Simon Parker

Geodemographic Code and the Production of Space

There is a growing body of research relating to the ways in which digital code contributes to the production of space. In much of this work this issue is approached by first examining particular spaces and then considering the code and its effects on those spaces. In contrast, we explore the production of space from another angle, examining the ways in which an example of code—geodemographic classification—is constructed, and then questioning what it is about the emergent production of space that may feed back recursively into the production of that code.

Urbanism as Material Discourse: Questions of Interpretation in Contemporary Urban Theory

This essay seeks to challenge the idea that those who consider themselves to be empirical urban researchers are necessarily concerned with a quite separate quest for knowledge than those involved in the interpretation of representations and narratives of the urban experience. Two essential claims are advanced. First, the attempt to make an epistemological distinction between the city as a lived, physical space and the city as a complex ensemble of shared knowledge, memory, and representation, undermines rather than clarifies the purpose of critical urban research. And second, that urban culture—broadly defined—is understood and constructed narratively through the shared medium of its material discourses. In other words, spatiotemporal narratives allow the urban complex to operate both as a self-legitimating sociospatial system as well as promoting the economic, social, political, and cultural discourses that form the material bases of the unequal distribution of social power.

From soft eyes to street lives: The Wire and jargons of authenticity

In terms of its ability to hold the attention of the viewer and to require an engagement with hundreds of characters and numerous complex institutions and organisations in over 60 hours of real‐time television, David Simon and Ed Burns’ television drama, The Wire, offers the prospect of a new ‘socio‐spatial imagination’. Drawing on the work of C. Wright Mills and Theodore Adorno I argue that ‘fictional’ social critique in the form of the televisual novel can be a more effective medium than mainstream social science for revealing the spaces and people that capitalism has left behind.

ELITE FORMATION, POWER AND SPACE IN CONTEMPORARY LONDON

In this article we examine elite formation in relation to money power within the city of London. Our primary aim is to consider the impact of the massive concentration of such power upon the city’s political life, municipal and shared resources and social equity. We argue that objectives of city success have come to be identified and aligned with the presence of wealth elites while wider goals, of access to essential resources for citizens, have withered. A diverse national and global wealth-elite is drawn to a city with an almost unique cultural infrastructure, fiscal regime and ushering butler class of politicians. We consider how London is being made for money and the monied – in physical, political and cultural terms. We conclude that the conceptualization of elites as wealth and social power formations operating within urban spatial arenas is important for capturing the nature of new social divisions and changes.

Critical Urban Theory versus Critical Urban Studies: A Review Debate

Critical urban theory and critical urban studies form the subject of two recent edited collections on approaches to the analysis and transformation of the contemporary capitalist city. In an exchange of commentaries by the respective editors and contributors, the introduction explains the genesis of each book and previews some of the key observations. Peter Marcuse then offers his assessment of Critical Urban Studies: New Directions, which is reciprocated by a commentary on Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City by Jonathan Davies, David Imbroscio and Warren Magnusson.

Managing the political field: Italian regions and the territorialisation of politics in the second republic

In large parts of the media and even within certain sections of the academic community a perception has grown that the pressure for devolution in Italy has been very much a bottom-up process, fed by a grass-roots resentment at the domination of local and regional politics by ‘Rome’ and articulated by a new generation of localist politicians predominantly, but not exclusively on the right who see an opportunity to renegotiate the division of power between centre and periphery in favour of greater regional autonomy. However, if we take Fabbrini and Brunazzo’s distinction between regionalisation (‘a process of decentralisation supported by the central states to rationalise their activities’) and regionalism (‘a process of devolution requested by local electorates and leaders to increase regional autonomy’) we can determine that the process of regionalisation has been more in evidence and has been more sustained because it enjoys both national and supranational institutional support. On the other hand, regionalism represents a highly contested set of values and policy goals, few of which, it will be argued, correspond to the aspirations of most local voters, but rather are configured by Italy’s local and regional elites in order to lend legitimacy to what are often non-territorially specific political agendas. Regionalisation has its origins in the early years of the Italian Republic when four autonomous regions—the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the border regions and provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta (and later Friuli Venezia-Giulia) were created. The so-called 15 ‘ordinary regions’ covering the remainder of the national territory were not established until 1970, and remained largely devoid of effective powers and finance until the latter half of the 1970s. The delay in instituting regional government except in the special regions where the national leftist parties have very little presence has often been attributed to the cynical determination of the Christian Democrats to exclude their political

Parliamentary elections in Italy, May 2001

Article Outline 1. Background 2. Electoral coalitions 3. The poll 4. Vote transfers 5. The new parliament and government

Non-state space : The strategic ejection of dangerous and high maintenance urban space

ABSTRACT Non-state space: the strategic ejection of dangerous and high maintenance urban space. Territory, Politics, Governance. Some commentators have characterized so-called ‘no-go’ areas as sites in which the exercise of authority is prevented. Here we suggest that many such spaces are produced by state, policing and citizen repertoires that aim to minimize the costs and risks of engaging, supporting and servicing such spaces and their populations. In this article, we locate strategies of public spending, policing and political action that offer a governing logic in which neighbourhoods are essentially subtracted from the constitution of the city. During such designations, the assurances of citizenship, vitality of civic institutions and presence of policing may be partially or wholly suspended. We present a framework for the identification of such strategies in which these forms of social, political and spatial exiting are described as being autotomic in nature – spaces that are ejected in order to avoid losses or further damage to the body politic of the city in ways akin to the response of certain animals that protect themselves from predation by shedding a limb or body part. This term adds force and depth to assessments of the ways both temporary and more sustained exits by policing, management and state servicing are designed in order to avoid responsibility over or engagement with spaces deemed a threat in order to maintain the integrity of the remaining, included city.

New Directions in Urban Theory: Introduction

The idea for this special issue grew out of a panel session at the 2008 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, which was organized by one of the coeditors (Simon Parker) and included papers by the other co-editor (William Sites) and a third contributor (Talja Blokland). Elvin Wyly, who had attended the Boston session, was kind enough to suggest that the papers might make an interesting special issue for Urban Geography, and he also shared our enthusiasm for the transatlantic editorial collaboration that we hoped would bring together a range of scholars and subjects that might not otherwise have been found within the pages of this journal. As our ideas for the special issue developed, we were very pleased to have our invitations to contribute articles accepted by colleagues who were not able to participate in the Boston session but whose work, we felt, fit very well with the theme of this special issue. These authors included Robert Beauregard, Louise Callier, Robert Fairbanks, Laurie Hanquinet, Susan Parnell, Jennifer Robinson, and Mike Savage—all of whom reflect diverse national geographies and disciplinary affiliations while sharing, along with the other contributors, a strong belief and commitment to theoretical and critical inquiry as an essential dimension in the evolution of urban studies. Despite working on different continents and in somewhat different social science departments, both editors discovered that they shared an enthusiasm and admiration for the way in which human geography had, through the subfield of urban geography, maintained a central concern for the “life of cities” at the core of the discipline far more successfully than what might even be considered the pioneering urban disciplines of sociology and anthropology (for a discussion see Parker, 2004, 159–176; Amin, 2007). As “geography-curious” fellow social scientists, we were therefore delighted to have the opportunity through this journal to share some of the ideas and perspectives that have most engaged and excited us by contemporary urban theorists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The selection of articles for this special issue does not emerge from a systematic effort to take stock of the current state of the field, and does not pretend to represent the full variety of innovative and field-shaping work in the domain of urban theory. Rapidly developing subfields such as urban political ecology, assemblage theory, complexity theory,

Introduction: A Tale of Two Italies—Continuities and Change in the Italian Republic, 1994–2006

The idea for this special issue of Modern Italy emerged from the Association for the Study of Modern Italys annual conference ‘The Second Italian Republic Ten Years On: Prospect and Retrospect’, which was held at the Italian Cultural Institute, London, in November 2004. The conference afforded an opportunity for scholars and observers of contemporary Italy to reflect on one of the most eventful decades in the history of the Italian Republic and to offer an appraisal of how political, economic, social and cultural life had fared since the first election based on the new majoritarian voting system which first brought Silvio Berlusconis coalition to power in April 1994.