Jon Swords

Approaching disaster management through social learning

Purpose – Coping with and adjusting to disruptive challenges has always been a characteristic of human development. Formalisation of this has led to the emergence of a number approaches addressing disruptive challenges. Often formalised practice has a narrow focus. Increasingly complex challenges require a refocus of formalised approaches. Drawing from these approaches, the purpose of this paper is to posit that a greater focus on preparedness through pre‐disaster planning is needed for a more holistic approach to disaster management.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the evolution of disaster management thinking and practice and proposes that changes are needed to the dominant disaster management model. These changes are drawn from a number of alternative perspectives. Based on the uncertainties surrounding complex or “wicked” problems, for example, climate change and variability, this paper develops a more holistic approach.Findings – Responding to “wicked problems” requires a greater focus...

The Accidental Youth Club: Skateboarding in Newcastle-Gateshead

Skateboarders re-invent and interrogate the physical structure of cityscapes as they use spaces, buildings and objects for skating. However, skaters are routinely regarded by the civic and business interests who dominate city centre planning and regeneration as, at best, a nuisance and at worst an unruly and dangerous blight. This paper reports findings from a research project involving skaters which begins to unpick this stereotype. A participatory methodology combining mapping, interviews and observation was used to identify spots used by skaters in Newcastle and Gateshead (North East England). The key spots were characterized using four criteria: trickability, accessibility, sociability and compatibility. Findings reveal that two further factors temporal and relational dimensions are crucial to the journeys skaters embark on. Sociability was the one constant factor defining favoured spots. The study revealed a sociable, entrepreneurial, creative skate scene. Far from being a problem the skaters add to the social capital of the cityscape. The findings suggest that rather than designing out skaters from the city the civic authorities should work with skaters to sustain their scene as a positive benefit to city regeneration.

Michael Porter's cluster theory as a local and regional development tool: The rise and fall of cluster policy in the UK

There has been much written on industrial agglomeration, but it is Michael Porter’s cluster theory, above all others, which has come to dominate local and regional economic development policy. His work has been adopted by the OECD, EU, national and local governments the world over. He and his consultancy group have led reviews of national economic growth strategies in dozens of countries. This rise to prominence, however, is in the face of widespread critique from academics. Cluster theory’s theoretical foundations, its methodological approach and practical implementation have all been unpicked, leading some to label little more than a successful brand riding the wave of new regionalist fashions. Despite libraries of incredibly useful books and articles on clusters, there remains an absence of work which interrogates the translation of clusters into, and then through local and national policy. The aim of this article is to go some way to remedying the situation by examining the influence of Porter’s cluster theory charted through an examination of UK regional development policy in the 1990s and 2000s. To help map the journey of clusters into and through UK economic development policy actor-network theory is adopted as an explanatory framework.

Tracing postrepresentational visions of the city: representing the unrepresentable Skateworlds of Tyneside

In any visualisation of the city more is left unseen than made visible. Contemporary visualisations of the city are increasingly influenced by quantification, and thus anything which cannot be quantified is hidden. In contrast, we explore the use of ‘lo-fi’, doodled, participatory maps made by skateboarders in Tyneside, England, as a means to represent their cityscape. Drawing on established work an skateboarding and recent developments in cartography, we argue that skateboarders understand the city from a postrepresentational perspective. Such a framing presents a series of challenges to map their worlds which we explore through a processual account of our mapmaking practice. In this process we chart how skateboarders’ mappings became part of a more significant interplay of performance, identity, visualisation, and exhibition. The paper makes contributions to the emerging field of postrepresentational cartography and argues that its processual focus provides useful tools to understand how visions of the city are produced.

The Connectivity of the Creative Industries in North East England – The Problems of Physical and Relational Distance

The creative industries are seen as a key part of economic development policy for national and regional policymakers. This research adopts a relational approach to examine the spatialities and networks of connections that workers in the North East of Englands creative industries forge and maintain over space. Based on a questionnaire survey and interviews, our findings reveal a set of industries that are isolated from the major hubs of creativity outside the region and display a regionally bounded set of working and engagement practices. Numerous reasons underpinning this isolation are outlined, which are generated, in part, by both physical and relational distance to other agents in similar sectors. We also examine a group of highly mobile creative workers whose working practices and previous experience outside the North East allows them to overcome barriers faced by their counterparts. The paper concludes by calling for further comparative research to better understand the connectivity of regional creative industries that also avoids privileging London as the only source of discursive and financial influence. A series of recommendations for policy makers tasked with fostering the creative industries is outlined.

Visualizing urban and regional worlds: power, politics, and practices

Visualizing urban and regional worlds: power, politics, and practices In 2009 Environment and Planning A launched its featured graphics section reasoning “[m]ore and more of the way the world is communicated takes place through graphical means and journals need to reflect that development” (Thrift, 2009, page 763). Six years on developments in computing, visual methodologies, analysis, and communication have proved the decision to publish academically informed graphics well timed. Today more visualisations are being created for larger audiences than ever before, but importantly they are being produced with new techniques and by new actors, within increasingly complex scopic regimes. The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, Le Monde, O Globo, and many others, have embraced (interactive) infographics as a medium to communicate the most important news stories in the past few years. Governments are also leveraging the power of graphics: read a government report and you will find it filled with charts and diagrams depicting budgets and performance. For enterprises (social and commercial), graphics form major parts of annual reports and share prospectuses. In their advertising, too, charts inform customers of the life-enhancing efficiencies their product will bestow on consumers. And tech companies are treating data like the new oil. It is important, therefore, we understand the politics, power, and practices of visualisation within this information political economy. This theme issue does so through the prism of cities and regions. This focus is both timely and compelling for two interconnected reasons. First, cities and their hinterlands are special—they have ‘triumphed’ over other forms of human settlement (Glaeser, 2011) and the 21st century has been declared the century of the city with urban populations predicted to account for 70% of the world’s population by 2050 (Burdett and Rode, 2007). Second, the confluence of big data and smart city agendas has seen cities visualised anew. ‘Urban data scientists’ working in city labs, urban data centres, and smart city hubs are using proprietary software and algorithms from technology giants to create dashboards and real-time models of urban centres (Kitchin et al, 2015; Mattern, 2013; 2015). New questions are raised, therefore, about the role of different actors in the production and dissemination of visualisations, the empirical basis for city models and maps, who and what is included and excluded from visualisations, the potentialities visualisations hold, and how we should conceptualise them. To help address these questions we invited contributions from previous featured graphics authors. The contributions come from scholars working in architecture, geography, economics, environmental science and planning, and present work which visualise cities and regions through modeling, mapping, deconstructing, drawing and doodling them. Contributions include traditional papers, featured graphics (and extended versions) and commentaries. We encouraged articles which were visually rich, at the expense of words, to make this issue a feast for the eyes. A series of interrelated themes can be identified amongst the work published in this special issue.

A topological road map of Newcastle upon Tyne

This featured graphic is a topological road map of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, generated using GIS and social network analysis software with Ordnance Survey data. The map formed part of ‘‘en_counter’’ (2016), an exhibition of mapping work in Newcastle upon Tyne. The map is derived from Ordnance Survey MasterMap Integrated Transport Network data (Ordnance Survey, 2010), provided in a multi-part fully topologically structured link and node format including information about roads (‘‘RoadLink’’), their names (‘‘Road’’), and their connections (‘‘RoadNode’’). Various data manipulations were made using ArcMap GIS and spreadsheet software to transform the data into the flat file format needed by Gephi social network analysis software. Relevant attributes from the ‘‘RoadNode’’ and ‘‘Road’’ items were joined to the ‘‘RoadLink’’ features. The ‘‘RoadLink’’ features were clipped to the boundary of Newcastle Metropolitan District using Ordnance Survey Boundary-Line data (Ordnance Survey, 2015). Only public roads were selected and so excluding alleys and private roads. Some ‘‘RoadLinks,’’ mainly segments of roundabouts and slip roads, had no name. A name was added if appropriate, or else the link was deleted. Incidences of the same name being used for different roads were identified and the name was altered to, for example, High Street 1, High Street 2, etc. A series of look-up operations, sorts and filters were used to produce a flat table with each row representing a named road and one of the roads it connects with. The result was data in which connections between roads are maintained, but their location is free to be manipulated. Gephi allows the manipulation and analysis of social network graphs. We used the Force Atlas 2 algorithm (Jacomy et al., 2014) to generate forces of attraction and repulsion within the network, pulling together nodes (in this case roads) which share connections, and pushing apart those which don’t. Refinement of labels, lines, and layout was done in Adobe Illustrator. The final map is accurate in the sense it can be used to navigate the city from road to road, but the lack of geospatial references makes it unfamiliar and discombobulating upon viewing. Suburbs and coherent urban areas are grouped together and are located in relation to one another which is logical, but strange at the same time. Topographical scale is lost as map distance is a result of relational connectivity rather than points in physical space. An approach similar to this has been previously theorized (Park and Yilmaz, 2010), albeit without spatializing algorithms in mind. Statistical analysis of the network can be undertaken including measures of centrality to identify significant roads based on the number of connections.

Geographic visualisation: lessons for learning and teaching

Abstract This paper outlines a pedagogic project funded by the former GEES Learning and Teaching Development Fund, exploring students’ attitudes to, and learning through, visualisation as a method of assessment in a core undergraduate geography module. Student expectations and experiences of this assessment, together with reflections on learning and teaching methods more widely, were investigated using participatory appraisal, and follow-up face-to-face feedback. Student perceptions of visualisation as assessment mixed an uncertainty about what was expected, with a sense that visual work might be comparatively ‘easier’. Responses after the assessment recognised the difficulty of the method, the focus on data and the ability to address complex topics. Students also compared their experiences with visualisation to other assessment methods, with many finding the visual approach stimulating and effective for their learning, and module marks were higher than in previous years. We have retained the assessment in the module and extended some of the lessons, especially the use of show-and-tell critique sessions for formative feedback, to other modules.