Academic journals: Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Journal summary: Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space is an international journal of critical, heterodox, and interdisciplinary research into the relations between the political and the spatial. It advances debates on the spatialization of politics and the politicization of spatial relations. The journal includes original contributions that integrate empirical and theoretical analyses to engage, advance, challenge, and reframe debates about the political.
Politics and Space values a wide range of critical and radical perspectives and encourages new theorizations, novel methodologies, and decentring ontologies. It encourages research that engages marginalized and oppressed standpoints and critically engages hegemonic forms of power. The journal aims to push the boundaries and potential of research on the political and the spatial by exploring questions including: What is the status of the political in such research? How does thinking politics spatially help us understand pressing contemporary concerns in the world? And how can or should researchers act politically through their scholarship? The substantive scope of Politics and Space extends from urban politics to the politics of international institutions; from political economies of development and empire to political geographies of mobilities and identities; from geopolitics to the governance of environmental crises; and from the spatialities of states and sovereign power to the geographies of social justice.

Publisher: Sage

Website: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/epc

Access: Subscription; some open-access articles

Journal type: Academic peer-reviewed

Academic journals: Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

Journal summary: Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science is an international, multidisciplinary journal focused on the application of quantitative, computational, design and visual methods to the spatial and morphological structure of cities and regions.

Areas of methodological interest include geocomputation, spatial statistics, geographical information science, computational modelling, visualisation, agent based modelling, crowdsourcing, big data, optimisation, and urban analytics. Papers are invited that provide empirical evidence for understanding, planning or theorising how urban systems and processes emerge. It welcomes papers that show how formal models can be used to explore how cities and their elements behave, reproduce, evolve, or impact upon urban forms and functions, and on the livability, equality and sustainability of cities. Papers on topical themes such as complexity theory, smart cities, and urban science are encouraged.

Publisher: Sage

Website: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/epb

Access: Subscription; some open-access articles

Journal type: Academic peer-reviewed

UK UNESCO World Heritage site damaged

Brunton Turret, Hadrian’s Wall © David Gill

Part of Hadrian’s Wall at Brunton Turret has been damaged by metal-detectorists “‘Nighthawk’ metal detectorists damage Hadrian’s Wall“, BBC News 20 June 2018). Some 50 holes have been noted around this well-preserved section of the Roman frontier. This raises questions about how internationally significant heritage assets can be protected for future generations. Equally important is the question, how can the archaeological and heritage communities make it clear that such activity cannot be accepted?

Academic journals: Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Journal summary: Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space is a pluralist and heterodox journal of economic research, principally concerned with questions of urban and regional restructuring, globalization, inequality, and uneven development. International in outlook and interdisciplinary in spirit, the journal is positioned at the forefront of theoretical and methodological innovation, welcoming substantive and empirical contributions that probe and problematize significant issues of economic, social, and political concern, especially where these advance new approaches. The horizons of Economy and Space are wide, but themes of recurrent concern for the journal include: global production and consumption networks; urban policy and politics; race, gender, and class; economies of technology, information and knowledge; money, banking, and finance; migration and mobility; resource production and distribution; and land, housing, labour, and commodity markets. To these ends, Economy and Space values a diverse array of theories, methods, and approaches, especially where these engage with research traditions, evolving debates, and new directions in urban and regional studies, in human geography, and in allied fields such as socioeconomics and the various traditions of political economy.

Publisher: Sage

Website: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/epn

Access: Subscription; some open-access articles

Journal type: Academic peer-reviewed

Academic journals: the Environment and Planning suite

Journal summary: Environment and Planning is a suite of 5 linked journals. First published in June 1969, the first issue of Environment and Planning was one of two issues that year. An immediate success, the journal quickly expanded, spawning a second series, Environment and Planning B in 1974 and adding Environment and Planning C and D in the 1980s. In 2018 Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space was launched.  Environment and Planning series contributes to the interdisciplinary study of space; the stuff of not only of human geography but today a matter of concern for a growing number of related social-science disciplines.

Each journal’s specific focus is as follows:

• EPA: Economy & Space
• EPB: Urban Analytics and City Science
• EPC: Politics and Space
• EPD: Society and Space
• EPE: Nature and Space

Publisher: Sage

Website: https://www.eandponline.org/

Access: Subscription; some open-access articles

Journal type: Academic peer-reviewed

Academic journals: Cultural Trends

Journal summary: Cultural Trends has been providing in-depth analysis of the cultural sector since 1989. It focuses on key trends within the arts, culture, heritage and media and it offers overviews of the sector as a whole. The journal is committed to the principle that cultural policy should be rooted in empirical evidence. To this end, it champions better information on the cultural and creative sectors and its widespread dissemination. It aims to:
• stimulate analysis and understanding of culture and the creative sectors based on relevant and reliable data;
• provide a critique of the empirical evidence upon which policy on culture and the creative industries may be based, implemented, evaluated and developed;
• examine the soundness of measures of the performance of government and public sector bodies pertaining to the cultural and creative sectors; and
• encourage improvements in the coverage, timeliness and accessibility of data on culture and the creative industries.

Publisher: Routledge

Website: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccut20/current

Access: Subscription; some open-access articles

Journal type: Academic peer-reviewed

Top 10 Heritage Sites in England: a personal view

Castle Howard © David Gill

Historic England has published a list of its Top 10 Heritage Sites in England. But what would be on my personal list? The oldest site on their list was the Anglo-Saxon ship-burial site at Sutton Hoo, but I would like to push the list back a little further. I would place two key sites:

• the first, the prehistoric mound of Silbury Hill near Avebury in Wiltshire.
• the second, the monumental Roman frontier of Hadrian’s Wall that cuts across Northumberland and Cumbria.

Cathedrals are equally hard to list. I think top of my list would be Durham. What can beat the view of the cathedral from the train? I would also place the magnificent Norwich Cathedral in the rankings.

Norwich Cathedral © David Gill

I would like them to be joined by one of the Yorkshire abbeys, and Fountains is probably the  one that heads the list. But should there be a castle on the list? Pevensey Castle brings together the Roman fort with the later medieval castle, and with hints of the Second World War inserted into the masonry.

Fountains Abbey © David Gill

Country houses are difficult. Chatsworth is an outstanding residence, but I think that I would place Castle Howard, Yorkshire above it. Queen Victoria’s residence, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, has spectacular views over the Solent and should be on the list.

On a more modest scale, Cherryburn in Northumberland linked to Thomas Bewick, is an intimate location.

I feel that there should be some industrial heritage in the list. Stott Park Bobbin Mill, tucked away on the edge of Windermere in the Lake District, is one of those captivating sites. Local resources and energy supplies provided a key component of Britain’s trade.

Stott Park Bobbin Mill © David Gill