Introduction to Human Geography: A new semester begins!

It is always an adventure to teach first year courses. Completely new faces with new group dynamics and new curiosities. Always a nice encounter!

The term has started in RA 2 weeks ago. The Introduction to Human Geography course began with 20 fresh members, new young souls, to get into the magic world of geography.

We've started, as usually, with 'vegetables' metaphor to learn that a city is not only a physical entity. It is shaped by social, economic, political and cultural processes and dynamics. We explore these dynamics with Childe's "urban revolution" concept with reference to Soja's work. It is a nice framework to understand the development of cities and urban communities through the time.

We have diverse topics in this course, as it is an introductory course, to touch at least the most important fields of interest of human geography. But first we need to understand how cities are formed and developed...We have a political economy approach to understand the transformation of cities, meaning that we're exploring the development of the capitalist economic system by looking at the main political economic processes that had an influence on the decisions of actors of urban development. We will, as you will notice soon enough, explore the influence of how the formation of capitalist system has been shaping the urban development. We need to understand the relationship between the economic, political and social transformations and the transformation of capitalist political economic system. And that's why we start with a historical adventure to understand how capitalist system is established and has been changing through time. We started last week with really the beginning of the settled human communities and tackled their social, spatial, economic and political characteristics. We've looked at Catalhoyuk in Turkey, for instance, as one of the first known urban civilization (which also gave us a chance to look into the very first human made map).

After a brief introduction to the conceptual framework and approach of the course and the story of how first hanger gatherers began to settle down, I took the students for a walking tour in Middelburg. It's always nice when the weather is cooperating. The walk has a couple of purposes. First of all I want the students to learn how to 'observe' the physical built environment and connect it to historical knowledge. I call this 'reading the city' exercise. While walking I talk about certain historical facts of course but the main idea is to show them how to look around and understand the transformations that have been taking place in the city. I introduced some terms and concepts like gentrification, urban regeneration, suburbanization, etc., which will be later on discussed and explored in series of lectures. It's always good to have a visual clue about what we're talking about. Another interesting point about Middelburg is that since it's medieval urban pattern is still very visible, it makes it easy to understand the medieval urban structure as a case study.

The walk helped us in the next lecture for two reasons: First we could easily imagine the 'medieval city' in the case of Middelburg, secondly, we could discuss certain spatial concepts on the basis of our experience in the city. We had a class exercise about map reading, which forced the students to think about certain concepts like 'urban form', 'patterns', 'development zones', and 'land-uses'. We discussed those on the basis of Middelburg map and of course our experiences from the walk have really helped us to visualize these concepts.

In the last lecture we've looked into the transformation from feudalism to merchant capitalism and the impact of this change on the urban settlements. We're now about to start the third week of the semester and next lecture is going to be about the urban dynamics triggered by the transformation from merchant capitalism to industrial capitalism.

See you on Monday!

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok

Associate Professor in Human Geography, Roosevelt Academy, University of Utrecht
Senior Researcher, OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology

t.tasan-kok@roac.nl, m.t.tasan-kok@tudelft.nl

We've made a lot of progress and went through a diversity of topics since you've got acquainted with Henry Ford and his evolutionary 'assembly line' in the beginning of this term. Julien Temple's 'Requiem for Detroit' is a good choice of a (BBC) documentary and definitely deserves for a whole course to be devoted to it. Not a bad start for the economic geography field I guess. You did not only refresh your memory on Fordism but also have met the post-industrial metropolis and its sometimes shocking images. Most of you haven't seen this spectacular documentary and I'm not surprised that you were all impressed by it. I think the lecture on shrinking cities made a lot of sense now too!

From this point on we will hang on to the post-industrial economy and try to understand the dynamics of it and how they changed the city. On Monday we'll talk about the globalism and global production networks within the framework of this new theme and will have two student-led seminars. Can't wait! On Wednesday we're travelling to Antwerp to be welcomed by the Port Authority and colleagues from University of Antwerp and will be given lectures and a fantastic guided tour. I guess, by then you will really get the idea of a port city!

See you at 11:00

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok

Hi

It's been a while! We have been through a lot of topics in the mean time. The rural geography lecture made most of you sleep despite my attempts to keep you awake. Well, not everything has to be so excited in human geography for sure. But hey when we finally come to the rural sociology I had the feeling that the class was waking up (or was it the coffee break?). Anyhow, when we went into a more exciting cultural geography field I noticed that 'sex, drugs, and motorcycles' kept you awake so far...Well just a joke (except for the sex part, which I will clarify below)!

We have had an exciting (and quite wet) field trip to Antwerp, where we were warmly welcomed by OASeS (Center on Inequality, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City) at University of Antwerp. Professor Jan Vranken delivered a fantastic guest lecture on inequalities, social cohesion, and exclusion. I think we all learned a lot on concepts that were too abstract before. I begin to hear you writing and talking about social cohesion after this class, which made me very happy! Professor Stijn Oosterlijnk explained us how a research center such as OASeS works. How do they get funding and conduct research, what is their area of interest, etc. Very informative! Then two OASeS researchers Pieter Cools and Elias Storms gave you an honest presentation of how they conduct their research and what is actually to be a researcher in the field of social geography. I think it was a nice meeting with reality.

Then, with an unfortunate timing to be outside, we took tram 11 to go to Zurenborg to make some observations. The idea was to walk through Dageraadplaats to observe the role of a public square in social cohesion but by then the rain was pouring so bad that we ended up observing the role of a local pub in social cohesion instead. That was fun! Then we made our way to Driekoningenstraat, which houses a lot of ethnic shops, restaurants and cafes and after some observations on this street, which recently won the 'street with a best climate' price of the city, we took the tram back and then I made sure you made your way back to Middelburg on time.

We went deeper into cultural geography with the topics on geography of food, social, ethnic and religious diversity, and multiculturality and had a fantastic guest lecture from Professor Maartin Loopmans of the Catholic University of Leuven on Geography of Sexuality. Well, that woke you up for sure!

Having the mid-term exam behind us and the Spring Break in between, we are now about to explore economic geography topics in the coming weeks, which will involve a field trip to the Port of Antwerp (co-organised by the University of Antwerp and Port of Antwerp).

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok

Geography of food...!

Sounded strange at first isn't it? Geography of food...but it is a very serious field in cultural geography with enormous amounts of research and publications going on. Scholars are busy discussing different aspects of food geography like the political aspects, the health aspects, the life style aspects, the sociology of it, the psychology of it, the governance of it..and yes, it is a fun topic too. Just to give you an idea I copied some sessions from the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New York I was participating last week:

• Advancing debates on sustainable and local food
• Biodiversity and Food in the Context of Development and Climate Change
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 1: Food for Fuel
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 2: Governing Sustainability
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 3: A Technological Fix?
• Critical Geographies of Food in the City: Activism and Community
• Food in the City: Exploring Space, Place, and Taste
• Food security, food sovereignty, & food justice: the Geographies of Food
• FoodMediaPolitics 1: Celebrity Chef Space
• FoodMediaPolitics 2: Production, Consumption, Representation
• Hunger & Food Systems - Urban & Global Perspectives
• Navigating the Geographies of Food: People, Place, Culture, & Power
• New Directions in Political Ecology II: Addressing Food, Agriculture, Well-Being and Rural Livelihoods
• Processes of Globalization in Agri-Food Networks
• Sustainable communities through food systems: Considering urban/rural intersections, challenges and opportunities
• The Political Ecology of Alternative Food Systems
• The Role of Geographers in Promoting Leadership in Environmental Sustainability, Food Security and Health Policy Initiatives in Africa
• Theorizing the Geographies of Food: New Directions and Interventions for Alternative Food Praxis

See what I mean? And this is not all...there were hundreds of presentations in the field of geography of food just in this conference.

From Monday on we will move to other fields of human geography (rural geography first, and then slowly we'll move deeper into cultural geography in the coming weeks).

Have a great weekend!

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok

The age of stupid!

Hi

It was interesting wasn't it to look to the world from this perspective?

Well, it is just one side of the coin of course and a string opinion which is critical on increasing consumerism and unawareness and selfishness of people on upcoming disasters. I like to show this video in my classes because I think it makes an impression and gives us a lot to discuss later on.

While I'm in New York I want you to keep thinking about the terms we briefly discussed: sustainability, resilience and mitigation. I hope you enjoy the Jakarta lecture of Wim Stolte! Don;t hesitate to ask him questions about his experiences, he took part in amazing projects everywhere in the world to help cities prepared for disasters.

See you on 1st of March!

Best
Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok

Ps. Start to understand resilience

Monday we'll discuss a new term, resilience. Please have a look at Carpenter et al (2009) article that I uploaded in workspaces!

Demographic change and environmental challenges

Hi

We're moving towards a new field in human geography: Environmental challenges and societal reflections. Today I focused on the demographic change, using some interesting visual material and statistics. To make it more interesting for you and also for me!

Next week we'll start with world resources and problems facing them. When I attend my annual conference (Association of American Geographers) in New York, you will be guided by an excellent guest lecturer, Mr. Wim Stolte, who has spend all his life living in disaster zones, helping cities to be re-built or getting ready for a disaster. He will share his experiences in Jakarta with you. Meanwhile, weekend is approaching and we will still see each other on Monday.

Looking forward!

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok