The ‘Practical Range of Choice’ in Water Resources Geography

Wescoat, JR James L.

doi:10.1177/030913258701100103

Cited by 37 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…I argue that NU representations of nature, especially those used to define NU ideals of community, may be interpreted by consumers as a form of green politics. I conclude by advocating the inclusion of a range of humanenvironment in the planning process (after Wescoat, 1987) and calling for professionals to "rethink" nature according to scale and social relations (after Katz, 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community

Till¹

2001

Urban Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A central goal of New Urbanism (NU) is to provide alternatives to suburbs through ecologically sound designs and more natural communities. This article situates NU environmental rhetoric culturally and analyzes why this form of nature is being promoted now. I argue that NU anthropocentric understandings of nature reflect and resonate with dominant mainstream environmental ideas in American culture. To understand why NU planners may uncritically adopt these socially and spatially limited understandings of nature, I discuss the institutional contexts of the planning profession. For various reasons, planners historically have understood nature in geographically restricted ways, as Utopian garden, mappable data, and consumer product. More recently, NU ideals of community have been defined by representations of nature that may be construed by consumers as a form of green politics. This article concludes by stressing the need for further research and advocating more inclusive understandings of human-environment relations in the planning process. [Key words: New Urbanism, mainstream, environmentalism, planning profession, green marketing.]My impetus for writing this article stems from a recent personal experience at Seaside, Florida with my graduate seminar in cultural geography.2 As one of the first neotraditional towns built, Seaside has become the symbol for New Urbanism (NU) more generally (Falconer Al-Hindi and Staddon, 1997). As we arrived from the southwest, the pastel-colored town seemed to emerge from a dense, stunted forest of scrub oak. During a tour, we learned that only native plants were allowed to grow in town; ecologically wasteful green lawns were limited to public town greens. Our guide also mentioned that the colors of the homes mimicked the locale's natural setting, moving from the light pastels of the dancing waves (homes located closer to the shoreline) to the darker, earth-toned colors of the dense, scrubby vegetation encircling the town (homes located farther back from the shore). My students had never been to Seaside before and many commented on the town's coastal setting, with breathtaking beaches of fine, white sands and intensely turquoise blue waves. On this trip, I found myself taken with the (private) wispy bridges that framed that coastal beauty. As our guide pointed out, unlike other nearby developments, the bridges at Seaside protected the fragile harmony of the sand dunes, sea grasses and wild rosemary.As I sought out what seemed to be the most "natural" parts of the town, I found myself walking along paths of crushed oyster shells (known as "Krier walks") toward the thickets of scrub oak away from the shore. Hidden from view toward the edges and back of Sea-220

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community

Till¹

2001

Urban Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is, in the pragmatic sense, outside their 'practical range of choice.' (Wescoat 1987). Possible actions include: fine-tuning information sources to meet farmers' needs and expectations; and addressing the social stigma of organic production among many conventional farmers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research within the pragmatic tradition: accepts complexity in human and ecological dynamics and is guided by human experience as the basis of understanding a complex problematic situation (Duram 1997, Light and Katz 1996, Wescoat 1987, 1992. According to Dewey, a key pragmatic scholar, experience is what we do, how we learn, and what happens to us (Cutchin 2008, Thayer 1970, Dewey, 1958.…”

Section: Pragmatism and Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

A pragmatic assessment of government support for organic agriculture in Ireland

Duram

2010

Irish Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Hazards research, from its inception in the human ecology tradition with its pragmatic philosophical moorings, has emphasized hazards as integral to human environment interaction (Wescoat, 1987;Kates and Burton, 1986a,b). The more radical hazards' geographers have gone further to state that hazards in fact arise from the injustices, deprivations, and inequalities characteristic of places and the so-called ''normal'' life within those places (Blaikie et al, 1994;Hewitt, 1983Hewitt, , 1997.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcing vulnerability? Disaster relief, recovery, and response to the 2001 flood in Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Mustafa

2003

Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper conducts a retrospective analysis of the relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the 2001 flood disaster in the Rawalpindi-Islamabad conurbation in Pakistan. The concept of recovery back to ''normal'' is questioned because ''normal'' life in the study area was characterized by extreme poverty, injustice, exposure, and vulnerability to hazards. A strong gender dimension to the experience of relief and recovery was found from the case study. It is suggested that participatory approach to needs assessment and actual relief and recovery, with special attention to gender variables, will go a long way towards linking recovery with long-term vulnerability mitigation. r

show abstract

The ‘Practical Range of Choice’ in Water Resources Geography

Cited by 37 publications

References 19 publications

New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community

New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community

A pragmatic assessment of government support for organic agriculture in Ireland

Reinforcing vulnerability? Disaster relief, recovery, and response to the 2001 flood in Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About