Human Geography: A Short Introduction just published

Human Geography: A Short Introduction was just published by Oxford University Press.

Inspection copies are available from OUP  and can be purchased through Amazon.

Still some free eprints of recently published papers

An update on free eprints of recently published papers.  I am given a limited number and the demand for some has exhausted the quota. However, there are still some free eprints for the following:

Representing Country in the Creative Postcolonial City

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/rpeSx6Fh8nBEtaUNC9yr/full

Flânerie and the globalizing city

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MQsckd9UtyMnczzy2pYV/full

No Accident: Traffic and Pedestrians in the Modern City

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4Ane6XnvISvD6dm6wUKd/full

Interview with World Future Review

I was interviewed by the associate editor of World Future Review about hopes and observations of the future based on my recent book "Stress Testing The USA". The  interview is available online. Here is a small sample.

Challenging the System: An Interview with John Rennie Short

WFR: The United States has seen its share of crises over the last few years, and the question that many futurists would probably ask is “How much better prepared is this country for the next crisis?” It sounds like you have some doubts about U.S. crisis preparedness as it now stands. And you express those doubts in your book.

John Rennie Short: What I did in the book was to look at the whole range of events— four in particular, namely, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis, and Hurricane Sandy. In a sense, I wanted to shift the debate toward looking at systemic failures and away from blaming any one particular individual or group. Often we’ll look for one person to blame—“the botched Hurricane Katrina response was Michael Brown’s fault,” for example, or “the Wall Street meltdown happened because of greedy bankers.”

I tried to show that there were structural issues at work.If we say it was just greedy bankers, well, there are always greedy bankers. What changes can we make to the larger system?

We should be more open to dissident voices—such as the voices that were warning us about the housing bubble, or the voices warning us against invading Iraq. Also, we tend to look at the future as simply an unfolding of the past. At this moment, however, that is actually a particularly dangerous notion to hold.

Take the notion of climate change as an example: all of our thinking and all of our infrastructure is based on the weather patterns that we have known for the last few hundred years. Those were patterns in which we could expect a once-every-five-hundred-years “super storm,” or maybe a one-in-a-hundred-years super storm. But under climate change conditions, the probabilities of a super storm vastly increase. So that one-in-a-hundred-years super storm becomes a one-every-ten-years super storm! The reality is changing, but our infra- structures and thinking stay woefully behind.

WFR: Those “super storms” are one of the near- future threats that you warn readers about in your book. What would such as storm entail? Certainly Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy seemed pretty “super” in themselves.

Short: We have a scale of hurricanes, something like 1 to 5, and 5 is very, very high. And we tend to get very few of those, maybe one in a hundred years. And climate scientists are saying there are just more and more of these storms that are reaching that scale of intensity. The storm that would have hit us once in a hundred years is now more likely to hit us once every ten years.

And so the probabilities are changing very, very quickly. And we should always be wary when trying to predict these things. I think climate and weather are very unpredictable. That’s why I’ll tend to speak in probabilities. We had Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and it wasn’t followed by other major storms. The years that immediately followed weren’t really active years. But then just last year (2012), we had Hurricane Sandy. It doesn’t follow a straight line. There isn’t a set pattern. But the risk is real nevertheless. And what it demonstrates is that you need to change the metric of risk.

The same applies with fiscal risk. Clearly, there is growing systematic risk in the financial system. And at the same time that we have all of this increasing risk, we also have these sets of beliefs against regulating the market. We’re still implementing the ideology of deregulation, and we’re doing so at the very time when all of these risks are going up.

Just as the world is becoming more uncertain, people more than ever want the warmth of certainty. “Deregulation, that’s good”; “build up the military, that’s good.” They hold onto these simplistic notions from the past and apply them to the future, just as the future is becoming more unpredictable.

WFR: The dysfunctional polarization of Congress and the Obama administration surely isn’t very amenable to crisis preparations of any kind. How feasible is it to enact the changes that you call for in this current political climate? And how might that political climate itself change (or not change) in years to come?

Short: We are in a particular period, one that comes along every generation or so, when there’s a major time of change and the policies of the past just don’t work. Another example would be Roosevelt’s New Deal. There was a sense, when Roosevelt came in, of we just have to try stuff. Just relying on the market wasn’t going to work. The New Deal was less about ideology; it was more about let’s see what works.

We’re in another one of these periods. We have a storm of oncoming changes, from climate change to fiscal meltdown. And we’re in this policy vacuum. The policies of the past just haven’t worked. We need a time of fresh thinking and openness to new ideas. But I kind of worry about the notion of a “blueprint.” We’re in a period of such rapid and large-scale change that we need to be flexible.

It’s sort of generational. I think maybe we need a new generation to take over. All the polls and evidence tell us that the new genera- tions are much less ideological, much more pragmatic, much more tech savvy. One exam- ple would be attitudes toward gays. In the 1990s, Clinton was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and that was seen as a major step forward. And nowadays, you do polls, and young people just don’t get what the older generation was so hung up about.

I think we could very well be in that generational switch. Some of those old debates are no longer debates, because there’s a new generation.

Interview with Writer's Voice about 'Stress Testing The USA'

As part of Environment Month at Writer’s Voice, a national radio show and podcast featuring author interviews, readings, and reviews, I was interviewed about my recent book 'Stress testing The USA" (Palgrave Macmillan). In the book I use the stress test concept to four major events the United States experienced at the start of the 21st century: the invasion of Iraq, the financial meltdown, Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

The interview was scheduled to air on Writer’s Voice broadcast stations across the country throughout the week of April 7.

To listen to the full interview on Writer’s Voice, click here http://www.writersvoice.net/2014/04/john-rennie-short-stress-testing-the-usa-john-michael-greer-green-wizardry/ 

 

Free eprints of recently published urban papers

I publish papers in a range of academic journals. One publisher allows me to send free eprints. If you want  a free eprint click on the appropriate link.

Population Change in U.S. Cities: Estimating and Explaining the Extent of Decline and Level of Resurgence

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/vd74tcnMvehtZJv9i8QP/full

Representing Country in the Creative Postcolonial City

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/rpeSx6Fh8nBEtaUNC9yr/full

Flânerie and the globalizing city

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MQsckd9UtyMnczzy2pYV/full

No Accident: Traffic and Pedestrians in the Modern City

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4Ane6XnvISvD6dm6wUKd/full

Globalization, cities and the Summer Olympics
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VqgZJUCwRdJ3Wa4W7T5X/full

The Supreme Court decision to overturn elements of The Voting Rights Act- eprint

My paper entitled, 'The Supreme Court, the Voting Rights Act and Competing National Imaginaries' was just published in the journal Territory, Politics, Governance. It looks at the background to and implications of the June 25 2013 decision (Shelby County v. Holder) by the US Supreme Court to overturn key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

You can obtain a free reprint at

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Fj28hcBD9Dzn5TaK98TR/full

These are limited in number so if you cannot get hold of a copy email me.

Travels in South East Asia and Myanmar

Spent the Holiday Season in South East Asia. I visited Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. More photos are available at my website http://johnrennieshort.com/ftp-files/pages-html/travels.html.

Singapore was busy, brisk and efficient. Three stops in  Malaysia: Langkawi was all green and lush, Penang was an eclectic mix of the colonial and postcolonial while Kuala Lumpur was a modern metropolis. Phuket bordered between the sleazy and the romantic that is Thailand and Medan in Sumatra had the urban feel of the global South. The highlight of the trip was three-day visit to Myanmar. The country formerly known as Burma is just emerging from decades of economic mismanagement and political repression. There are new political freedoms and a more open economy and society. Three random thoughts. The saddest part of the trip for me was to see trucks filled with teak trunks being loaded onto ships. In a nation of wonderful craftsmen a rare resource was being shipped out of the country without any value added work being done. The forest was being depleted for primary production export- an obvious way to remain poor and underdeveloped. In the surge of economic globalization the usual tale of crony capitalism and elite enrichment is unfolding. 

Teak loaded onto ships for export (© John Rennie Short)

Visiting an island temple  (© John Rennie Short)

Stupa in Bago  (© John Rennie Short)

Nuns in Yangon  (© John Rennie Short)

Second, the deep Buddhist religiosity of the country is evidenced with thousands of monks and nuns, lots of pagodas (stupas) and temples visited frequently by the faithful. The air smells of incense and the landscape is filled with the sacred architecture of the past and the present merging into one as the oldest edifices, some thousands of years old,  look brand new in their shining gold gilt. Finally, the country is opening up to the outside world but still has an innocence as when the locals, especially in the rural areas, look at outsiders with friendly wonder at what for them is the Other, but the Other who represents a more connected and more democratic society in the making.

Young and curious in Myanmar  (© John Rennie Short)