Exploring urban verticality during the 2011 flood in Bangkok, Thailand

Geographers have a long-established research interest in the ways infrastructures shape urban flood vulnerability and how urbanites cope with urban flooding. In this paper, I contribute to this literature by exploring the three-dimensional city during an urban flooding situation. Within a case study (based on interviews and ethnographic observations), I attend to ad hoc coping practices of a diverse city population during the 2011 flood in Bangkok. I foreground the vertical direction of these strategies and the affordances of the urban built environment and urban infrastructures that enabled such coping. The paper thus stages a conversation between established literature on urban flood vulnerability and coping with an emerging interest in vertical urbanism literature. Through this conversation between the two literatures, research on urban verticality is probed to consider verticality as a crucial dimension of urbanism during times of flood disasters

Sensing the Waterscape - Re-Assembling the Politics of Climate Change and Displacement in Bangkok, Thailand

The effects of climate change on human society and urban metropolises in the Global South, such as Bangkok, have been widely discussed in academic and policy circles. In the last few decades, debates on climate change and displacement have particularly captured the attention of the media, policymakers and academics. So-called “climate refugees” have advanced as the “human face of climate change”. Critically examining the literature on the relationship between climate change and displacement that either sees this relationship as deterministic (so-called Maximalist position) or complex (so-called Minimalist position), this dissertation seeks to reorient debates on climate change and displacement to consider the link between both compounds as an emerging assemblage. The dissertation argues that such a perspective allows for a more-than Western ontology, a nuanced engagement with urban spaces such as Bangkok, in which climate change and displacement begin to materialise and contribute to a political quest for open futures. Within this emerging assemblage, affective forces, human and non-human actors, the urban materiality of a fragmented waterscape shapes and influences the politics of climate change and displacement. Through an intra-urban comparative research design that utilises a range of qualitative and ethnographic methods (e.g. participant observations, semi-structured interviews, walk-along interviews), the emerging heterogeneous urban climate change and displacement assemblage is investigated. In three empirical chapters, the dissertation attends to the historical fragmentation of Bangkok’s waterscape and its connections to contemporary and future climate change and displacement; the 2011 inundation in which wide parts of the city were flooded, involving diverse topologies of displacement; and finally two urban struggles over the re-engineering of Bangkok’s waterscape, in which the political contestations that are at stake within the climate change and displacement assemblage are analysed and compared. The dissertation argues that through re-framing debates on climate change and migration through an assemblage approach, a more sensory, nuanced, and ultimately more complex understanding of the political nature of the relationship between climate change and displacement is advanced

Do trust and renewable energy use enhance perceived climate change efficacy in Europe?

In the European Union, mitigation policies in the energy sector are one of the most important fields of political intervention for reducing emissions to achieve sustainability. Using renewable energy is moreover a central arena for perceived personal and political climate change efficacy, which describes an individual’s perceived ability to positively contribute to the fight against climate change and their belief in the effectiveness of government and society to tackle climate change collectively. In this paper, we distinguish between perceived personal and political efficacy beliefs. We use multilevel regression to investigate the relationship between these two dependent variables and trust in national governments as well as renewable energy use in 20 European countries for the first time. Our analysis first finds that socio-demographic predictors for perceived personal and political climate change efficacy operate almost diametrically. Second, we find that trust in governments is a much stronger predictor for perceived political efficacy. Third, we find that renewable energy use is a significant and positive predictor for perceived personal efficacy but correlates negatively with political efficacy. Finally, we find some cross-national variation in our European sample for both dimensions of efficacy beliefs. Understanding what shapes personal and political efficacy is salient to enhance public acceptance for sustainable energy transitions. © 2022, The Author(s)

Re-thinking urban infrastructures as spaces of learning

Research on urban infrastructure has advanced to the forefront of human geography inquiry in the last two decades. Among other topics, geographers have looked into the privatization and neo-liberal splintering of urban infrastructures; the failings of infrastructures and the power relations revealed within these failings; the political ecology of infrastructural provisions; the specific infrastructural challenges of cities within the so-called Global South; and the entanglements of everyday experiences, affects and emotions with infrastructures. Yet, little attention has been drawn to the ways in which infrastructures need to be learned to fulfil their role of smoothly providing people with diverse services. Given the increasing spatial mobility of populations (e.g., as refugees, migrants, expatriates, and tourists), as well as the accelerating pace of infrastructural change (e.g., in the name of Smart City developments) however, it has become more salient than ever to open-up urban infrastructural research more explicitly towards critical inquiries of learning. Thus, this paper proposes to re-think urban infrastructures not only as socio-material configurations, but more specifically as important spaces for learning

Social media and perceived climate change efficacy: A European comparison

Climate change perceptions interact with how climate change is portrayed in the news, which is now increasingly accessed via social media platforms. While their effects on climate change awareness have been documented, it is less clear to what extent news consumed via social media platforms influences perceived climate change efficacy, which refers to the belief that one is able to make a difference in the fight against climate change. Our paper investigates the relationship between internet use, news received via social media, and perceived climate change efficacy in Europe, by using multilevel regression that shows the effects on individual, national and regional level. We find that there are modest differences between perceived climate change efficacy within our European sample and that on aggregated, national level Facebook negatively correlates with perceived climate change efficacy. Furthermore, regions with high participation in social media, show lower perceived climate change efficacy. Our multi-level research design thus puts new insights into the spatial manifestation of climate change opinions in the context of a digital geography interested in exploring differences in the effects of digital media uses

Forschen im Globalen Süden: Forschungsethik als transformative Kraft?

Auf der Tagung "Räumliche Transformation: Prozesse, Konzepte und Forschungsdesigns" wurden neben vielen lokalen und regionalen Beispielen der Raumforschung auch einige Forschungsbeiträge zu Transformationsprozessen aus dem sogenannten Globalen Süden vorgestellt. Dieser kurze Beitrag versucht, eine Verbindung zwischen den Beiträgen und dem übergeordneten Kongressthema zu eröffnen, indem er Forschungsethik als potenziell transformative Kraft untersucht. Da Forschung von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern aus dem Globalen Norden im Globalen Süden etliche logistische und organisatorische, aber eben auch ethische, politische und moralische Herausforderungen bereithält, ist eine selbstkritische Positionierung im Forschungsprozess unerlässlich. Weiterhin, argumentiert dieser Beitrag, sind es gerade diese Herausforderungen, die selbstkritische Reflexionen zulassen und es dadurch ermöglichen, ein Transformationspotenzial auf persönlicher, institutioneller und auch auf der Projekt- und Output-Ebene zu entwickeln. Die räumliche Transformationsforschung kann durch solche ethicopolitical-Momente, wie sie von dem Sozialwissenschaftler Vinay Gidwani vorgeschlagen werden, eine große ethische Reflexionstiefe erreichen und mitunter auch eine Transformation auf Ebene der Wissensproduktion anstoßen.During the conference "Spatial Transformation: Processes, Concepts and Research Designs" a number of local and regional case studies was presented alongside a panel of research activities conducted in the so-called Global South. This contribution offers a reflection on the role of research ethics and their potentially transformative power within such contexts. First, the article argues that within research projects conducted by researchers from the so-called Global North in the Global South, a self-critical reflection on ones’ position is necessary as the researcher will inevitably be confronted with various critical - ethical, logistical, political - moments. Second, it is argued that these critical moments cannot only function to challenge the research process but can also be made useful for critical reflections which may unleash a transformative potential on personal, institutional, project and output level. Research on spatial transformations may profit from reconsidering research ethics to achieve a higher dimension of self-reflexivity

Geographies of climate change opinion

Climate change can only be tackled with public support for sustainable policies. Thus, public attitudes towards climate change matter. More than 3 decades of climate change opinion (CCO) research—conducted by geographers, environmental psychologists, behavioural scientists, sociologists etc.—have provided us with a wealth of information about which predictors shape public CCOs. This review synthesises these findings and highlights the different geographies (the self, the nation, the region, the digital) that emerge within this research. Given the increased importance of social media, virtual geographies of climate change scepticism are increasingly being identified. Our paper argues that new research agendas must be developed to address the meshwork of virtual space and small scale geographies (regions, towns, districts) in which CCOs are formed. © 2022 The Authors. Geography Compass published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Exploring the variances of climate change opinions in Germany at a fine-grained local scale

How and why climate change opinions vary within countries at a small geographic scale is rarely investigated. Previous research has focused on public opinions at the individual or national level, leaving local differences within countries and their underlying factors largely unexplored. The lack of research at subnational levels is problematic, as adaptation and mitigation policies depend on collective support and action involving multiple stakeholders at the local scale. It is thus crucial to identify geographic differences in climate change opinions and to unravel their determinants at a fine-grained local scale. We examine public CCOs across 4,667 municipalities in Germany by relying on a representative survey of households. Here we show substantial and systematic differences in public climate change opinions across locations that manifest between urban vs. rural and prospering vs. declining areas. Besides these geographic features, more complex historical and cultural differences between places play an important role

Sailing to save the planet? Media-produced narratives of Greta Thunberg’s trip to the UN Climate Summit in German print newspapers

Narratives and stories are important communication tools and as such essential subjects of social geography. This paper analyses the retelling of Greta Thunberg’s sailing trip across the Atlantic to the Climate Action Summit in New York in 2019 in leading German newspapers and magazines and how her intentions are transformed through this reporting into different narratives. The research mainly focuses on examining the influence of space and place, as geographical research has revealed that spatial determinants are crucial in risk communication and knowledge generation on climate change but have yet to be studied considering stories. The paper, therefore, extends the story-based approach from communication sciences by geographical research on the role of space and place in action-based stories. Therefore, the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is used to decode the spatial environment in narratives as an active element that shapes the narrative, and the way characters can (inter)act within these settings. The paper further develops the NPF framework through a geographical lens by focusing particularly on the selection options of spaces for social interactions and affective bonds. Thus, it becomes evident how spatial contexts and environments shape the interactions between individuals and crucially influence the types of narratives that emerge

The role of climate change awareness for trust in institutions in sub-Saharan Africa

Within the context of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, trust in institutions is an important prerequisite to implement climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. There is a lack of systematic investigation of the relationship between climate change awareness, conflicts, and trust in institutions. We address this pressing research gap based on a regression analysis with trust in institutions as dependent variables, and climate change awareness and violence as independent variables drawing on Afrobarometer individual data and aggregated data on armed conflicts. Our main findings indicate that trust in institutions in sub-Saharan Africa is influenced by both the individual climate change awareness and the violence context. First, we find a negative relationship between those who are aware of climate change and trust in institutions. Second, we observe a socio-economic divide: young, urban and educated parts of the population as well as those who feel their ethnic group is treated unfairly do not trust institutions. Third, we see a regional divide: those far from political centres are not aware of climate change, and those close to the political centres do not trust institutions