151 research outputs found
Claims that airports are a cityâs âeconomic engineâ are overstated, especially when compared to other local infrastructure
Airports are a key part of our globalized world, and calls for their expansion and development are becoming increasingly common. But airports can have negative effects on their local areasâ air and noise pollution, and traffic congestion. Do airportsâ benefits outweigh their costs to local areas? In new research that examines the 25 largest airports in the U.S., Julie Cidell finds that while airports may drive economic activity within a region, more often than not, that activity is occurring outside the vicinity of the airport. She writes that aspects of an airportâs location, such as nearby industry and transport links often serve as job creators, rather than the airport itself
Whose streets? Roadway protests and weaponised automobility
The article examines the role of automobility in US-based anti-racism demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. We contrast the spatial strategies of highway occupations by racial justice activists, with so-called âweaponised carâ attacks by the American far right. Analysing online memes and anti-protest legislation, the article explores under-acknowledged links between âautomobile supremacyââthe structure of motorists' privilege as embedded in law, the built environment and the popular imaginaryâand the patterns of racial stratification often termed âwhite supremacyâ. We document three ways in which automobility has been enlisted as means of violence against protestors and against wider Black communities in the US: through the use of vehicles, right-of-way conventions, and roadways as weapons. The article demonstrates how the imperative to make way for the motorist has long provided cover for racial injustice.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Mobilising sustainable building assessment models: agents, strategies and local effects
This paper considers how work on knowledge and policy mobilities can be used to analyse the processes behind and the local impacts of mobile sustainable building assessment models such as BREEAM and LEED. After reviewing existing concerns and critiques relating to the impacts of these models on the local sensitivity of sustainable building designs, consideration is given to the effects on local sensitivity of âwho mobilizesâ the models, the âintercity issuesâ associated with generating commensurability between places, and the way âevents along the wayâ are used to sell models. These questions reveal that work on knowledge and policy mobilities provides a useful framework through which to develop social science perspectives on the local impacts of mobile building assessment models. In particular, this approach highlights how processes of mobility are used to frame approaches to sustainable building design and potentially undermine attempts to render models sensitive to local challenges and solutions. It is, therefore, suggested that the knowledge and policy mobilities informed approach adopted here is beneficial as it places less emphasis on the intrinsic technical features of models and more emphasis on the powerful effects of processes of mobilisation on understandings and practices of sustainable design
When runways move but people don't: the O'Hare Modernization Program and the relative immobilities of air travel
This paper draws on Urryâs four interconnected senses of mobility to argue that the OâHare Modernization Project, carefully framed as moving runways rather than expanding OâHare International Airport, has differentially affected the mobilities of people and land uses in addition to airport boundaries and noise, and that work on aeromobilities has not sufficiently considered spaces on the ground beyond airport borders. The relative immobility of the built environment around a major piece of infrastructure such as OâHare has significant material consequences when the airport itself becomes mobile, reminding us of the politics inherent to the production of mobility systems and cities.Ope
MRD codes with maximum idealizers
Left and right idealizers are important invariants of linear rank-distance
codes. In the case of maximum rank-distance (MRD for short) codes in
the idealizers have been proved to be isomorphic to
finite fields of size at most . Up to now, the only known MRD codes with
maximum left and right idealizers are generalized Gabidulin codes, which were
first constructed in 1978 by Delsarte and later generalized by Kshevetskiy and
Gabidulin in 2005. In this paper we classify MRD codes in
for with maximum left and right idealizers
and connect them to Moore-type matrices. Apart from generalized Gabidulin
codes, it turns out that there is a further family of rank-distance codes
providing MRD ones with maximum idealizers for , odd and for ,
. These codes are not equivalent to any previously known MRD
code. Moreover, we show that this family of rank-distance codes does not
provide any further examples for .Comment: Reviewers' comments implemented, we changed the titl
Rhythmanalysing marathon running: âA drama of rhythmsâ
© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017. This paper draws on Lefebvreâs rhythmanalysis to investigate the multiple rhythms of the Berlin Marathon, exemplifying and expanding understandings about the rhythms of places and mobilities. First, we discuss how isorhythmic order is imposed on the city and event by race organizers. Secondly, we show that a marathon depends upon the preparatory training or âdressageâ performed by the thousands who have made themselves ârace-readyâ. Thirdly, we explore the changing individual and collective rhythms that continuously emerge according to contingencies and stages of the race to compose an unfolding drama of rhythms that includes both arrhythmic and eurhythmic experiences
User-made immobilities: a transitions perspective
In this paper we aim to conceptualize the role of users in creating, expanding and stabilizing the automobility system. Drawing on transition studies we offer a typology of user roles including user-producers, user-legitimators, user-intermediaries, user-citizens and user-consumers, and explore it on the historical transition to the automobile regime in the USA. We find that users play an important role during the entire transition process, but some roles are more salient than others in particular phases. Another finding is that the success of the transition depends on the stabilization of the emerging regime that will trigger upscaling in terms of the numbers of adopters. The findings are used to reflect on potential crossovers between transitions and mobilities research
Critically Interrogating Eco-Homes
Eco-homes have only been researched in fragmented and partial ways, which fail to adequately examine their complexities and possibilities. Numerous myths about eco-homes persist in the public imagination and policy support has been mixed with, in practice, little change to the construction of contemporary homes. The ecological and social potential of eco-homes are being undermined by a technocratic focus, the capacity and behaviour of occupants, and a weakening of design as developments are scaled-up. This intervention identifies five ways in which eco-homes need to be more robustly interrogated to strengthen their potential, through their breadth and diversity, dynamic nature, socio-material interdependencies, place, and understanding of their political economies. Crucially these interrogations need to be researched simultaneously to ensure that the full diversity of eco-homes is understood through their multiple interdependencies, multi-scalar practices and materialities
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