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There is a longstanding literature on the unequal geographical distribution of welfare. In this paper we argue that increasingly geography is becoming the basis for rationing access to some forms of welfare. Focusing on access to secondary schools in East London, England, where the demand for places at the more popular schools generally far exceeds the number of places available, we show how distance from school has now become the primary means of allocating places. Rather than educational resources attempting to compensate for geographical disadvantage, geography (in the form of distance from school) has become the rationale by which those living in advantaged areas continue to have privileged access to educational resources. Whereas previously the role of the state was to compensate for the unfairness of such geographical inequalities, geography (via distance to school) is now used to justify the unequal allocation of scarce school places. The paper demonstrates that not only does the near universal adoption of distance-based allocation policies in East London lead to the reproduction of social advantage and disadvantage, but also it is creating new hierarchies of school popularity and more important unpopularity which are not always clearly related to issues of school attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relations between practice, knowledge and context in design consultancies. It uses a case study of design consultancies in London based on in-depth interviews with designers working in design agencies in the city. The paper argues that the relations between design knowledge and context have been conceived in two ways. The first account emphasises the sharing of tacit knowledge in a design community marked by relatively strong and durable social ties. The second approach argues instead that design is a creative collectivity with much weaker social ties and a broader range of types of knowledge. It is argued that while both of these approaches illuminate parts of situated learning and context in design consultancies, these are actually more complex and mixed than either account recognises. Both accounts overlook the crucial importance of what are termed medium-strength ties between designers and their clients that combine market contracts with personal regard and friendship. The paper concludes by suggesting that such medium ties are increasingly important in design-based innovation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with the attention paid to written texts, geographers and others have neglected the spoken word in its many forms, particularly in investigations of the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. This paper argues that considering orality as a series of embodied, situated enunciations, declarations and conversations can provide a basis for historical geographies of the spoken word that engage with representation as practice. Using evidence from the domain of law within the context of Britain's plantation colonies in the Caribbean - particularly Barbados and Jamaica - this paper argues for the significance of the oral culture of empire. This was evident in the ways in which the power of speech - through the rules on oath-taking and evidence-giving - was part of the making of imperial and colonial identities and relationships dividing white and non-white, free and unfree, both within the spaces of plantation societies and in the broader British Atlantic world. The fragility of the identities and relationships made through the spoken word is also demonstrated through a series of moments when changes in the regulation of speech in courts of law were suggested and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London’s skyline is changing significantly with a new generation of iconic buildings, of which the Swiss-Re Tower is the most well known. Despite the fact that many of these buildings are located in the City (London’s financial heart), little attention has been paid to the relationship between the transformation of London’s skyline and the recent institutional reconfiguration of the Corporation of London, the authority that runs the City. Focusing empirically on the City’s iconic architecture, and foregrounding a period of institutional crisis for the Corporation (1970–1990), the paper: first, departs from the standard analysis of iconic buildings as signifiers of economic success, and sketches a framework for examining the role of iconic architecture during moments of crisis and, second, offers a new approach to understanding the City’s iconic commissions: not as signifiers of London’s international economic power, but as symptoms of changes in the institutions and élites that promote the City’s new urbanity. The article details how the internationalisation of London’s economy after the 1970s challenged the Corporation’s insular character. The Corporation’s resistance to the ‘invasion’ of foreign companies, people and architectural styles in the City in the midst of a rapid expansion of London’s economy and growing inter-urban competition, led to open threats from the government for the abolition of the Corporation. Responding to these threats, the Corporation reinvented itself with an institutional reform and re-branded its identity in the early 2000s as an outward-looking institution, open to London’s new transnational élites. The 2002 Unitary Development Plan that introduced a new architectural language in the City corresponds to the same need to construct a new imaginary identity for a re-branded Corporation. Towering over the City’s traditional signifiers, the City’s new buildings constitute an ode to the Corporation’s new identity and a visual coup d’état against its time-old heritage-oriented planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between gentrification and globalisation has recently become a significant concern for gentrification scholars. This has involved developing an understanding of how gentrification has become a place-based strategy of class (re)formation during an era in which globalisation has changed sociological structures and challenged previously established indicators of social distinction. This paper offers an alternative reading of the relationship between gentrification and globalisation through examining the results of a mixed method research project which looked at new-build gentrification along the River Thames, London, UK. This research finds gentrification not to be distinguished by the gentrifer-performed practice of habitus within a ‘global context’. Rather, the responsibility for gentrification, and the relationship between globalisation and gentrification, is found to originate with capital actors working within the context of a neoliberal global city. In order to critically conceptualise this form of gentrification, and understand the role of globalisation within the process, the urban theory of Lefebvre is drawn upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that a process of super-gentrification, similar to that first identified by Lees (2003 Urban Studies 40 2487–509) in Brooklyn Heights, New York City, is occurring in the already gentrified, inner London neighbourhood of Barnsbury. A new group of super wealthy professionals working in the City of London is slowly imposing its mark on this inner London housing market in a way that differentiates it and them both from traditional gentrifiers and from the traditional urban upper classes. We suggest that there is a close interaction between work in the newly globalizing industries of the financial services economy, elite forms of education, particularly Oxbridge, and residence in Barnsbury which is very different from other areas of gentrified inner London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]