Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the urban crisis: (18) ‘Detained at her majesty’s pleasure…’ (a dialogue on the implications of a volcanic interruption to the plans of those attending a geography conference in Washington)

Abstract

This compilation of a dialogue arising from a volcanic interruption to the travel plans of many of those attending the conference of the American Association of Geographers in Washington covers the period 17 April, when the conference still had three days to go, to 26 April, when return flights to Europe were well under way. It is included here as a further contribution to the series, ‘Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the urban crisis’. The series began as an analytical, descriptive and exploratory response to 9/11 and to the failure of urban and socio‐spatial studies to come together in relation to what urbanization is and means now. That failure, it has been argued, has several dimensions: the absence of a comprehensive inter‐, trans‐, and/or post‐disciplinary basis, and of a reach that takes in the full extent of human experience and of its implications for action/praxis. This is not to deny, of course, that there is rich and complex work available in the field but, rather, to focus on what is missing and how this can be remedied. That the series would have to include an ecological/environmental dimension was indicated at an early stage in its development.1 The nature and significance of this un‐integrated domain is explored here through the experience and reflections of members and associates of the CITY network either directly experiencing or focusing on the human consequences of the volcano’s invasion of ‘airspace’. About half of the correspondence compiled here took the form of personal replies to CITY Editor, Bob Catterall; the rest was shared directly between members of the group(about twenty people). The compilation has been very lightly edited so as to exclude the email addresses of those involved and, in one case, the identity of a colleague, referred to here as Cassandra, who prefers to be anonymous. Retention of the often very informal mode of expression used in emails is deliberate. References to CITY’s work, whether commendatory or critical, have been retained as centrally relevant to how a largely academic journal can make a useful contribution – including a sense of fun as well as of high seriousness – to matters of such urgency. Our thanks to Sasha Vidakovic for allowing us to use two of the posters from his set, ‘Oko moje glave’.2