Rgs-Ibg Ugrg

RGS-IBG UGRG

Urban Geography Research Group

Annual Report for 2006/07

UGRG Committee September 2006 – September 2007

Chair: Prof Jon May (Queen Mary)

Secretary: Dr Gesa Helms (University of Glasgow)

Treasurer: Dr Jenny Middleton (Royal Holloway)

Website Editor: Dr Scott Rodgers (Open University

Communications Editor: Dr Rebecca Edwards (CardiffUniversity)

Book Review Editor:Dr Jill Fenton (Queen Mary, University of London)

Event Coordinators:Dr Richard Smith (SwanseaUniversity) and Dr Margo Huxley (University of Sheffield)

Award and Prize Coordinators:Dr Mustafa Dikeç (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Dr Mags Adams (University of Salford)

The committee during 2006/07

A number of changes took place at the 2006 AGM: Jon May moved from being a committee member to Chair to replace Gordon Macleod; similarly, Jenny Middleton, a former PG member, took up the post of Treasurer to replace Maria Kaika. Mustafa Dikec and Nick Fyfe joined the committee as General Members, with the latter resign shortly afterward due to work commitment. During the year, Richard Smith and Margo Huxley also joined the committee. The committee decided not to have general members any longer but to identify specific tasks for each person involved with the committee to facilitate integration and smooth running of our various tasks – please see the list above for those posts.

Following the 2006 AGM at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in September 2006, a committee meeting took place at Queen Mary in October 2006 and a second one in February 2007 also at Queen Mary.

Activities during 2006/07

Lucie Middlemiss, Carita Niemi, Agnieszka Sobol ‘Communities, Civil Society and Social Capital for Sustainability’

Jennie Middleton, Justin Spinney ‘Mobilising the City: the politics of movement, fixity and representation’
Susan Moore, Mike Raco ‘Private Pursuit of the Public Good?: Rethinking PrivateSector Engagement in Urban Governance and Development Policy’
Mags Adams, Judith Petts, Gemma Moore ‘Sustainable urban environments: unravelling the myth of interdisciplinarity’
Helen Jarvis, Rachel Pain (with Seraphim Alvanides, Harriet Bulkeley, Colin Pooley) ‘Choosing a school in the city and making the journey to school’ Co-sponsored by UGRG and WGSG
Laura Keogh ‘Postgraduate Research in Urban Geography’ Co-sponsored by UGRG and The Postgraduate Forum (PGF)

We nominated 4 Guests for the AC2007, 3 with 1-day passes and 1 from oversees for a 3-day pass, making up our 6-day quota:

Prof Mayer Hillman, Policy Studies Institute, London – 1 day
Dr John Holmes, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford – 1 day
Prof Kent E Portney, TuftsUniversity, – 3 days
Dr John Turnpenney, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and CSERGE – 1 day

Undergraduate Dissertation Prize

There were 12 entries for the 2006 Urban Geography Research Group Dissertation Prize. Overall the standard of entries was extremely high which was very encouraging for the future of urban geography research. The winning dissertations will be posted on the UGRG website to introduce the research to the wider urban geography community in addition to providing accessible examples of exemplary undergraduate dissertations.

A first prize of £50 was awarded to Matther Maguire, an undergraduate student in the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh for his dissertation entitled 'The consequences of the relocation of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary: an integrated multimodal approach to accessibility studies'. The following dissertations were ‘highly commended’:

'Unwelcome in the City: Exclusion and the homeless in Liverpool'
David Roberts, Department of Geography, University of Birmingham.
'La 'Londonisation' - The Future of Paris? A case for the 'soft' global city'
Katharine Arnold, Department of Geography, University of Oxford.
'Decline and Deprivation or Renaissance and Renewal? Urban Regeneration in Scotswood, Newcastle upon Tyne'
Matthew Spilsbury, Department of Geography, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
'Cultures of Dis-attachment?' A case study of unemployment amongst Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlet and its links to localised social networks, poor social capital and residential segregation'Alexander Patton, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.

UGRG Website ( List (URB-GEOG-FORUM)

Since its redesign in 2004 the UGRG website has gradually evolved, and over the past year has been adjusted so as to place additional emphasis on the new UGRG Book Review Series, as well as new awards to be introduced in the coming year. While small adjustments will continue in the short term, there are developing plans to significantly overhaul of the UGRG website. Broadly speaking, the redesign will aim to make the web page a more useful urban studies resource, along with its traditional function of providing information about the UGRG as a group. In addition to a website overhaul, there were initial steps taken this year to rethink the broader UGRG communications strategy. One possibility being explored seriously is replacing the currently dormant UGRG newsletter with a broad-based urban geography blog attached to the website.

The UGRG’s urban geography listserv continues to steadily grow, and as of mid-August has over 270 subscribers. Over the next year there are plans to develop ways to better use the listserv as part of plans to overhaul the UGRG website (see above).

UGRG conferences and event sponsorship

The committee’s main field of activities centres on the annual UGRG conferences, and, relatedly, an attempt to invite further good quality events in the field of urban geography with a call for conference proposals to be sponsored by the Research Group twice a year.

UGRG on Paradigmatic Cities, 2-4 November 2006

UGRG convened and hosted a 2 day workshop/conference 2-4th November 2006 around the theme ‘Paradigmatic Cities?’ . The event was organised by a sub group of the UGRG committee (Gesa Helms, Jon May, Jennier Middleton and Scott Rodgers) and held at the Scottish Trade Unions Congress in Glasgow. To encourage attendance from both the waged and unwaged/postgraduates, conference fees were kept to a minimum (£35 for waged, £10 for unwaged/postgraduates). The majority of costs were met through delegate’s fees, with a small award (£400) from the RGS-IBG Research and Higher Education Division Committee enabling reduced fees for postgraduates/unwaged and contributing to the travel and subsistence costs of the Key Note speakers. The event was a real success. Discussion was organised around a set of key note addresses (Juliet Davies, Architecture, University of Kent; Rob Imrie Geography, Kings College London; Jennie Robinson, Geography, Open University) and papers from colleagues from across the UK, Germany, Switzerland and the US. The event attracted some 30 plus delegates, and generate lively debate. Following the success of the Paradigmatic Cities workshop, plans are well developed for a second such event in 2007 again convened around an issue of general concern to those in Urban Geography/Urban Studies (‘Approaching the City’) with a workshop format so as to encourage debate and discussion. A greater emphasis will be placed on postgraduate involvement at the 2007 event, with the anticipation that such a workshop will become an annual event and will replace the previously separate UGRG postgraduate conferences.

Upcoming UGRG Conference Approaches to the City, 1-2 November 2007, Sheffield

The UGRG Annual Event for 2007 on'Approaching the City'is to be held in Sheffield atSt. Mary's church has been booked for the 1st and 2nd of November.To datetwo keynote speakers have been confirmed (Professors Marcus Doel and Steve Pile) and two others (Professors Jane Jacobs and Jane Wills) has been contacted (awaiting reply).While responses to the first CFP have been slow, we are currently advertising at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference (poster and flyer) to encourage more abstracts (esp. from postgraduate students). A second CFP is set to be released immediately after the RGS-IBG annual conference with a deadline for abstract submissions on 30 September.

Conference Sponsorship from UGRG

As planned we have decided to sponsor annually two events in the field of urban geography with a small grant of £ 200 each. For this, we are currently inviting proposals to be sent to Mustafa Dikec by 14 September 2007. The next round will be in March 2008.

Future Plans

All ongoing activities (conferences, RGS-IBG sessions, event sponsorship, awards/prizes are ongoing and we are looking forward to further suggestions regarding activities for the next year.

Glasgow, 24/08/07

Gesa Helms (UGRG Secretary)