Search

This paper employs interview narratives alongside participant-led photography and caption writing to examine the different daily geographies of 15 HIV-positive gay men in Auckland, New Zealand. Difference for these men is rooted in both their HIV status and their sexuality, and this difference has implications for their engagement with the world at a range of spatial and temporal scales. Giving voice to such experiences begins to answer calls for geographers to consider more deeply the connections between health, sexuality and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the rhetoric and symbolism deployed in the course of selling residential properties at Hobsonville Point, a new development in Auckland. Specifically, we ask what understanding of community is promoted in this development, and how this understanding is represented in promotional material. Our study is informed by analysis of newspaper articles, promotional material and planning/legal documents as well as field observation (2011-2012). We conclude that appealing to a contemporary yearning for nature and social cohesion at an urban coastal location has generated a situation in which community is being 'sold' at Hobsonville Point, yet paradoxically is yet to be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of designing appropriate institutional arrangements for metropolitan government and planning has recently proved highly contestable politically. We interrogate how the role of the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) was zealously contested and hollowed-out during the 1990s. More recently, the impacts of the neo-liberal reforms in Auckland have been mediated by a further round of local government reforms inspired by a Third Way ideology and by the imperative to respond to the planning crisis resulting from infrastructure underinvestment. New regionally based governance arrangements and planning processes have been created. We argue that this new commitment to regionalism can realistically expect to be tested by deep-seated political cleavages within Auckland and by Auckland's relationship with central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]