Geography Research Collection

Concerns about destruction and the shaping of the urban environment, so evident in 1916, manifested themselves in a very different way a century later. In the immediate aftermath of the Rising, many buildings were entirely or partially destroyed, congregational spaces in the city such as the General Post Office and Clery’s Department Store were badly damaged, and livelihoods were jeopardised as many workplaces and tools of work were damaged or looted. The most pressing concern a century ago was restitution to repair the damage and erase the material and visual legacy of the Rising so that the O’Connell Street area could be reopened for business as swiftly as possible. A campaign to this end transcended all political divisions as the British government underwrote the property losses occasioned by the Rising. In 2016, ‘destruction’ is still an important motif as heritage campaigners vigorously oppose redevelopment plans for the greater O’Connell Street area – including Moore Street, Moore Lane, and Henry Lane – lest they imperil buildings that they claim are central to the history and commemoration of the 1916 Rising.

The Reconnect project advanced knowledge on the impact of low-head barriers on connectivity in Irish rivers in terms of sediment dynamics and ecology (fish, macroinvertebrates and macrophytes) through studies undertaken from 2016 to 2020 in four core study areas on the Duag, Dalligan and Burren rivers and Browns Beck Brook and at 35 other locations across 12 river/stream systems. The project also developed a methodology for prioritising barriers for modification or removal to improve hydromorphology and connectivity.

It is a common perception that biodiversity exists mainly in rural locations and this perception may be supported by the predominance of designated sites (e.g. Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas and Natural Heritage Areas) in rural areas. Given that approximately 40 per cent of the Irish population lives in rural areas the designated sites are indeed very important and their designation allows them particular protection. However, as Ireland’s population becomes increasingly urbanised, the role and management of urban biodiversity is becoming more important not only due to the encroachment of urban areas into previously undeveloped lands (i.e. urban sprawl) but also the recent trend towards increasing residential densities. These have heightened the role for proper recognition, protection and management of biodiversity in urban areas.

Moore Street in Dublin is best known as the location of the city’s oldest food market. But its location beside the General Post Office meant that it formed part of the stage on which the drama of the 1916 Rising was played out. It is central to the story of Easter Week because the leaders of the 1916 Rising issued their surrender from numbers 14-17 Moore Street. The street has thus assumed significance in national narratives of the Rising and ‘Irish’ identity, and has become a rallying point for campaigners who wish to recognise landmarks and sites associated with the insurrection and Ireland’s eventual independence. However, throughout the 20 th century this had become one of the most neglected parts of the inner city as focus shifted to addressing the housing crisis in the city through suburban developments and the creation of ‘new towns’ on the edge of the city.

De nombreuses études ont tenté d’expliquer la montée – ou la résurgence – depuis 2010 de l’extrême droite dans le monde. Dans ce court article, nous exposons pourquoi, pour comprendre ce phénomène, une nouvelle approche est nécessaire, qui parte du point de vue des pays du Sud glo- bal1 , où les notions de colonialisme et de colonialité jouent un rôle central dans l’analyse.

Used inevitable every single day, by all people, despite the age, social class, economic status of ethnicity, public space represents a great deal in our wellbeing and in the image of the city. In particularly, residential public spaces do have a high economic, social and emotional importance. The present empirical study aims to highlight the first step in a complex process of planning. The observation of the most important issues of the residential public spaces in Bucharest represents the foundation of future researches themes like urban planning, social wellbeing and segregation, urban image and urban identity. Considering the recent history of the city the main focus is set on the elementary challenge to adapt the democratic modern life style and expectation to a predominantly socialist urban structure.

Commentary 1 This article appeared in a classic number of the Annals. Some of the best younger talents in the Association of American Geographers were commissioned to show the state of the art of American geography to the 1976 IGU Congress in Moscow. There was no overall theme but one emerged none the less. With articles by Yi-Fu Tuan on humanistic geography, Robert Sack on magic and space, David Ward on the mythology of the Victorian slum and Leslie King on alternatives to positivist economic geography, it amounted to something of a special issue on the philosophical turn of the time in Anglo-American human geography. As a graduate student then at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I was acutely attuned to this mid-1970s turn to more cultural-humanistic perspectives and the possibilities they offered.

Cumulative Effects Assessment, a requirement under European law, refers to the analysis of accumulated environmental change resulting from past, present and future human activities. Despite the legal requisite, and its potential to better address and mitigate environmental degradation, assessment of cumulative effects is a key deficiency in current environmental assessment practice – mainly due to the disparity in definitions and divergence in methodological approaches. To address the current lack of systematic methods and tackle some of the identified methodological shortcomings, intuitive yet innovative approaches based on Geographic Information Systems have been developed to examine potential cumulative effects at a landscape level. The approaches are tailored to tackle specific considerations such as direct and indirect effects on the receiving environment or on specific valued components. This paper demonstrates them and comparatively appraises their applicability. While further studies are required, pilot testing of these methods have validated their practical implementation and, more importantly, their potential to enhance current Irish practice by enabling systematic preliminary desk-based assessments of potential cumulative effect areas, thus facilitating better environmental management and evidence-based planning decisions.

This commentary explores the spatialities, and in particular, the urban legacies, of the 1916 Rising from the perspectives of 1916 and 2016. The focus is on Dublin's north inner city and especially O’Connell (formerly Sackville) Street and the adjacent thoroughfares – the epicentre of the 1916 Rising. This commentary is presented as three short papers: the first addresses the immediate post-Rising legacy and explains how and why the O’Connell Street area was speedily reconstructed despite the stringencies of the First World War; the second examines the centennial legacy, recent efforts to preserve the memory of 1916 and their broader socio-spatial impacts; the third reflects on how the seminal historical event of the 1916 Rising has shaped and continues to shape livelihoods, politics and the built form of the city. The commentary concludes by highlighting the value of an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the evolution of urban spaces and outlines some of the broader implications and lessons for planning, heritage and policy-making.

COVID19 is inherently geographical in its impact on society. Not only has it deepened pre-existing inequalities and further isolated groups that rely on physical spaces, such as LGBTQ people, the pandemic required a restructuring of multiple forms of time–space relations including activism. Using interview and questionnaires responses from early 2021, we explore the impact of COVID19 on the activities of those expressing concerns about, and opposition to, socio-legal changes related to sexualities and genders in Canada, Great Britian and Ireland. Participants’ perceptions of the effects of COVID19 regimes (lockdowns and restrictions) highlight four key trends. First, the biggest group of questionnaire respondents understood their views/activities as unchanging. Second, some participants noted a disengagement with sexual and gender politics. Third, those who were activists before/during COVID19 noted challenges in continuing their activities online with the loss of face-to-face interactions, and how they negotiated new spatialities. Finally, for some participants COVID19 regimes meant either newly engaging in, or increasing their pre-pandemic, activism with time to ‘research’ and to develop their activities. Further work is needed to investigate if our findings are similar to other groups engaged in other forms of activism and the longitudinal effects and implications of COVID19 geographies on activism.

In less than 20 years the housing system in China has been transformed from one based predominantly on the public provision of housing to a market-based system, to the extent that more than 80% of households in urban China are homeowners. The sheer scale of this change, compressed into such a short time, is impressive. However, the move to a commodified system has not been problem free. Indeed, the twin issues of displacement and, more generally, affordability are coming increasingly to the fore, resulting in significant policy shifts since 2010 toward the promotion of low-end housing for lower middle- and low-income groups. This article examines these issues through a detailed analysis of the implementation of the indemnificatory housing policy in Nanjing, and highlights the complex and often contradictory nature of this policy in practice.

“What will you be doing in Oslo?” an official at Dublin airport asked as I boarded the plane yesterday. “Giving a lecture”, said I. “On what?” he queried. “On the current state of geography” I almost hesitated to inform him. “Oh, you mean ecology and things – very important subject these days”, he reassured me. Previous worries about the scope of the lecture were amplified: how to set limits on the “current”, how to define “geography”, and finally, on what terms “national comparisons” might be broached. On the flight I again glanced over the 13-page full colour supplement to the Irish Times, entitled Networks of Power which had appeared last week and then understood why the airport official knew exactly about “the current state of geography”.

Temporary land uses have become the focus of much debate within academic and policy circles in recent years. Although the international literature contains numerous case studies of temporary interventions, little attention has been paid to the dynamics of the interactions among different stakeholders. This paper reports on a stakeholder workshop that used a participatory research approach to collectively define the issues facing those interested in the potential of vacant urban sites. The paper outlines the goals, design and evaluation of the workshop and concludes with a discussion of suggested lessons for practice that emerged from the workshop sessions.

Environmental sensitivity is a critical consideration in natural resource management. In the context of the legislative requirements for impact assessment, environmental sensitivity (or vulnerability) assessments present a framework for systematically determining the potential for significant adverse impacts. This is reflected in the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive’s requirement to take account of the vulnerability of the area likely to be affected when identifying and characterising potential impacts (EC, 2001, Annex II, 2), as well as in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive’s cautioning on the potential for significant effects when proposing developments in environmentally sensitive locations (EC, 2014, Article 28). Assessing environmental sensitivity provides further insight into the baseline environment by contributing an additional dimension to the purely technical consideration of environmental characteristics. It can serve as an empirical and systematic approach, and as a more objective critical foundation to promote evidence-based impact assessment and environmental planning.

Liczne badania usiłowały wytłumaczyć wzrost – lub odrodzenie – radykalnej prawicy w świecie po 2010 roku. W tym krótkim artykule postulujemy przyjęcie nowego ujęcia w próbach rozumienia tego fenomenu, polegającego na perspektywie Globalnego Południa,1 w którym kolonializm i kolonialność odgrywałyby centralną rolę analityczną (Masood i Nisar, 2020; Tavares Furtado i Eklundh, 2022).

Into a cordial and well-to-do home in Tallinn, Estonia, Edgar Kant was born on 21 February 1902. His father, Jüri Kant, was a merchant and his mother, née Elise Ruval, had a rural background. From the wide circle of friends and associates who found hospitality at the Kant home young Edgar apparently imbibed a global perspective on life and a curiosity about languages and different styles of thought. From his mother he learned about the rich Estonian record of folk lore, its history, culture, and geography. Liberal in politics yet staunchly patriotic, the atmosphere of Kant’s childhood was one which encouraged study of international affairs, science, a rational attitude toward economic and social matters, and a strong love for nature. All of these values shine through in Edgar Kant’s life and work. A geographer he became and a conscientious citizen, Rector of Tartu’s University, fully embarked on a potentially brilliant scholarly career when his country was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1944. As an involuntary exile in Sweden, however, he was an inspiration to students and colleagues at the University of Lund, where he spent the rest of his life, from 1944 to 1970.

"Geography has never flowered alone; it has always been tied in with the general advances of science, trade, and technology; it literally has no history separate from the intellectual and cultural currents of the time." F. Lukermann Issues of national prestige and identity stirred among the sponsors and audiences of geography during its early years as an academic field. For the first two generations of disciplinary effort in Europe at least, imaginations continued to fly towards exploration of the few remaining terrae incognitae, but they also turned to the local environments of the homeland, where landscapes were read as indices of cultural belonging, as 'medals struck in the image of civilization', tangible evidence of historical relationships between human cultures and milieux. Heimatkunde (literally, knowledge of home areas), which became a required item in the apprenticeship of young recruits, was a style of practice intimately linked with questions of local, national and regional identity. It held a special appeal in the lands of Norden.

The Urban Environment Project (UEP) is a multi-disciplinary, inter-institutional research project whose goal is to develop a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) for the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) (figure 1) so that policy makers can explore the environmental effects of policy alternatives before implementation and make evidence based decisions. The questions and problems posed by the specialist teams (Air Quality, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Transport and Urban Sprawl) are based in an environmental framework, and the land-use model MOLAND is the engine room for producing possible outcomes and scenarios to aid visualisation and direct comparison of a selection of infrastructure developments at both regional and local scales.

I.INTRODUCTION: Throughout a century of Western social thought, mankind's perennial enquiry into the where, when, and how of life has yielded a rich legacy of speculation. From the ebullient satire of Butler's Erewhon (Butler 1872) and the idealism of utopian fiction, the angry critique of Existentialist and Marxist philosophy and the resounding protest of popular song, evidence abounds that the human spirit remains undaunted in its desire to not only grasp the course of' events but also to ameliorate and control the conditions of life. The increasing rate and complexity of change in our day renders the challenge to rationality so overwhelming that at times it becomes difficult to pause, reflect, and evaluate the latent assumptions and implications of scholarly effort. Barriers to communication between separate worlds of scholarship, too, prevent the flow of insight between different specialized perspectives, or the restoration of harmony between the YIN and the YANG of human reason.

In an era when, we are told, cities are now the source of economic dynamism and the focus for innovations in public policy and governance across the world, Ireland presents an anomaly. This was made apparent by the recent rejection of an attempt to introduce a directly elected mayor for Dublin at a time when mayors are lauded as the solution to manifold social and economic problems. However, when we delve a little deeper, that decision is perhaps unsurprising given the traditional ambivalence in Ireland towards the ‘urban’.