles. La paralització dels plans urbanístics provocada per la crisi financera (2007), junt amb la tendència de reducció del consum d’aigua potable de l’última dècada, evidencien una capacitat de producció d’aigua dessalinitzada molt superior a les necessitats del moment present. Esta investigació revisa la situació actual de la dessalinització d’aigua marina i salobre continental en les regions de Múrcia i València, fa balanç dels avantatges i dels inconvenients que comporta i planteja una discussió entorn del paper que pot exercir esta font no convencional com a recurs estratégic i de futur per a garantir demandes urbano-turístiques i agrícoles, principalment durant situacions de sequera.

One of the oldest laments in agrarian development has been over the ageing and loss of the farm population but, for the first time since the Second World War, a noticeable return to farming is now taking place across most of Europe. These farm entrants we classify as Continuers and Newcomers. Research shows that they have different characteristics. Newcomers are characterized by their profiles (female and higher education), the barriers they face (access to land, capital and markets) and by the business models that they adopt (pluriactive and multifunctional). This paper describes the main features of Newcomers as they form a new and dynamic group in European rural society and contribute strong social motivations and practices to farming. This change may be referred to as a shift from an agroindustrial to an agrosocial paradigm and, together with new social and environmental relations in food systems, forms a new rurality in Europe.

Aquest article es planteja dos objectius. El primer és interrogar-se sobre el paper que exerceixen avui les agricultures locals en el desenvolupament sostenible dels espais rurals i en quina mesura construeixen un moviment de tornada de l’agricultura al territori que propicia noves relacions entre tots dos, expressades en maneres diferents de produir, en nous objectius i nous llaços amb el territori. En segon lloc, es reflexiona al voltant de la difícil convivència entre dos paradigmes vinculats a la producció agroalimentària, l’industrial hipermodern, basat en la globalització/mundialització, i el postmodern, basat en l’ancoratge territorial.

L’article constitueix un relat explicatiu sobre el procés de conversió de Barcelona en una ciutat turística, particularment al llarg de les dues últimes dècades. S’aporten dades evolutives dels diferents components del sistema turístic i es contextualitza el significat de les activitats turístiques en les estructures de la ciutat i en el seu funcionament. Aquest procés ha estat complex i es mostra inacabat. Es parteix de dues premisses específiques: a) són diversos els factors que expliquen l’origen i el desenvolupament del procés, i entre ells destaca el paper de la gestió pública del turisme, del seu model de promoció i foment, que és valorat com un model d’èxit; b) en el seu nou estatus com a ciutat turística, Barcelona té el repte de dissenyar un model de gestió de la ciutat (turística) basat en la relació turisme-ciutat que prevegi minimitzar els conflictes i afavorir les sinergies.

This paper shows the results of a research project on territorial conflicts in the Veneto region. The research describes the various types of conflict connected with territorial transformations. The number of conflicts and active committees suggests a lifelong interest in environmental issues as well as highlighting the significant role that land development and land use dynamics – which have occurred in the Veneto region in recent decades – are playing in this new phenomenon.Conflicts should be interpreted not only as a public demand for more participation and involvement in territorial processes that have a direct impact on them and their standard of living, but also as a self-professed lack of confidence in a political class that has gradually reduced the capacity for political representation.

Tensions and conflicts over water use are increasingly common, as a result of both high water scarcity and high water demand. The use of water resources generates political disputes between countries sharing waters within their borders. This paper aims to discuss water security and the interstate conflict and cooperation that can result from it. It is based on an interdisciplinary literature review that aims to contribute to the development of studies on transboundary water policies, encompassing concepts such as water security, water justice and water governance. This article aims to grasp the problems involved in the conflicts and cooperation on shared use of transboundary water resources. It is divided in the following parts: water and international politics; international security, environmental security and water security; and interstate water conflicts and cooperation in the use of shared water resources. Cooperation in the use of transboundary waters might spare distributive conflicts on water use. In situations of scarcity, policies should prioritize human and animal watering, which might relieve water supply issues between riparian countries. On the other hand, water abundance may end up creating more tensions than water shortages, since disputes over its use might emerge instead of cooperation favoring interstate security.

This paper covers the development dynamics of the air transportation industry. Having the evolutionary economic geography as the frame of reference, we analyze the co-evolution of the market (selective environment), the aeronautics knowledge and equipment (technology) and the air transportation institutional policy (policy). The stress is on those factors affecting network formation and tie selection. The results of this investigation add to the limited empirical research on the evolution of transport network systems. We found that air trans-port shows a path dependency; although at the same time has a strong level of uncertainty due to exogenous factors. Also, the co-evolution between the selective market environment, technology and institutional decisions has been verified. The latter happen to be key, as the evolution of air transportation can only be understood in the context of a mixed regulatory environment that provides different levels of freedom for network formation.

This paper reviews the literature on the uneven patterns of airport seat capacity. Seat capacity distribution studies are useful to show air travel possibilities and whether economic development is concentrated in some particular regions. During the last decades, seat capacity patterns have been reshaped by an increasing process of deregulation of the air traffic market and liberalization of the former flagship carriers. Overall, literature agrees that intra-continental seat capacity has tended to deconcentrate, meaning that seats are more equally spread along the airport population, while inter-continental seat capacity, the most valuable for the exchange of face-to-face information and global supply chains, has tended to concentrate in fewer airports. Hence, in quantitative terms inequality has decreased, although in qualitative terms it has increased.

Resilience appears to have become a buzz word since the ecological, psychological, social and economic sciences began to use it to refer, respectively, to the capacity of ecosystems, people, societies, the economy, and more recently even urban systems to cope with disturbance. In fact, it is unclear exactly what the catchword «resilient city» means. Based on these assumptions, this article reviews resilience perspectives and their possible application to urban systems. In the first part of the paper, the concept of resilience, its evolution and perspectives (from engineering to social ecology) are analyzed with reference to ecosystems, societies and complex systems. In the second part we try to shed light on this panacea of concepts applied to cities. Important insights of this review are that certain resilience engineering perspectives (such as recovery and persistence views) can lead to unsustainable patterns of development in cities, while from complex systems resilience perspectives the principles of sustainability and transformability emerge as the consequent and necessary trajectory. While the term «resilient cities» often refers only to the capacity to maintain functions and structures, we argue that urban resilience should be framed within the resilience (system persistence), transition (system incremental change) and transformation (system reconfiguration) views.

This paper draws on rich ethnographic data and complementary survey research from a three-country study (Ghana, Malawi, South Africa) of young people’s mobility to explore the gendered nature of children’s journeys to school in sub-Saharan Africa. In most African countries, girls’ participation in formal education is substantially lower than boys’, especially at secondary school level. Transport and mobility issues often form an important component of this story, though the precise patterning of the transportation and mobility constraints experienced by schoolchildren, and the ways in which transport factors interact with other constraints, varies from region to region. We draw attention to the nature of gendered travel experiences in rural and urban areas, the implications of these findings for access to education, and finally suggest areas where policy intervention could be beneficial.

Les fàbriques de pasta de cel·lulosa tenen fama de ser potencialment contaminants i, per tant, motiu de conflictes en moltes parts del món. Arran de la instal·lació d’una planta d’aquest tipus a la riba oriental del riu Uruguai —el qual delimita la frontera entre l’Argentina i l’Uruguai—, va aparéixer un espontani i actiu moviment ecologista a la ciutat argentina de Gualeguaychú que provocà que aquesta ciutat es declarés en contra de la instal·lació d’aquesta fàbrica de paper. Aquest fet va motivar la intervenció dels governs dels dos països, per la qual cosa d’un problema relativament petit i localitzat es va passar a un veritable conflicte geopolític de solució difícil. Aquesta nova escala del conflicte va eliminar la possibilitat d’arribar a acords que impliquessin —per totes dues ribes del riu— despeses socials, polítiques i econòmiques excessivament elevades per a tots els actors.

Resulta habitual trobar en el paisatge de les valls pirinenques, com ara la Vall Fosca (Pallars Jussà), la coexistència de dos fenòmens diametralment oposats: d’una banda, l’abandonament del territori i, de l’altra, la intensificació de l’ús que se’n fa. El primer s’explica per la dramàtica regressió de les activitats primàries, base d’un sistema que començà a difuminar-se quan les regles del joc capitalista entraren en vigor. El segon correspon a la proliferació de complexos d’oci i esport i d’urbanització, com a conseqüència de les noves demandes d’una població eminentment urbana. La ramaderia extensiva de muntanya, en un estat alarmant de recessió, reivindica avui el seu paper en la diversificació de les economies pirinenques, en tant que s’adequa a les possibilitats del territori i és responsable de la qualitat paisatgística que la demanda turística exigeix.

El propòsit de repensar l’assignatura de ciències socials dins de l’ensenyament secundari obligatori (ESO), per transformar-la en un marc coherent d’aprenentatge que doni cabuda, més enllà de la divisió habitual entre geografia i història, al conjunt de les disciplines que integren els estudis socials, porta l’autor a reflexionar sobre el paper que pot tenir la geografia en la vertebració dels nous continguts i, alhora, a plantejar la necessitat d’integrar plenament la matèria en un projecte interdisciplinari que la doti de significació i utilitat.

Over 20 years ago, feminist and radical geographers urged members of the discipline to critically engage with questions of gender and sexuality in our research, in academic life and in the classroom. Classrooms, as geographical spaces are gendered, classed and sexualized in particular ways within power relations. Drawing on contemporary feminist pedagogies in geography, I critically reflect on an unexpected situation that arose in a North Ame - rican Graduate course on social justice issues. In written course evaluations, student comments reflected a particularly gendered and sexualised set of expectations that stemmed, in part, from the nature of the classroom setting and the course content. In this paper, I examine how my experiences in this course illustrate that attempts to «gender», «sex» and «queer» the geography classroom have met with successes and setbacks that reflect particular historical and contextual circumstances.