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1 – 10 of over 10000This paper aims to problematise the relation between “legality” and the state, through a case study analysis of law at work within the built environment. In doing so, the paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to problematise the relation between “legality” and the state, through a case study analysis of law at work within the built environment. In doing so, the paper argues that studies on law and geography should consider the broader processes of state “law making” to understand the production of illegal space.
Design/methodology/approach
The liminal boundary of illegal/legal and its relation with the state is developed through a case study on the legalisation process of a “squatter” settlement located on the outskirts of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The paper draws on primary qualitative research (semi-structured interviews) and legal analysis undertaken in Kyrgyzstan at various times over seven months between 2011 and 2013.
Findings
Examining law as static and pre-existing is problematic in developing an understanding of the production of illegal and legal spaces within the built environment. An emphasis on law-making and the process of legalisation draws attention to the different groups, practices and policies involved and reframes the relation between the state and legality.
Originality/value
Using a case study anchoring the analysis within law’s constitutive and contested presence within the built environment, the paper addresses a theoretical and empirical panacea in legal geography by unpacking the “legal” with reference to its plurality internally within the state. Moreover, studies on law and geography have tended to focus on European or North American contexts, whereas this paper draws on data from Central Asia.
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This article looks at the relationship between human rights law and geography. Drawing from a meeting of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), the article explores how the right to…
Abstract
This article looks at the relationship between human rights law and geography. Drawing from a meeting of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), the article explores how the right to life was legally interpreted to apply to the loss of life associated with Hurricane Katrina. In particular, the article argues that the HRC’s legal interpretation of the right to life shifted as part of a discussion between the United States and nongovernmental organizations. The shift incorporated a more nuanced understanding of the spatial dimension of injustice by including preexisting inequalities and ongoing internal displacement in the analysis of human rights obligations related to the hurricane. The HRC meeting and the legal interpretations arising from that meeting therefore provide an example of Seyla Benhabib’s concept of “democratic iterations” as well as an example of how law can be “spatialized” through international legal processes.
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This study aims to systematise the methodology used in comparative urban planning law and propose primary contexts for comparison in planning law.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to systematise the methodology used in comparative urban planning law and propose primary contexts for comparison in planning law.
Design/methodology/approach
This study undertook a review of comparative law methodology discourse and sought to establish connections between the discourse and the field of planning law.
Findings
This study argues for establishment of a realistic goal for comparative planning law by focusing on the planning law's modifiability. The goal of comparison in planning law should not be to find universally desirable principles or better solutions. Rather, the goal should be to identify a motive for devising a solution. This is because it is not only difficult to establish legal values that are universally applicable to planning law but also inappropriate to determine superiority of planning laws that have been developed over time by each jurisdiction’s sovereignty and policies on land use. When determining comparable systems for analysis among legal systems that are functionally equivalent, it is important to consider the context of land use relations alongside the comparative analysis to be done. To set realistic goals, the context should not be extended indefinitely but be systematised. Based on the foundational relationship underlying planning law, including the tension between planning authorities and property owners, this study presents five specific contexts for comparative analysis: “Strength of Property Rights,” “Level of Judicial Intervention,” “Plan- or Development-led System,” “Allocation of Planning Power” and “Level of Participation.” Examination of these contexts will allow better understanding of the similarities and differences among different systems and practical application of the results of comparative studies.
Originality/value
This study presents a novel approach to systematising the methodology and framework of comparative planning law.
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This study aims to explore how urban governance of Hong Kong is impacted by the formulation and implementation of the new constitutional order of “one country, two systems” that…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how urban governance of Hong Kong is impacted by the formulation and implementation of the new constitutional order of “one country, two systems” that distinguishes between the British colonial government and the current government under Chinese sovereignty.
Design/methodology/approach
While the literature recognises the society of Hong Kong has been heavily relying on land and property activities, few attempts notice the uniqueness of Hong Kong’s sequential constitutional orders and its relations to those activities. This study presents a geographical enquiry and an archival study to illustrate the spatiality of the new constitutional order and its implications on land injustice. Drawing from the works of legal geography and urban studies, this study extends and clarifies Anne Haila’s conception of Hong Kong as “property state” to “property jurisdiction”.
Findings
Though common law and leasehold land system were perpetuated from the colonial period, the new constitutional order changed their practices and the underlying logic and ideology. The urban governance order of this property jurisdiction is intended for prosperity and stability of the society, and for the economic benefit and territorial integrity claim of the Chinese sovereignty.
Originality/value
This study enriches the literature of Hong Kong studies in three major areas, namely, the relationship with China, urban governance and land injustice. It offers a conceptual discussion, which contributes to comparative territorial autonomies studies. It also contributes to legal geography by providing insights beyond the western liberal democracy model.
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Evgenia (Jenny) Kanellopoulou, Kay Lalor and Luke Bennett
This account becomes both a theoretical and a methodological exploration of walking with the law; as such the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how we migh walk in order to…
Abstract
Purpose
This account becomes both a theoretical and a methodological exploration of walking with the law; as such the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how we migh walk in order to attend to how the law makes the built environment possible, how it shapes and creates places to be lived in, visited and experienced and how the law manifests in human encounters and interactions in the everyday life of the city.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the authors combine a walking narrative approach with an open-ended interview to raise awareness of the law’s hidden presence in the urban environment. The authors explore the city of Sheffield, in Yorkshire, in the North of England, to learn about its past, regeneration and future development by combining the appreciation of the built environment, as experienced by the senses and movement, with a guided tour.
Findings
This study highlights the interconnectivity of law and place both objectively and subjectively: the authors discuss sensorial experiences of law, and also elaborate on the normativity of law, as manifested in the regulation and the making of urban places in Sheffield.
Originality/value
The originality lies in the combination of methods used to appreciate the manifestation of law in the built environment, comprising interview, autoethnographic elements and walking (multisensory experience).
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Kate Parizeau and Josh Lepawsky
– This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors investigate the entanglement of law and the built environment through an analysis of waste-related legal case studies in the Canadian context. They investigate a notable Supreme Court case and three examples of Canadian cities’ by-laws and municipal regulations (particularly regarding informal recycling practices). They mobilize what Valverde calls the work of jurisdiction in their analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that the regulation of waste and wasting behaviours is meant to discipline relationships between citizens and governments in the built environment (e.g. mitigating nuisance, facilitating service provision and public health, making individuals more visible and legible in the eyes of the law and controlling and capturing material flows). They find that jurisdiction is used as a flexible and malleable legal medium in the interactions between law and the built environment. Thus, the material treatment of waste may invoke notions of constraint, freedom, citizenship, governance and cognate concepts and practices as they are performed in and through built environments. Waste storage containers appear to operate as black holes in that they evacuate property rights from the spaces that waste regularly occupies.
Originality/value
There is scant scholarly attention paid to legal orderings of waste in built environments. This analysis reveals the particular ways that legal interventions serve to construct notions of the public good and the public sphere through orderings of waste (an inherently indeterminate object).
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Stuart Hodkinson and Chris Essen
This paper aims to ground Harvey’s (2003) top-down theory of “accumulation by dispossession” in the everyday lives of people and places with specific focus on the role of law. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to ground Harvey’s (2003) top-down theory of “accumulation by dispossession” in the everyday lives of people and places with specific focus on the role of law. It does this by drawing upon the lived experiences of residents on a public housing estate in England (UK) undergoing regeneration and gentrification through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
Design/methodology/approach
Members of the residents association on the Myatts Field North estate, London, were engaged as action research partners, working with the researchers to collect empirical data through surveys of their neighbours, organising community events and being formally interviewed themselves. Their experiential knowledge was supplemented with an extensive review of all associated policy, planning, legal and contractual documentation, some of which was disclosed in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Findings
Three specific forms of place-based dispossession were identified: the loss of consumer rights, the forcible acquisition of homes and the erasure of place identity through the estate’s rebranding. Layard’s (2010) concept of the “law of place” was shown to be broadly applicable in capturing how legal frameworks assist in enacting accumulation by dispossession in people’s lives. Equally important is the ideological power of law as a discursive practice that ultimately undermines resistance to apparent injustices.
Originality/value
This paper develops Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession in conversation with legal geography scholarship. It shows – via the Myatts Field North estate case study – how PFI, as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession in the abstract, enacts dispossession in the concrete, assisted by the place-making and ideological power of law.
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Athanasia Pouloudi, Xenia Ziouvelou and Konstantina Vassilopoulou
A large amount of research work in e‐business concerns the experiences and lessons learned from developing and implementing innovative e‐business models. The findings of this…
Abstract
A large amount of research work in e‐business concerns the experiences and lessons learned from developing and implementing innovative e‐business models. The findings of this research usually concentrate on financial aspects or on the use of information and communication technologies in a specific company or industrial sector. While this is critical for understanding and replicating positive business results, we argue that it is as important to understand the societal context in which business models are developed; it is social issues that define (constrain or enable) the broader context of e‐business adoption. This paper aims to draw research attention to these social issues and suggests societal factors that influence the adoption of e‐business models. Specifically, the paper argues that factors related to region/geography, culture, the legal and regulatory environment, economic, ethical and professional factors, as well as factors related to social capital/social networks and social structure influence, directly or indirectly, the way in which e‐business models are perceived, implemented and evaluated. Three cases are presented to show how these factors become evident in e‐business, followed by a discussion of their managerial implications. The aim of the paper is to sensitise managers and policy makers in shaping an enabling societal context for the proliferation of socially acceptable business models.
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This paper aims to consider the potential implications of the layering of regulation in relation to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at the borders between the nations of the UK.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to consider the potential implications of the layering of regulation in relation to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at the borders between the nations of the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a qualitative research method grounded in particular in legal geography to examine the existing approaches to regulating hydraulic fracturing and identify the places and their features that are constructed as a result of their intersection at the borders of the nations comprising the UK.
Findings
The current regulatory framework concerning hydraulic fracturing risks restricts the places in which the practice can occur in such a manner as to potentially cause greater environmental harm should the process be used. The regulations governing the process are not aligned in relation to the surface and subsurface aspects of the process to enable their management, once operational, as a singularly constructed place of extraction. Strong regulation at the surface can have the effect of influencing placement of the site only in relation to the place at which the resource sought reaches the surface, whilst having little to no impact on the environmental harms, which will result at the subsurface or relative to other potential surface site positions, and potentially even increasing them.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is limited by uncertainty as to the future use of hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas within the UK. The issues raised within it would also be applicable to other extractive industries where a surface site might be placed within a radius of the subsurface point of extraction, rather than having to be located at a fixed point relative to that in the subsurface. This paper therefore raises concerns that might be explored more generally in relation to the regulation of the place of resource extraction, particularly at legal borders between jurisdictions, and the impact of regulation, which does not account for the misalignment of regulation of spaces above and below the surface that form a single place at which extraction occurs.
Social implications
This paper considers the potential impacts of misaligned positions held by nations in the UK in relation to environmentally harmful practices undertaken by extractive industries, which are highlighted by an analysis of the extant regulatory framework for hydraulic fracturing.
Originality/value
Whilst the potential for cross internal border extraction of gas within the UK via hydraulic fracturing and the regulatory consequences of this has been highlighted in academic literature, this paper examines the implications of regulation for the least environmentally harmful placement of the process.
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