Helga Leitner

The political construction of scale

Geographic scale, referring to the nested hierarchy of bounded spaces of differing size, such as the local, regional, national and global, is a familiar and taken-for-granted concept for political geographers and political analysts. In much contemporary analysis of political organization and action, geographic scale is treated simply as different levels of analysis (from local to global) in which the investigation of political processes is set. Recently this notion of geographic scale as an unproblematic, pre-given and fixed hierarchy of bounded spaces has been challenged. Geographers have shown that the geographic scale at which, for example, economic activities and political authority are constituted, is not fixed but periodically transformed (Smith and Dennis, 1987; Herod, 1991). Attention has been drawn to the relations between, and influences of, processes operating at different geographic scales (such as the local and global), and how they interact to produce incentives and motives for political action (Miller, 1994). Alternatively, geographers have sought to illustrate aspects of the construction of scale by drawing attention to what are essentially rhetorical stances of political actors. For example, Jonas (1994) discusses the attempt by a multinational corporation headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts, to portray itself as a local operation attached to the local community in order to create support for its resistance of a takeover bid by a conglomerate with British headquarters. The common ground of this body of research is that geographic scale is conceptualized as socially constructed rather than ontologically pre-given, and that the geographic scales constructed are themselves implicated in the constitution of social, economic and political

Cities in pursuit of economic growth The local state as entrepreneur

Abstract During the past two decades, issues of local economic growth have come to dominate urban politics and planning in American cities, and local governments have adopted increasingly entrepreneurial economic-development strategies. Explanations of this by previous writers have claimed that entrepreneurial behavior by the local state is either economically determined, or stems from the initiatives of relatively autonomous political agents. In this paper it is contended that, in order to reassess these conflicting explanations, it is necessary to analyze how economic and political processes operating at different spatial scales interact to determine local policy formation and outcomes, and a conceptualization of local state action using this approach is developed. This is then applied to explain the evolution of downtown development policies in the central cities of American metropolitan areas. It is also argued that local context must be incorporated into the analysis in order to account for inter-urban variations in policy outcomes, and an abbreviated comparison of two central cities, San Francisco and Minneapolis, illustrates the importance of this.

Measuring the unmeasurable

Qualitative Spatial Data Analysis: A Compendium of Approaches.- A. Generalized Linear Models and Categorical Data.- Statistical Models for Qualitative Data.- Statistical and Scientific Aspects of Models for Qualitative Data.- Analysis of Qualitative Individual Data and of Latent Class Models with Generalized Linear Models.- Categorical Regression Models for Contextual Analysis A Comparison of Logit and Linear Probability Models.- Multivariate Contingency Table Analysis with NONMET: Basic Ideas.- Categorical Data Methods and Discrete Choice Modelling in Spatial Analysis: Some Directions for the 1980s.- B. Log-Linear Models.- Hybrid Log-Linear Models.- A Comparison of the Loglinear Interaction Model with Other Spatial Interaction Models.- Modelling Cross-Tabulated Regional Data.- C. Partial Least Squares and Lisrel models.- Systems Analysis by Partial Least Squares.- Recent Developments on Categorical Data Analysis by PLS.- Soft Modelling and Spatial Econometrics: Towards an Integrated Approach.- Structural Equation Models with Qualitative Observed Variables.- D. Multidimensional Qualitative Analysis.- Multidimensional Data Analysis for Categorical Variables.- Analyzing Activity Pattern Data Using Qualitative Multivariate Statistical Methods.- Unemployment and the Rise of National Socialism: Contradicting Results from Different Regional Aggregations.- Generalized Path Analysis for Mixed Geographical Data.- Order-Dependent Measures of Correspondence for Comparing Proximity Matrices and Related Structures.- A Survey of Qualitative Multiple Criteria Choice Models.- E. Fuzzy and Qualitative Structures.- A Linguistically-Based Regional Classification System.- Fuzzy Data Analysis in a Spatial Context.- Qualitative Structure Analysis of Complex Systems.- F. Discrete Choice Models and Dynamics Analysis.- Trends and Prospects for Qualitative Disaggregate Spatial Choice Models.- The Analysis of Panel Data for Discrete Choices.- Travel-Activity Behavior in Time and Space: Methods for Representation and Analysis.- Dynamic Analysis of Qualitative Variables: Applications to Organizational Demography.- Mathematical Specification of Transportation Models.- General Representational Formalisms and Search Procedures for Inferring Models from Categorical Data.- G. Synthesis.- Developing Trends in Qualitative Spatial Data Analysis.

Reconfiguring the spatiality of power: the construction of a supranational migration framework for the European Union

Abstract This paper examines the construction of a supranational framework for immigration control for the European Union since the mid-1980s and its implications for national sovereignty, for EU membership and for migrants. As in the case of European integration more generally, this construction process has been highly contested, involving numerous negotiations, tensions and struggles among different political actors situating themselves and operating at different geographic scales. Contestation occurred over three issues in particular: first, over where power and authority should be located—at which geographic scale and in which institutions; second, over geographic scope—the territorial extent of the framework; and third, over the principles according to which power and authority should be exercised—over divergent visions of justice and democratic accountability. Examination of the cacophony of intergovernmental institutional arrangements and agreements on immigration matters suggests that power over the immigration of non-EU nationals remains in the hands of nation-states, with supranational policies materializing only when they are seen as consistent with national interests. An analysis of the tensions and struggles between different state and non-state actors concerning the rights of current and potential non-EU immigrants reveals contrasting visions of justice and democratic accountability. Juxtaposed to the exclusionary policies promoted by national government representatives and right-wing nationalist parties are calls by transnational nongovernmental organizations for more inclusionary policies encompassing the protection of human rights of immigrants and their representation in the democratic process.

Spaces of Encounters: Immigration, Race, Class, and the Politics of Belonging in Small-Town America

Small towns throughout the rural upper Midwest have been experiencing dramatic economic restructuring and an unprecedented influx of new immigrants of color, triggering conflicts and tension between almost exclusively white residents and the new immigrants. Analyzing the roots and content of white residents’ responses to their encounters with new immigrants in a small town in rural Minnesota, the concept of spaces of encounters draws attention to the relational quality of identities and attitudes and the active role of emotions and spatiality in processes of Othering and racialization, as well as the potential of the encounter to disrupt preconceived boundaries and racial stereotypes. White residents racialize immigrants and space, although the specific form taken by processes of racialization is inflected by individuals’ social positionality and place identities and by longer term and broader scale racial stereotypes and dominant discourses about immigration, race, and nation in the United States. The racialization of immigrants defends white privilege and culture; recovers an imagined idealized place, past, and future; and establishes that belonging to the national and local community is conditional on immigrants conforming to white American values and norms—an assimilationist imaginary that runs up against the multicultural and multiracial reality of the town. Residents’ reflections on their own racial prejudice and different forms of racism, as well as intimate social relations they forge with individual migrants, hold promise for social relations that transcend differences across racial and cultural divides.

GIS-based measures of environmental equity: Exploring their sensitivity and significance

In order to determine whether principles of environmental justice have been violated, a large number of empirical studies have been carried out to ascertain whether minority and low-income populations are disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution. This study provides a comparative evaluation of two commonly employed proximity measures in GIS-based environmental equity assessment, examining their influence on the results of the analysis, and proposes a methodology for evaluating the significance of these results. 1990 census data on population characteristics and data from the 1995 EPAs toxic release inventory (TRI) for the City of Minneapolis, MN are used. These results also allow a preliminary assessment of environmental equity/inequity in potential exposure to airborne toxic chemicals for racial minorities, poor people and children in Minneapolis. In the third part of the paper we develop and employ a geographic randomization methodology for assessing the significance of these results.

GIS-based Environmental Equity and Risk Assessment: Methodological Problems and Prospects

Geographic information systems increasingly have been applied in the domain of environmental risk assessment. One area of research that appears to have excellent potential is in GIS as applied to the assessment of environmental equity. This paper reviews the methodologies used in recent GIS-based environmental equity studies and their results. From this review, a framework for a more comprehensive discussion of methodological issues and challenges is provided, addressing questions of data and measurement, scale and resolution, and methods of analysis. A preliminary environmental equity analysis for the Twin Cities metropolitan region illustrates the complexity of the relationship between the methodological approaches used and the resulting assessments of environmental equity and risk. This analysis is based on multiple sources of hazardous materials, uses fine-resolution census data including site-specific institutions, includes more sophisticated measures of risk than the location of hazardous sites, and...

Dreaming the ordinary Daily life and the complex geographies of citizenship

This paper introduces the concept of ‘ordinary’ to analyze citizenship’s complexities. Ordinary is often taken to mean standard or routine, but it also invokes order and authority. Conceptualizing citizenship as ordinary trains our attention on the ways in which the spatiality of laws and social norms are entwined with daily life. The idea of ordinariness fuses legal structures, normative orders and the experiences of individuals, social groups and communities, making citizenship both a general category and a contingent resource for political life. We explore this argument using immigrants as an example, but the conceptualization of citizenship extends more broadly.

URBAN PULSE—PROVINCIALIZING GLOBAL URBANISM: A MANIFESTO

“To thematize requires a project to select its objects, deploy them in a bounded field, and submit them to disciplined inquiry” (Guha, 1997, xv) Mainstream urban scholarship envisions urbanization as a global process that is best achieved via the worldwide application of the development mechanisms pioneered in the advanced capitalist countries—currently, those of neoliberal globalization. Yet the repeated failure of this vision to deliver on its promise of wealth for all and ecological sustainability compels urban scholars to rethink mainstream presumptions. By means of a ten-point manifesto, we argue that provincializing global urbanism creates space from which to challenge urban theories that treat “northern” urbanization as the norm, to incorporate the expertise and perspectives of urban majorities, and to imagine and enact alternative urban futures.

Urban encounters with difference: the contact hypothesis and immigrant integration projects in eastern Berlin

Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary cities as promoting conviviality and intercultural sensibilities. The contact hypothesis and immigrant integration policies drawing on it similarly stress the importance of increased face-to-face contact for reducing inter-group prejudice and conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research in eastern Berlin, this paper examines spaces of encounters between local residents and recent immigrants and their potential for decreasing negative stereotypes, prejudice, and conflict. We find that contact between Russian Aussiedler and local German residents in public and quasi-public spaces remains fleeting, often reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes. Local immigrant integration projects, despite their intentions of increasing contact between migrant and non-migrant residents, often fail to provide opportunities for deeper contact. On the other hand, sustained and close encounters are enabled in spaces of neighborhood community centers, where immigrants and native residents work side-by-side on common projects. These sustained encounters engender more empathy and positive attitudes toward individual immigrants but these are not scaled up to the group, contradicting claims of recent contact theorists. We suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.