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AbstractThis article investigates the engineering of elevated transport infrastructure in contemporary Mumbai. It argues that the conception, construction and implementation of flyovers and skywalks in Mumbai over the past 20 years has been part of elite efforts seeking to instil a more free‐flowing, predictable and regulated city. The techniques, routines, standards and visualizations comprising these engineering schemes have promised ways of reshaping the socio‐material configurations and everyday landscapes of Mumbai into a more knowable, functional and integrated realm. The article suggests that this can be understood analytically as a means of trying to establish and maintain 'formal' ideals, citizens and spaces in Mumbai against wider urban contexts perceived as increasingly 'informal'. The article thus emphasizes the importance of exploring how the 'informal' and 'formal' are actively produced and imagined against each other through material practices and procedures, and the central role of urban engineering in attempts at reconfiguring the social and political dimensions of urban life.

In Policing the City, Harris seeks to explain the transformation of criminal justice, particularly the transformation of policing, between the 1780s and 1830s in the City of London. As utilitarian legal reformers argued that criminal deterrence ought to be based on certain and rational punishment rather than random execution, they also had to control the discretionary authority of enforcement. This meant in theory and practice the centralization of policing in the 1830s, and the end of local policing, which was seen as corrupt, inefficient, and unsuitable for rational criminal justice. Revolutionary changes in policing began locally, however, in the 1780s. Such local changes preceded and inspired national reforms, and local policing up to the centralizing measures of the 1830s remained dynamic, responsive, and locally accountable right until its demise. Anxiety about policing had as much to do with the social origins of the police as it did about the origins of criminality, and control over the discretionary authority of watchmen and constables played a larger role in criminal justice reform than the nature of crime. The national, metropolitan, and City police reforms of the late 1830s were thus the culmination of a contentious argument over the meanings of justice, efficiency, and order, rather than its beginning. Harris's evidence reveals how what we've come to think of as "modern"policing evolved out of local practice and reflects shifts in wider debates about crime, justice, and discretionary authority.

State of current knowledge -- SVP civil commitment policies in an implementation framework -- Methodological approach -- Conceptual and operational models -- Conceptual analysis -- Operational analysis -- Summary and conclusions.

AbstractThis symposium opens up new critical insights and analytical perspectives into the relationships between power, politics, materiality and urban engineering. In so doing it demonstrates the central role of engineers in the production and negotiation of everyday life in the city. In contrast to the technocratic exercise engineering often professes to be, the contributors to this symposium argue that the assembling and choreography of cities through the myriad techniques, routines, standards and visions of engineers is inextricably bound up with broader socio‐cultural, material and political urban dynamics and processes. This necessitates investigating the multiple and competing social imaginations, forms of knowledge and regimes of expertise associated with urban engineering. The symposium's five articles, straddling disciplinary backgrounds in geography, anthropology, engineering and history, focus analytical and empirical attention on the figure of the engineer and on the work of engineering in the cities of Paris, Mumbai, Singapore and London. Engineering, we suggest, is a diagnostic for probing the shifting forms of mediation that animate and inhabit contemporary dynamics of urban change. The symposium thus opens up a new avenue for cross‐disciplinary and transregional research for urban studies while also suggesting innovative ways of conceptualizing urban transformation and contestation.

International audience During March, April and May 2007 the local newspaper for the island of La Réunion, "Le Journal de L'Ile de La Réunion" (JIR), published 427 articles relating to natural hazards, with hazard-related articles occupying a total paper area of 21.94 m2 and appearing in all but four of the 90 editions of the newspaper. This high level of coverage was due to the passage of two cyclones in March, the largest historical eruption of Piton de la Fournaise in April, and a major rock fall event in May. The high level of coverage may also be due to the fact that JIR is a tabloid that follows tabloid news values. Cyclones, volcanic eruptions and rock falls fit the news values of a tabloid well, especially when the stories involve the power elite, feature stories of human interest, include surprise elements and rescues, and are of high impact, especially to the local population. Disasters also provide spectacular imagery and the opportunity for eye-catching headlines, which is another element of the tabloid format. These key parameters thus all flag stories about natural hazards and, in particular, volcanic eruptions as being newsworthy for a tabloid.Of the page space devoted to natural hazards, 9.24 m2 (42%) were set aside to reporting of volcanic activity, specifically the April 2007 eruption of Piton de la Fournaise. We completed a content analysis of these reports to understand the quality of information disseminated to the readership and to extract data regarding the impact of the eruption on local communities. We found the information to be of extremely high quality, with lava reporting being the most important issue covered by page area, mostly due to its photogenic nature. If we consider text-dominated reports, and exclude photo-montages, then the order of importance in terms of space set aside to reporting of a particular theme becomes: (i) general eruption details; (ii) summit collapse; (iii) lava flows; (iv) evacuation; (v) gas; (vi) ocean-entry; (v) air fall; (vi) vegetation fires (lit by lava ...

AbstractThis symposium creates and stimulates new dialogue and cross‐disciplinary exchange between planning theorists and geographers in researching the transfer of urban policy and planning models, ideas and techniques. The symposium challenges a restricted historical focus in much of the emerging geographical literature on urban policy mobilities by drawing on a rich tradition within planning history of exploring and documenting the trans‐urban travel of planning ideas and models over the last 150 years. It is argued that this longer‐term perspective is required to highlight important historical continuities and institutional legacies to contemporary urban policy circuits and pathways and to question what is particularly new, distinct and innovative about an intensification in the travel of urban ideas, plans and policies over the past decade — and the accompanying scholarly interest in them. The symposium also uses the emphasis on particular details and specific experiences within planning histories to foreground and develop approaches, particularly from recent geographical scholarship, that investigate the contingent and embodied practices and wider epistemic contexts that enable — or hinder — contemporary policy transfer.

Britain to 1830 -- Universal suffrage and no surrender : politics at home and abroad, 1830-1867 -- Dark satanic mills? : economic and social change, 1830-1867 -- Utilitarians, evangelicals, and empire : intellectual and cultural developments, 1830-1867 -- Democracy and empire : politics, 1867-1910 -- The decline of the aristocracy : economic and social change, 1867-1910 -- Faith and doubt? : cultural change, 1867-1910 -- In Flanders Fields : Britain and the Great War, 1910-1918 -- Nationalism and depression : politics, economics and social change, 1919-1939 -- Culture and ideas between the wars, 1919-1939 -- London burning : Britain in the Second World War -- Winds of change and rivers of blood : politics, 1945-1979 -- Building a welfare state : society and the economy, 1945-1979 -- Meet the Beatles : cultural and intellectual developments, 1945-1979 -- From Rule Britannia to cool Britannia : politics, 1979-2007 -- Whither Britain? : society and culture, 1979-2007