Very proud to say that our special issue with @urbanstudiesjournal.com is now all up online! We address the authoritarian turn in urban governance globally, as neoliberal policies lose legitimacy and require more coercive means of enforcement. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Nice to see this in bright pink hard copy.

fitness influencing, lifting, fight clubs - they all are Trojan horses for fascism

It was powerful and profound to be in Hiroshima a few weeks ago. No bombs. No war.

Creative and accessible adaptive retooling of former elevated highway in Seoul. Inviting by day or by night.

Shanghai past, present, future. The Bund by night is an awesome spectacle.

Thank you to @samhalvorsen.bsky.social and Adriana Massidda for joining us yesterday for our Annual Lecture - great capstone to the year's activities.

¡No Pasarán!

We host Dr. Sam Halvorsen (QMUL) and Dr. Adriana Massidda (Sheffield) next Monday (9th June) for our Northumbria Social and Cultural Geographies Research Group Annual Lecture, on 'Strategies of Popular Participation in Buenos Aires'. Welcome to join in person or get in touch for the MS Teams link.

En route to Exeter to chat about Authoritarian urban space and affects. Always awed by these Victorian train sheds.

Linking Silicon Valley's NRx 'California Forever' to Kigali's technocratic master plans, our article of the week explores how illiberalism thrives through urban density and the viral speed of digital 'Extrastatecraft'. By @jluger.bsky.social et al. in @urbanstudiesonline.com buff.ly/sPpXvuA

Blue skies for some qualitative research in the Lake District with Northumbria Geography first year students.

Lovely day for some place-based assessments on the peri-urban with 2nd year BA students.

New #OA study by @jluger.bsky.social and Miklós Dürr explores whether there is something inherently #illiberal about the urban condition, e.g., does the urban condition uniquely produce and scaffold #illiberalism? buff.ly/30sn8LQ #PlatformUrbanism

Happy to see this open access @urbanstudiesonline.com paper published, which began as a chat with Miklós Dürr at Tyneside Bar in August 2022. We suggest that illiberalism is a facet of global urban life. Part of an upcoming special issue: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Three sessions on "The Critical Urban Lives of Ruins" here at the #AAG tomorrow (Wed) and Thursday am. What work do ruins do? And what might they reveal that's new?

Had a bit of fun with this short-fiction piece in an upcoming issue of Critical Studies on Security. In this, a character finds himself trapped on 'Alpha Male Island', a site of 'Manospheric' fantasy. He then manages to escape, and reconsider his subjectivity. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YKBVN...

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome... im cabaret, au cabaret, to cabaret!

No Nazis. No Kings.

CFP for the RGS-IBG in Birmingham, for anyone still looking for a session (see attached). Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, as well as a short biography, to Sabina Lawreniuk ([email protected]) and Jason Luger ([email protected]) by Weds 5th March 2025.

The price of cobalt in Congo. The price of coffee in Cali. The price of neon in Neom. Predictive AI and bombs in the sky.

Jacob Miller and I wrote a short thing on the violent ruination of Trump's America. @gregseigworth.bsky.social was gracious enough to include it along with many other short pieces in this 'Capacities to: Affect up Against Fascism' collection, which is open access: imbricate.press/book/capacit...

This symposium @antipodeonline.bsky.social could not account for the latest developments shaped by the far-right (such as centering E.M. as a far-right world builders) but it is still very timely and offers important insights. antipodeonline.org/2024/12/12/n... #geo #geosky @jluger.bsky.social

At a restaurant last night the couple next to me fed the menu into chat gpt and asked it what to order. Humanity won't survive the year.

Favorite workspace away from home.

Nice to see this @antipodeonline.bsky.social intervention out in the world which critically responds to some of the troubling world-building (and world-breaking) happening now. Conversation began in sessions at the AAG2023 in Denver. antipodeonline.org/2024/12/12/n...

A few more weeks to apply for this funded PhD studentship.

Making art 🎨 and thinking about art's relationship to the city, it's processes and spatial contestations, Amsterdam Noord.

'Encountering Urban Worlds' field trip to Amsterdam, drifting through Leidseplein, global, local, atmospheres, spectacle.

Advertising a fully-funded PHD at Northumbria University looking at how Urban Social Infrastructures (USIs) can be better-provided in UK cities to improve (holistic) Gen-Z Mens' Health and Wellbeing. Get in touch if interested, deadline January. Details here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Overheard comment by passer-bye on Northumberland Street: "there's a hell of a lot you can do with Human Geography". Indeed, kind pedestrian.

Gateshead and Michael Caine.

Concrete dreams.

Motivated by the recent events in Amsterdam and our upcoming student field trip there I've been watching McQueen's 'Occupied City'. Spellbinding from minute 1.

It was a long week.

In this open access paper now published in Cultural Geographies, through comparative experiences in a mega-church and hardcore gyms in Singapore and North America, I critically reflect on authoritarianism's (dangerous) capacity for atmospheric joy. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Between Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow is some serious dosage of weird.

Post-politics is Adorno's desk, enclosed In a glass cube on campus quad where activism is not permitted.

Democracy takes work, every day (Wien, Hofburg)

Looking forward to catching up with urban friends at #UAA in New York this week.

In this Dialogues forum paper; Tilman Schwarze and I suggest that maybe "post-industrial" urbanism has outlived its conceptual value. Open Access. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Social media reminded me that I saw Ed Soja speaking about spatial justice in Asian cities in Singapore back in 2013, one of his last public lectures.

The UK is rain, meetings, and Christmas jumpers.

North Carolina’s descent in one-party rule today deserves as much attention as Mike Johnson’s past. We’re talking about a state of 11 million suddenly having an election-proof GOP government.

Exploring some modernism and #publicspace in Rotterdam

Hoping for kindness in this place. Always happy to chat urban space.