Spatial Transformations

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036159, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This book examines a variety of subjective spatial experiences and knowledge production practices in order to shed new light on the specifics of contemporary socio-spatial change, driven as it is by inter alia, digitalization, transnationalization, and migration. Considering the ways in which emerging spatial phenomena are conditioned by an increasing interconnectedness, this book asks how spaces are changing as a result of mediatization, increased mobility, globalization, and social dislocation. With attention to questions surrounding the negotiation and (visual) communication of space, it explores the arrangements, spatialities, and materialities that underpin the processes of spatial refiguration by which these changes come about. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from across diverse range disciplines to address questions of socio-spatial transformation, this volume will appeal to sociologists and geographers, as well as scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture.

"This book examines a variety of subjective spatial experiences and knowledge production practices in order to shed new light on the specifics of contemporary socio-spatial change, driven as it is by, inter alia, digitalization, transnationalization and migration. Considering the ways in which emerging spatial phenomena are conditioned by an increasing interconnectedness, it asks how spaces are changing as a result of mediatization, increased mobility, globalization and social dislocation. With attention to questions surrounding the negotiation and (visual) communication of space, it explores the arrangements, spatialities and materialities that underpin the processes of spatial refiguration by which these changes come about. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from across diverse range disciplines to address questions of socio-spatial transformation, this volume will appeal to sociologists and geographers, as well as scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture"--

This book focuses on social transformations as one of the central topics in the social sciences. The study of European social transformations is very valuable in the context of universal discussions within social sciences: explaining invariable, universal attributes of societies and examining changing attributes. The book consists of 20 chapters on European social transformations, written from the perspectives of distinguished scholars from such disciplines as economics, political science, educational science, geography, media and communication studies, public management and administration, social psychology and sociology. The temporal and spatial range of the book is wide, including such global changes as time-space compression, focusing particularly on change processes in Europe during the last two decades. The book consists of four main parts, beginning with an overview of the theoretical and methodological approaches, and then focusing separately on post-communist transformations, institutional drivers of social transformations in the European Union, and European transformations in the context of global processes. The book presents current theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches that complement the scientific literature on social transformations. This book is both an invaluable resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom and will be of interest to students, academics, and policy-makers studying how this diverse region has changed over recent years.

This book investigates peacebuilding in post-conflict scenarios by analysing the link between peace, space and place. By focusing on the case studies of Cyprus, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and South Africa, the book provides a spatial reading of agency in peacebuilding contexts. It conceptualises peacebuilding agency in post-conflict landscapes as situated between place (material locality) and space (the imaginary counterpart of place), analysing the ways in which peacebuilding agency can be read as a spatial practice. Investigating a number of post-conflict cases, this book outlines infrastructures of power and agency as they are manifested in spatial practice. It demonstrates how spatial agency can take the form of conflict and exclusion on the one hand, but also of transformation towards peace over time on the other hand. Against this background, the book argues that agency drives place-making and space-making processes. Therefore, transformative processes in post-conflict societies can be understood as materialising through the active use and transformation of space and place. This book will be of interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, human geography and IR in general.

Definitions of urban entities and urban typologies are changing constantly to reflect the growing physical extent of cities and their hinterlands. These include suburbs, sprawl, edge cities, gated communities, conurbations and networks of places and such transformations cause conflict between central and peripheral areas at a range of spatial scales. This book explores the role of cities, their influence and the transformations they have undertaken in the recent past. Ways in which cities regenerate, how plans change, how they are governed and how they react to the economic realities of the day are all explored. Concepts such as polycentricity are explored to highlight the fact that cities are part of wider regions and the study of urban geography in the future needs to be cognisant of changing relationships within and between cities. Bringing together studies from around the world at different scales, from small town to megacity, this volume captures a snapshot of some of the changes in city centres, suburbs, and the wider urban region. In doing so, it provides a deeper understanding of the evolving form and function of cities and their associated peripheral regions as well as their impact on modern twenty-first century landscapes.

This edited volume analyses and discusses the systematisation of Polish socio-economic transformations of the last three decades using selected examples of the most important changes. 1989 marked the onset of the political transformation process in Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The transition involved a shift from a socialist system to a parliamentary democracy and from a command economy to a market one. Due to the deep economic crisis that culminated in 1988 and the peaceful model of change developed and implemented in Poland, the magnitude and manner of implementing various initiatives was unprecedented and had specific implications. This transformation opened Polish society and the Polish economy to the impact of global social and economic changes, triggering successive transformations, often overlapping in terms of their causes and consequences. This publication aims to present the course and effects, in particular territorial, of Poland's socio-economic transformation in the years 1990–2020. The analysis covers the key aspects of this transformation, illustrated with references to the concepts and theories of development, domestic and foreign literature, own empirical research and existing or newly developed model approaches to transformation in the territorial dimension. The book appeals to researchers and student in the fields of geography, spatial management, economics and business, sociology and political sciences, public and private economic research institutes, employees of governmental bodies and corporations, consultants in public administration, journalists and policymakers.

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Theory and Application of Diagrams, Stanford, CA, USA in June 2006. 13 revised full papers, 9 revised short papers, and 12 extended abstracts are presented together with 2 keynote papers and 2 tutorial papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on diagram comprehension by humans and machines, notations: history, design and formalization, diagrams and education, reasoning with diagrams by humans and machines, and psychological issues in comprehension, production and communication.