Articles
Presidential Address: The Conditions of Coastality
by David A. Plane, 9
The City as an Image-creation Machine: A Critical Analysis of Vancouver’s Olympic Bid
by Katherine McCallum, Amy Spencer, and Elvin Wyly, 24
ABSTRACT: The strategic mobilization of images, visual metaphors, and other forms of graphical rhetoric has always been central in place promotion. Images of place have assumed even greater importance, however, with the rise of locational tournaments of cities bidding for the “right” to host high-stakes transnational spectacles. In this paper, we adapt Harvey Molotch’s pioneering theory of the urban growth machine to illuminate the contemporary enterprise of city bids for the Olympic Games. Taking Vancouver’s successful bid for the 2010 Winter Games as a case study, we use a visual methodology framework to analyze the manifest (explicit, surface) and latent (implicit, subtle) visual narrative strategies used to craft a carefully considered representation of the city. Our analysis of the official Bid Questionnaire and the video presentation to the International Olympic Committee documents the sophisticated process by which a city is constructed to embody pristine urban nature, multicultural social harmony, and vibrant local cultures of sport in keeping with the spirit of Olympism. Whether imagined cities like this are effective is irrelevant: cities understand that half of their advertising budget is wasted (they just don’t know which half). The expanding symbolic economies of tourism, conventions, and hallmark events require that urban growth machines develop and operate a full suite of image creation machines, each attuned to the real and perceived desires of an elusive transnational audience in a perpetual movable feast of locational consumption.
Building and Maintaining Urban Water Infrastructure: Phoenix, Arizona, from 1950 to 2003
by Elizabeth K. Burns and Eric D. Kenney, 47
ABSTRACT: Clean urban water, distributed and collected through centralized regional infrastructure, is a driving force in development of the rapidly growing metropolitan regions of the arid Southwest. This study examines the internal magnitude and location of water infrastructure in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, from 1953 to 2003. Regional building-permit data were the basis for identifying six cycles of boom-and-bust real estate activity. Using Water Services Department GIS files, we find that the grid of 1-mile arterial streets provided a systematic framework for incremental water infrastructure expansion. Over this 50-year period, the water system consolidated existing settlements with private water sources and aggressively provided revenue-generating services to an expanding customer base. By 1994–2003, however, new urban fringe development existed only at the northern and southwestern boundaries of this extensive central city. Water infrastructure activities now increasingly included replacement for intensified service, renovation, maintenance, and repair. Detailed analyses of this and other urban water systems provide an additional source of broad insights into processes of both external fringe development and internal land intensification.
Case Study in Real Estate Appraisal: Temecula Olive Oil Company
by Nancy Summers, 65
ABSTRACT: This paper introduces geographers to the field of commercial real estate appraisal using the case study of the Temecula Olive Oil Company site in Aguanga, California. The appraisal was prepared by the author while an employee of Tierra West Appraisal & Land Use Dynamics, Inc. in Hemet, California, for Citizens Business Bank for purposes of new loan financing. The 26-acre site consists of level-to-rolling topography, expansive views, a lake and campsite, 5 acres of olive and grape agriculture, a business office, barn, storage shed, winery and olive press, and proposed event room. The steps necessary to properly appraise the site include concepts and analyses familiar to geographers, such as research into appropriate market areas, map interpretation and land use, slope analysis, strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats (SWOT), and highest and best use. Real estate appraisal is a multidisciplinary field that incorporates aspects from geography, economics, finance, environmental planning, and law. Typical appraisal tools include aerial photos, topographic maps, as well as handheld computers, GIS, and GPS.
This paper summarizes the appraisal analysis and the conclusions as set forth in the appraisal report prepared for the Client (Citizens Business Bank1). This is a summary of an example of an actual appraisal, and so does not conform to the normal style and format of typical academic papers. Several terms that are routinely used in appraisals are used here, such as referring to the parcel under consideration as the subject property, and references to other works are lacking.
President’s Plenary Session
Major Directions in the Future Population Geography of the Pacific Coast
by David A. Plane, 95
Ethnic Geography Dynamics: Clues from Los Angeles
by James P. Allen, 97
ABSTRACT: The five-county metropolitan region of Los Angeles has such large ethnic populations that it can show ethnic geography trends and patterns not easily identified in smaller places. I use Los Angeles to illustrate three dynamics that seem neglected in the urban literature. First, significant out-movement from poor, more central areas of Los Angeles into suburbs means that Blacks, Latinos, and Asians are no longer trapped in such neighborhoods, as was the case a half century ago. Second, many suburbs, particularly those built after about 1970, contain racially and ethnically diverse populations, some with very low levels of residential segregation between groups. Last, rates of ethnic group intermarriage with other groups are higher outside each group’s area of residential concentration, and Blacks and Whites in Los Angeles are more likely to be married outside their respective groups than in the U.S. as a whole. All this evidence suggests the value of studying Los Angeles and suburbs as indicators of the nation’s future ethnic geography.
Letter to the Editor, 117
Book Reviews
Nicholas O’Connell, On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature, 119
Reviewed by Ralph K. Allen, Jr.
Philip R. Pryde, Editor, San Diego: An Introduction to the Region, Fourth Edition, 122
Reviewed by Carlos Tovares
Report on the Sixty-seventh Annual Meeting, 126 (PDF, 40K)
APCG Distinguished Service Award, 128 (PDF, 32K)
APCG Student Paper Award Winners, 129 (PDF, 32K)
Resolutions of the Sixty-seventh Annual Meeting, 130 (PDF, 40K)
Editorial Notes, 132 (PDF, 40K)