Civilizing nature Gissibl, Bernhard; Höhler, Sabine; Kupper, Patrick
2012., 20121115, 2012, 2012-12-19, Letnik:
1
eBook, Book
National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a ...global phenomenon. The development of these ecological and political systems cannot be understood as a simple reaction to mounting environmental problems, nor can it be explained by the spread of environmental sensibilities. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, this volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time. It focuses especially on the actors, networks, mechanisms, arenas, and institutions responsible for the global spread of the national park and the associated utilization and mobilization of asymmetrical relationships of power and knowledge, contributing to scholarly discussions of globalization and the emergence of global environmental institutions and governance.
Brooklyn Bridge Park has emerged as an internationally recognized attraction. Stretching along a waterfront that faces one of the world's great harbors and a storied skyline, it has utterly ...transformed a strip of moribund structures that formerly served bustling port activity. When the idea was put forward, it did not come from government officials or planners, but from a local community aghast that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey might sell the defunct piers and their upland, situated below the quiet precincts of Brooklyn Heights, for intensive housing development. Neighborhood leaders, looking for less intensive uses of the property, ultimately came to the idea of a park. The Port Authority resisted, seeing a park as a money-losing proposition, as did the once powerful longshoremen's union, which was desperate to hold onto jobs. The battle was waged inconclusively for well over a decade; the Port Authority was prevented from developing the site, but the park did not move forward, either. Then, locally elected officials joined with members of the local communities to form something called a Local Development Corporation (LDC) to explore how the Port Authority might be induced at last to shed its money-losing waterfront piers in favor of a park. The LDC turned to the communities themselves and carried out an open process of public planning, a democratic process that became a model for other public projects but that was unique in its day. That process produced a plan, and that plan ultimately produced a park. In this book, the authors have tried to tell the full story of how Brooklyn Bridge Park came to be, from the inside deliberations as well as the public actions. They have tried to be complete and factual. One of the people interviewed told them that all history is revisionist to some extent, and they do have a point of view on many of the issues discussed, but they have tried to keep each other honest and to reflect all the competing views.
The governing of urban drug use and its economies represents a central aspect of urban governmentality and has played an important role in the production and control of public space in numerous ...cities of the Global North since the 1970s. Urban drug cultures are often the subject of moral panics and urban policing. At the same time, geographical engagement with the spatial dimensions and effects of governing urban drug cultures is surprisingly rare. Using the example of Görlitzer Park in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, this paper examines the spatializing discourses and practices of urban drug policies and shows how looking at the governing of illicit drugs provides a productive lens for analysing forms of urban exclusion, marginalization, and normalization. From a geographical perspective, it is particularly interesting to examine how this form of urban governance mobilizes spatial approaches and representations of space, i.e., how urban drug cultures are spatialized in multiple ways.
Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local ...inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Uncertain path Tweed, William C
2010., 2010, 2010-10-06
eBook
In this provocative walking meditation, writer and former park ranger William Tweed takes us to California’s spectacular High Sierra to discover a new vision for our national parks as they approach ...their 100th anniversary. Tweed, who worked among the Sierra Nevada’s big peaks and big trees for more than thirty years, has now hiked more than 200 miles along California’s John Muir Trail in a personal search for answers: How do we address the climate change we are seeing even now—in melting glaciers in Glacier National Park, changing rainy seasons on Mt Rainer, and more fire in the West’s iconic parks. Should we intervene where we can to preserve biodiversity? Should the parks merely become ecosystem museums that exhibit famous landscapes and species? Asking how we can make these magnificent parks relevant for the next generation, Tweed, through his journey, ultimately shows why we must do just that.
The recently described from the Russian Altai and Kazakh Altai Anthonomus dudkoi Legalov is found in the Katon-Karagay National Park in Eastern Kazakhstan (South-Western Altai). Photographs of the ...adults of both sexes of this species and of A. germanicus Dieckmann, of a female of Anthonomus morosus Faust from the Southeastern Altai, and of the aedeagus of Anthonomus dudkoi and A. morosus from Southeastern Altai are provided showing that A. dudkoi is close to A. morosus but not to A. germanicus, as was stated in the original description.
The role of local people in contemporary nature conservation practices is often poorly understood or neglected. This book, therefore, examines questions of local participation at the nature-society ...nexus within national parks in the transitional context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The post-1990 reconfiguration of conservation paradigms in this part of the world has re-opened various age-old debates about the protection and administration of natural heritage. Further complicating the situation has been the introduction of market-based principles, which has embedded the entire process in broader dynamics of neoliberalization and the capitalist space economy. Providing an integrated perspective on why, how and for whom nature conservation practices have been implemented in CEE, this book sheds further light upon the mechanisms through which such practices both redefine and are affected by the everyday life of people living in national parks. Offering a critical global review of the environmental motivations and power interests behind the creation of national parks, as well as a typology of the relations between local people and the dynamics of nature protection in them, this work challenges the dichotomy between developed and developing countries that pervades much of the academic literature on nature protection. Author Saska Petrova highlights the lessons that can be learnt by applying the experiences of local community participation in environmental management in CEE to other locations undergoing major systemic change in their environmental governance practices, such as the 'low carbon transition' that is currently unfolding at a global scale.
A Wild Idea Edmondson, Brad
2021, 2021-05-15, 2021-04-15
eBook
A Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a ...territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to save the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private. A Wild Idea is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were saved, and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.
Cities of Knowledge O'Mara, Margaret
2015, 2015., 20150217, 2004, Letnik:
27
eBook
What is the magic formula for turning a place into a high-tech capital? How can a city or region become a high-tech powerhouse like Silicon Valley? For over half a century, through boom times and ...bust, business leaders and politicians have tried to become "the next Silicon Valley," but few have succeeded. This book examines why high-tech development became so economically important late in the twentieth century, and why its magic formula of people, jobs, capital, and institutions has been so difficult to replicate. Margaret O'Mara shows that high-tech regions are not simply accidental market creations but "cities of knowledge"--planned communities of scientific production that were shaped and subsidized by the original venture capitalist, the Cold War defense complex.
At the heart of the story is the American research university, an institution enriched by Cold War spending and actively engaged in economic development. The story of the city of knowledge broadens our understanding of postwar urban history and of the relationship between civil society and the state in late twentieth-century America. It leads us to further redefine the American suburb as being much more than formless "sprawl," and shows how it is in fact the ultimate post-industrial city. Understanding this history and geography is essential to planning for the future of the high-tech economy, and this book is must reading for anyone interested in building the next Silicon Valley.
