Category: Urban Studies

Q&A with Guy Osborn on the importance of parks as plural spaces in urban areas

Festivals & The City, edited by Andrew Smith, Guy Osborn and Bernadette Quinn, is an open access UWP title that explores how festivals and events affect urban places and public spaces, and focuses particularly on their role in fostering inclusion. Its 15 chapters are drawn from a range of different European cities, including Venice, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Rotterdam and Barcelona. They explore a variety of events and festivals, including those focused on heritage, music and craft beer.

Here editor Guy Osborn, Professor in the Westminster Law School, Co-Director of the Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture and editor of the Entertainment and Sports Law Journal, gives an insight into his research interest and where it’s taking him next.

Q: How did you first become interested in the subject of urban festival spaces? 

I guess my interest in law and popular culture, and particularly music and sport, was my way in. Also I had worked with Andrew Smith on a project relating to how the Olympics had used parks as fan zones, particularly Hyde Park, so how public spaces were used for private events was an issue of interest to me. 

Q: Do you have a favourite urban festival? Where and why is it special to you?

The Great Escape in Brighton. I have been going to this as a fan/punter for many years. It’s special for all sorts of reasons, not least because it’s an annual event where I meet up with pals who I first met at university many moons ago. But it also allows me to see lots of up and coming bands. 

Q: Does your research indicate an increase in the use of festivilised urban spaces post-pandemic compared with pre-pandemic?

That’s an interesting question – I’m not sure we know enough yet to say for certain. Our research was very much centred on a year in the life of one park, Finsbury Park, and it just so happened that the pandemic interrupted our field work! Certainly Finsbury Park has continued to have events, Pulp and Arctic Monkeys, for example recently, and local groups have ben divided on this as before. What is also apparent is that local authorities are strapped for cash and are trying to monetise their assets where they can.

Q: Do you think public urban areas can be genuinely plural spaces in the global north?

Yes, that’s what they are essentially for, or what they should be for. Parks are really important.

Q: What is next for you in terms of your research in this area?

One of my next big projects that is somewhat related is examining event tickets – the means via which access is granted to events such as a festival. More closely related to the book project, Andrew and I have talked of doing a sort of social and cultural history of music festivals in London – we just need some funding or someone to commission us!  

You can download and read Festivals & The City for free here

Migration, mobility and aircraft, sea serpents, deep time, Covid, poetry and Notre Dame de Paris ‘entangled’ – Anthropocenes Journal 2021 contents
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Migration, mobility and aircraft, sea serpents, deep time, Covid, poetry and Notre Dame de Paris ‘entangled’ – Anthropocenes Journal 2021 contents

Seven new research articles/contributions have been published in UWP’s journal Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. Journal authors continue to rethink in the words of the editors (about the journal) ‘abstraction, art, architecture, design, governance, ecology, law, politics and discourses of science in the context of human, inhuman and posthuman frameworks’. And this is showcased in an eclectic and uniquely interdisciplinary mix of material published in Vol 2 issue 1 which covers January 2021 to the end of July so far.

See here for the new issue contents for this year and here for 2020.

Readers have enthusiastically responded to the journal’s mix of material that mirrors and interprets the Anthropocene; that have reflected on the significance of eels, ‘sea serpents’, polar bears, invasive insects and human bodies; considered urban, mixed-use, dune, river and post-industrial landscapes; presented material as poetry, audio essays, visual essays, book reviews and creative writing on science. And of course reflected broadly on the key issues of climate change disasters, deep time, culture and the uses of architecture, data aesthetics, frontier technology, hyperobjects, Covid-19 and how to move beyond anthropocentricism.

Active Travel Studies journal, under way
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Active Travel Studies journal, under way

Active Travel Studies a new UWP journal has published its first article. Kirsty Wild and colleagues offer an analysis of the impact of e-Bikes on access to cycling for women based on research undertaken in Auckland. Could e-Bikes offer encouragement for more physical activity and overcome inhibiters especially for mothers?

A reminder of the journal’s scope and aims below. And here the lead editors Tom Cohen and Rachel Aldred discuss their plans and ambitions for a timely new journal. The journal is based at the University of Westminster‘s Active Travel Academy

We live in times of climate crisis, with illegal levels of air pollution in many cities worldwide, and what has been called an epidemic of physical inactivity. Technological change alone will not solve such problems: we also need major growth in active travel (primarily walking and cycling, but also other active and semi-active types of travel, such as scooters) to replace many shorter car trips. Active modes could even (e.g. through electric assist trikes) help make urban freight much more sustainable.

Journals within many fields cover active travel, but literature remains highly segmented and (despite high levels of policy interest) difficult for practitioners to find. Established, mainstream journals are not open access, another barrier to policy transfer and knowledge exchange. Thus, while many towns, cities, and countries seek to increase active travel, the knowledge base suffers from a lack of high-quality academic evidence that is easy to find and obtain. This reinforces practitioner reliance on often lower-quality grey literature, and a culture of relying on ad hoc case studies in policy and practice.

This journal provides a bridge between academia and practice, based on high academic standards and accessibility to practitioners. Its remit is to share knowledge from any academic discipline/s (from bioscience to anthropology) that can help build knowledge to support active travel and help remove barriers to it, such as car dependency. Within this normative orientation, it is rigorously academic and critical, for instance not shying away from analysing examples where interventions do not lead to more active travel. It goes beyond immediate policy imperatives to share knowledge that while not immediately change-oriented can contribute to a deeper understanding of, for instance, why people drive rather than walk. 

As well as publishing relevant new research, the journal commissions both commentary pieces on such research, and critical reviews of the existing literature. Reflecting the diversity of its audience, its content is varied, including written work of different lengths as well as audio-visual material

Longer distance cycling – ATS special issue call for abstracts

Longer distance cycling – ATS special issue call for abstracts

ACTIVE TRAVEL STUDIES: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Special issue – Longer distance cycling: roles, requirements and impacts

Guest editors

Professor John Parkin (University of the West of England, UK)
Dr Anders Fjendbo Jensen (Technical University of Denmark)

The bicycle is increasingly seen by many cities as a solution that provides efficient and effective urban mobility, and at the same time reduces the negative environmental consequences of motorized transport. Research on cyclists’ behaviour often focuses on everyday cycle trips of shorter lengths. By contrast, this call focuses on longer length trips.

While shorter distances are more common, there are indications of a potential for modal shift to bicycle for longer trips if they are facilitated by good quality cycle infrastructure separated from other modes. Longer distance cycleways are beginning to be built between settlements in some places, and provide continuous, attractive and comfortable routes where progress can be rapid and uninterrupted. Such longer distance routes can benefit everyday cycling, and can attract travellers who would have otherwise used a car.

The development and increasing use of e-bikes is also a significant potential contributor to more longer distance cycling. The increasing availability of other types of cycle, for example non-conventional cycles including recumbents, may be a factor in being able to cycle longer distances.

While the combination of longer distance good quality infrastructure and e-bikes could act as an encouragement for some, the combination of the two may not be attractive to others. Overall the special issue is interested in the potential contribution of longer distance cycling and its implications, good and bad. On the positive side, there may be gains in accessibility and inclusion; on the negative, longer distance cycling may deter shorter (slower) cycling trips and/or stand in tension with the concept of the 15-minute city.

This special issue will cover the following areas:

  • Funding and public policy, and other policy relating to the support of longer distance cycling, for example, employers’ policies. 
  • The design and construction of infrastructure, and the value of technology, such as e-bike development and use.
  • Implementation strategies, such as communications and social marketing, used to promote everyday longer distance cycling. 
  • The extent to which longer distance everyday cycling is inclusive and attractive. 
  • The extent to which longer distance cycling for business can serve last-mile and other delivery/servicing needs 
  • Cycle logistics business models for longer distance deliveries, and the experiences of those working in the cycle logistics industry.
  • The way in which longer distance cycleways support trip making behaviour for everyday and regular trip making.
  • Equity and equality issues relating to those attracted to longer distance cycling and those who are not attracted to it, and the way this is affected when specific cycling infrastructure is provided.
  • The choices available to people who cycle longer distance, including the value of the option of multi-modality as part of longer distance cycle trips.
  • Case studies and intervention studies. 
  • Analysis of the impacts of longer distance cycling both socio-economically and on the environment (e.g. carbon reduction, air quality, noise and severance). 
  • Emerging practices of longer distance cycling, for different purposes and in different contexts. 
  • We are interested in papers from all parts of the world. The call is not primarily intended to cover longer distance cycling in relation to leisure or tourism but we are open to submissions that address longer distance cycling for business (e.g. couriers or freight).

Timescales and practicalities:

Please submit abstracts (400-600 words) at https://activetravelstudies.org/about/submissions. You will first need to register at https://activetravelstudies.org/register 
Deadline: 16th November 2020.

Authors will hear from the editors encouraging a full submission or providing feedback by 14th December 2020.

Full submissions to be made by 31st March 2021. These will be peer reviewed. ATS submission categories include: research articles, commentaries, reviews, debates and interviews.

Provisional publication date of issue: from June 2021.

ATS is a peer-reviewed open access journal and no fees will be charged to contributors to this special issue.

‘Active Travel Studies’ journal open for submissions.
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‘Active Travel Studies’ journal open for submissions.

Active Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal launched today for submissions a venture based at the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy. Editors Tom Cohen and Rachel Aldred here discuss the thinking behind the journal and outline below the range of published material to be expected and context of current debates on active travel in 2020.

“Active Travel Studies will provide researchers with a natural home for new findings on all aspects of active travel, including but not limited to walking and cycling. As an open-access journal, charging no fees to either authors or readers, it will reduce barriers between those who are producing knowledge on active travel and those who wish to benefit from it.

‘We’re very excited about the journal,’ explains its editor, Dr Tom Cohen. ‘It marks an opportunity for research on active travel to reach a wider audience and to do so without the delay common in academic publishing. The journal will welcome a range of submissions (debates, reviews and interviews, as well as more familiar research articles) and we plan to allow multi-media output as well as more conventional formats.’

‘Another way in which we hope to differ from many journals is in remaining approachable – we welcome the opportunity to discuss with authors their ideas concerning possible submissions. But this will not be at the expense of academic rigour: all submissions will be subject to peer review.’

The journal is launching at what may be an auspicious time, as COVID-19 has provoked both a sharp increase in active travel and heated debate about whether and how that increase can be made permanent. As Cohen puts it, ‘our hope is that the journal can provide sound evidence to inform both this policy transition and others in the future.’

About the Journal

Active Travel Studies is a new, peer-reviewed, open-access journal intended to provide a source of authoritative research on walking, cycling and other forms of active travel. In the context of a climate emergency, widespread health problems associated with inactivity, and poor air quality caused in large part by fossil-fuel transport, the journal is relevant and timely. It will perform the critical function of providing practitioners and policy makers with access to current and robust findings on all subjects relevant to active travel.

We live in times of climate crisis, with illegal levels of air pollution in many cities worldwide, and what has been called an epidemic of physical inactivity. Technological change alone will not solve such problems: we also need major growth in active travel (primarily walking and cycling, but also other active and semi-active types of travel, such as scooters) to replace many shorter car trips. Active modes could even (e.g. through electric assist trikes) help make urban freight much more sustainable. Journals within many fields cover active travel, but literature remains highly segmented and (despite high levels of policy interest) difficult for practitioners to find. Established, mainstream journals are not open access, another barrier to policy transfer and knowledge exchange. Thus, while many towns, cities, and countries seek to increase active travel, the knowledge base suffers from a lack of high-quality academic evidence that is easy to find and obtain. This reinforces practitioner reliance on often lower-quality grey literature, and a culture of relying on ad hoc case studies in policy and practice. This journal provides a bridge between academia and practice, based on high academic standards and accessibility to practitioners. Its remit is to share knowledge from any academic discipline/s (from bioscience to anthropology) that can help build knowledge to support active travel and help remove barriers to it, such as car dependency. Within this normative orientation, it is rigorously academic and critical, for instance not shying away from analysing examples where interventions do not lead to more active travel. It goes beyond immediate policy imperatives to share knowledge that while not immediately change-oriented can contribute to a deeper understanding of, for instance, why people drive rather than walk. As well as publishing relevant new research, the journal commissions both commentary pieces on such research, and critical reviews of the existing literature. Reflecting the diversity of its audience, its content is varied, including written work of different lengths as well as audio-visual material.

For more information on submissions see the journal page ‘About’ and drop down menu for information on editorial team, editorial policies and submissions.

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman

UWP launched a brand new journal today, now open for submissions.

Editors David Chandler, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Jane Lewis of the University of Westminster explain the background and their thinking that led to its creation:

‘Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman’ seeks to explore the implications of the Anthropocene from the perspectives of the social and life sciences, arts and humanities. We see the Anthropocene as an invitation to think differently about ways of being in the world and how we operate within, across and beyond our disciplinary framings. We take inspiration from Val Plumwood’s view that the Anthropocene poses the question: ‘Is it to be a posture of openness, of welcoming, of invitation, toward earth others, or is it to be a stance of prejudged superiority, of deafness, of closure?’ At present we feel that there is too little invitation: work on the Anthropocene often seems divided between climate scientists working along technical and managerial lines and, what can come across as, fairly aloof and abstract philosophical approaches. We seek to work to expand the area of Anthropocene work which can often be obscured by this divide; working out from the middle as it were.

For us, the Anthropocene poses questions that go far beyond narrow technical or governmental concerns of how to address issues such as climate change and global warming. While some contributors may, no doubt, be concerned with preventing, slowing or opposing the Anthropocene as a future to come, we hope that others will provide a critical, constructive and exploratory focus upon what it means to live within the Anthropocene as a time in which the certainties of the modernist world are becoming undone. Our desire is that this journal will pursue the open-ended and future-oriented invitations of the Anthropocene through building new cross-disciplinary research communities, facilitated through publishing in an open access format available to all.

We feel that the time is right to establish a world-leading interdisciplinary journal placing the University of Westminster at the centre of contemporary conceptual debates and practices. Drawing upon our unique strengths across diverse fields from the arts and media to the human sciences, via law, architecture and politics, Anthropocenes will engage and work with leading and upcoming international academics and practitioners looking for an interdisciplinary outlet and keen to develop and initiate debate through traditional and non-traditional forms of publication including visual and audio links.’