Education: Ph.D. in Geography (University of Utah), M.A. in Regional Planning and Development (Jawaharlal Nehru University), B.S. in Geography (University of Calcutta)
The following profile was compiled by Brendan Vander Weil (Texas State University) for the Encoding Geography initiative. To learn more, visit: http://www.ncrge.org/encoding-geography/
Please describe your job, employer, and the primary tasks you perform in your position.
I’m currently responsible for supervising an expanding group of talented statisticians, behavioral health scientists, data analysts and epidemiologists. Together we manage data collection efforts, disseminate various products (reports, publications, briefings, policy documents) and advise behavioral health policies for the administration. The Treatment Services Branch (TSB) is responsible for three major behavioral health data collection and surveillance systems: Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) and Behavioral Health Information Surveillance Systems (BHSIS) and provide all statistical support for Buprenorphine Waiver Notification Systems (BWNS).
Before joining SAMHSA in March 2021, for close to seven years I was working as the statistician and viral hepatitis epidemiologist for DC Department of Health (DOH). I was also part of the COVID-19 Task force for DC from 2020–2021.
How has your education/background in geography prepared you for this position?
Geo-computation, from my understanding, is the “art and science of solving complex geographical (spatial) problems through computation” (Source unknown). I want to take this opportunity to iterate that Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geographical Information Sciences (GISc) are NOT interchangeable. I strongly believe that we as geographers can do a lot more than make maps. This belief has been the central tenet of my career in public service. We can assist decision-making in the most scientific method with our understanding of space and spatial changes over time.
As a graduate student in India (Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)) and the U.S. (University of Utah), I was lucky to have received extensive training as a spatial scientist and demographer. This expanded my understanding of population sciences and geo-computation, which I apply every day in my position to improve health outcomes for people.
What is an example of applying geography concepts and skills in order to analyze and solve problems in your work?
I have several projects that are currently being implemented where I am using geo-computational methodologies, but we will have to wait for them to be released through SAMHSA. For me, it is impossible to resolve mental health and substance abuse disparities and encourage health equity without spatial thinking and geo-computation. SAMHSA (specially CBHSQ) understands that and encourages discussion on applying geo-computation while also supporting and encouraging researchers to use https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/ for analytical and geo-computational purposes, among many other projects.
From my previous position at DC DOH, where I spent close to seven years, I was able to implement several geo-computational projects. I published as much as I could to make sure people knew about administrative data collection and the impact of geo-computation in policy. One project example is DC’s effort to End the HIV Epidemic (EHE).
I was proud to have been an integral part of the EHE implementation with the DC DOH, which has achieved the first of its 90/90/90 goals (https://www.dcendshiv.org/) of 90% of people living with HIV being aware of their HIV status (and now aiming for 95%). We were committed to implementing evidence-based policies to improve care for people living with HIV and create access to prevention and tools to stop new infections.
I used spatial analysis to find high-risk areas that needed immediate attention, resource re-allocation, and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) to reach the EHE goals. I was responsible for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Network Strategy (SNS) to identify new HIV diagnoses for DC.
For M&E, I was responsible for programmatic data collection, program monitoring, evaluating the programs and the outcomes, providing technical support and assisting in resource allocation. I then mapped the outcomes for the community-based organizations (CBOs) for improvements. The project was instrumental to a separate proposal for using geolocation-based applications to identify new HIV diagnoses for states to implement.
What types of geographic questions did you ask and think about in your project?
My questions as a public servant always have a two-tier approach:
In the first tier: What is the impact of my project on the lives of people and what outcome do I want to answer through this project. I restrict my projects to non-exploratory but policy-oriented questions.
In the second tier: My projects span demography, GISc and spatial epidemiology or health geography. I do not have any projects or have been part of any project that does/did not entail extensive statistical/data management-based coding.
What types of data did you acquire to support your project?
I always use administrative data collection for my projects within my role as a public servant. These data collection tools inform policies within the administration. I encourage researchers in academic settings to use them as well. There are several administrative data sets available which can be instrumental in framing accurate questions. I also encourage researchers to read annual reports to understand their needs. SAMHSA has several such data collection efforts which are publicly available through public use files https://www.samhsa.gov/data/
What types of content knowledge and skills (both geographic and more general) did you use to evaluate, process, and analyze the data you gathered for your project?
A large part of my job is to make sure that administrative data is collected without any glitches and plan how to enhance data collection so that it will assist health related policies in the United States. The scope of each ongoing project is different, thus, as a supervisor, my job is to assign it to the appropriate subject matter expert (SME) who would be responsible to evaluate, process and analyze the data.
As for projects that I take interest in, they are ones that have a large spatio-temporal aspect to it or have predictive capacity.
How did you communicate the results of your project (e.g., writing technical reports, making maps and geo-visualizations, creating graphics, data tables, etc.)? Do you have a recent product or publication to share with us as an example?
I have communicated my results to multiple stakeholders, ranging from scientific audiences, panels, political stakeholders, community-based organizations, legal groups, media (including interviews), administrative leaderships, and the public. The communication strategies I use differ based on the audience. I have generated reports, technical documentation, maps for program evaluation for resource allocation, publications, and conference proceedings.
What are the criteria that you use to assess the quality of your results?
I look at the impact of my project on improving health outcomes for people and its scientific validity – in other words, I’m looking at the impact of my results on implementing evidence-based policy.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 2031418, 2031407, and 2031380 (Collaborative Research: Encoding Geography – Scaling up an RPP to achieve inclusive geocomputational education). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation
Regional Councilor Chair Shawn Hutchinson shared the highlights to the regional reports, and he shared the full report electronically with members of the Council. The full reports will be published on the AAG website.
East Lakes
Patrick Lawrence reported that there is uncertain state support and concern for emerging potential policies impacting higher education in Ohio and Michigan. He said there is a need for more engagement with K-12 geography education including the Ohio Geographic Alliance, Advanced Placement (AP), and other high school college credit programs.
Great Plains-Rocky Mountains
Hutchinson reported that the GPRM meeting will be hosted by the University of North Dakota on October 13–14, 2017. Hutchinson noted the expansion of geotechnology (including GIS and UAV) and online programs buoying enrollment for many regional programs, many of whom continue to operate under increasingly challenging budgetary conditions.
Middle Atlantic
The division had no report, but Hutchinson reported that Rebecca Kelly of Johns Hopkins was recently elected regional councilor.
Middle States
Robert Mason highlighted a response to a distressed department: Long Island University, Post Campus, which suspended admissions for the Geography major. Mason said division members are asking how, if at all, do departments respond to the administration travel bans at local and regional levels.
New England/St. Lawrence Valley
John Hayes reported that NESTVAL had a successful meeting on the campus of Bishop’s University during October 14-15, 2016, in Sherbrooke, QC, Canada. The conference theme was “Multi-Scale Climate and Environmental Change.” The upcoming meeting will be hosted by Central Connecticut State University during October 20–21, 2017, in New Britain, CT. The conference theme will be “Geography in the Community.” The annual, peer-reviewed journal of NESTVAL, The Northeastern Geographer, will publish the next two volumes as special issues on Climate Change in the Northeast and Food Geographies of the NESTVAL Region.
Pacific Coast
Sriram Khé reported that the upcoming APCG meeting will be in Chico, CA, during October 25–28, 2017. Hosted by the Department of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico, the conference theme is “Sustainable Communities.” He reported that several new programs have been established within the region including four new undergraduate specializations and three new minors at the University of Nevada Reno and three new programs at the University of Southern California, including an interdisciplinary PhD and MS degrees, and an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor.
Southeastern
Thomas Mote reported that the next SEDAAG meeting will be November 19–21, 2017, in Starkville, MS, with local arrangements handled by Mississippi State University. He reported that departments are being creative and innovative about ways in which they attract students and seek support, with much emphasis placed in online programs, geospatial technologies and environmental-related studies. New undergraduate programs are now being offered, or are being proposed, at the University of Florida, Florida State University, Marshall University, and the University of Georgia. At the graduate level, East Carolina State University now offers a Professional Science Masters in GIS&T, and UNC Charlotte is considering a name change for their Ph.D. degree from “Geography and Urban Regional Analysis” to “Geography.”
Southwest
Darren Purcell reported that the University of North Texas Department of Geography and the Environment was selected as the inaugural winner of the Master’s Program Excellence Award. Additionally, the department will strengthen their international offerings with a China Field School in Summer 2017. He also said the Department of Geography at Oklahoma State University received state approval for a Global Studies BA. A new minor in Global Studies is pending approval. This is the fourth undergraduate program managed by the department, adding to their existing BA and BS in Geography and BS in Geospatial Information Science degree programs.
West Lakes
Julie Cidell reported that the regional meeting was successful despite being in a geographic extreme of the region: Marquette, MI. She reported that departments are trying many different approaches to increase enrollment and/or majors and asked if it would it be useful to do a survey of departments to see what changes have been made in the past 5-10 years and what effect they have had. She said members mentioned that they want the Association to do more in this regard.
Hutchinson reviewed the regional reports in response to the call of the Executive Committee to identify the impact of changes in federal policies. A few regions mentioned the effects of federal policies on their programs, with the federal travel policies raising concerns about international student recruitment. He also mentioned the expressions of appreciation for the Association responses to those policies.
Hutchinson said the common theme among most regions was the effect of state budgets on higher education. Many of the regions’ reports mentioned issues regarding declining undergraduate enrollment, which may be related to online programs, AP credit, and transfer credit from other institutions. Purcell asked whether anyone had provided data about the effect of AP Human Geography, as the effect of the AP exam has been a common concern without supporting data. McAnneny suggested that other AP courses may also play a role. Hutchinson discussed the role of geography as a “discovery major” and the importance of contact in the college level. Cidell said that at the University of Illinois 6% of students took AP Human Geography, and of those students, only 6% enrolled in a geography course at the university. Purcell suggested reaching out to the 200,000 students taking AP Human Geography, as well as the people teaching the course. Bednarz emphasized the importance of creating a pipeline with teachers of AP Human Geography. Alderman talked about reaching out to high school guidance counselors, college and university advisers, and community colleges. Chris Hair mentioned the importance of media and video that explain what students can do with a geography degree. MacDonald said that UCLA uses an open house with community colleges to attract students. Lawrence mentioned the use of the Penn State Geospatial Revolution materials for recruitment plus alumni videos, which have received positive feedback. Richardson commented that he is seeking support from National Geographic to produce promotional videos, but he said it is also worthwhile to determine what is available online that could be used pending permission. He said the media landscape has changed and this may need to be in the form of a social media campaign. Sue Roberts suggested that the Association have a repository of promotional materials that departments produced. Hutchinson mentioned that Kansas State University worked with media professionals in the university to produce brief videos that were targeted to prospective students and their parents.
MacDonald asked that the departmental recruitment effort become an Association priority and suggested that Meridian Place hire someone to help develop media targeted for use by departments seeking to grow enrollment. He said there should be some video presence but the effort should use multiple media platforms. MacDonald said a report to Council regarding progress in this effort should be presented at the Fall 2017 Council meeting. At the annual meeting in New Orleans, he said there should be a session on best practices followed by a document on best practices.
Khé asked about the regional councilor election concerns expressed by Bednarz, particularly in light of the delayed election in one region. Lawrence asked what mechanism is available for expressing concern and offering assistance when regional divisions struggle. The individual regional councilors shared the process for elections in their regions, focusing on nomination processes, eligible voters, timeline, and the form of the election. Richardson shared the rules for electing regional councilors. Bednarz recommended a sub-committee of regional councilors that would examine election processes in each region.
MacDonald stated that Regional Councilors should be elected by AAG members in each regional division, regardless of their regional division membership status.
In the wake of protests for racial justice following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis by police in 2020, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to rename five streets, one in each borough, in honor of the movement. In Manhattan, Black Lives Matter Boulevard was co-named at 1 Centre Street, a block that is home to the city’s Municipal Building, City Hall, and the Department of Education. In addition to these namings, the city funded a Black Lives Matter Mural on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower, a mere five blocks (and six-minute walk) from the AAG’s Hilton Midtown hotel conference center. University of California Berkeley Professor Brandi Thompson Summers has examined Black Lives Matter murals like these around the country, and notes many of them are “visually stunning.” Yet she writes with concern how they “superficially stylize Blackness rather than respond to Black demands for justice” and employ what she calls “Black aesthetic emplacement,” coopting struggles for justice while political and economic elites obscure historic and ongoing structural injustices that hurt communities of color. Indeed, the first Black Lives Matter street painting in New York City was on Fulton Street, in the historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, organized not by city leaders but by a local nonprofit theater and designed and completed by local activists and artists.
Painters of Black Lives Matter mural on Fifth Avenue, New York City. By Anthony Quintano, Flickr. Creative Commons license
Also at 1 Centre Street is the eastern historic extent of the African Burial Ground National Monument, the resting site for the remains of over 15,000 free and enslaved African-American and Black New Yorkers; it was in use from the 1630s through 1795. The visitors’ center at the site, on the ground floor of the Federal building built there in the 1990s, has a section on the extensive activism from that same period, which led to the establishment of the National Monument.
New York City’s efforts to engage its layered history through street renaming is characteristic of efforts around the country in recent years, where geographer and past AAG president Derek Alderman—who has tracked nationwide street renamings to honor Martin Luther King and other Black leaders1—has noted in an interview with Bloomberg City Lab,“a bit of catch-up going on.” Founded on the systematic dispossession of the Indigenous Lenape People, New York City has quite a lot of catching up to do, especially in light of its long history of ties to slavery and the slave trade, repressive violence against Black New Yorkers such as during the 1863 Draft Riots, and systematic Black dispossession and erasure during Title I Urban Renewal and today as residents face eviction and displacement. Indeed – many of the city’s central streets—Houston (pronounced How-ston), Stuyvesant, Delancey, Duane, Mott, and Schermerhorn, to mention but a few—have connections to and profited from the slave trade. Although these street names remain, racial-justice movements are among the key catalysts in contemporary street renamings. We can see these contestations unfold, in various layers, by walking New York City’s named and renamed streets.
New York City has renamed over 1,600 of its streets, parks, plazas, highways, and other public infrastructure, according to retired urban planner Gilbert Tauber.2 In his recent book, Names of New York, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, an American geographer and writer, connects street names with stories of how various populations leave their mark on the city. Writes Jelly-Schapiro in The New York Review of Books: “If landscape is history made visible, the names we call its places are the words we use to forge maps of meaning in the city.”
Leonard Bernstein Place, named by Mayor Dinkins in 1993. Wally Gobetz / Creative Commons License
Types and Forms of NYC Street Renamings
New York City is in a constant state of flux and remaking, with street renamings no exception. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as encroaching colonization overrode the ancestral landscapes and place-names of the Lenape people, and then the succeeding pastoral places of New York like Bloomingdale, functions and landscapes of place were entirely transformed and renamed (to what we know as the Upper West Side, in the case of Bloomingdale).3 Starting in the 20th century, distinctive city procedures evolved for renaming processes, with distinct purposes, politics, and means of recognition.
Co-names (sometimes known as secondary names) for community leaders, as defined by Community Boards, are named for local activists who have passed away. Those outside the neighborhood might not know them, but residents from the area will have appreciation for their work, and these community leaders represent New York City’s diverse populations. For example, consider the portion of Morningside Drive in Manhattan, co-named Marie Runyon Way. Runyon was a tenant activist who fought the wholesale demolition of Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings on her street. Many of Morningside Drive’s SROs have since been demolished, but her legacy remains on this street sign.
Co-names for well-known public figures, by contrast, can boost property values and accelerate processes of dispossession and erasure through place-making and what Bourdieu might refer to as ”distinction.”4Brian Goldstein’s bookRoots of the Urban Renaissance examines the coalition of racially inclusive economic-development boosterism that emerged from initial 1960s’ battles between capitalist developers and radical social movements in Harlem. Rose-Redwood looks at name changes in Harlem including the changes from 125th Street to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in 1984, and from Lenox Avenue/Sixth Avenue to Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987. Note both Goldstein and Rose-Redwood, renaming in Harlem was part of a nationwide movement calling for the cultural recognition of African Americans, even as this movement saw re-naming as a device for economic-development and increasing property values elsewhere in New York City, including on the city’s Upper West Side.
Finally, honorific re-namings might serve as placemaking devices or commemorate city history, even when not named for an individual or institution. This was precisely the impetus for renaming 6th Avenue “Avenue of the Americas” in 1945, to highlight the establishment of the United Nations and the location of its headquarters several avenues east, and as a nod to the Organization of American States. In the context of the World Trade Center, collective memory of trauma and loss loom large in renaming processes across the city that memorialize those lost in 9/11.
Analysis of Renaming and Its Functions in New York City
Lessons emerge from the different types of NYC street renamings and co-namings. First, (1), co-naming rarely replaces the old (and renaming does not always do so, either); the old name often lingers on as a palimpsest. (2) Name changes are often advanced for placemaking and economic-development boosterism. And (3) Name changes can emerge from genuine efforts to foster a more inclusive city, honoring local communities and advocates.
1) renaming as palimpsest
Street renamings – whether co-names, secondary names, or, in some cases, full renamings – do not always fully “replace” the city streets’ original names. Indeed, by contrast, the new names often layer on top of the old. In some cases, residents will continue to refer to streets by their original names, including Harlem residents who say “Lenox” and not “Malcolm X” Boulevard (Google Maps, perhaps an arbiter of authority, recognizes both). With community co-names, there are typically two street signs, one placed atop the other, to designate the simultaneous presence of multiple names. Palimpsests, as scholars like Schein and Bloch discuss, are layered tapestries where the past never disappears but melds or joins with new layers to produce a different image or subjective experience (Schein explores “erasure and over-writing and co-existence” of American suburban landscape imaginaries in the Lexington, KY suburb of Ashland Park, and Bloch considers layers of mural and graffiti art in Los Angeles). Likewise, New York City names have residues informed by residents’ memories and life experiences; they cannot easily be decreed away. Yet just as how “modern” New York and its residents are in constant and rapid flux – experiencing new development, large-scale projects, and displacement – city streets change. That longtime residents in particular sometimes resist name changes speaks to their embodied memories of times before name changes, and community resistance to top-down government or developer tactics (as in section 2, below). Street renamings also speak to residents’ political struggles and activism. As an example, renaming 125th Street in Harlem to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. speaks to the activism and experiences of central Harlem residents, and resident efforts to prevent developer-backed name changes like “South of Harlem,” or SoHa, have largely been successful. General Lee Avenue (named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee), which runs through the Fort Hamilton military base in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has yet to be changed. Yet some renamings do successfully and fully replace former names. The horrific subway wreck on Malbone Street in Brooklyn in 1919 led to the renaming of that street to Empire Boulevard, and with time, the new name stuck. Fully renaming streets may affect memory different than secondary or co-naming actions, as might the conditions under which the renaming takes place (in this case, a tragedy).
2) renaming for profit
As Rose-Redwood explores, renaming numbered streets such as Amsterdam Avenue in the Upper West Side helped cultivate a sense of “place” in the neighborhood, which drove up property values. Such placemaking efforts also explained the city council’s impetus for renaming 6th Avenue “Avenue of the Americas.” Today, apartment-hunting websites like Street Easy are keen to explore street renamings and their roles in city placemaking.
Perhaps even more cynically, we could think of renamings by New York City public officials as small-scale symbolic politics that distract from material politics of inequality and redistribution. The New York City Department of Transportation has comparatively full control over streets, and name changes can be more affordable and less politically controversial “wins” for city leaders than major changes to political economy or democratic representation. Sharine Taylor, writing on the case of Toronto, worries that renamings might even be employed to “quell concerns” by residents demanding more structural material changes.
3) renaming for inclusion
In a city that is majority nonwhite and nearly 37% foreign-born, changing street names can make New York City feel less alienating and more inclusive, especially when streets are co-named for community heroes with local ties. In that frame, and especially when the changes are demanded by local residents, a renaming can be an act of cultural citizenship. Renaming also offers an important opportunity to think about the gender politics of street names in the past and present.5 And importantly, long after name changes are enacted, we are all left with an intricate palimpsest of street names that better reflects the demographic diversity of New York City.
Conclusion
Even in the context of over 1,600 streets, parks, plazas, and highways that have been re-named in just the past 200 years of New York City’s history, we might consider just how many streets have not been renamed. Houston, Stuyvesant, Delancey, Duane, Mott, and Schermerhorn are just some names intimately tied into New York City’s identity that are also associated with Dutch and English settler colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These names are not peripheral to the city’s political geography: Peter Stuyvesant, as one example, enslaved over 40 people and was a renowned bigot, with white supremacist values and a desire to expand slavery across the hemisphere. NYC places continue to bear Stuyvesant’s name: the Stuyvesant Town housing developments, the historically Black (and gentrifying) Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the top-performing Stuyvesant High School.6
A full renaming of problematic New York streets or public infrastructure is not possible or likely. Instead, they present New Yorkers and visitors an opportunity to examine the city’s origins, which reveal how racism, genocidal projects against Indigenous Peoples, and the slave trade played major roles in structuring the city and its place-making. Yet street renamings also reveal efforts by city residents and elected officials to create a more just city and built environment, adding to that history. When in town for the 2022 AAG Annual Meeting, come discover the contradictions and narratives of New York City’s many streets and places for yourself.
Stefan Norgaard is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University and a member of the AAG2022 Arrangements Committee. The author would like to thank his colleagues on the committee, Tamar Y. Rothenberg, Professor and Chair of theDepartment of History at Bronx Community College-CUNY; and Jason B. Greenberg, Professor of Geography at Sullivan University, for their reading and suggestions for this article.
Footnotes
1“Street names and the scaling of memory: the politics of commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr within the African American community,” Area 35(2): 163–173).
2 For a map showing the long churn of renaming in New York since the colony was founded, see Constantine Valhouli’smap of early place names.
3 The story of the Bloomingdale district is related to the 1811 Commissioners’ street grid plan and the eventual development of Manhattan and 125th St. Thus, renamings erased the informal farm-and-estate community when development crept north.
4Indeed, notes Rose-Redwood (2008) in his article “From Number to Name: Symbolic Capital, Placesof Memory and the Politics of Street Renaming in New York City”: street (re)-naming can advance an “elite project of symbolic erasure and forced eviction, on the one hand, and the cultural recognition of a historically marginalized group, on the other” (438).
5 There is a nascent, yet growing interest in scholarly literature at the intersection of street naming and gendering the urban streetscape. Scholars and activists in recent years are exploringefforts at naming more streets after women. Bigon and Zuvalinyenga offer a review of such efforts in Global South city streets, and Rose-Redwood in his article “Number to Name” considers the NYC-specific example of Mary McLeod Bethune Place.
6Stuyvesant Town was built over demolished gas tanks in what was called the Gas House District (now there’s a renaming for development reasons!) in a public-private partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance. The complex was offered as affordable housing for returning WWII veterans and their families and has its own racist history, as African-Americans were barred from renting there; activists sued, and lost. Bedford-Stuyvesant slightly overlaps the northern extent of Weeksville, a village of free Black property owners founded in the 1830s that is mostly in Crown Heights, but with overlap. 3. Stuyvesant High School, established 1904, is one of NYC’s so-called specialized public high schools, and requires an extremely competitive entrance test; this policy is very controversial, as very few Black students qualify for admission, and the percentage is declining.
NEW YORK CITY PLANS: A BRIEF BACKGROUND Two massive planning efforts in New York during the 19th and 20th century framed the direction for the city’s intensive development during the next two centuries. First, New York’s 1811 street grid plan mapped out Manhattan’s transformation from mostly bucolic field and farmland to rapidly growing city. Among other things, the grid plan established Manhattan’s system of numbered streets and avenues from south to north. Coming about 100 years later, “the insane 1915 renumbering system in Queens,” says AAG member, geographer, and historian Tamar Rothenberg, “was intended to create borough-wide order from the independently developed merged towns and villages of Queens and Brooklyn,” the two western boroughs/counties on Long Island that were incorporated into New York City in 1898. By that time, the City of Brooklyn had already incorporated all of Kings County, but Queens was still a county of separate cities, towns, and villages. Rothenberg says, “There are some funny takes on how that plays out today,” and recommends this overview from 2000 in the New York Times. —compiled with information provided by Tamar Rothenberg
For further reading, consider:
Names of New York, by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Penguin Random House, 2021).
When I taught my Geography of China class in fall 2019, I had a student from the PRC whom I remember as being particularly open-minded and eager to learn. One day, after I lectured about the massive Hong Kong protests for universal suffrage and the principle of one-person one-vote that were occurring, he asked, nonplussed, “Why do they care so much about one-person one-vote? What’s the big deal? Why bother protesting for that?” He was genuinely curious about what could motivate so many people to expend so much effort on something that didn’t seem to him to be much preferable to the alternative. I explained the benefits of representative and liberal democracy, accountability of one’s elected officials, and the importance of citizens having a real voice in governance, but I could see the skepticism from him and other international students about what US democracy was looking like to the rest of the world.
There’s also a slightly different way to interpret his question: why were the people of Hong Kong struggling so hard for an ideal that has proven elusive even for the world’s self-proclaimed champion of democracy? Consider the first meaning of “one-person one-vote” – universal suffrage. Aside from the obvious fact that voting in the US was originally limited to only white men with property, this year has seen an unprecedented wave of over four hundred voter suppression bills introduced in state legislatures across the country. Georgia has notoriously made it illegal for anyone other than a poll worker to give food or water to anyone waiting in line to vote, disproportionately affecting minority communities where wait times are very long and barriers to voting formidable. Other bills make it more difficult to register, establish strict photo ID laws, and limit access to voting by restricting mail-in ballots, absentee ballots, early voting, number of polling sites, and hours polling sites are open. These and other measures disproportionately affect people of color, the elderly, and those with disabilities. In one 2016 inspection, nearly two-thirds of polling places had at least one impediment for those with disabilities, up from less than one-half in 2008. Many Native Americans who live on reservations do not have traditional street addresses, causing their voter registration applications to be rejected; furthermore, because of increasing limits on polling sites and drop boxes, some Native Americans have had to drive up to 150 miles in order to vote.
Beyond these obstacles to voting access that belie the idea of universal suffrage, however, there is also a second meaning to “one-person one-vote”: the principle that any one person’s voting power should be roughly equivalent to another’s. Representation in the US Senate does not adhere to this principle (nor the Electoral College for the selection of the president): a voter in rural Vermont effectively has sixty times the clout of a voter in California. The House of Representatives, though, is supposed to be the people’s house, with representation proportional to the population (though every state must have at least one representative). It is for this reason that there is a decennial census, in order to apportion Congressional representatives based on population change. Since the number of House seats was frozen at 435 by an act of Congress in 1929, reapportionment has meant the movement of Congressional seats from slow-growing to faster-growing states. Recent scholarship in political geography suggests that this process has disadvantaged lower income, less educated, and minority populations. The findings of the 2020 Census, delayed due to the pandemic, have resulted in seven states losing one seat each, five states gaining one seat each, and Texas gaining two seats.
After reapportionment comes redistricting: the drawing of electoral district boundaries for Congressional districts as well as state legislatures. The Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment dictate that in any given state, congressional districts and state legislative districts must have equal populations. Redistricting must also follow the Voting Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race (though it has been substantially gutted by 2013 and 2021 Supreme Court decisions). Beyond this, however, the actual drawing of districts is up to each state. Common criteria for districts, adopted by many states, include geographic compactness, contiguity, preservation of communities of interest, preservation of counties or other political subdivisions, and competitiveness.
Fair redistricting is indispensable to a healthy democratic republic. But what exactly is fair? This turns out to be a rather difficult question; it is much easier to see when things are blatantly not fair – when they don’t adhere to one-person one-vote in the second sense of equal representation. Gerrymandering is the term used to describe a configuration where district boundaries give unfair advantages to an incumbent, a political party (partisan gerrymandering), or another group. The portmanteau was coined in 1812 after a governor named Gerry signed into law a redistricting plan which looked like a salamander and was designed to keep his political party in power. Partisan gerrymandering has a long history in the US, with two of its most common tactics being “cracking” and “packing.” Cracking refers to spreading members of a political or ethnic/racial minority into many districts to ensure they cannot elect a representative of their choice, while packing is the concentration of voters of one type into one district, to reduce their overall influence. Although the strategies seem plain enough, interpretations can be contested in practice. In particular, in the 1990s, a wave of majority-minority districts was created to prevent or reverse racial discrimination caused by earlier gerrymandering. But these attempts to prevent cracking minority representation were seen by others as a form of packing.
Since the 1960s, there has been increasing litigation as well as citizen attention to the often highly partisan results of redistricting. One response has been the creation of Independent Redistricting Commissions (IRCs) to either oversee or delineate congressional and legislative boundaries. In addition, many states, regardless of whether they have IRCs, have opportunities for public comment and testimony, public hearings, public map submissions, and citizen review.
Here is where geographers come in – or, at least, should. After all, there are few things as geographical as the drawing of maps. Yet, though there continues to be research on electoral geography (for example see recent articles by Webster, Forest, and Rossiter et al.), most research on redistricting has been done by political scientists, mathematicians and lawyers. Even more relevant here is the fact that geographers have by and large been absent from the current redistricting process underway across the US. This is no doubt due in part to the fact that each state has a different process, making it harder to identify opportunities to get involved. It is for this reason that AAG is launching a virtual Redistricting Panel Series this month to equip geographers with the tools and knowledge to take action in their home states as district maps are redrawn. There will be panels for up to 15 states this month, organized by geographers and hosted on AAG’s virtual platform. Anyone is welcome to register for a panel, which will focus on the redistricting process of that particular state, how geographers can get involved, and why geospatial thinking is indispensable to the effort to create fair outcomes.
My own participation in a recent public hearing of the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission confirmed just how relevant geographical considerations are – for example, in defining “communities of interest.” Preliminary maps had put several small mountain towns in western Boulder County into a large district that crossed county lines and was comprised of many mountain areas. In this version of redistricting, mountain towns tied to the ski industry were treated as a community of interest. But many at the hearing argued that in fact the more relevant community of interest is the watershed. “Everything flows downhill” said one participant: residents of the mountain towns come downhill for schools and jobs, much as the water in the reservoir flows east down to larger population centers. Others argued about the donut shape that the city of Boulder had been divided into for a state house district, suggesting that this split a community of interest that has developed around the issue of affordable housing. Others still argued that, given their concern about the health and environmental impacts of fracking, they should not be placed in a district with a majority pro-fracking and anti-regulation population. An exasperated IRC member asked several times how the speakers would draw the lines instead, given the requirements of equal population. A former county commissioner sympathized with the IRC, acknowledging the difficulty of their task: “One person’s ‘gerry’,” he noted, “is another person’s ‘mander.’”
I hope that AAG’s Redistricting Panel Series will inspire geographers to get involved, contributing their geospatial expertise and sensibilities to these extraordinarily important, and difficult, tasks. To see panels and register, visit this link.
Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at emily [dot] yeh [at] colorado [dot] edu to enable a constructive discussion.
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Moving Forward on Climate Change and Professional Ethics
A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at 419 ppm, have now reached 150% of their pre-industrial levels – the highest in more than four million years, when sea levels were about 24 meters higher, the global average surface temperature almost 4ºC warmer than today, and the first modern humans had more than three million years yet to appear on earth. The world-historical COVID-19 pandemic, still wreaking havoc across the mostly unvaccinated globe, temporarily decreased emissions, but not enough to be detectable in rising atmospheric CO2 levels. NOAA has recently defined new “normal” temperatures that are significantly higher than those in the past.
As I write, a hazardous and extreme heat wave has gripped the Southwestern US, stretching power grids to their limits and threatening heat deaths. The entire Western United States is also in the throes of a severe drought that is expected to last all summer. Indeed, global warming has contributed significantly to changing what would have otherwise been a moderate drought in the Southwestern US into a megadrought worse than has been seen for almost a millennium. This year, drought is predicted to lead to another ruinous, record-breaking fire season, on the heels of nightmarish 2020 fire season in the Western US – and around the world. It is also affecting access to safe drinking water and forcing farmers to make difficult decisions about what crops to keep, which will likely lead to higher food prices.
None of this is news to geographers, so why start my first column as AAG president with a reminder of the ongoing climate devastation? There are several reasons, beyond my embodied experience of consecutive days of record-shattering heat in my home state of Colorado. (These days, my kids and I have taken to sleeping in a tent on our back porch – itself a privilege.) First, geographers have been at the forefront of research on climate change, adaptation, resilience, and climate justice, but our research as geographers is often not acknowledged in the press or known to the public; this is relevant to the visibility, and ultimately health, of the discipline. Second, climate change is one of four primary policy campaigns that AAG will be undertaking over the next 1-2 years. Through the release of the new AAG website, expected later in 2021, geographers will be able to more easily engage with legislation and policy related to climate change.
Third, I want to use this opportunity to highlight the work of the Climate Action Task Force, which has been led by Professor Wendy Jepson and which I joined in 2020. As a reminder, this task force was formed by Council to undertake the task of realizing the goals of a 2019 member petition: to reduce CO2 emissions related to the Annual Meeting commensurate with what the IPCC states is needed to limit warming to 1.5 C — that is, a 45% reduction (from 2010 levels) by 2030. In doing so, the Task Force is seeking ways to position AAG as a leader and model of how large organizations can respond to climate change in a manner that both meets the needs of their members and is environmentally and socially just.
A 45% reduction is not a trivial change; it’s not a tweak around the margins of business as usual. Achieving this goal would mean a radical transformation in how the AAG stays financially solvent, and perhaps how we form our identities as geographers. As such, AAG can only move forward through extensive member participation and dialogue about what this means and how we might get from here to there. These conversations have already begun. At the virtual meeting this spring, the Task Force hosted a collaborative keynote panel of anthropologists who shared their creative and inspiring reflections and experiences on climate-friendly and accessible conferencing, as well as two roundtables of dialogue amongst geographers representing different types of institutions, career stages, and social identities to consider the meaning of annual in-person meetings to their careers, and share ideas for future formats that would be less carbon intensive and yet meet geographers’ needs.
Going forward, The Professional Geographer will soon publish a Focus Section that presents a variety of perspectives on low-carbon annual meetings. The Climate Action Task Force is looking forward to community commentary on these contributions and further brainstorming through the new AAG website. Looking down the road, AAG will also be performing a financial analysis of different future meeting models, working collaboratively with the AAG Regions on a climate-forward initiative, encouraging the formation of meeting nodes, and further soliciting all members’ input through a survey. I will revisit these important issues in future columns.
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If AAG action on climate change has seemed a long time coming to some members, so too has an update of the AAG Statement on Professional Ethics, last revised more than a decade ago, in 2009, long before the implementation of the Professional Conduct Policy. Indeed, graduate students have recently argued that it is outdated, too long, confusing, and falls short of providing clear guidance, especially compared to those of other scholarly organizations. I am happy to share, therefore, that at its Spring 2021 meeting, AAG Council unanimously approved a revised Statement on Professional Ethics, which can be accessed here. AAG will soon make it readily available for review whenever a member joins or renews, and during the Annual Meeting registration process.
The impetus for this came from the report of the AAG Geography and Military Study Committee, which was formed in 2017 by AAG Council in response to a member petition calling on the AAG to study the engagement of Geography with US military and intelligence communities vis-à-vis safety, labor demand, curriculum, academic freedom, and ethics, and to offer concrete recommendations based on its report. Both the Report and the timing of the resulting process have subsequently been subject to critique. What I want to focus on here, though, are several of the Report’s recommendations that Council voted in Fall 2020 to accept, including:
Revise the AAG code of ethics statement and policy as it relates to the ethical issues that may arise from military-funded research. This should include comparing the AAG statement (current and proposed) with the codes of ethics related to research developed by other disciplines such as the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) as well as the Department of Defense (DoD) statement of ethics as it relates to research.
and
Update and revise the AAG Statement on Professional Ethics (every few years). With new and revised updates, encourage members of the association to read them as part of the membership renewal and meeting registration processes.
In response to this Report, Council also approved the formation of an implementation committee, which I chaired, to update the ethics statement.
The committee began its work by consulting other professional organizations’ statements of ethics and, based on those models, revised the 2009 Statement to focus on practical and easily memorable principles and actions. The committee also integrated references to the 2020 Professional Conduct Policy, removed discussion of issues regulated elsewhere (such as regarding the confidentiality of student grades), updated the language regarding new technologies, and explicitly mentioned the ethics of geographers’ engagements with the military, intelligence, security, policing and warfare where specifically relevant, but with an eye toward a Statement broad enough to cover all ethical obligations. It was a significant undertaking conducted over a short period of time, and I want to sincerely thank the committee members for putting in so much, and such thoughtful, time and effort to this task: Council member Richard Kujawa (Saint Michael’s College), Sue Roberts (UKY), Reuben Rose-Redwood (UVic), and former AAG president Eric Sheppard (UCLA).
Of course, no Statement of Ethics is ever final or perfect, especially as ethics themselves are not a matter that can be settled once and for all. Thus, the AAG should become proactively engaged with the question of ethics, on an ongoing basis. This is already starting to happen, not only with plans for Council to revisit and update the Statement every three years, but also with the ongoing GeoEthics Webinar Series, a partnership between AAG, Esri, and the Center for Spatial Studies at UC-Santa Barbara. Once the AAG’s new website is up and running, we hope to offer a list of links and publications on ethics and geography, and provide a space for feedback for all AAG members, including reactions to the Ethics statement, additional resources, and other discussion.
If ethics are, in part, about doing no harm, then a commitment to act to reduce the future harms of climate change is one in accordance with our stated ethical principles. I also want to point out that both the new Statement on Professional Ethics and the work of the Climate Change Task Force are ultimately the results of member petitions to Council. Both petitions have sparked concrete actions that are moving the AAG forward in a positive direction toward addressing the pressing challenges facing the earth and its peoples in the 21st century.
Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at emily [dot] yeh [at] colorado [dot] edu to enable a constructive discussion.
The AAG is pleased to announce the recipients of the three 2020 AAG Book Awards: the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, the AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, and the AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography. The AAG Book Awards mark distinguished and outstanding works published by geography authors during the previous year, 2020. The awardees will be formally recognized at a future event when it is safe to do so.
The John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize
This award encourages and rewards American geographers who write books about the United States which convey the insights of professional geography in language that is both interesting and attractive to lay readers. Adam Mandelman, The Place with No Edge: An Intimate History of People, Technology, and the Mississippi River Delta (LSU Press, 2020)
Adam Mandelman’s The Place with No Edge: An Intimate History of People, Technology, and the Mississippi River Delta offers an engagingly written interpretation of one of North America’s most unique cultural landscapes. Probing the environmental history of the lower Mississippi Delta, Mandelman reveals the intimate interplay of people, technology, politics, land, and water in a setting that for centuries has challenged and frustrated Euro-Americans. What he discovers is a rich story of how humans modified the delta environment as sugar cane farmers, rice producers, timber harvesters, oil drillers, and petrochemical manufacturers dramatically transformed the regional landscape. He documents how the technologies they utilized actually brought the Delta’s culturally diverse peoples into more intimate, interdependent relationships with their complex natural setting.
Rejecting the simple argument that this was merely another example of people destroying an environment they did not understand, Mandelman encourages us to appreciate the complexity of that human-land relationship. He argues that people need to look more closely at the interplay of technology and nature and to responsibly intervene in respectful ways where possible.
Mandelman’s nuanced narrative explains why this is so important and he suggests how it is necessary to understand and make sustainable this exotic setting for the people, plants, and animals that call it home. Mandelman’s work is indeed an excellent example of the kind of geographical research and writing recognized by the AAG John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize.
The AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography
This award is given for a book written or co-authored by a geographer that conveys most powerfully the nature and importance of geography to the non-academic world.
Alison Mountz,The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Alison Mountz’s monograph The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago is an important, timely and critical intervention in debates over the deadly curtailment of refugee rights globally.
By carefully charting the hidden geographies in which forced migrants are increasingly detained, Mountz provides a clear account of how contemporary states are using territory and off-shore management sites to deny access to asylum. While drawing on sophisticated geographical theories in its analysis of these deadly developments, the book is never intimidating. It is certainly sobering and overwhelming at moments, but by drawing readers in with compelling and sometimes surprising stories it remains at once accessible and alluring. It shows how a wide array of works by other geographers – from scholars of migration and borders to theorists of geopolitics, precarity and spaces of exception – can help us and a wider public come to terms with the practical death of asylum as a human right.
By thereby connecting the fates of real human beings with the construction of spaces where being human is repeatedly denied to the point of death, the book also invites readers to reflect deeply on how their own human geographies are bound up with those of others deemed illegal and unwanted. It is an urgent indictment of our times, but also of the intersecting territories of sovereignty and security in which borders demarcate belonging with such deadly consequence.
The AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
This award is given for a book written by a geographer that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography.
Chie Sakakibara, Whale Snow (University of Arizona Press, 2020)
In Whale Snow, Chie Sakakibara pioneers a vision of surviving humankind and kin safely segueing a conjoined path in the future. On the frontier between tundra and ocean, she engaged in the kind of years-long fieldwork that exemplary geographers have pursued for generations in an effort to understand the why of where. Recognizing that whales and whaling remain integral to Inupiat lifeways, despite the onslaught of globalization and climate change, her work explores and elucidates the significance of bowhead whales to the persistence of Inupiaq culture and community.
This book offers a rare, qualified, and yet substantiated optimism to readers around the world. Hers is a vision of “being in a togetherness” that perseveres against myriad adversities on the near horizon, and that can continue to do so far into the future. This research is exemplary in its
sustained commitment to the community. It demonstrates the best of embedded, ethically-driven, and collaborative knowledge production. Those who seek, through their own studies with diverse cultural communities of practice, to overcome – as do the whaling Inupiat of Alaskan North Slope Borough, in unity with their animal kin — the existential threats of our unprecedented and contingent present will be inspired and transformed by reading this book.
In so many ways, Whale Snow epitomizes the essence of geography as an art, science, method, literary practice, and a way of understanding and relating to the world.
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