Lmst

The Making of Grimsby’s Dock Tower: The Entanglements of Infrastructural Relations

New post on infrastructure, fishing, and the links between land and sea. Jointly published by NiCHE and The Metropole:

https://niche-canada.org/2026/01/12/the-making-of-grimsbys-dock-tower-the-entanglements-of-infrastructural-relations/

https://themetropole.blog/2026/01/12/the-making-of-grimsbys-dock-tower-the-entanglements-of-infrastructural-relations/

#UrbanHistory #UrbanGeography #environment #EnvHist #EnvHums #BritishHistory #fish #Infrastructure #fishing #history #histodons

Stratified Fault Lines

Basel developed slowly over centuries, shaped by trade, craft, and a dense medieval fabric that privileged continuity over rupture. For a long time, the city grew organically, expanding its borders without fundamentally disrupting its horizontal scale or human proportions. In the late 20th and early 21st century, Basel repositioned itself as an international hotspot for architecture, culture, and the life sciences. This shift introduced a new urban logic. Landmark projects and global actors began to reshape the city’s image, culminating in the vertical presence of the Roche towers. Rising behind the low roofs of the old town, they embody efficiency, power, and contemporary ambition. Their scale does not merge with the historical city but stands against it, exposing a structural tension between accumulated urban time and deliberate architectural intervention. What emerges is not a harmonious skyline, but a stratified cityscape where horizontal continuity and vertical assertion coexist without resolution.

Mood: Transient – Higher Than The Sky

#UrbanPhotography #ArchitecturePhotography #UrbanGeography #Basel

Exploring nonlinear and interactive associations between built environment features and subjective streetscape perceptions

Harvey, C. & Aultman-Hall, L. Measuring urban streetscapes for livability: a review of approaches. Prof. Geogr. 68, 149–158…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Cities #environment #General #Latvia #LV #Science #Socialsciences #sustainabledevelopment #technologyandsociety #Towns #UrbanEcology #UrbanGeography/Urbanism(inc.megacities #Urbanism
https://www.newsbeep.com/276329/

🏔️ How high is your community?

Using the MRDEM-2024 elevation model, I mapped the average elevation for each Calgary community.
The result clearly shows how the city “steps down” from the western uplands toward the Bow and Elbow River valleys in the east and south.

🔹 The highest areas — around Tuscany, Rocky Ridge, and Cougar Ridge — rise over 1,240 m above sea level.
🔹 The lowest zones — Shepard, McKenzie Towne, and parts of the southeast — drop to about 1,000 m.

It’s a great reminder that Calgary’s landscape still reflects its glacial past — a city built on terraces, slopes, and ancient river plains.

#Calgary #Alberta #Geography #Geospatial #QGIS #OpenData #UrbanGeography #DataVisualization #Topography #Geomorphology #Canada #DEM

Digital Elevation Model (MRDEM-2024) over Calgary with community boundaries.
Warm colors (red-orange) show higher elevations in the west; cool colors (blue-green) show lower areas near the Bow and Elbow rivers.

Map of Calgary communities colored by weighted average elevation.
The northwest and western districts (Tuscany, Rocky Ridge) are the highest; the southeast communities (Shepard, McKenzie Towne) are the lowest.

Returning here to share an article I recently published in Urban History. I argue for a deeper, more playful engagement between urban historians and the environmental humanities if we are to address the ecological crises of our times. 'Urban history as urgent work, an argument for disciplinary promiscuity' https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/urban-history-as-urgent-work-an-argument-for-disciplinary-promiscuity/5F09F423B1EAB5C89F3F1BC46D6DCBD4 #environment #EnvHum #Anthropocene #UrbanHistory #UrbanGeography #History #OpenAccess

How to build a better city - Think
“What we prioritize in our cities impacts how we work, live and play. In this episode, host Krys Boyd talks to three experts about creating a walkable city, how zoning codes are quietly shaping your daily life, and the ways that urban green spaces can promote biodiverse wildlife.” #UrbanPlanning #UrbanLandscape #Architecture #UrbanGeography #Zoning
https://think.kera.org/2025/10/08/how-to-build-a-better-city/

OnlineFirst - "BIG U(nicorn)?: The nature of nature in coastal resilience planning" by @emdupuis:

#coastalresilience #climatechange #climatecrisis #criticalgeography #urbangeography #criticalsustainability #infrastructure #sustainability #cities #water #sealevelrise #geosky

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486251351478

Untapped New York explores the forgotten islands that surround NYC - nearly thirty named islands that most people, including native New Yorkers, don't even know exist. The article examines eleven islands united by themes of abandonment and obscurity, many once inhabited by individuals or institutions, but now erased from public memory. #UrbanGeography #AbandonedPlaces #NYC #Islands #ForgottenHistory #Geography
https://www.untappedcities.com/8-abandoned-islands-near-nyc/?ref=daily-newsletter

Northern Australia sits next to Southeast Asia.
It's rich in minerals.
It's crucial for shipping and strategy.
And yet... there’s no major city.
👉 https://www.ryanjhite.com/2025/06/21/why-is-there-no-major-city-in-northern-australia/
#Australia #DarwinNT #UrbanGeography #AsiaPacific #GlobalTrade

We are pleased to invite you to our roundtable discussion "𝗟𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀? 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗨𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀" in Leipzig or online!

📆 7 February 2025
🕖 11:00-14:00
🏠 Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig / online (Zoom)

Details at https://leibniz-ifl.de/en/institute-1/news/dates-and-events/details/lost-cities-found-narratives

#LostCities #UrbanGeography #Leipzig

I remain a believer in state-based interventions. In many ways they're indispensable.

However, when the state gets captured by nefarious interests, it is important to remember that non-state organizing remains real and powerful throughout history.

Community ownership is a great example. And community land is enormously important.

https://placesjournal.org/article/community-land-trusts-and-civic-empowerment/

#CLTs #CommunityLandTrusts #CommunityOwnership #Geography #UrbanGeography #Planning

OnlineFirst - "An analytical framework to understand the problematization of urban (historical) animals" by Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder:

#urbangovernance #problematization #urbananimals #historicalgeography #urbangeography

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486241281227

In ("critical") #UrbanGeography, this is then used by scholars such as Erik Swyngedouw, talking about the fact that concepts like "sustainability" or "resilience" are politically empty. And policies mobilising these concepts are deemed post-political.

And then what? From what I remember, they then actually call for more bottom-up movements -- critical geography is often on their side.
I wanted to go back to one source of that reasoning (Mouffe) -- well, a bit disappointed.
4/n

Wow! 🥳🎊 I received a copy of a book we wrote a chapter for with @tuomo and Hanna-Mari Pienimäki.

It's one thing to see one's own work published on a website, but another feeling when you can hold it in your hand.

If you're interested in #multilingualism #sociolinguistics #UrbanStudies and #LinguisticLandscapes check out this book. Relevant also for #UrbanGeography #HumanGeography #GIScience and #multimodality 🤓

The #OpenAccess book is available here: https://oa.finlit.fi/site/books/e/10.21435/sflin.24/

Cover of the book. The title is Sociolinguistic variation in urban linguistic landscapes.

Our chapter is chapter 9 with the title "A multimodal approach to physical and virtual linguistic landscapes across different spatial scales".

I have a chapter in this new volume: Environment, Agency, and Technology in Urban Life since c.1750: Technonatures in the Global North (eds Mikkel Thelle and Mikkel Høghøj), alongside a whole bunch of wonderful colleagues and thinkers. Happy to help out anyone who needs my work but doesn't have institutional access
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-46954-1

#UrbanHistory #UrbanGeography #EnvHum #EnvironmentalHistory #Sudan #Khartoum #Omdurman #KhartoumNorth #BritishEmpire #colonialism

Podcast interview with my colleague, and all around good guy, Damon Scott, about his new book.

#urbangeography #queerhistory #sanfrancisco

https://newbooksnetwork.com/damon-scott-the-city-aroused-queer-places-and-urban-redevelopment-in-postwar-san-francisco-u-texas-press-2024

2024 is set to be quite an intense work year for me, quite a few exciting things going on! These will crop up in future posts but for now I'll just that there will be history work coming on: colonial urban planning and military landscapes; fish and fishing in the history of the built environment; history of infrastructures. There'll also be interdisciplinary discussion of watery agency. As a still recovering twitter addict, I'll still be trying to learn more mindful ways of using social media without either becoming obsessed with it or dropping off completely. Let's see how all this goes!

#History #Infrastructure #InfrastructuralHistory #research #UrbanHistory #UrbanGeography #CoastalHist #EnvHum #histodons