Stephen Graham | Newcastle University (original) (raw)
Papers by Stephen Graham
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
In Search of the City in Spatial Strategies: Past Legacies, Future Imaginings Geoff Vigar, Ste... more In Search of the City in Spatial Strategies: Past Legacies, Future Imaginings
Geoff Vigar, Stephen Graham and Patsy Healey
[Paper first received, November 2003; in final form, January 2005]
Summary. This paper addresses the ways in which urban regions are represented in contemporary urban policies. In doing so, it critically examines how urban trends are reflected in diverse notions of ‘cityness’ in contemporary policy discourses about spatiality and territoriality. Through a detailed case study of the use and construction of the word ‘city’ in a range of urban governance contexts in Newcastle upon Tyne, this paper analyses the political work done by diverse representations and invocations of ‘cityness’ in contemporary urban governance. Such representations matter because the way in which contemporary cities are conceptualised influences policy formulations and policy outcomes. In addition, considerable emphasis is being placed in contemporary urban policy on ‘joining-up’, ‘integrating’ and co-ordinating governance efforts. How conceptions of the city are mobilised to do such integrating work provides insight into the challenge such ambitions present. The evidence from the case study suggests that the capacity of local actors to think about the processes of change in metropolitan regions, and to define the ways in which they can respond, is often limited, as they struggle to define what their ‘city’ actually might be these days. This tends to be to the detriment of collective attempts to maximise conditions for citizens and for investment.
“Telecommunications”, writes Barney Warf (1998, 225),“is one of the few topics in geography that ... more “Telecommunications”, writes Barney Warf (1998, 225),“is one of the few topics in geography that richly illustrates the plasticity of space, the ways it can be stretched, deformed, or compressed according to changing economic and political imperatives”. The growing centrality of key large urban regions, or 'global cities', to the economic, social, political and cultural dynamics of the world (for a review, see Knox and Taylor, 1995) presents a particularly potent example of the reconfiguration of space through telecommunications.
This article attempts to debunk five prevailing myths which together are implicit in much of the ... more This article attempts to debunk five prevailing myths which together are implicit in much of the current debate and rhetoric surrounding telecommunications and the future of cities. These are labelled: the myth of the technological determinism, the myth of urban dissolution, the myth of universal access, the myth of the simple substitution of transport by telecommunications, and the myth of local powerlessness.
Amidst the flurry of emails speculating on the urban dimensions of the apocalyptic events of Sept... more Amidst the flurry of emails speculating on the urban dimensions of the apocalyptic events of September 11th, one, for me, stood out. Andy Beveridge wrote to the Urban Geography list serv (URBGEOG@ LISTSERV. ARIZONA. EDU) quoting a piece called “Here is New York” in the Essays of EB Whitewhich published in 1948. Contemplating nuclear attacks, Whitewhich's words nevertheless seem eerily prescient." The subtlest change in New York”, he wrote:
Abstract The post 9/11 Western World has been heavily marked by a near nearparanoid emphasis on t... more Abstract The post 9/11 Western World has been heavily marked by a near nearparanoid emphasis on the catastrophic threats posed by so-called cyber terrorism. Such cyber terror attacks, however, have, so far, been noticeable by their absence. At the same time a much more hidden, but increasingly pervasive form of forced demodernisation state infrastructural warfare is emerging as a central component of contemporary military strategy.
Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imagin... more Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imaginative geographies of US security strategies. This work has illuminated a number of mechanisms through which geographical knowledge has been interpreted and reformulated to support specific political agendas.
In April 2002, in a dramatic shift in strategy, the Israeli Defence Force bulldozed a 40,000-squa... more In April 2002, in a dramatic shift in strategy, the Israeli Defence Force bulldozed a 40,000-square-metre area in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. A UN report estimated that some 52 Palestinians were killed in the attack, about half of them civilians.
Resumen Como dato interesante, las nociones de la ciudad, planificación urbana y urbanismo, ocupa... more Resumen Como dato interesante, las nociones de la ciudad, planificación urbana y urbanismo, ocupan un importante lugar en las campañas publicitarias y debates actuales en torno al ciberespacio y la Internet. Los comentarios populares sobre el crecimiento de las compras basadas en las telecomunicaciones, la interacción social y la recuperación de información están salpicados con el uso de metáforas urbanas para describir los espacios electrónicos en los que todos entran e interactúan cada vez más.
The history of communications is not a history of machines but a history of the way the new media... more The history of communications is not a history of machines but a history of the way the new media help to reconfigure systems of power and networks of social relations. Communications technologies are certainly produced within particular centres of power and deployed with particular purposes in mind but, once in play, they often have unintended and contradictory consequences.
The chaos of American urban sprawl belongs not just to the city of steel and glass, but also to t... more The chaos of American urban sprawl belongs not just to the city of steel and glass, but also to the other city—the phantom city of media and information. With most resources devoted to it, it is the cyber-city which is accelerating faster than the real urban space.(Channel 4 1994: 4)
Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through co... more Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. This term–following Foucault (1970), Said (1978) and Gregory (1995)–denotes the ways in which imperialist societies are constructed through normalizing, binary judgements about both 'foreign'and colonized territories and the 'home'spaces which sit at the 'heart of empire'.
By considering the city as an enormous artefact, the size and distribution of its streets, sidewa... more By considering the city as an enormous artefact, the size and distribution of its streets, sidewalks, buildings, squares, parks, sewers and so on can be interpreted as remarkable physical records of the socio-technical world in which the city was developed and conceived (Aibar and Bijker, 1997: 23).
T has long been argued that the" public realm" of Western cities is in crisis, caught between pri... more T has long been argued that the" public realm" of Western cities is in crisis, caught between privatizing and commodifying tenden-Boyer 1994 _A. cies and the rising fear of crime and the" other" in the postmodern city. This crisis is closely bound up with the growing social polarization that is being etched into the landscapes of advanced industrial cities, with their ever-more segmented and separated social zones and rising internal economic inequalities.
We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is une... more We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is unevenly mapped onto different income, gender and ethnic groups. However we remain poorly equipped to understand how ICTs, with their intrinsic abilities to transcend barriers of space and time, relate to the fine grain of people's lives on the ground in cities and neighbourhoods. ICTs contract space in enabling us to contact distant friends, pick up voice mail and order goods. Mobile phones on the move short-circuit time to an instant.
Durant la dernière décennie, les principaux réseaux de services urbains du Royaume-Uni ont été pr... more Durant la dernière décennie, les principaux réseaux de services urbains du Royaume-Uni ont été privatisés. C'est historiquement parlant une situation inédite dans l'évolution des services publics urbains britanniques. Cet article s' attache en premier lieu à cette" révolution des réseaux d'infrastructures urbains", en la replaçant dans une perspective historique.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality Stephen Graham Newcastle Universit... more Getting off the ground: On the politics of urban verticality
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University, UK
Lucy Hewitt
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Progress in Human Geography 37(1) 72–92
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
In Search of the City in Spatial Strategies: Past Legacies, Future Imaginings Geoff Vigar, Ste... more In Search of the City in Spatial Strategies: Past Legacies, Future Imaginings
Geoff Vigar, Stephen Graham and Patsy Healey
[Paper first received, November 2003; in final form, January 2005]
Summary. This paper addresses the ways in which urban regions are represented in contemporary urban policies. In doing so, it critically examines how urban trends are reflected in diverse notions of ‘cityness’ in contemporary policy discourses about spatiality and territoriality. Through a detailed case study of the use and construction of the word ‘city’ in a range of urban governance contexts in Newcastle upon Tyne, this paper analyses the political work done by diverse representations and invocations of ‘cityness’ in contemporary urban governance. Such representations matter because the way in which contemporary cities are conceptualised influences policy formulations and policy outcomes. In addition, considerable emphasis is being placed in contemporary urban policy on ‘joining-up’, ‘integrating’ and co-ordinating governance efforts. How conceptions of the city are mobilised to do such integrating work provides insight into the challenge such ambitions present. The evidence from the case study suggests that the capacity of local actors to think about the processes of change in metropolitan regions, and to define the ways in which they can respond, is often limited, as they struggle to define what their ‘city’ actually might be these days. This tends to be to the detriment of collective attempts to maximise conditions for citizens and for investment.
“Telecommunications”, writes Barney Warf (1998, 225),“is one of the few topics in geography that ... more “Telecommunications”, writes Barney Warf (1998, 225),“is one of the few topics in geography that richly illustrates the plasticity of space, the ways it can be stretched, deformed, or compressed according to changing economic and political imperatives”. The growing centrality of key large urban regions, or 'global cities', to the economic, social, political and cultural dynamics of the world (for a review, see Knox and Taylor, 1995) presents a particularly potent example of the reconfiguration of space through telecommunications.
This article attempts to debunk five prevailing myths which together are implicit in much of the ... more This article attempts to debunk five prevailing myths which together are implicit in much of the current debate and rhetoric surrounding telecommunications and the future of cities. These are labelled: the myth of the technological determinism, the myth of urban dissolution, the myth of universal access, the myth of the simple substitution of transport by telecommunications, and the myth of local powerlessness.
Amidst the flurry of emails speculating on the urban dimensions of the apocalyptic events of Sept... more Amidst the flurry of emails speculating on the urban dimensions of the apocalyptic events of September 11th, one, for me, stood out. Andy Beveridge wrote to the Urban Geography list serv (URBGEOG@ LISTSERV. ARIZONA. EDU) quoting a piece called “Here is New York” in the Essays of EB Whitewhich published in 1948. Contemplating nuclear attacks, Whitewhich's words nevertheless seem eerily prescient." The subtlest change in New York”, he wrote:
Abstract The post 9/11 Western World has been heavily marked by a near nearparanoid emphasis on t... more Abstract The post 9/11 Western World has been heavily marked by a near nearparanoid emphasis on the catastrophic threats posed by so-called cyber terrorism. Such cyber terror attacks, however, have, so far, been noticeable by their absence. At the same time a much more hidden, but increasingly pervasive form of forced demodernisation state infrastructural warfare is emerging as a central component of contemporary military strategy.
Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imagin... more Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imaginative geographies of US security strategies. This work has illuminated a number of mechanisms through which geographical knowledge has been interpreted and reformulated to support specific political agendas.
In April 2002, in a dramatic shift in strategy, the Israeli Defence Force bulldozed a 40,000-squa... more In April 2002, in a dramatic shift in strategy, the Israeli Defence Force bulldozed a 40,000-square-metre area in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. A UN report estimated that some 52 Palestinians were killed in the attack, about half of them civilians.
Resumen Como dato interesante, las nociones de la ciudad, planificación urbana y urbanismo, ocupa... more Resumen Como dato interesante, las nociones de la ciudad, planificación urbana y urbanismo, ocupan un importante lugar en las campañas publicitarias y debates actuales en torno al ciberespacio y la Internet. Los comentarios populares sobre el crecimiento de las compras basadas en las telecomunicaciones, la interacción social y la recuperación de información están salpicados con el uso de metáforas urbanas para describir los espacios electrónicos en los que todos entran e interactúan cada vez más.
The history of communications is not a history of machines but a history of the way the new media... more The history of communications is not a history of machines but a history of the way the new media help to reconfigure systems of power and networks of social relations. Communications technologies are certainly produced within particular centres of power and deployed with particular purposes in mind but, once in play, they often have unintended and contradictory consequences.
The chaos of American urban sprawl belongs not just to the city of steel and glass, but also to t... more The chaos of American urban sprawl belongs not just to the city of steel and glass, but also to the other city—the phantom city of media and information. With most resources devoted to it, it is the cyber-city which is accelerating faster than the real urban space.(Channel 4 1994: 4)
Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through co... more Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. This term–following Foucault (1970), Said (1978) and Gregory (1995)–denotes the ways in which imperialist societies are constructed through normalizing, binary judgements about both 'foreign'and colonized territories and the 'home'spaces which sit at the 'heart of empire'.
By considering the city as an enormous artefact, the size and distribution of its streets, sidewa... more By considering the city as an enormous artefact, the size and distribution of its streets, sidewalks, buildings, squares, parks, sewers and so on can be interpreted as remarkable physical records of the socio-technical world in which the city was developed and conceived (Aibar and Bijker, 1997: 23).
T has long been argued that the" public realm" of Western cities is in crisis, caught between pri... more T has long been argued that the" public realm" of Western cities is in crisis, caught between privatizing and commodifying tenden-Boyer 1994 _A. cies and the rising fear of crime and the" other" in the postmodern city. This crisis is closely bound up with the growing social polarization that is being etched into the landscapes of advanced industrial cities, with their ever-more segmented and separated social zones and rising internal economic inequalities.
We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is une... more We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is unevenly mapped onto different income, gender and ethnic groups. However we remain poorly equipped to understand how ICTs, with their intrinsic abilities to transcend barriers of space and time, relate to the fine grain of people's lives on the ground in cities and neighbourhoods. ICTs contract space in enabling us to contact distant friends, pick up voice mail and order goods. Mobile phones on the move short-circuit time to an instant.
Durant la dernière décennie, les principaux réseaux de services urbains du Royaume-Uni ont été pr... more Durant la dernière décennie, les principaux réseaux de services urbains du Royaume-Uni ont été privatisés. C'est historiquement parlant une situation inédite dans l'évolution des services publics urbains britanniques. Cet article s' attache en premier lieu à cette" révolution des réseaux d'infrastructures urbains", en la replaçant dans une perspective historique.