Readings & Questions

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The course readings have been chosen to enhance your field school experience not as some kind of punishment or drudgery you have to endure.

To get the most out of them, go beyond mere skimming and instead fully engage with them:

  • underline,
  • write in the margins,
  • ask them questions,
  • challenge them,
  • compare them with other things you’ve read, take notes [but notes that are useful for you not what you think the teacher wants to see]

I’ve included some questions that should prove helpful for working through them and will serve as part of the basis for our discussion of them the week of May 11.

Note: without engaging with them you won’t retain any information. Nothing sticks. Take time with them.  Don’t just try to get through them as quickly as possible.  As a student your job right now is to learn and to learn how to learn. Sit with the material. Absorb it. Let it seep in. Rushing through stuff all the time just teaches you how to superficially navigate your world. Go deeper. Especially with the pressing social and ecological challenges our region and our world face we need to go much deeper. We need to figure this all out. So while reading, be constantly thinking:  what can I take from this reading to help me see the world more clearly (and act more effectively)?

Make sure you bring the readings, your notes and lots of enthusiasm to the in-class sessions during the week of May 11th where we will review this material.

Some of the readings are about (field school) learning. Some are about sustainable community development. Some are about Europe and the specific places we will visit.

Orr, D. 1994. Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human Prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press [Ch 1: “What is Education for?” pp 7-15]

This is a classic in environmental education. It is a straightforward read but should provide some insights into concerns with and opportunities for educating in this time of environmental misadventure.

The following questions should help guide you through it:

  1. What is education for according to Orr?
  2. In what ways is contemporary education failing? What are the six myths of education that he recognizes?
  3. How might we rethink education?
  4. What do you think? How much do you agree with him?
  5. What important message(s) will you take away from this article?

Shurmer-Smith, L. and Shurmer-Smith, P. 2002. “Introduction” and “Field observation: looking at Paris”. In P Shurmer-Smith (Ed.) Doing Cultural Geography, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp 165-175

Two chapters from the text “Doing Cultural Geography” provide an intro to critical cultural geography and fieldwork in cities. The introduction shows how geographers are theorizing "culture" not as something static and possessed but something dynamic and performed. They also emphasize that power is central to culture - that the cultural and political cannot be disentangled. Make sure you read and understand this chapter as it provides important theoretical background for our course. In our case, we are interested in power / culture / performance both with respect to the human geography of the region as well as in trying to understand the evolving context(s) of (un)sustainability.

The chapter ends with an interesting discussion on learning and teaching emphasizing the importance of (active) learning as opposed to (passively) being taught. In this course you will do cultural geography not be taught it.

The second chapter introduces doing cultural geography fieldwork grounded in the study of a field course in Paris. Unfortunately we are not going to Paris but the chapter provides some key insights (and warnings) for us.

The following questions should help guide you through it:

  1. According to the authors what constitutes ineffective and effective field learning experiences (i.e. what should I the instructor be wary of)?
  2. What limitations must we all be mindful of in a field course?
  3. What benefits can we expect?
  4. Although the chapter focuses on Paris there are a number of more generalizable observations the authors make that could be useful for studying other cities. Make a list of things we might want to focus on in our own observations of our cities.

Nairn, K. (2005). “The problems of utilizing ‘direct experience’ in geography education”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29(2), pp. 293–309.

Hope, M. (2009). “The Importance of Direct Experience: A Philosophical Defense of Fieldwork in Human Geography”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 33 (2), pp. 169-182

These two articles provide contradictory perspectives on the value of field study. Nairn (2005) is skeptical of the "direct experience" that field schools ostensibly offer. Hope (2009) responds to this critique. I feel that both articles offer important insights and I want you to read them carefully attending to how they might inform your own field school experience. To me, it's more useful to think of each argument as offering something valuable rather than favoring one perspective and dismissing the other.

It may be very helpful to consider the following:

  1. Summarize each argument, comparing and contrasting each perspective on fieldwork.
  2. List all the key points regarding field study that you would want to remember: warnings from Nairn, justifications from Hope etc.
  3. Provide your own assessment of each article. What do you make of their arguments?


Gibson, R.; Hassan, S.; Holtz, S.; Tansey, J. and Whitelaw, G. 2005. Sustainability Assessment: Criteria, Processes and Applications. London: Earthscan [Chapter 3: “Sustainability”, pp 38-65]

This chapter from Univ. of Waterloo sustainability guru Bob Gibson’s book provides a useful introduction to the concept of “sustainability”. It will provide the basis for discussion in the classroom component of the field course. It should be relatively straightforward and some material may be quite familiar to most of you. However, it provides a good overview. Please read and come prepared to discuss.

These questions should help guide you through it:

  1. Why is sustainability “both a necessary and difficult idea”?
  2. How is it both a new and very ancient idea?
  3. What does the author have to say about progress, development and growth?
  4. How is sustainability a contested concept?
  5. According to the author, what are the essentials of the concept?
  6. What are the most important points to take away from this article?
  7. What do you make of his consideration of the topic?

Peck, S. & Dauncey, G. n.d. “12 Features of Sustainable Community Development: Social, Economic and Environmental Benefits and Two Case Studies”, available at: http://www.cardinalgroup.ca/nua/nua.html

This paper disseminates research undertaken by two local consultants for the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation.  I included it simply to give you a sense of the diverse components of sustainable community development.

Complete the following:

  1. For each of the 12 features, briefly summarize the concerns and opportunities.
  2. After reading through the list, do you think there is anything missing?
  3. In particular note the interesting features the Southeast false Creek development in Vancouver. We will be visiting many such developments both in Victoria (Dockside Green & Selkirk Waterfront) and throughout Europe.

Marcuse, P. 1998. “Sustainability is not enough”, Environment and Urbanization, 10(2), pp 103-111

Peter Marcuse is the son of famous Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse and brings a critical eye to urban planning. This popular article raises important questions about the social dimensions of sustainability.  While its focus is on housing policy, some of the author’s insights can inform our approach to sustainable cities more generally.

Try to answer these questions as you work your way through it:

  1. What is the important message of this article that we should remain wary of in our own exploration of sustainable community development?
  2. Why isn’t sustainability enough? What is Marcuse getting at?
  3. Do you agree?
  4. What is the important take-away message here?

Keil, R. & Whitehead, M. 2012. “Cities and the Politics of Sustainability”. In P. John, K. Mossberger & S. Clarke (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Urban Politics, New York: Oxford

This book chapter by Keil and Whitehead bring urban politics and sustainable development into dialogue. The reading focuses on a major waterfront redevelopment project in Toronto and sets us up for thinking about and critically interrogating the redevelopment projects we will encounter on our trip.  Because some of you may find some of the theoretical elaboration challenging to comprehend, I have included more detailed questions here to help you identify the important points raised.

As long as you can answer these questions you’ll be fine:

  1. What is the significance of the Toronto Waterfront case study that opens the chapter? Specifically what are the “two important insights” with respect to sustainable urban development explicitly identified? What is meant by the subtitle of this section: “the duplicitous nature of the sustainable city”?  (Section 1)
  2. In what ways do the authors identify that sustainable urban development can be contradictorily imagined? (throughout the chapter)
  3. Ensure you have some sense of the genealogy or evolution of thinking around sustainable urban development. In particular, what is the significance of the Vancouver Declaration (1976) for understanding sustainable cities (Section 2)?
  4. What are the five key processes of sustainable urbanization, as outlined by the authors (Section 2)?
  5. Explain Harvey Molotch’s “Growth Machine” thesis and how it relates to sustainable urban development. Your answer will likely tie into #2 above (Section 2.1).
  6. What does Harvey’s “structured coherences” analysis add to our understanding of the barriers to sustainable urban development that growth machine analysis fails to reveal (section 2.2)?
  7. Explain the four sets of issues around “justice” with respect to sustainable urban development that the author’s identify (section 3).
  8. What does urban political ecology add to our ability to analyze sustainable urban development (Section 4.1)?
  9. What new urban challenges have arisen and what do they mean for discourse of “sustainable urban development” according to the authors? (Section 4.2)
  10. Reviewing your answers, what are the key points we should keep in mind with respect to this article to help inform our field investigation of sustainable cities?

Beatley, T. 2000. Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities. Washington, DC: Island Press, [Chapter 1: “Introduction- Green Urbanism and the Lessons of European Cities”, pp. 3-25]

This book would have made a great text for our course but alas it is a bit dated. However, I thought I would include the introduction because it gives us some useful things to consider when studying urban sustainability in Europe and thinking about what we might be able to bring back to North America.

Consider the following the questions:

  1. If we are interested in sustainability, why study cities? In other words, what is the role of cities in global sustainability?
  2. What does Beatley consider to be the key elements of “green urbanism”?
  3. Why study European cities? What do we have to be cautious of with respect to transferability of best practices? (What) is it possible to learn from European cities?

Hall, P. 2014. Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism. London: Routledge, [Ch 10 “Conserving Resources in Scandinavia: Stockholm and Copenhagen-Malmö”, pp215-247]

This chapter introduces some of the efforts undertaken in three of the cities we will be visiting. We will visit many of the projects introduced such as the Hammarby Sjöstad development in Stockholm, Ørestad in Copenhagen and Västra Hamnen in Malmö. Rather than including questions, I want to encourage you to come up with some questions that will guide your investigation of these projects and the cities more generally.

With respect to the Ørestad development, read the following short online article by Lea Olsson and Jan Loerakker. They will be our guides for a tour of this project:  http://www.failedarchitecture.com/the-story-behind-the-failure-copenhagens-business-district-orestad/

Bechova-Jordan, B. 2010. "Europe". In D. Johnson, V. Haarmann, M. Johnson & David Clawson (Eds.) World Regional Geography: A Development Approach 10th Edition. New York: Prentice Hall

This chapter from a geography textbook is included to give you some more background to the region we will be exploring. There is a ton of detail here that you are not expected to consume. Flip through the chapter reading sections relevant to our study, looking at the images and maps etc. but don't get bogged down in the minutiae. In particular see how the countries we are exploring compare and contrast with each other.