Public places and empty spaces: dislocation, urban renewal and the death of a French plaza

This article examines the dislocations produced when competing understandings of public space come into contact. Focusing on Montpellier, France, where an urban renewal program has seen portions of the city-centre renovated, the article considers the breaking apart of a North African commercial cluster under the guide of French heritage protection. Arguing that such action is tiedto municipal urban politics and wider trajectories that place diverse identities in a separate category, I trace the process through which a plaza encompassed in the urban renewal program has been labelled as “empty” and “dead” space. Suggesting that the relocation of a well-used outdoor food market is an instance of public space being deliberately emptied of its social and civic function, I argue that such sites are better defined as “municipal spaces”, entities that are firmly in the realm of the state, rather than ones within the purview of diverse publics

Co-housing childhoods: parents’ mediation of urban risk through participation in intentional communities

Co-housing is a form of intentional community that encourages shared living and sees members jointly build and develop urban housing projects. Through an emphasis on traffic-free developments and reference to strong community sentiment, co-housing is construed by parents as providing a safer and more desirable location for raising children. Drawing on fieldwork in two Canadian co-housing developments, this paper demonstrates how parents are able to mediate risks associated with traffic, bullies, and strangers

Soundscaping the Archives: Disrupting Boundaries through Sensory Research

Through this paper, we seek to re-imagine and challenge the meaning of archival spaces. While archival spaces are repositories of information, they are also sites where cultural values and public memory are shaped, and forms of power enacted. Drawing on sensory ethnography research in the Le Corbusier archives in Paris, France, we consider how boundaries are disrupted through noise, echo, reverberations, buzzing, and other “sounds.” Our work is presented in two overlapping textures: a soundtrack, with recordings from the Le Corbusier archives; and the text written out below. Alongside tracing archival soundscapes, a secondary function of this paper is to find our way with voice. In our experiences, ethnography is an embodied method, personal and context-specific. This made engaging with the two sets of “I’s” within our work, ultimately, a reflexive and collective process that happened over many conversations. We have chosen to keep “I” and clarify, as much as possible, whose experience is being shared

Gecontesteerde etnische markten in Montpellier

Op de Place Salengro aan de rand van het historisch centrum van Montpellier ligt, verdrongen tussen het verkeer, de Marché du Plan Cabanes. De meeste klanten hier zijn immigranten en mensen uit de lagere inkomensklasse op zoek naar betaalbare en etnische producten

Regulating the farmers’ market: paysan expertise, quality production and local food

This paper considers the meaning of local, quality food in the context of a farmer’s market in Montpellier, France. The focus is on understanding how farmers conceptualize ‘local’, how they perceive and cater to their clients’ demand for quality food, and what mechanisms are deployed to ensure a joint approach to these conventions. With a market association capable of carrying out site inspections to weed out ‘fake- farmers’ and an expectation that each vendor would participate in staged demonstrations of agrarian competency, the market emerges as an exclusive and tightly regulated commercial space that promotes both local protectionism and alternative consumption practices

Public space and memories of migration: erasing diversity through urban redevelopment in France

This article examines the meaning of public space and impact of heritage-led urban redevelopment in a diverse neighbourhood in Montpellier, France. It traces the relocation of a North African market from a central city plaza in favour of French antiques, and the resulting contestation over what constitutes local heritage, who has the capacity to determine how public space is used, and the seeming erasure of migrant identities and memories from an important community plaza. The paper considers how urban areas are re-imagined through a change in the materiality of public space, and outlines the role of outdoor markets in defining the social function of such spaces. The paper examines the intertwining of physical erasure (urban redevelopment and the removal of a diverse food market) and cultural erasure (the loss of certain community memories), and how these processes speak to broader debates about French national identity, cultural heritage, and the meanings attached to public spaces

Editor's Introduction: Public Space Beyond The City Centre: Suburban and Periurban Dynamics

Through this special issue, we bring together papers interested in public space beyond the city centre. That is, public space in suburban and periurban locations, including high-rise neighbourhoods and new exurban divisions, and in communities located at the interstices of the city-region. We are interested in how the values associated with public space—as an accessible site open to a range of uses, and a place of collective engagement and interaction—map out as we step away from downtown. Additionally, we are concerned with how struggles over and within public space proceed in non-central places

Engaging Diverse Audiences: The Role of Community Radio in Rural Climate Change Knowledge Translation

Community radio is an important form of knowledge dissemination, especially in rural areas where it can create opportunities for a geographically spread-out audience to engage in local debates. Through this article, we reflect on the community-building function of radio and consider how it can be mobilized to support climate change knowledge transfer in rural communities. Our reflections draw on the use of community radio during the Gros Morne Climate Change Symposium, an event that brought together researchers, practitioners, and community members to discuss coastal climate change adaptation in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. We consider the history of radio in Canada, its role in rural communities, and review experiences with radio-focused knowledge dissemination in other locations to frame our own discussion of the topic. Through reflection, each of the co-authors highlights their understanding of the role of community radio at the symposium and argue for the continuing relevance of radio in an era when digital communications are more common. We conclude by arguing that community radio can strengthen place-based identities by creating a distinct forum for engagement and is therefore an important tool for climate change knowledge transfer

The mobility of experiential learning pedagogy: transferring ideas and practices from a large- to a small-campus setting

In this article, we examine the development of a new, experiential learning human geography and planning course at a smaller campus in Newfoundland, Canada. Our interest is twofold: to consider how pedagogical approaches can be transferred between a large urban campus and a small-town location; and to examine the benefits and complications of such transfers through a reflective examination of the resulting experiential learning program. The article captures the experiences of students, faculty, and university engagement staff in the deployment of the course. From these perspectives, we situate the decision to transfer an existing program across universities, the nuances of adapting such programs to the local context, and the challenge of meeting student desires for experiential learning amidst experimental pedagogical approaches. The paper concludes by suggesting that transferring pedagogical models across locations requires flexibility in terms of ensuring that new modules fit existing program constraints, and that such transfers have the potential to both challenge and positively transform experiential learning processes