Space In England Research Articles

Legitimacy and place leadership: responding to and recovering from disruption in regional soft spaces

ABSTRACT This article explores through interviews the influence of legitimacy on place leadership within regional soft spaces in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. Legitimacy is an important yet underexamined facet of place leadership. Employing a tripartite legitimacy framework – input, throughput and output legitimacy – we illuminate novel insights on the nature of legitimacy relationships at different boundaries of regional soft spaces and how they shape place leadership over time in a changing context. We further argue that political astuteness is vital for multi-hatting leaders within regional soft spaces to enable cross-boundary mobilisation for collective action in response and recovery from disruption.

Changes in mixed ethnicity households and neighbourhood transitions in England and Wales.

Conventional explanations of neighbourhood ethnic transitions consider what drives differential growth in ethnic group populations without regard to household composition. We enrich these nonhousehold approaches by using consistent Census data on neighbourhoods and households for England and Wales for 2001, 2011 and 2021 to analyse connections between mixed-ethnicity households and neighbourhood ethnic diversity. We employ a neighbourhood typology of ethnic diversity that identifies neighbourhoods as either low- or moderate-diversity, or high-diversity, where no single ethnic group is in the majority. We focus particularly on White-majority and highly diverse neighbourhoods given the dominance of the former in residential spaces in England and Wales, and because they are the principal source of transitions to highly diverse neighbourhoods. Mixed-ethnicity households have become an increasingly important feature of the ethnic diversification of England and Wales; by 2021, almost 15% of multiperson households were mixed, a growth from 12% in 2011 and 9% in 2001. We find that higher levels of neighbourhood ethnic diversity are associated with higher shares of mixed-ethnicity households. In high-diversity neighbourhoods, for example, around 30% of multiperson households (nearly a quarter of a million households) were ethnically mixed in 2021. Levels of household mixing in moderate-diversity White neighbourhoods were considerably higher than in low-diversity White neighbourhoods. The same is found for diversifying neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods that become more ethnically diverse were typically home to higher rates of mixed-ethnicity households. Stably moderately diverse White neighbourhoods also had a higher proportion of mixed households. Studies of neighbourhood transition that focus on individuals in neighbourhoods may be missing important processes operating in the intimate spaces of the home. Including this intermediate scale of analysis adds to our understanding of neighbourhood ethnic mixing and processes of integration.

The University Forest School Space in England: taking seminars outdoors for early years undergraduates

ABSTRACT Outdoor natural spaces are seen as not only physical locations but also shaped by human interactions, cultural practices, and political processes. University seminars were conducted in the on-campus Forest School. Focusing specifically on the development of early years educators in England, the exploration of outdoor natural spaces reveals a multifaceted dimension that extends beyond mere physicality. A convenience group of 25 participants comprising early years undergraduates were selected for a focus group that took place around a campfire after a series of seminar discussions. Thematic analysis of the data revealed the themes of collaboration, creativity, and cultural boundaries. Drawing upon Lefebvre and Massey, this research highlights the potential for new educational spaces beyond the traditional indoor classroom and the benefits of incorporating nature into early years learning environments.

Domestic Space in Britain, 1750–1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion

Domestic Space in Britain, 1750–1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion

Housing Space in England at the Neighbourhood-Level, 1971 to 2017

While most discussions of housing in the UK tend to focus on national or regional scales, the level of diversity within regions means that measuring trends at neighbourhood level is vital for a more complete understanding of how housing markets and housing conditions are changing. Using small area data also enables identification of hot spots of changing housing demand as well as charting changes in the composition of housing stock in neighbourhoods. This paper makes use of a new dataset, developed as a part of the PopChange project, which enables analysis of population and housing change using Census data for neighbourhoods across England since 1971. The data reveal considerable neighbourhood-level diversity in trends throughout this period. Notable trends identified include a marked increase in overcrowding in outer London over the period 1971–2011, a decrease in the number of rooms per person across much of the wider south east between 2001 and 2011, and large increases in average household size in parts of London, Birmingham, Bradford, and Oldham. Administrative data for 2015 and 2017 allow a post 2011 Census perspective on the number of dwellings per person. When measured in terms of dwellings per person, housing space increased at regional level over the period everywhere except London, but there is considerable variation and all regions contain neighbourhoods with declining numbers of dwellings per person.

Was the trip worth it? Consistency between decision and experienced utility assessments of recreational nature visits

AbstractThis paper assesses the relationship between decision utility and experienced utility of recreational nature visits. The former is measured as the travel cost to reach that site as routinely used by the travel cost method (TCM), and the latter is operationalized through visit‐related subjective well‐being (SWB). As such, the analysis is a test of convergent validity by examining whether ex ante TCM‐based assessment of recreational value reflecting decision utility corresponds to stated ex post SWB, reflecting experienced utility. It explores to what extent utility revealed by counts of nature visits are associated with self‐reported, visit‐related SWB relating to that same visited site. The analysis uses two existing datasets providing information on (i) 3672 recreational visits to green/blue spaces in England over the course of four years and (ii) 5937 recreational visits to bluespace sites across 14 European countries over one year. Results show a positive association between travel cost and visit‐related SWB while controlling for trip frequency and a large set of covariates, suggesting convergent validity of the two utility concepts. A breakdown by travel mode suggests this relationship only holds for trips involving motorized transport and is not present for habitual, chore‐like walking visits to the recreational site.

Publicity as a Factor in the Formation of City Authority in England in the 14th — 15th Centuries (Based on London)

In the 14—15th Centuries the city community of London becomes an active participant in the public socio-political space in England, acting as a new social subject of power relations. The formation of the city community of Freemen took place in the 12—13th Centuries in the context of the institutionalization of social and political processes in London. It is one of the most important characteristics of publicity authority. The city community of Freemen was a social institution consisting exclusively of citizens who were allowed to enjoy city privileges, including the right to participate in city government and the election of city officials. Exactly they were not just included in the publicity space of power, but also became its active actors. Municipal government was in the hands of the Aldermen and elected from among their other officials, including the highest — the Mayor and Sheriffs. The Aldermen constituted the wealthiest and most influential part of the Freemen, and they were part of the merchant top of the livery of the "Twelve Great Livery Companies" of London. The publicity of authority is most clearly manifested in the electoral principles in relation to the highest officials of the city magistrate. The City officials had to act on behalf of the community of citizens within their delegated authority based on the principle of electability. However the principle of electability had limitations that reflected the contradictoriness of the publicity space of authority in the period under review. In electing Aldermen the last and decisive word was actually left to the Aldermen themselves, who in practice elected the Mayor and Sheriffs. The Community of London was removed from the election. Urban uprisings that shook the capital in the 14—15th Centuries and directed against the government are a sign of the expansion of participants in the publicity space of authority. Representatives of the London ruling elite not only had to represent the interests of the Freeman's upper class of the city community, but also acted as a kind of channel of the connection between a certain part of the capital's society and the Royal authority. The Mayor and Sheriffs were elected by the townspeople, though a limited part of them, and from among the townspeople, but at the same time they officially considered as Royal officials. Some of the Aldermen were directly in the service of the King. The King could interfere in the electoral process at any time and remove even the Mayor from his office. Representatives of citizens, all the same Aldermen, took part in the discussion of the most important issues of state life in the Parliament, which is evidence of the expansion of the field for publicity dialogue between the government and society.

Practitioners’ perspectives and needs: Developing skills to support unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children (UASCs) in experiencing ‘belonging’ in English educational spaces

This article builds on Yuval‐Davis’s (2006, 2007, 2011) theories of belonging, in order to relay how practitioners can support unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children (UASCs) in developing a positive sense of belonging in educational spaces in England. To do so, the article synthesises literature surrounding theories of belonging, UASCs’ educational access in England and practices supporting UASCs’ educational attainment and sense of belonging. Further, the article considers interviews with a social worker, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) teacher, charity sector staff member, legal expert and government workers in East England, all of whom work with UASCs. Interview analysis seeks to understand how practitioners believe UASCs find a sense of belonging in the educational spaces that they inhabit. After presenting the interview findings, the article builds on scholarly literature related to supporting UASCs’ education by discussing how practitioners, including all staff who interact with UASCs in school, college or residential accommodation spaces, can work to facilitate UASCs’ sense of belonging in educational spaces in England. The article recognises that practitioners can do so through learning to speak with low‐level ESOL students, developing trauma awareness and reflexively approaching their relationships with UASCs. Thus, the article provides policy recommendations to support practitioners in doing so.

From Statues to Statute: Protests and Vigils in the Time of COVID-19

COVID-19 has proved to be an enormous challenge to the routine policing of public space in England and Wales. This paper will seek to explore the way that police leaders and operational commanders have had to react to the already-difficult human rights problem of policing public order at protests and demonstrations , given those difficulties have been exacerbated by a) unclear government policy and legal positions on the right to protest through different stages of the pandemic in England and Wales and b) the need to understand a new risk to public health, and to officer safety. At the same time as this new challenge has been unfolding for leaders in public order policing, HM Government have established a review of policy and law relating to public protests , and then moved to put a Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (2021) before Parliament, to create broader powers to police protest.

Multiple deprivation and geographic distance to community physical activity events — achieving equitable access to parkrun in England

ObjectivesTo evaluate geographic access to free weekly outdoor physical activity events (‘parkrun’) in England, with a particular focus on deprived communities, and to identify optimal locations for future events to further maximise access. Study designThis study is a cross-sectional ecological analysis of the socio-economic disparities in geographic access to parkrun events in England in late 2018. MethodsWe combined geolocation data on all English Lower Layer Super Output Areas and parkrun events to calculate geodesic distances to the nearest event for more than 32,000 communities in England. We use this measure of geographic access to summarise the relationship between access and socio-economic deprivation, measured using the index of multiple deprivation. We then used geographic coordinates of public green spaces in England to conduct a simple location-allocation analysis to identify 200 locations for future event locations that would maximise access. ResultsIn England, 69% of the population live within 5 km of one of the 465 parkrun events. There is a small negative correlation between distance and deprivation, indicating that access is slightly better in more socio-economically deprived areas. Setting up an additional 200 events in optimal locations would improve access: the average distance to the nearest parkrun event would improve by 1.22 km, from 4.65 km to 3.43 km, and approximately 82% of the English population would live within 5 km of a parkrun event. ConclusionOver two-thirds of the English population live within 5 km of a parkrun event, and contrary to our expectation, we find that geographic access is slightly better for those living in more deprived communities. Creating additional events may improve geographic access, but effective strategies will still be needed to increase engagement in new and existing events by those living in socio-economically deprived areas.

The evolution and stability of multi-ethnic residential neighbourhoods in England.

This paper analyses the most ethnically diverse spaces in England. We define multi-ethnic neighbourhoods as spaces where no one group is in a majority and at least five ethnic groups have representation. Around 4% of all English neighbourhoods (Lower Layer Super Output Areas) met these criteria in 2011. Often mislabelled as “segregated” spaces, the growth of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods helps benchmark increased inter-ethnic contact, yet we know very little about their spatial extent and the dynamics of their expansion. We use Census data for 1991, 2001, and 2011 to consider how neighbourhood-level diversity has changed during a period of substantial increase in ethnic diversity at the national scale. To what extent did these highly diverse areas grow, and what is the geography of that growth? Which types of areas did these neighbourhoods transition from? For example, were multi-ethnic neighbourhoods formerly low or moderately diverse, and which groups dominated these locales? We also consider if multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are here to stay, or if they are compositionally unstable. We reveal a surprising aspect in England’s neighbourhood transitions: multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are highly stable, and increasingly so. Some 88% of neighbourhoods that were multi-ethnic in 1991 retained their high-diversity status in 2001, while over 95% of 2001 multi-ethnic neighbourhoods remained highly diverse by 2011. This is a different story to that of the USA, where high-diversity neighbourhoods have received more scholarly attention, and where these neighbourhoods have high attrition rates, functioning as stepping stones to another type of space. We explore the demographic and housing dynamics associated with this stability.

State-rescaling and re-designing the material city-region: Tensions of disruption and continuity in articulating the future of Greater Manchester

In a context of globalisation, the emergence of city-regions and the politics and dynamics of their constitution has been debated for almost two decades. Recent writings have extended this focus to seeing city-regions as a geopolitical project of late capitalism where the state takes a critical role in the re-design of city-regions to make them amenable to international competition and to secure strategic inward investments in the built environment and infrastructure. We explore this issue in the context of state redesign of sub-national space in England and focus on Greater Manchester, as the de facto exemplar of ‘devolution’ to English city-regions. We argue that though re-scaling in Greater Manchester is a long-term historical process this has been punctuated by the UK state’s process of ‘devolution’ since 2014, this has involved a re-design and formalisation of Greater Manchester’s governing arrangements. It has also involved invoking a long dormant role for city-regional planning in articulating the future design of the material city-region over the next two decades as an attempt to formalise and continue a pre-existing, spatially selective growth trajectory by new means. Yet, the disruption of new hard governing arrangements also provides challenges to that trajectory. This produces tensions between, on the one hand, the pursuit of a continuity politics of growth through agglomeration, material transformation of the city-region and narrow forms of urban governance and, on the other hand, a more disruptive politics of the future of the city-region, its material transformation and how it is governed. These tensions are producing new political possibilities and spaces in the transformation of Greater Manchester. The implications of this are discussed.

Parliament's Debates about Infrastructure: An Exercise in Using Dynamic Topic Models to Synthesize Historical Change

Can "distant reading" and digital tools enhance the history of technology by revealing hitherto undetected patterns in the record? Using the parliamentary debates of Britain in the nineteenth century, this essay revisits the history of infrastructure in the British empire, asking how tools compare with secondary sources. The author applies topic modeling and dynamic topic modeling to synthesize the historical record, and finds that the results largely match the known turning points, key players, and technologies in the history of British infrastructure. In several cases, however, digital investigation draws the researcher to new results. The domains where digital tools unveil new patterns include: the improvement of the River Shannon, the alignment of political parties with particular technologies, and the chronology of building public spaces in Britain's imperial capitals. The experiment documented here validates topic models as a source for periodizing technology over time.

A minority within a minority?: the complexity and multilocality of transnational Twelver Shia networks in Britain

Academic scholarship on Shia Muslim minorities in the West has described them as ‘a minority within a minority’ (Sachedina 1994: 3) or as ‘the other within the other’ (Takim 2009: 143), referring to a certain sense of double-marginalization of Shia Muslims in non-Muslim societal contexts. They need to undertake particular efforts to maintain both an Islamic as well as particular Shia identity in terms of communal activities and practices and public perception and recognition, responding to the rise of Islamophobia more generally and anti-Shia sectarianism more specifically. This article problematizes this notion of a double-marginalization of Shia minorities in the West as too simplistic. The article investigates the dynamics around the creation of transnational Shia communal spaces in north-west London, the public representation of Shia Muslim identities by networks and organizations based there to illustrate their multilocal connectivities and internal heterogeneity. The article is based on research in the borough of Brent, north-west London, and presents novel insights into Shia spaces in Britain and thereby makes an important contribution to complexifying academic discourse on Muslims in Britain which has focussed on Sunni Muslims almost exclusively. The ethnographic data is contextualized by providing background information on the historical and social formations of the networks and the centres examined in the article. To analyze the multilocal spatial manifestations and connections of these network, the article utilizes Werbner’s notion of ‘complex diasporas’ (2002, 2004, 2010) and recent contributions to the development of a spatial methodology in Religious Studies (Knott 2005; Vásquez 2010; Tweed 2006; McLoughlin and Zavos 2014). The article thereby constitutes the very first attempt to apply recent contributions on the nature of diasporic religions and their spatial multilocality to the case study of Twelver Shia networks based in London.

‘From Gaza to the Streets of Britain’: British social media coverage of the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict

Social media has removed the sense of distance between the public and an international conflict. However, there has been little attempt to look at the impact of this on a spectating society. This article addresses this inquiry with the 2014 Gaza War and British society. Drawing upon a variety of online sources, including tweets, Facebook comments/posts, images, and videos, this article demonstrates how the competing narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have intersected with both virtual and public space in Britain since 2014. Thus, this article is an interdisciplinary study that merges paradigms from social history and media studies to determine why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become an increasingly impassioned issue within Britain in recent years.

Sparing or sharing? Differing approaches to managing agricultural and environmental spaces in England and Ontario

The ability to balance agricultural production and environmental conservation in the face of increasing demand for food, fuel and fibre poses a major challenge for governments around the world. This challenge is explored in two areas of comparison: Ontario, Canada and England, UK in order to understand how each has balanced agriculture and environment in its land use policies. England and Ontario share similarities that suggest lessons and instruments may be transferrable to achieve similar land use objectives. Through the use of a thematic analysis of policy documentation, from each case study area, themes are identified demonstrating differences in approaches, and underlying policy preferences, associated with balancing agriculture and the environment. Specifically, results suggest that policymakers in Ontario hold a preference for land-sparing and leanings towards the productivist paradigm, whereas the land-sharing approach coupled with evidence of post-productivism is more common in England. The structural similarities of these cases provides insights into less tangible aspects of either context, such as policymaker preferences, where different approaches have emerged from a similar foundation. Moreover, as England transitions out of the EU, it may draw on the experiences of other jurisdictions in the design of a new suite of agri-environmental policies, with Ontario's approach providing one alternative. Overall, this paper contributes to our understanding of the manifestation of land-sparing/sharing and productivism/post-productivism in real world policy contexts and the relationship between both sets of concepts.

After the Asbo: Extending control over young people’s use of public space in England and Wales

The concept of anti-social behaviour became prominent in the UK in the 1990s when the Labour government constructed it as an important policy challenge and deployed a series of high profile interventions against it. But anti-social behaviour faded significantly from the political agenda once Tony Blair’s premiership ended in 2007 and its diminution appeared complete when the most high profile of interventions, the Anti-social Behaviour Order or Asbo, was replaced by the more mundane-sounding Injunction in 2014. This commentary argues, however, that far from the anti-social behaviour control regime softening as government priorities shifted elsewhere, legislation passed in 2014, allied to technological innovation, has increased the potential for those whose presence is considered problematic to be ‘eliminated’ from public spaces. This has particular significance for young people, whose discursive association with disorder and greater tendency to congregate in groups make them likely to be the targets of enhanced exclusionary practices.

Investment, global capital and other drivers of England’s housing crisis

The popular diagnosis of the ‘housing crisis’ afflicting England, particularly in London and the South East, is of acute housing under-supply. Not enough new homes are being built, and the scarcity of housing where it is needed is driving up prices, resulting in widespread unaffordability and all the socio-economic challenges that follow. All the main political parties have committed to programmes of accelerated housebuilding, highlighting ways to sidestep the sluggish planning system and build consensus for rapid development. An opposing diagnosis of the crisis has emerged in recent years, however, claiming that available housing space in England is now double, per capita, what it was 100 years ago. England’s — and London’s — housing problems are rooted in unequal distribution, and not simply in the under-supply of new homes. Inequality in access to the housing resource results from an increased reliance on market allocation and a rising tide of domestic and international investment, concentrated in the London property market, but which causes price distortions to ripple outwards. This paper argues that, although data are scarce and contested, with regard to investment buying, the asset value attached to housing is a key market driver, which cannot be addressed solely through additional housing supply.

Restructuring the policy space in England: The end of the Left–Right paradigm?

Political scientists often talk about ‘ideological dimensions’ that aggregate related policy issues into a single latent construct. Applying factor analysis and Mokken Scale Analysis to opinion data generated from a Voting Advice Application deployed in England in the run-up to the European parliamentary elections, I show how individual issues may be aggregated into two principal dimensions: an economic dimension that separates Left and Right in terms of the economy and a cultural communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension. I also identify a third (libertarian–authoritarian) dimension, but this appears to aggregate very few issues. By positioning party supporters on a two-dimensional map defined by the two principal dimensions, I show that United Kingdom Independence Party supporters are situated very near the ‘communitarian’ pole of the cultural communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension. Finally, I show that overall, the communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension forms a rather more coherent scale than the Left–Right dimension and this tendency is even more marked among younger voters and voters with little interest in politics. Overall, this would appear to show that the notion of (economic) Left and Right is losing its salience in English politics.

Archive, Sound and Landscape in Richard Skelton's Landings Sequence

Richard Skelton's Landings sequence is one of the most sustained musical and literary projects of the last two decades. Critically lauded as an heir of Gorecki and Eno, Skelton began the sequence as a musical investigation of history and landscape, but it has developed into a succession of sound art pieces, performances, books, and pamphlets concerned with the mapping of rural spaces in England and Ireland. This paper critically elaborates the sequence's textual work, situating Skelton's music within his writing and within the historical and archival concerns that repeatedly emerge through his work. These concerns include the nature of biography and of the human within the landscape, the tenuous nature of sound, the question of historical naming, and the relationship of the land to the dead. Landings raises significant questions about archival practice and the relationships between material locations and art. This paper asks whether Skelton's work delineates something specific about archives and human identity, and whether these identities and the archives of history can be located materially.