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The publication of the 2021 Census data revealed that four English cities—Birmingham, Leicester, London and Manchester—are now 'no majority' cities, meaning that no ethnic group, including the White British, comprise a majority (more than half) of their populations. This paper explores the residential diversification of these cities to ask: whether that diversification is reflected in the average neighbourhood of all ethnic groups or just some; whether the decline in the number of White British means that 'enclaves' of other ethnic groups are emerging instead; whether the White British are avoiding living in diverse neighbourhoods; and whether a co‐occurrence of the diversification is that residential segregation between the White British and other groups is increasing within and beyond the boundaries of these cities. Using a harmonised set of cross‐census neighbourhoods to provide a consistent geography across the 2001, 2011 and 2021 censuses, the results show that the residential neighbourhoods of the four cities have increased their ethnic diversity for the average member of all ethnic groups. Despite some growth in the number of neighbourhoods where a group other than the White British form a majority, especially in Leicester, the overall conclusion is one of residential diversification happening alongside residential desegregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years sexualised drug use, usually referred to as chemsex, has become the object of intense media health‐related panic and increasing academic scrutiny. Critical social scientists have challenged pathologising perspectives, analysing the socio‐cultural and political economy dimensions of chemsex. Against the silence of geographers in this emerging field, the paper develops a geographical relational analysis of chemsex, focusing on the experiences of gay men living with HIV in two Italian cities (Bologna; Milan) and Italian gay men living with HIV in three English cities (Leicester; London; Manchester). Demonstrating the constitutive role of place in the practice of chemsex, the paper frames place relationally, that is, as the encounter between here and there, the material and the virtual, imagined geographies and lived spaces. To emphasise the central role of place and geographical knowledge to understand chemsex, the paper builds on 'weak theory', as it conceives things as open, entangled, connected and in flux, while focusing on ordinary practices and heterogeneity in more‐than‐human worlds. Showing how chemsex represents an embodied, relational geographical encounter among different human and non‐human actors, places (both physical and digital), imaginations and desires, the paper highlights the role of sexual practices in the relational construction of place‐making, therefore calling for an increased engagement with sex itself within the field of geographies of sexualities. The paper introduces a relational geographical perspective to the analysis of chemsex. Demonstrating the constitutive role of place in the practice of chemsex, the paper frames place relationally, i.e. as the encounter between here and there, the material and the virtual, imagined geographies and lived spaces. The paper calls for an increased engagement with the materiality of sex within the field of geographies of sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to compare the drivers of clustering of rural and urban creative industries in England. We use pre‐pandemic web‐scraped data from 154,618 creative industry organizations in England, and use a novel technique to identify 71 distinct rural creative "microclusters" of geographically proximate creative firms. We then consider the role of place‐based assets and agglomeration in the presence of microclusters at a micro‐level geography and find that the determinants of microclustering are generally consistent between rural and urban areas. On that basis we argue that policies to support creative clusters may drive rural regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intervenes in the debate on ethnic segregation in British cities by paying attention to the hitherto neglected phenomenon of territorial stigmatisation. It discusses the stigma attached to the neighbourhood of St Paul's, Bristol; how it emerged, how it is felt and negotiated by local residents 'from below', and its effects on how that neighbourhood is managed by policy elites 'from above'. The paper critically reviews some recent influential treatments of ethnic segregation in the UK and the moral panic over ghettoisation, before explaining how the racialisation of urban space and extreme events such as the riots of 1980 and recent high-profile activities connected to Bristol's drugs economy have installed a damaging reputation of St Paul's as a segregated 'ghetto' of vice and dereliction. Using a mixed-methods approach, we show that black-white segregation in St Paul's is in fact low, and then explain how its ghetto reputation affects the experiences of residents. The paper concludes by arguing that in order to understand the complexities of ethnically diverse urban communities in Britain, territorial stigmatisation must be subjected to analytical scrutiny to complement the high-profile statistical approaches of recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the wider social impacts of hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games and its 'legacy' ambitions in East London, emphasizing securitization as an inbuilt feature of the urban regeneration project. Drawing on extensive original empirical research, the paper analyses the modalities of Olympic safety and security practices within the Olympic Park itself and their wider impact, while also connecting this research to theorization and debates in urban sociology and criminology. In this complex setting, a raft of formal and informal, often subtle, regulatory mechanisms have emerged, especially as visions of social ordering focused on 'cleansing' and 'purifying' have 'leaked out' from the hyper-securitized 'sterilized' environment of the Olympic Park and become embedded within the Olympic neighbourhood. In such complex circumstances, applying Douglas' (1966) work on purity and danger to the spatial realm provides a key conceptual framework to understand the form and impact of such processes. The imposition of order can be seen to not only perform 'cleansing' functions, but also articulate multiple symbolic, expressive and instrumental roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built heritage of most cities is heterogeneous, hybrid and multiple. However, certain heritage objects and meanings are invariably privileged over others in place-making strategies. In this paper we are interested in the production of local heritage and design discourses and their impact on the regulation of conservation and change in the built environment. Using the example of the legacy of post-war (i.e. 1950s and 1960s) modernist development in Manchester, England, the paper explores the performative work of place narratives in conservation policy. The contested heritage value of post-war modernist development in the UK is particularly relevant, given the difficulties posed by aspects of 1950s and 1960s design set against increased pressures for conservation. Accordingly, the conservation of aspects of 1950s/1960s urbanism can be fiercely resisted by urban leaders. Empirically, we examine the ways in which post-war heritage has been selectively incorporated into the dominant design and heritage narratives of the city of Manchester. Looking beyond Manchester, the paper contributes to conceptual debates about the situated politics of heritage and the institutional work performed by heritage discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2007, the city of Sheffield officially declared itself to be the UK’s first ‘City of Sanctuary’, a gesture that sought to instil a spirit of ‘welcome and hospitality towards asylum seekers and refugees’. Drawing on a series of interviews and ethnographic work, this paper critically examines this gesture by considering how City of Sanctuary sought to enact a relational account of place through which the responsibilities of Sheffield towards both proximate and distant strangers were highlighted. The paper argues that while the City of Sanctuary movement integrates both relational and territorial political practices, it also actively pursues a relational imaginary through presenting the city as a space of political connections and responsibilities. This is achieved through a twin focus upon the role asylum seekers and refugees play in constituting the city and the role that Sheffield might come to play in national discussions of asylum. Following this discussion, the paper looks to the implications of City of Sanctuary’s work for a relational account of spatial politics, arguing that a dual orientation of spatial responsibilities ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ place may be more easily articulated in reference to some networks and flows than others. The experiences of City of Sanctuary therefore suggest that relational accounts must present a space of negotiation between territorial practices, political networks, spatial responsibilities and geographical imaginations. The development of City of Sanctuary into a national network of towns and cities promoting hospitality indicates the importance of such negotiations for developing a culture of refuge across British cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whimsy describes the capricious, playful and fanciful, and designates something irrational or without an immediately obvious reason to exist. I argue that this frivolity and illogicality are precisely what can make whimsy a significant, if fleeting, ground for micro-political change. To demonstrate this claim I use the example of yarn bombing - a contemporary form of street art in which knitted and crocheted items are attached to parts of the urban landscape. Yarn bombing, I argue, does more than feminise the city, for the whimsy with which it is imbued has the capacity to increase our attentiveness to habitual worlds in a series of micro-political gestures. Yet it is impossible to fully recognise and harness a politics of whimsy, for doing so defies its character as frivolous and without motive, and supersedes these traits with intentionality and utility. As a result, a politics born of whimsy is always-already a paradoxical politics. The broader question thus becomes one of how to dwell in whimsy's ungraspable moment in order that we might remain open to new political and ethical potentialities. To explore these issues, this paper draws on performative ethnographic fieldwork, wherein 30 yarn bombs were made and displayed in the city of Bristol during 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) using a GB plant-level data set. The main findings relate to whether spatial spillovers and 'place' effects are important: plants located in cities generally perform better than plants in the same region outside of these cities; but with the exception of Bristol, no city has significantly higher TFP levels than the South East. This suggests that spatial externalities associated with city location are not as important as the benefits of being situated in the South East region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early medieval Winchester, three monastic communities were enclosed together in the south-eastern corner of the town. By the later Anglo-Saxon period, Old Minster was a monastic cathedral and New Minster and Nunnaminster were monastic communities for men and women respectively. This paper addresses ways in which the three foundations collaborated and co-ordinated with each other and with the city. While gender segregated these communities, both liturgy and the urban context integrated them, as can be seen from the books used and produced by religious men and women in this city in later Anglo-Saxon England. The importance of prayer to the inhabitants of the city and the wider locale can be seen in the documents that request liturgical services - most often prayers and masses - in return for grants of land and other gifts. Ecclesiastical and lay individuals alike allied themselves to these religious houses, seeking commemoration and often also burial in their cemeteries and hoping to benefit spiritually from their prayers. The ways in which gender affected the religious experiences of Winchester's citizens and their consecrated brothers and sisters are complex, but they are also important in understanding how the saints and their servants on earth related to God, to each other and to the surrounding urban space. [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]

There has been remarkable enthusiasm for redesigning and reanimating urban public spaces in recent years. Yet geographical and urban research has tended to interpret these changes through a relatively limited set of concerns related to exclusion, encroachment and claim-making. This paper seeks to extend engagement with the concept of public space. It does so by arguing for the need to attend more closely to the generative capacities of public spaces and to the material and practical affordances they can offer. Following a project of intervention in a public space in West London - where a troubled crime hotspot underwent a programme of transformation - we suggest that there is much to be gained from broadening attention to the ways in which everyday spaces of public life are assembled: to different ways of inhabiting public space, to atmospheres that are produced, and to the ways in which material interventions enable and constrain the potentialities of spaces and their publicness. Our aim in doing so is to foster attention to, and develop an understanding of, the many instances where cities might become more inclusive, more convivial and generally better for the people that inhabit them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]