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GEOS2123 The Geography of Cities and Regions
Main Essay
Due Date: 5pm April 29 (Sydney-time: to be submitted via Canvas)
Word Count: 2000 words (+-10% permitted), excluding references but including in-text
citations and direct quotes. Word count should be included on the cover page
of the essay.
Background and aims
As we discussed in week 1, cities are multi-dimensional. In this Unit, we are studying how
cities are made up of relationships between places, people, processes, practices and politics.
Our first module this semester is focused on a range of important processes that shape
cities. Our second module is focused on a range of urban practices. Of course, there are
many processes and practices that we do not have time to consider in a 13 week semester!
So, in the essay assessment we invite you to conduct your own research into an urban
practice that we do not cover in our lectures. In a way, we are asking you to imagine that
you are conducting research for a new lecture in our ‘practices’ section, on a topic that is of
particular interest to you. We look forward to learning about all kinds of urban practices as
we read your essays!
Essay Question
Choose an everyday urban practice that we do NOT cover in our lectures1, and write a
geographical account of how that practice both shapes, and is shaped by, the city.
You may choose to keep your discussion quite broad, illustrating your argument by
comparing examples of your chosen practice across a range of cities. Or you may choose to
go into more depth by discussing your chosen practice in a particular city.
The best essays will analyse how the practice they have chosen relates to the other
dimensions of urban life that we are discussing this semester (urban processes, places,
peoples and politics).
What kinds of things should you write about?
People living in cities are engaged in all manner of practices, some of which we will not
discuss in our lectures this semester. We invite you to think about the kinds of urban
practices that are of most interest to you. Once you have come up with some ideas, do
some targeted searches through geography/urban geography journals to see what kinds of
academic research might be out there on your chosen practice. Geographers have such
1 In other words, you are NOT to focus on practices of policing, working, eating, remembering, or walking.
diverse interests; chances are you will find something to get you started! If you have an idea
but are worried about whether it meets the requirements, feel free to email Kurt to ask.
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.
Worshipping
A focus on the practice of religious worship would make a fascinating topic for an essay.
Cities are often made up of people with diverse religious identities, who may find
themselves together in a city as a consequence of processes like migration, who congregate
to worship in different kinds of places, and whose efforts to secure a space for worship may
bring them into conflict with urban policy-makers and with one another (politics). There’s a
large literature on this topic, but to give you a local example, you could check out:
• Connell, J., Iveson, K. (2014) An Eruv for St Ives? Religion, identity, place and conflict
on the Sydney north shore. Australian Geographer, 45(4), 429-446
• Dunn, K. (2005) Repetitive and Troubling Discourses of Nationalism in the Local
Politics of Mosque Development in Sydney, Australia, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, 23(1): 29-50.
Shopping
Do you like going to the shops? If yes, why not write about the urban geography of
shopping! There’s lots of interesting writing about retail, shopping and its urban
geographies. The emergence of suburban shopping malls in the twentieth century and their
consequences for city life, and for the survival of ‘high streets’ in cities, have received plenty
of attention. There’s also been a bit of a revival of thinking about those local shopping
streets, and the diversity of people and cultures they support. You could start by taking a
look at:
• Voyce, M. (2006) Shopping malls in Australia: the end of public space and the rise of
‘consumerist citizenship’?, Journal of Sociology, 42(3): 269-286.
• Watson, S. (2009) The Magic of the Marketplace: Sociality in a Neglected Public
Space, Urban Studies, 46(8): 1577-1591.
• Zukin, S., Kasinitz, P. and Chen, M. (2016) Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday
Diversity from New York to Shanghai, Routledge.
• The Committee for Sydney has even just produced a report on Sydney’s ‘High
Streets’ and their importance for the city’s economy and social life.
Playing
While cities are often approached as sites of intense economic activity, they are also sites of
fun and play for many people – including children. There is a really interesting literature on
the ways that urban geographies of childhood play have changed over time – and a growing
movement arguing that we ought to be promoting more ‘free-range’ play in cities through
planning reforms that make our cities more ‘child-friendly’. And there’s also more recent
work on ‘play’ that considers it more broadly, not only as something that children do. You
could tackle this issue more broadly, or examine particular cities or initiatives. Here’s an
overview of how geographers think about play in different ways:
• Woodyer, T. (2012) Ludic geographies: not merely child’s play, Geography Compass,
6(6): 313-326.
There’s also a whole journal devoted to children’s geographies. And for a classic piece on
changing geographies of childhood, check out:
• Valentine, G. (1996) Angels and Devils: Moral Landscapes of Childhood, Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(5): 581-599.
Gardening
While we typically think of cities as ‘built’ environments, of course in many cities gardening
remains an everyday activity for many. But that gardening might take many forms, from
backyard gardening to rooftop gardening, market gardening and community gardening. You
could pick one or more cities, and consider the ways in which the geographies of gardening
are shaped and contested as the city changes. Here’s a fascinating example which brings
together questions of practice, people (African American women), process
(deindustrialisation), place (Detroit’s vacant land) and politics (gardening as community and
resistance!):
• White, M. W. (2011) Sisters of the Soil: Urban Gardening as Resistance in Detroit,
Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, 5(1): 13-28.
Or for a different case with a more explicit discussion of urban colonisation, see:
• McClintock, N. (2018). Urban agriculture, racial capitalism, and resistance in the
settler‐colonial city. Geography Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12373
Protesting
City streets and public spaces are frequently the sites of protest. Those protests take a wide
variety of forms, from well-behaved marches that have the permission of authorities to
rowdy demonstrations that block traffic and long-term occupations in protest camps. And
there have been interesting changes to the geography of protest with the use of social
media platforms to organise events and choreograph protest movements in real-time. You
could write an essay on the relationship between protest and urban space, perhaps looking
at trends in protesters’ use of urban spaces and infrastructures (eg the recent wave of
transit protests around the world), or perhaps focusing in on one example of protest. Some
examples to think with:
• Iveson, K. (2017) 'Making space public' through occupation: The Aboriginal Tent
Embassy, Canberra. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(3), 537-
554
• Castells, M. (2015) Networks of Outrage and Hope: social movements in the internet
age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Commuting
The daily commute is a feature of life for so many urban inhabitants – be they commuting
for work, for study, or for some other regular purpose. Commuting brings us into contact
with a range of urban infrastructures – from footpaths to cycle paths, roads, railways,
waterways, and more. And it also brings us into contact with our fellow commuters.
