The Kennet Geog Blog

  Amid the growing   local government bankruptcy crisis , as many as half of the local authorities in England and Wales might be forced to cut their green spaces budgets. The situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland is not much better. A survey by the Local Government Association in February 2024 found that   48%   of local authorities say they plan to defund, to varying degrees, the parks and other green spaces within their areas. England’s urban green spaces alone are estimated to provide up to  £6.6 billion  in benefits to the communities that use them each year. Yet using them isn’t open to everyone. There is significant social inequality in terms of access to urban green spaces. In December 2023, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs parliamentary committee heard  evidence  that the most affluent 20% of urban wards have as much as five times more publicly accessible green space that the most deprived wards. Urban green spaces have long be...

  Perilously situated between rising sea levels and pressures from upstream lie coastal river deltas and their roughly half a billion inhabitants. These regions have played an important role in societal development since the last ice age, offering flat, fertile lands with abundant freshwater which are ideal for agriculture. In recent times, coastal river deltas have become hubs of the global shipping trade, giving rise to fast-growing megacities such as Dhaka, Cairo and Shanghai. But these areas are now  under threat . And not all of the blame can be placed on climate change. Read article 1  here! Read article 2  here!

As the gavel came down on the latest round of climate talks in Dubai, there were declarations of “we united, we acted, we delivered” from the COP28 presidency. This was met by a sense of   déjà vu   among delegates of the Alliance of Small Island States ( Aosis ), an intergovernmental organisation representing the nations most vulnerable to climate change. In her post-summit  statement , Aosis lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen expressed confusion that the  UAE Consensus , COP28’s final agreement, was approved when representatives from small-island developing states (or  Sids  were not in the room. While some delegates hailed the  consensus  as “ beginning of the end ” of the fossil fuel era, Aosis countered that the document contained a “litany of loopholes” which did little to advance the key actions needed to stave off climate breakdown and deliver justice to islands and low-lying states facing the gravest consequences of the climate crisis. Read t...

  On the morning of December 6 1917, a French cargo ship called SS Mont-Blanc collided with a Norwegian vessel in the harbour of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. The SS Mont-Blanc, which was laden with 3,000 tons of high explosives destined for the battlefields of the first world war, caught fire and  exploded . The resulting blast released an amount of energy equivalent to roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT, destroying a large part of the city. Although it was far from the front lines, this explosion left a lasting imprint on Halifax in a way that many regions experience environmental change as a result of war. The attention of the media is often drawn to the destructive explosions caused by bombs, drones or missiles. And the devastation we have witnessed in cities like Aleppo, Mosul, Mariupol and now Gaza certainly serve as stark reminders of the horrific impacts of military action. However,  research  is increasingly uncovering broader and longer-term consequences of war ...

People who directly depend on the natural world for their livelihoods, like farmers and fishers, will be among the greatest victims of the climate crisis. In vulnerable hotspots, such as the arid lands of Kenya and Ethiopia, farming communities are already struggling with droughts and water scarcity that kill their cattle and threaten their very survival. The glacial-fed river basins of the Himalayan mountains, or the deltas of Bangladesh, India and Ghana, are increasingly prone to floods, landslides and powerful cyclones. As a result, men are often migrating further to keep their families going, looking for casual work in neighbouring towns or villages for a few days or weeks at a time, or to cities further away. Many try to return home when they can, with whatever they have earned. But during their absence, the entire burden of maintaining the family is on women. Read the full article  here!

 Video's more your thing? The Viking Geo has a wide array of fantastic videos to support your learning, browse through the channels playlists to find the units that fit our course.  The channel can be found  here.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked intense public and political debate on the future of cities and urbanisation. Prognoses have ranged from the ‘end of the city’ to reinvigorated visions of green multifunctional neighbourhoods. Urban researchers have identified a set of existing and potential shifts in all kinds of areas: urban imaginaries, material forms, sociotechnical networks, economic activities, social practices, governance arrangements, and spatial configurations.  Our starting point is a concern with how the pandemic has  accelerated  certain processes and agendas and how these operate in relation to circulations that are variously prioritised, catalysed, devalued, neglected and abandoned at different sites across the urban world. At the same time, other processes, priorities and sites have been  decelerated , interred, put on hold, and confined to particular margins. Read the full article  here!

Short Abstract The paper makes an important contribution to geographical thinking by applying new scale-free methods to (a) ascribe geographic origins to long-established British populations, and (b) ascribe origin characteristics to more recent migrants. For the first time, we demonstrate that geographic origins and inter-generational migration history shape social mobility outcomes for long-established populations. We demonstrate that social mobility outcomes for more recent migrant groups are diverse and that conventional statistical classifications of ethnicity conceal some diversity of outcomes that arise from probable national origins, family group membership, and length of family group establishment in Britain.  Click here for full article

RGS-IBG Managing Editor: Academic Publications Sep 19 By  Julian Dobson ,  Sheffield Hallam University Geographers' interest in high streets has ebbed and flowed over the years. The 1980s saw a  flurry of interest  as traditional town centres were reshaped by out-of-town or edge-of-town shopping centres designed to be accessed by car. More  recent scholarship  has continued to frame high streets and town centres as shopping environments, often referencing a common trope of the  'death of the high street' . The idea that the high street is dying is common in media and policy circles ,  too, prompting a rash of initiatives such as the UK Government’s  Future High Streets Fund . Acknowledgement of the wider functions of town centres has been relatively muted, however, although some attention has been paid to what might be described as 'more-than-market' approaches to retailing that ‘ develop and create community’ . Even if the idea of the high s...

    Place is a geographical nexus of connections How do we understand space? What makes a space special to so many people? The ARCGIS story map attached  here  is a great way to visually aid your understanding of the bigger picture surrounding the unit. Click read more to access the link! 

How do we perceive places differently?  The article linked to this post provides a variety of pictures that people have captured of their hometown. How do you think peoples sense of place will change over time? Do you see these places in the same way? A great article to apply what you know to unfamiliar concepts!   My hometown