ABSTRACT Protected areas aim to conserve biodiversity and the natural environment, yet their effectiveness depends on how people understand and relate to them. This study examines perceptions of Monte Louro, a Natura 2000 site in Galicia (Spain), to analyze how conservation designations shape people’s representations and relations to the landscape. Drawing on semistructured interviews (n = 13) and questionnaires (n = 136), we identify two main interpretations of the area: one that sees it as a wild landscape, and another that emphasizes its agrarian past and shaping by humans. The Natura 2000 designation plays a key role in reshaping these views. Visitors tend to perceive the area as more natural simply because it is formally protected, while local residents experience increasing emotional detachment as restrictions limit traditional practices. These contrasting responses reveal how conservation policies alter place meanings and produce new social distances. The findings highlight a persistent gap between institutional conservation frameworks and local perceptions, underscoring the need to integrate cultural and historical values into management strategies.

ABSTRACT There are approximately 1.2 million people of Czech ancestry in the United States, yet relatively little is known about the approximately 60,000 to 80,000 immigrants who arrived after 1989. This study employs the aspirations-capabilities framework to examine this more recent immigrant group and its engagement with institutional networks linked to Czechia and the Czech diaspora. Based on data gathered from two online surveys and qualitative interviews we answer the following questions: What were the aspirations and capabilities of Czech immigrants settling in the United States during the postcommunist era? How did this twenty-first century cohort of immigrants engage with organizations created a century earlier and did this engagement facilitate their capabilities? Who participates in these organizations and how might this engagement impact future mobility decisions? We conclude that long-established immigrant organizations contributed to the capabilities of many recent Czech migrants in the United States, which affirms patterns seen with other immigrant groups. In addition, we highlight that such organizations are important components to geographical opportunity structures that influence destination choice and future mobility decisions.

ABSTRACT To examine the layered, complex, and often contradictory processes of displacement and belonging, this special issue brings together a transnational collective of women scholars, including two Indigenous scholars from Aotearoa New Zealand and Hawai‘i who study different facets of human displacement and forced mobility. The central aims of the special issue include three key initiatives: First, we aim to explore the processes through which displaced persons actively (re)construct belonging, emphasizing the everyday, affective, and relational dimensions of home-making. Second, we strive to highlight human agency, creativity, and resistance of forcibly displaced people. Finally, we highlight Indigenous and diasporic perspectives to shed light on how histories of colonialism, dispossession, and relational attachment to land shape contemporary experiences of displacement and belonging.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the return migration of Ukrainians who left for abroad after February 2022 when the war with Russia escalated and who returned to Ukraine so that they lived in the country by the summer of 2024 when the war was still going on. It explores their complex journeys back to Ukraine and their future migration aspirations. Utilizing survey data, interviews, and field observation regarding returnees alongside information from international organizations, the study reveals how their experiences were shaped by a mix of voluntary decisions and forced circumstances, influenced by immediate safety needs, long-term goals, and evolving war conditions. While abroad, many migrants kept strong connections with Ukraine through social media and short visits, and most returned with a strong desire to settle back into familiar surroundings. The vast majority of return migrants were women and children. There is a predominant reluctance among returnees to leave Ukraine again, emphasizing their commitment to staying in Ukraine despite ongoing challenges.

ABSTRACT Like most American cities, Colorado Springs saw a decline of housing and population in its inner-city neighborhoods as suburbanization became the dominant housing model from the mid-twentieth century through 2010. At the same time, affordable units in the downtown were not built as land developers responded to market forces that generated larger profits from stand-alone suburban houses. This paper uses a historical GIS database to record and map 3432 houses that were destroyed or converted to some other land use in the city’s downtown and discusses the reasons for this loss. The data reveal that the African-American community was particularly hard hit with nearly 70 percent of their houses destroyed, abandoned, or otherwise removed. The loss of these traditional neighborhoods contributes to a lack of affordable housing and the removal of lower income residents, along with a decline in urban vitality, historical character, and mixed uses in the urban core. Within the past decade there has been renewed investment in downtown housing on lots abandoned over the previous decades, a form of new-build gentrification that further exacerbates the demographic shift to wealthier residents.

ABSTRACT Forest ecosystems in many low-income tropical countries experience high rates of degradation. Often, remote sensing and forest surveys are used to assess the degradation, neglecting local knowledge in the evaluation and management responses. In this study, we integrate scientific and local knowledge to co-create customized indicators for qualitatively plumb forests and identify suitable management strategies. We used the Drivers-Pressures-Stressors-Condition-Responses framework to guide this collaborative process. Working with 100 farmers in 10 communities, we used in-depth interviews, historical narratives, photography, and geospatial methods to conduct extensive “forest walks” to measure forest quality. Participants described their perception of forest quality based on seven co-created indicators and the impacts of human-environment interactions. We found that co-created indicators of forest quality generally align with indicators used in ecological science, highlighting synergies for collaborative assessment. Perception of forest quality is based mostly on intrinsic value placed on ecosystem services and the degree of human impacts on forest condition. Local knowledge integration and co-creation in forest quality assessment uncovered nuances of the drivers of forest deforestation, which aids in the development of customized co-management strategies for regeneration and conservation. Overall, the study underscores the importance of bottom-up collaboration in bridging the science-policy-practice gap to address forest degradation.

ABSTRACT In the immediate decades following the end of World War II, Northwestern University rapidly and unexpectedly emerged as an important node in American geography. Prior to 1945, Northwestern did not have an independent geography department, but by 1965 Northwestern had become a preeminent center of geographic thought. This paper examines how Northwestern became a substantial producer of academic geographers and of interdisciplinary geographic thought/methods, focusing on the period from 1945–1965. The piece reflects on how this period at Northwestern reshaped geography in the United States more broadly in the second half of the twentieth century. Through an examination of the faculty and graduates of the program, this paper explores how Northwestern provided fertile ground for the continuation of existing, and the innovation of new, geographical traditions.

ABSTRACT Previous work has suggested that protected areas, both in the United States and around the world, have been disproportionately established on lands of low economic potential. As the bulk of protected areas occur in rural settings, the possibility that less valuable lands are more often reserved from development deserves separate examination in cities. Leading late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American pioneers of urban planning explicitly recommended the use of economically marginal lands for city parks, as did decision makers in public discussions. An examination of protected areas in America’s six largest cities today shows them to be unusually concentrated on terrain of high elevation, steep slope, and high flood potential, all factors likely to have discouraged intensive development. The past consequences of such targeted site selection have included the displacement for park creation in a number of cities of economically and racially marginal communities who had settled on such residual lands. The results, in addition, support the claim that land protection has been a lower priority, in urban as well as rural settings, than the extent of protected areas would suggest, and they underline the potential importance of the physical environment in understanding urban geography.

ABSTRACT Diaspora, the migration of people away from their homelands, is a contemporary experience of Indigenous communities. Of concern in Indigenous diaspora research is how one maintains cultural identity while living within exclusionary environments that have the lasting influence of settler-colonial assimilationist ideologies. This paper contributes to the growing conversation around the Indigenous diaspora by drawing on the narratives of three Māori individuals who have lived experience in the diaspora. Kōwetewete, an Indigenous qualitative research method, invited conversations from the diaspora into this paper. Participants provided insights concerning the complexity of identity assertion in the diaspora, themes of belonging and connection to tūrangawaewae (ancestral homeland), and diasporic relations to the homeland. This paper highlights the need for better recognition of Māori in the diaspora and argues that it is essential to decolonize place-based markers that continue to limit cultural-identity experiences.