Fluid Spatial Imaginaries: Evolving Estuarial City‐regional Spaces

This article looks at successive attempts to create new spatial imaginaries around three estuary‐based city regions in England: the London–Thames Gateway, the Atlantic Gateway/Mersey Belt (Manchester and Liverpool), and Hull and the Humber ports. We develop a framework of analysis for new planning and regeneration spaces that takes forward debates on relational and territorial geographies, spatial imaginaries and the creation of new regional identities as governance objects. Specifically, we adopt a long‐term and comparative perspective that allows an examination of how successive efforts at regional building are both path‐dependent and context‐specific, as new approaches reflect emerging ideas about how best to construct successful regions in a changing global economy.     

Real Geographies,Real Economies and Soft Spatial Imaginaries: Creating a ‘More than Manchester’ Region

This article develops a framework for analysing region‐building processes as spatiotemporal constructs, involving competing spatial imaginaries and attempts at consolidating these through institution building. Central here is the performative role of what we refer to as ‘soft space imaginaries’ in the ‘phased’ building of regions for planning and economic development over time. We demonstrate how this understanding can be used to examine the phased enactment of successive waves of region‐building by tracing the evolution of multiple soft spatial imaginaries in north‐west England. The analysis exposes the variable logics, alliances of actors, and tactics used to build momentum and secure legitimacy around preferred imaginaries which advocates often promoted on the grounds that they somehow reflected ‘real geographies’ or ‘real economies’. In this context, soft space imaginaries are seen to play an integral role in intellectual case making about the contemporaneous form and purpose of subnational governance. Yet our analysis also exposes the durability of past soft space imaginaries and their continued impact on efforts to build new soft spaces. What emerges is an understanding of soft space imaginaries as more than just superficial representations. They can help determine where government investment is channelled and into what kinds of policies.     

Santiago Calatrava and the ‘Power of Faith’: Global Imaginaries in Valencia

The focus of this article is on the importance of collective imaginaries for urban policy mobility, and on the agents and modes of power through which imaginaries are translated, mobilized and become materialized in specific places. Through the case study of the monumental complex of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, designed by Valencian global architect Santiago Calatrava, I discuss Calatrava's mobilization of ideas of modernity, tradition, democratization and self‐esteem already present in the collective imaginary of the people and the politicians of post‐Franco's Spain to promote his global architecture. In this process, I argue, global imaginaries were translated into local imaginaries and vice versa as they became embodied in persons and objects, represented in this case by Calatrava's figure as a local/global architect and by the architecture of the City of Arts and Sciences. Particularly, I analyse Calatrava's use of the power of seduction, persuasion and coercion to mobilize such imaginaries in order to build his ubiquitous signature architecture in Valencia.     

Making ‘Global Sydney’: Spatial Imaginaries,Worlding and Strategic Plans

This article critically examines the expression of global spatial imaginaries in urban policy and planning. Following recent calls to understand how the global is ‘made up' in and through cities, we argue for the usefulness of Roy and Ong's concept of ‘worlding’. By analysing how strategic spatial plans envisage ‘Global Sydney’, the article reveals a constitutive spatial imaginary informed by the articulation of three interrelated elements: global city standards, comparative techniques and extra‐local policy models. Unpacking how cities are selectively worlded through spatial imaginaries, the article advances an approach to urban globality as actively cultivated and differentially produced.     

From neoliberalism to national developmentalism? Contested agrarian imaginaries of a postneoliberal future for food and farming

This review examines three recent books that address the relationship between neoliberalism and agribusiness, on the one hand, and the demise of smallholder farming, traditional diets and the rise of diet‐related chronic illness, on the other. The first, by Timothy Wise, adopts what may be characterized as an ‘agrarian populist’ stance, constructing a universal binary between trans‐nationalizing agribusiness and a unified family farm sector. Protagonists from the latter are seen to embody the future, using agroecology to feed the world sustainably in a time of climate crisis. This is not a consistently propeasant stance, however; Wise seems rather to advocate a ‘farmer road’ to national capitalist development. The other two books, by Alyshia Galvez and Gerardo Otero, cover quite similar ground to one another, looking explicitly at the rise of neoliberalism, the decline of traditional farming and diets and the rise of processed food‐related diseases. Unlike ‘agrarian populists’, both authors privilege the state and ‘class struggle’ (sensu lato) in analysing the dynamics of neoliberalism, free trade agreements and food policies. Normatively, both see the state as pivotal in generating policies centred around smaller scale farming and the production of nutritious food for all. For Otero, like Wise, these policies seem to be tied to a form of national developmentalism as an escape route from neoliberalism. For Galvez, the future is less clear‐cut—although by inclination ‘propeasant’, she does not exclude elements of national developmentalism in envisioning a postneoliberal world.     

‘Download to delicious’: Promissory themes and sociotechnical imaginaries in coverage of 3D printed food in online news sources

The fabrication of food products is one of the emergent uses of 3D printing technologies. The news media are important sources for framing the meanings of emerging technologies such as 3D food printing and introducing them to publics. In this article, I discuss the findings of an analysis of online news reporting of 3D printed food technology. A sociocultural perspective was adopted, in which the promissory themes contributing to broader sociotechnical imaginaries related to food and novel technologies were identified in the corpus of news stories examined. These imaginaries can be pivotal in framing collective ideas of where the futures of technologies lie. The analysis found that, unlike coverage of many other novel food technologies, the corpus of online news reports examined overwhelmingly framed food printing technologies in positive ways. Five major promissory themes were identified, portraying 3D printed food technologies as: futuristic; creative; healthy; efficient; and sustainable. These themes contributed to sociotechnical imaginaries that drew on a number of contemporary preoccupations related to food cultures: novelty, entertainment and leisure pursuits; convenience and time-saving; effective production and distribution; health and nutritional aspects; and environmental impacts and global food security.     

Engineering the revolution? Imagining the role of new digital technologies in infrastructure work futures

Contemporary imaginations of the impact of new digital technologies (NDTS) are dominated by utopian visions of a ‘revolution’ in productivity and efficiency, contrasted with dystopian views of declines of work and human skills, and distrust of artificial intelligence's efficacy. This article explores imaginations of digital futures in the infrastructure sector through case study research of a global engineering organisation. Drawing on a practice approach, a typology is generated from interviews with engineers and managers to reveal that three broad imaginations compete within the organisation: technodeterminism; technoscepticism; and human-centric, all with utopian and dystopian variants. Clear relationships exist between the diverse imaginary positions taken by employees with their different roles, biographies and levels of the organisational agency. Those with relatively higher levels of agency tended towards technocentric utopianism while those with lower levels of agency displayed a resolutely dystopian version. Conversely, while the outward-facing image of the organisation promotes a utopian imagination of a technologically driven future, those with the very highest levels of the organisational agency remain technosceptic. This means that real change is slow. However, an encouraging manifesto for the future is suggested by those who are innovating NDTS to reimagine alternative infrastructure futures through improved human-centric social outcomes.