Assorted Verbiage & Mappage

   Verbiage

       by Marc Lee, Erick Villagomez,
       Penny Gurstein, David Eby,
       and Elvin Wyly





       Loretta Lees,
       Tom Slater,
       and Elvin Wyly
       New York:
       Routledge

       Hardcover, Paperback
       
       On Amazon, we were discounted 34%
       even before publication!  Just wait,
       we're headed towards the loonie bin
       (perhaps in more ways than one).
       
       November 22, 2007:  Loretta and Tom
       appear at a book launch at Kings
       College London.




       November 23, 2007:  Gentrifying a
       new generation:  Zach Slater studies
       gentrification, and thinks about how to
       update Chester Hartman's famous
       1982 Displacement:  How to Fight it
       for today's cities.


And a very preliminary taxonomy
of New York City neighborhoods
based on housing subsidies to the rich and poor.

   Mappage
For details on how
this map was created,
see American Home
CopyLeft 2009 Elvin K. Wyly
Except where otherwise noted, this site is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
elvin k. wyly




I am a geographer with a passionate fascination with all things urban.  "Ah, cities, yes," you say, "...but ... geography?"  Perhaps your reaction is what Peter Gould had in mind when he described an all-too-common encounter at that bizarre middle-class ritual known as the Cocktail Party:

"Groping for something else to fill the silence, she got in her word first.  'And what do you do?' she said.

'Oh,' I said, grateful for the usual filler, 'I'm a geographer.'  And even as I said it, I felt the safe ground turning into the familiar quagmire.  She did not have to ask the next question, but she did anyway.

'A geographer?'

'Er ... yes, a geographer,' said with that quietly enthusiastic confidence that trips so easily from the tongues of doctors, engineers, airline pilots, truckers, sailors and tramps.  After all, everyone knows what they do, and off the conversation goes on the awful 'flu epidemic, the new bridge, the latest jet, the long haul out of Kansas City, the storm in the Bay of Biscay or the doss houses of Saskatoon.  But a geographer?

It has happened many times, and it seldom gets better.  That awful feeling of desperate foolishness when you, a professional geographer, find yourself incapable of explaining simply and shortly to others what you really do.  One could say, 'I look at the world from a spatial perspective...' or 'Well, actually, I'm a spatial analyst,' ... Or there is the concrete example approach.  'Well, at the moment we're calibrating an entropy-maximizing model for a journey-to-work study...' or possibly 'We're using a part stochastic, part deterministic, computer simulation model to examine the threshold values in a regional development programme,' all of which would be true up to a point.  But the words, with their precise meaning for geographers, convey nothing to others, and end up sounding like some private and deliberately obfuscating jargon.  Which would also be true.  Up to a point.  Often, in a desperate attempt to build a bridge with more familiar words, one ends up by saying, 'Well, actually, I teach geography.'

'Oh really?', and laughing.  'What's the capital of North Dakota?'"

[Peter Gould (1985).  The Geographer at Work.  London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 3-4.]

I first read these lines in the Spring of 1985, not long after I migrated into Geography after a very personal and powerful epiphany.  I was scribbling notes to capture the insights of the day's lecture in a first-year human geography class.  Roger Downs was there in the midst of a brilliant performance, drawing a lovely map on the chalkboard while narrating the historical-geographical circumstances that explained why cities appeared in some places (and not others) in Central Pennsylvania.  As the map came into view, the realization hit me hard.  This ... is this guy's job, I thought with sudden clarity.  His job is to do all this interesting stuff, this really cool shit, all day.  He gets paid for it!  Where do I sign up?

Consider that I was, at the time, living in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in a pre-Internet age in which digital activities required a trip to the computing center and waiting in line for output on that green-and-white tractor-feed printer paper.  I could not announce my conversion like it is now possible to do on blogs and teacher-rating web sites.  But I am encouraged that new generations are discovering the passions and possibilities of our field, thanks to the performance of talented educators like my colleague Matthew Evenden, who inspires students to submit things like this to ratemyprofessor.com:  "Wow, I loved his lectures and I wasn't at all interested before.  He's inspired me to change my major.  SO smart and SO beautiful.  I'll miss seeing his gorgeous self 3 times a week;( SO sad that he got married!"  Professor Evenden's pedagogy is first-rate:  not long ago, I was asked to offer an assessment of his teaching, and I was truly humbled.  An excerpt:  "Professor Evenden distills a potent spirit of historical geography, spiced with inherently and inescapably interesting insights on the political dilemmas of markets and state intervention, the assumptions of staples theory and industrial location theory, geopolitical facets of terms-of-trade, and strategic spatial configurations of supply chains in times of war. It all fits together well and flows smoothly. Students are captivated..."

There's no doubt that Professor Evenden's fine teaching is bringing people into geography who might otherwise become doctors, engineers, airline pilots, truckers, sailors, or tramps.

Geography is the study of the obvious -- of everyday landscapes that we take for granted, and of complex processes that are widely discussed but usually misunderstood; I learned this from my good friend Dan Hammel. Geography is also the study of why things that seem logical or reasonable in one place can be irrational or dangerous in another place; I learned this from Phil Gersmehl, a truly gifted and inspired scholar-teacher.  Geography is the perpetual tension of society and space, produced as we make places and spaces even while our context and environment shape the things we do, think, and understand.  And geography is a humble respect for the unique character of all places -- each position woven into economic, political, and social relations in a changing context of global flows and interdependencies.

I'm an urban geographer.  I love cities, and I am deeply troubled by the leading-edge role of contemporary urbanization in reproducing and reinforcing harsh social inequalities.  Market processes continue to drive spatial polarization and geographical injustice, by class, race-ethnicity, and gender.  Public policy does little to cushion these inequalities, particularly in today's neoliberal and neoconservative obsession with liberating market forces and recasting communities and citizens as consumers and investors.  My research analyzes the geographical dimensions of urban inequality, with a special emphasis on class, racial-ethnic, and gender discrimination in housing; neighborhood change, gentrification, and displacement; capital investment and disinvestment; homeownership policy; and the proliferation of dangerous, sophisticated tactics of predatory mortgage lending.  I also have taken an interest in the inescapably urban facets of what seem to be the dominant transnational obsessions of our time, tourism and terrorism.

A few years ago, a student wrote on a course evaluation, "He's not bad, but he is quite Yankicentric."  That about sums it up, and if you're interested in my thoughts on playing the role of The Ugly American, you might want to read this.  Most of my research focuses on large cities in the United States, although thanks to the talented students here, I am gradually learning a bit about Canadian urbanism -- especially the curious constellation of forces that distinguish Vancouver.  I still can't quite figure it out, but I do love it:  city as a turbocharged transnational growth machine, nexus of accelerated entrepreneurialism, cosmopolitan Pacific Rim entrepot laid atop small-town provincial continental exile, capital of West Coast Capital hidden behind capital of West-Coast sea-to-sky aesthetic, laid-back enjoyment.  Such a curious blend of potent political progressive commitments and passive-aggressive elite tradition.

This website has a variety of resources, divided into separate sections for research, teaching, and various data sources and suggestions.  But if you're interested in just one or two samples, for my research I would suggest a story that begins with Citi, Sandy, and the Prince, or the terrible experience of Beatrice; for teaching, I'd offer my lecture on Race, Housing, and the Urban Underclass, or the New Spatial Politics of Social Data.

The Capital of North Dakota?

And, I must confess, I really don't care about the capital of North Dakota.  I'm more concerned with North Dakota's relation with another capital of capital, where issues from torture to tax cuts are fought out in the belly of the beast of what David Harvey has called the New Imperialism.  North Dakota was one of many places where the balance between survival and full-fledged violent hegemony, what Chomsky has diagnosed as America the failed state, seemed at risk of slouching towards catastrophe in the Fall of 2006.  But let's hear it for Bismarck, and so many other precincts across North Dakota, keeping Kent Conrad in the mix and unleashing a cascade of changes in Committee Chairs, with the all-powerful investigation and subpoena power to restore checks and balances.  In this sense, the reallocation of seats in the midterm elections stitched the capital (and the rest) of North Dakota into a still-insecure Homeland urban system centered on the federalist capital in an election that surprised many seasoned political observers:  the old saw that all politics is local was subverted by a midterm that did seem to be truly nationalized, culminating in remarkable surprises in Senate races in Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, and Montana.

And in any event, equating geography with the memorization of such "factual" trivia as state capitals is worse than boring.  It can be quite dangerous, as it distracts us from the new geographies that are constantly under construction and contestation, from the massive real-estate speculation in Harlem and SoBro to the violence of the Israel-Lebanon borderlands to the death-ridden towns and cities across central Iraq, from the resurgence of gentrification in Chicago's South Side to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.  Geographies are always in the processing of becoming, of being made, interpreted, understood, and experienced -- for good or ill.  Geography is no more about the memorization of state capitals than history is the memorization of dates.  Except, that, is, in that bastion of Republican commitment to Enlightmentment principles, the Great State of Florida.  Not long ago, then-Governor Jeb Bush signed into law an education bill declaring, among other things, that "American history shall be viewed as factual, not constructed," and this purported factuality will henceforth be "knowable, teachable, and testable."  Among the specific "facts" to be imparted to schoolchildren are "the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy," while elsewhere the law explicitly prohibits interpretation.  As the journalism professor Robert Jensen points out,

"...it's a fact that Europeans began coming in significant numbers to North America in the seventeenth century.  Were they peaceful settlers or aggressive invaders? ... It's also a fact that once those Europeans came, the indigenous people died in large numbers.  Was that an act of genocide? ... In contemporary history, has U.S. intervention in the Middle East been aimed at supporting democracy or controlling the region's crucial energy resources?  Would anyone in a free society want students to be taught that there is only one way to construct an answer to that question?

...the law represents a yearning one can find across the United States.  Americans look out at a wider world in which more and more people reject the idea of the United States as always right, always better, always moral.  As the gap between how Americans see themselves and how the world sees us grows, the instinct for many is to eliminate intellectual challenges at home: 'We can't control what the rest of the world thinks, but we can make sure our kids aren't exposed to such nonsense.'"

[Robert Jensen (2006).  "Florida's Fear of History:  New Law Undermines Critical Thinking."  Common Dreams, July 17.]

So I'm glad to be teaching, learning, and doing geography on this side of the border.  The world here is is still round.  Even so, it's still important to rehearse those sound-byte responses to explain what geographers do.  As Graeme Wynn narrates the encounter:

"An exchange (partly imagined) at the Douglas (Peace Arch) Border crossing, 6 March 2008:

'Where you heading?' 
To a conference, in Bellingham.

'What sort of a conference?'
An academic conference -- for geographers.

'You a geographer?' 
Yes.

'Where is Damascus?' 
[Duly answered correctly (after rejecting
the possibility, fleetingly entertained,
of responding, 'I'm not sure, I'm still looking
for the  road there.')].

'Who's organizing this conference?' 
The Western Division of the Canadian
Association of Geographers.

'Why are Canadian Geographers meeting in the United States?' 

Now that's a good question.  How to explain..." 

[Graeme Wynn (2008).  "Geographers Go South."  Geog@UBC 3(7), March,
p. 1.  Vancouver:  Department of Geography, University of British Columbia.]



     Imaginer Urbanus


       More...


       And the real-estate porn
       announcing what will
       replace it.  The Cabrini-
       Green area is now
       being called SoNO.
       Not long ago, this intersection was in the midst of a long corridor of sixteen-story high-rise public housing projects built from the late 1950s to the early 1960s; see Arnold Hirsch's Building the Second Ghetto, Vest Monroe's Brothers, and Sudhir Venkatesh's American Project.  Now it's all gone, and "...nearly eight years after the Chicago Housing Authority embarked upon its $1.6 billion 'Plan for Transformation,' public housing's political base has been all but erased. ... just 26 percent of the folks registered [to vote] at the Robert Taylor Homes in November 2000 and 28 percent who were registered at Stateway Gardens were found on the voting rolls in September 2007 ....The loss of these massive concentrations of public housing voters represents a diminished political voice for a population many already considered disenfranchised. ... 'For all of the negative aspects ... they did have a lot of voters living there,' said Paul Fischer, emeritus professor of politics at Lake Forest College .... 'The concentration of those voters gave them a political significance.  Just by dispersing the population, which by definition occurred when they were relocated, you are also eliminating that political voice.'"  Kelly Lownestein and Alden K. Loury (2008).  "Lost Voters, Lost Voices."  The Chicago Reporter, January 13, available at http://www.chicagoreporter.com.

Fifty-first and Federal is, it would seem, an important site for many urban geographers.  Here's the view from Dr. Geoff DeVerteuil's geographical imagination (copyright Geoff DeVerteuil, January 2008).
Image ©copyright 1960 Robert S. Wyly
No animals were harmed in the production of this web page.

Full-size image
Another valuable Dakota Declaration:  eight months after suffering a life-threatening brain hemorrhage and partial paralysis that political analysts viewed as possibly undermining the razor-thin Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, Tim Johnson (D-SD) appeared at the Sioux Falls Convention Center to tell his constituents, "I'm back."  "Hard work is something in which I take great pride, so let me say this tonight going forward:  I am back", Johnson said after he was brought in to the hall in a wheelchair, with his face and speech still showing the signs of the 'arteriovenous malformation' and emergency surgery he endured in December, 2006.  "Of course, I believe I have an unfair advantage over most of my colleagues right now.  My mind works faster than my mouth does.  Washington would probably be a better place if more people took a moment to think before they spoke." Quoted in Associated Press (2007).  "Effects of His Brain Hemorrhage Evident, Senator Returns."  New York Times, August 30, p. A15.
"Upon reading of this page, you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions."  I'm joking, of course.  See the last line of this.
"When you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; but when you owe the bank $100 million, the bank has a problem."  -- Anonymous Bush Administration official, borrowing a line from J.P. Getty and privately complaining about Bush's inability to do anything when the ally he once called "my buddy and my friend," Pervez Mussharaf, declared a state of emergency in early November, 2007.  Bush has simply invested too much in Mussharaf.  Dan Froomkin (2007).  "Exposing Bush's Weakness."  Washington Post, November 6, White House Watch blog.  Thanks to Jon Cloke at Loughborough Geography for alerting me to the Getty etymology.
Random Resources and
Bureaucratic Stuff


UBC Annual Reports
  • 2006
  • 2007
  • Why annual reports will not be submitted in future years, Part 1, Part 2
  • They are now called "What I did with my Last Non-Summer Non-Vacation."  Here's 2008.
Contact information        Disclaimer        Curriculum Vita
"They are, after all, scholars -- and they are barely tolerated in British higher education."  Frank Furedi (2008).  "Is There No Room Left for Reflection?"  CAUT Bulletin 55(1), January, A2.
Biopolitics of the Blogosphere:  Resumes in the Age of Web 2.0

November 12, 2008:  The Obama Presidential Transition Team has prepared a questionnaire for prospective high-level appointees.  There are sixty-three questions.  A sampler:
"(10)  Writings:  Please list and, if readily available, provide a copy of each book, article, column or publication (including but not limited to any posts or comments on blogs or other websites) you have authored, individually or with others.  Please list all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet."
"(13)  Electronic communications: If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe."
"(14)  Diaries:  If you keep or have ever kept a diary that contains anything that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe."
"(58)  Please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g., Facebook, My Space, etc.)"
"(59)  Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun?  If so, provide complete ownership and registration information.  Has the registration ever lapsed?  Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage."
Questionnaire distributed by the Transition Team of the Office of President-Elect Barack Obama.  See Jackie Calmes (2008).  "For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All."  New York Times, November 12, A1.


Image courtesy of Tom Slater

More...
A Recent Random Rant

"The 1960s failed to deliver a thorough restructuring of society.  Nevertheless, it is dangerous and disempowering to remember the postwar era as nothing more than an age of a flawed, conservative positivist urbanism.  Many of the scholars working with social statistics who are now caricatured as unrepentant conservative positivists "were not infrequently of an actively leftist orientation" (Livingston 1992:  325) -- continuing the dissident heritage of the Vienna Circle itself.  Some of the most reactionary urbanism emerged not from quantitative-positivist research, but from explicitly qualitative ethnographic work on the culture of poverty (e.g., Banfield 1968).  Even the state-funded research of that era that is now recalled as the pinnacle of positivist urbanism looks downright radical when viewed from the vantage point of today's political climate. If positivism was tainted by its enrollment in American Fordism and the military-industrial complex -- and in some ways it was -- there was never any guarantee that a post-industrial, post-Fordist, post-positivist era would deliver us from the evils of militarism, inequality, racism, and all the other manifestations of social injustice.  Indeed, the Right has been all too quick to hijack the theoretical and tactical weapons traditionally associated with the Left.  The entire documentary history of the Bush Administration -- from Karl Rove's scorched-earth election strategies to the infamous torture memos deconstructing the contextual meanings of pain and organ failure while divining the torturer's intentions and human agency -- provides a horribly perverted course syllabus on poststructuralist, postpositivist imperialism. Any epistemology, and any methodology, can be co-opted and abused to serve the cause of violence, destruction, and inequality.  Conversely, all methodologies and epistemologies can be mobilized for social justice."
Elvin Wyly (2009), "Radical City."
Homes for All!  Vancouver March for Housing, April, 2009.
Need Career Advice?  Look in your Medicine Cabinet! 
"Man" shaving cream:  "Unless you're a geography teacher or a communist revolutionary you'll have to shave sometime.  Our gel has been formulated to deliver an incredibly smooth shave whatever the strength of your political will."  Image courtesy of Tom Slater, October 2009.
Good Night White Pride. (Below).  The man on the ground has a logo on his chest that is fairly common among European skinhead organizations.  Note the gondola ferro about to hit its mark.  My commitment is to nonviolent militance and creative resistance, but it is clear that we are seeing ever more threatening signs of potential violence -- on the Right and on the Left -- in today's conservative age of inequality, exclusion, privilege, and imperialism.  A generation after what Michael Watts (2001) described as the "global insurrections" of "1968 and all that," the struggles continue in cities across the world.  Almost two hundred years after Comte lamented the "Occidential anarchy" of revolutionary France, the Enlightenment struggle between reason and the "Catholico-feudalist system" continues.  On Darwin's birthday in February, 2009, the Gallup organization reported that only 4 in 10 Americans "believe" in evolution, and not long afterwards, surveys documented that an outright majority of Republicans did not "believe" that Barack Obama was elected U.S. President.  Birthers and Dittoheads, it seems, are uniting.  It's enough to give both positivists and post-positivists "serious cerebral disturbance."  (Comte 1851).
Venice, December 13, 2009.  Photograph by Jatinder Dhillon.  ©2009 ESOIBC.