Routledge Studies in Human Geography – serie

This book explores an innovative set of critical narratives, accounts and engagements by different authors about their professional mobility and how that relates to the discipline and their life experiences.Human Geography and Professional Mobility seeks to encourage, influence, and help students understand geographic concepts based on critical reflections, international experiences, and practical insight laid out in stories of real people, real geographers, and real college faculty, that students can relate to. This volume is less theoretical and more personal insight-based, wherein first-hand and personal accounts of practical experiences are explored, which renders the text supplementary reading for human geography, population geography, world geography, and migration/mobility classes. With critical navigation of spaces in response to several geographical questions, this book offers a novel perspective on professional mobility of geographers which will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of geography, tourism, sociology, and anthropology.

This book brings together research working at the boundary between design knowledges and mobilities, offering a novel collection for both theorists and practitioners. Drawing upon detailed case studies, it demonstrates the diverse roles of design in shaping mobility at different spaces and scales: across cities; within different types of buildings and infrastructures; and through commuting, work and leisure activities.A range of international scholars illustrate the designed mobilities of car parks, traffic lights, street benches, pedestrian wayfinding systems and accessible design in the urban environment; they examine spaces within hospitals, airports and train stations and investigate design practices for bicycles, future urban vehicles and MotoGP motorcycle racing. Other contributions explore overlooked mobile artefacts such as television and video game remote controls, 3D printing and the types of packaging which enable objects themselves to move around. This book demonstrates how the tools, assumptions and processes of design shape spaces of mobility, and also illuminates how shifts in the fluidity and circulation of people, practices and materials in turn reconfigure practices of design. Mobilising Design develops multi-disciplinary understandings of design, drawing upon diverse literatures including design history, product design, architecture and cultural geography. By highlighting often invisible artefacts and associated knowledges and controversies, the book foregrounds the taken-for-granted ways in which everyday mobility is designed. It will be of interest to scholars in geography, sociology, economic history, architecture, design and urban theory.

Socio-environmental crises are currently transforming the conditions for life on this planet, from climate change, to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term pollutants. The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the ‘ecologicalisation’ of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed ‘more-than-human’ framework to grasp these complexities and challenges. It contains multidisciplinary insights and diverse methodological approaches to question how to revise, reshape and invent methods in order to work with non-humans in participatory ways. The book offers a framework for thinking critically about the promises and potentialities of participation from within a more-than-human paradigm, and opens up trajectories for its future development. It will be of interest to those working in the environmental humanities, animal studies, science and technology studies, ecology, and anthropology.

In many countries, particularly in the Global North, established forms of solidarity within communities are said to be challenged by the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of the population. Against the backdrop of renewed geopolitical tensions – which inflate and exploit ethno-cultural, rather than political-economic cleavages – concerns are raised that ethnic and cultural diversity challenge both the formal mechanisms of redistribution and informal acts of charity, reciprocity and support which underpin common notions of community.This book focuses on the innovative forms of solidarity that develop around the joint appropriation and the envisaged common future of specific places. Drawing on examples from schools, streets, community centres, workplaces, churches, housing projects and sporting projects, it provides an alternative research agenda from the 'loss of community' narrative. It reflects on the different spatiotemporal frames in which solidarities are nurtured, the connections forged between solidarity and citizenship, and the role of interventions by professionals to nurture solidarity in diversity.This timely and original work will be essential reading for those working in human geography, sociology, ethnic studies, social work, urban studies, political studies and cultural studies.

This book advances our understanding of resource-dependent regions in developed economies in the 21st Century. It explores how rural and small town places are working to find success in a new economy marked by demographic, economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental change. How are we to understand the changes and transformations working through communities and economies? Where are the trajectories of change leading these resource-dependent places and regions? Drawing upon examples from Canada, USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Nordic countries, these and other questions are explored and addressed by constructing a critical political economy framework of resource hinterland transition. Towards a Political Economy of Resource Dependent Regions is a key resource for students and researchers in geography, rural and industrial sociology, economics, environmental studies, political science, regional studies, and planning, as well as policy-makers, those in industry and the private sector, and local and regional development practitioners.

The financial malaise that has affected the Eurozone countries of southern Europe – Spain, Portugal, Italy and, in its most extreme case, Greece – has been analysed using mainly macroeconomic and financial explanations. This book shifts the emphasis from macroeconomics to the relationship between uneven geographical development, financialisation and politics. It deconstructs the myth that debt, both public and private, in Southern Europe is the sole outcome of the spendthrift ways of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, offering a fresh perspective on the material, social and ideological parameters of the economic crisis and the spaces where it unfolded.Featuring a range of case examples that complement and expand the main discussion, Crisis Spaces will appeal to students and scholars of human geography, economics, regional development, political science, cultural studies and social movements studies.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on the internet, emphasizing its spatial dimensions, geospatial applications, and the numerous social and geographic implications such as the digital divide and the mobile internet.Written by leading scholars in the field, the book sheds light on the origins and the multiple facets of the internet. It addresses the various definitions of cyberspace and the rise of the World Wide Web, draws upon media theory, as well as explores the physical infrastructure such as the global skein of fibre optics networks and broadband connectivity. Several economic dimensions, such as e-commerce, e-tailing, e-finance, e-government, and e-tourism, are also explored. Apart from its most common uses such as Google Earth, social media like Twitter, and neogeography, this volume also presents the internet’s novel uses for ethnographic research and the study of digital diasporas.Illustrated with numerous graphics, maps, and charts, the book will best serve as supplementary reading for academics, students, researchers, and as a professional handbook for policy makers involved in communications, media, retailing, and economic development.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on the internet, emphasizing its spatial dimensions, geospatial applications, and the numerous social and geographic implications such as the digital divide and the mobile internet.Written by leading scholars in the field, the book sheds light on the origins and the multiple facets of the internet. It addresses the various definitions of cyberspace and the rise of the World Wide Web, draws upon media theory, as well as explores the physical infrastructure such as the global skein of fibre optics networks and broadband connectivity. Several economic dimensions, such as e-commerce, e-tailing, e-finance, e-government, and e-tourism, are also explored. Apart from its most common uses such as Google Earth, social media like Twitter, and neogeography, this volume also presents the internet’s novel uses for ethnographic research and the study of digital diasporas.Illustrated with numerous graphics, maps, and charts, the book will best serve as supplementary reading for academics, students, researchers, and as a professional handbook for policy makers involved in communications, media, retailing, and economic development.

Globalization has, essentially, come to an end. It is, already, a victorious revolution. It has profoundly restructured the relationships between people and the world, often recreating them in a new geographical image.This book discovers and describes these relationships of new geographies, providing a comprehensive spatial guide to the globalized world of the 21st century. It considers a number of timely and important themes and insights for the present and future world, exploring topics such as population trends and migration; development, the urban; transportation; religion; our endangered planet; wars, conflicts and terrorism, and disease. As such it offers a cross-cutting synthesis of the modern world. It will be of interest to students and researches in humanities and social sciences, including geographers, economists, political scientists and IR specialists.

The book explores the implications that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. It examines the effects that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. By weaving together experiences from a variety of countries and across disciplinary boundaries and research methods, the volume outlines the roots of over-research, where it comes from and what can be done about it. The book will be useful for social science students and researchers working in ethnographic disciplines such as Human Geography, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Sociology and seeking to navigate the tricky ‘absent present’ of already existing research on their fields of exploration.

The book explores the implications that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. It examines the effects that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. By weaving together experiences from a variety of countries and across disciplinary boundaries and research methods, the volume outlines the roots of over-research, where it comes from and what can be done about it. The book will be useful for social science students and researchers working in ethnographic disciplines such as Human Geography, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Sociology and seeking to navigate the tricky ‘absent present’ of already existing research on their fields of exploration.

Around 5.6 million British nationals live outside the United Kingdom: the equivalent of one in every ten Britons. However, social science research, as well as public interest, has tended to focus more on the numbers of migrants entering the UK, rather than those leaving.This book provides an important counterbalance, drawing on the latest empirical research and theoretical developments to offer a fascinating account of the lives, experiences and identities of British migrants living in a wide range of geographic locations across Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia. This collection asks: What is the shape and significance of contemporary British migration? Who are today’s British migrants and how might we understand their everyday lives? Contributions uncover important questions in the context of global and national debates about the nature of citizenships, the ‘Brexit’ vote, deliberations surrounding mobility and freedom of movement, as well as national, racial and ethnic boundaries.This book challenges conventional wisdoms about migration and enables new understandings about British migrants, their relations to historical privileges, international relations and sense of national identity. It will be valuable core reading to researchers and students across disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, Politics and International Relations.

Human beings are grieving animals. ‘Consolation’, or an attempt to assuage grief, is an age-old response to loss which has various expressions in different cultural contexts. Over the past century, consolation has dropped off the West’s cultural radar. The contributions to this volume highlight this neglect of consolation in popular and academic discourses and explore the usefulness of the concept of consolation for analysing spatio-temporal constellations. Consolationscapes in the Face of Loss brings together scholars from geography, philosophy, history, anthropology and religious studies. The chapters use spatial and conceptual mappings of grief and consolation to analyse a range of spaces and phenomena around grief, bereavement and remembrance, comfort and resilience, including battlefield memorials, crematoria, graveyards and natural burial sites in Europe. Authors shift the discussion beyond the Global North by including responses to traumatic grief in post-conflict African societies, as well as Australian Aboriginal traditions of ritual consolation. The book focuses on the relationship between space/place and consolation. In so doing, it offers a new lens for research on death, grief and bereavement. It offers new insights for students and researchers interrogating contemporary bereavement, as well as those interested in meaning-making, emerging socio-cultural practices and their role in personal and collective resilience.

Since the economic and financial crisis of 2008, the proportion of unemployed young people has exceeded any other group of unemployed adults. This phenomenon marks the emergence of a laborscape. This concept recognizes that, although youth unemployment is not consistent across the world, it is a coherent problem in the global political economy.This book examines this crisis of youth unemployment, drawing on international case studies. It is organized around four key dimensions of the crisis: precarity, flexibility, migration, and policy responses. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the chapters offer a dynamic portrait of unemployment and how this is being challenged through new modes of resistance. This book provides cross-national comparisons, both ethnographic and quantitative, to explore the contours of this laborscape on the global, national, and local scales. Throughout these varied case studies is a common narrative from young workers, families, students, volunteers, and activists facing a new and growing problem.This book will be an imperative resource for students and researchers looking at the sociology of globalization, global political economy, labor markets, and economic geography.

Time-geography is a mode of thinking that helps in the understanding of change in society, the wider context and ecological consequences of human actions. This book presents its assumptions, concepts and methods, and example applications. The intellectual path of the Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand is a key foundation for this book. His research contributions are shown in the context of the urbanization of Sweden, involvement in the emerging planning sector and empirical studies on Swedish emigration. Migration and innovation diffusion studies paved the way for prioritizing time and space dimensions and recognizing time and space as unity. From these insights time-geography grew. This book includes the ontological grounds and concepts as well as the specific notation system of time-geography – a visual language for interdisciplinary research and communication. Applications are divided into themes: urban and regional planning; transportation and communication; organization of production and work; everyday life, wellbeing and household division of labor; and ecological sustainability – time-geographic studies on resource use. This book looks at the outlook for this developing branch of research and the future application of time-geography to societal and academic contexts. Its interdisciplinary nature will be appealing to postgraduates and researchers who are interested in human geography, urban and regional planning and sociology.

The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea. This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and beyond academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.

This book makes a significant contribution to the history of placemaking, presenting grassroots to top-down practices and socially engaged, situated artistic practices and artsled spatial inquiry that go beyond instrumentalising the arts for development. The book brings together a range of scholars to critique and deconstruct the notion of creative placemaking, presenting diverse case studies from researcher, practitioner, funder and policymaker perspectives from across the globe. It opens with the creators of the 2010 White Paper that named and defined creative placemaking, Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, who offer a cortically reflexive narrative on the founding of the sector and its development. This book looks at vernacular creativity in place, a topic continued through the book with its focus on the practitioner and community-placed projects. It closes with a consideration of aesthetics, metrics and, from the editors, a consideration of the next ten years for the sector.If creative placemaking is to contribute to places-in-the-making and encourage citizenled agency, new conceptual frameworks and practical methodologies are required. This book joins theorists and practitioners in dialogue, advocating for transdisciplinary, resilient processes.

Time-geography is a mode of thinking that helps us understand change processes in society, the wider context and the ecological consequences of human actions. This book brings together international time-geographic research from a range of disciplines. Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand is a key foundation for this book, and an introductory biography charts the influences that led to the formation of his theories. A central theme across time-geography research is recognizing time and space as unity. Contributions from the Netherlands, the USA, Japan, China, Norway and Sweden showcase the diverse palette of time-geography research. Chapters study societies adjusting to rapid urbanization, or investigate the need for structural changes in childcare organization. The book also delves into green transportation and the interplay between humans and nature in landscape transformation. Applicational chapters look at ICT effects on young people’s daily life and methods for engaging clients in treatment practice.This book situates the outlook for this developing branch of research and the application of time-geography to societal and academic contexts. Its interdisciplinary nature will appeal to postgraduates and researchers who are interested in human geography, urban and regional planning and sociology.

This book examines geographical names, place-names, and toponymy from philosophical and cultural evolutionary perspectives. Geographical name-tracking-networks (Geo-NTNs) are posited as tools for tracking names through time and across space, and for making sense of how names evolve both temporally and spatially. Examples from North and South American indigenous groups, the Canadian arctic, Wales, England, and the Middle East are brought into a theoretical framework for making sense of aspects of place-naming practices, beliefs, and systems. New geographical tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) are demonstrated to be important in the production and maintenance of robust networks for keeping names and their associated meanings viable in a rapidly changing world where place-naming is being taken up increasingly in social media and other new mapping platforms. The Geography of Names makes the case that geographical names are transmitted memetically (i.e. as cultural units, or memes) through what Saul Kripke called communication chains. Combining insights from Kripke with views of later Wittgenstein on language and names as being inherently spatial, the present work advances theories of both these thinkers into an explicitly geographical inquiry that advances philosophical and practical aspects of naming, language, and mapping.

Intergenerational Space offers insight into the transforming relationships between younger and older members of contemporary societies. The chapter selection brings together scholars from around the world in order to address pressing questions both about the nature of contemporary generational divisions as well as the complex ways in which members of different generations are (and can be) involved in each other’s lives. These questions include: how do particular kinds of spaces and spatial arrangements (e.g. cities, neighbourhoods, institutions, leisure sites) facilitate and limit intergenerational contact and encounters? What processes and spaces influence the intergenerational negotiation and contestation of values, beliefs, and social memory, producing patterns of both continuity and change? And if generational separation and segregation are in fact significant social problems across a range of contexts—as a significant body of research and commentary attests—how can this be ameliorated? The chapters in this collection make original contributions to these debates drawing on original research from Belgium, China, Finland, Poland, Senegal, Singapore, Tanzania, Uganda, the United States and the United Kingdom..

Choosing to do fieldwork overseas, particularly in the Global South, is a challenge in itself. The researcher faces logistical complications, health and safety issues, cultural differences, language barriers, and much more. But permeating the entire fieldwork experience are a range of intermediating ethical issues. While many researchers seek to follow institutional and disciplinary guidelines on ethical research practice, the reality is that each situation is unique and the individual researcher must negotiate their own path through a variety of ethical challenges and dilemmas. This book was created to share such experiences, to serve not as a manual for ethical practice but rather as a place for reflection and mutual learning. Since ethical issues face the researcher at every turn and cannot be compartmentalized into one part of the research process, this book puts them at the very center of the discussion and uses them as the lens with which to view different stages of fieldwork. The book covers four thematic areas: ethical challenges in the field; ethical dimensions of researcher identity; ethical issues relating to research methods; and ethical dilemmas of engagement with a variety of actors. This volume also provides fresh insights by drawing on the experiences of research students rather than those of established academics. The contributors describe research conducted for their master’s degrees and doctorates, offering honest and self-critical reflections on how they negotiated ethical challenges and dilemmas.The chapters cover fieldwork carried out in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a broad sweep of development-related topics. This book should have wide appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates, and early-career researchers working under the broad umbrella of development studies. Although focused on fieldwork in the Global South, the discussions and reflections are relevant to field research in many other countries and contexts.

Feminism has re-shaped the way we think about equality, power relations and social change. Recent feminist scholarship has provided new theoretical frameworks, methodologies and empirical analyses of how gender and feminism are situated within the development process. Global Perspectives on Gender and Space: Engaging Feminism and Development draws upon this framework to explore the effects of globalization on development in diverse geographical contexts. It explores how women’s and men’s lives are gendered in specific spaces as well as across multiple landscapes. Traveling from South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to North America and the Caribbean, the contributions illustrate the link between gender and global development, including economic livelihoods, policy measures and environmental change. Divided into three sections, Global Perspectives on Gender and Space showcases the following issues: One) the impact of neoliberal policies on transnational migration, public services and microfinance programs; Two) feminist and participatory methodologies employed in the evaluation of land use, women’s cooperatives and liberation struggles and Three) gendered approaches to climate change, natural disasters and conservation the global South. A feminist lens is the common thread throughout these sections that weaves gender into the very fabric of everyday life, providing a common link between varied spaces around the globe by mapping gendered patterns of power and social change. This timely volume provides geographic comparisons and case studies to give empirically informed insights on processes and practices relevant to feminism and development. It illustrates ways to empower individuals and communities through transnational struggles and grassroots organizations, while emphasizing human rights and gender equity, and will be of interest to those studying Geography, Development Studies, International Relations and Gender Studies.

Object-Oriented Cartography provides an innovative perspective on the changing nature of maps and cartographic study. Through a renewed theoretical reading of contemporary cartography, this book acknowledges the shifted interest from cartographic representation to mapping practice and proposes an alternative consideration of the ‘thingness’ of maps.Rather than asking how maps map onto reality, it explores the possibilities of a speculative-realist map theory by bringing cartographic objects to the foreground. Through a pragmatic perspective, this book focuses on both digital and nondigital maps and establishes an unprecedented dialogue between the field of map studies and object-oriented ontology. This dialogue is carried out through a series of reflections and case studies involving aesthetics and technology, ethnography and image theory, and narrative and photography.Proposing methods to further develop this kind of cartographic research, this book will be invaluable reading for researchers and graduate students in the fields of Cartography and Geohumanities.

This book examines Félix Guattari, the French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and radical activist, renowned for an energetic style of thought that cuts across conceptual, political, and institutional spheres. Increasingly recognised as a key figure in his own right, Guattari’s influence in contemporary social theory and the modern social sciences continues to grow. From the ecosophy of hurricanes to the micropolitics of cinema, the book draws together a series of Guattarian motifs which animate the complexity of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most enigmatic thinkers. The book examines techniques and modes of thought that contribute to a liberation of thinking and subjectivity. Divided thematically into three parts – ‘cartographies’, ‘ecologies’, and ‘micropolitics’ – each chapter showcases the singular and pragmatic grounds by which Guattari’s signature concepts can be found to be both disruptive to traditional modes of thinking, and generative toward novel forms of ethics, politics and sociality.This interdisciplinary compendium on Guattari’s exciting, experimental, and enigmatic thought will appeal to academics and postgraduates within Social Theory, Human Geography, and Continental Philosophy.

Throughout the world’s hinterland regions, people are growing old in resource-dependent communities that were neither originally designed nor presently equipped to support an ageing population. This book provides cutting edge theoretical and empirical insights into the new phenomenon resource frontier ageing, to understand the diverse experiences of and responses to rural population ageing in the early 21st century. The book explores the resource hinterland as a new frontier of rural ageing and examines three central themes of rural population change, community development and voluntarism that characterize ageing resource communities. By investigating the links among these three themes, the book provides the conceptual and empirical foundations for the future agenda of rural ageing research. This timely contribution contains 15 original chapters by leading international experts from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Norway.

Branding is a profoundly geographical type of commodification process. Many things become commodities that are compared and valuated on markets around the globe. Places such as cities or regions, countries and nations attempt to acquire visibility through branding. Geographical imaginations are evoked to brand goods and places as commodities in order to show or create connections and add value. Yet, not all that is branded was originally intended and created for markets.This volume aims to broaden current understanding of branding through a series of contributions from geography, history, political studies, cultural, and media studies, offering insight into how ordinary places, objects and practices become commodities through branding. In so doing, the contributions also show how nation, place and product as targets of branding can be seen as intertwined. To discuss these forms of branding, book chapters refer to states, cities, holiday destinations, food malls, movies, dances, post stamps and other items that serve as brands and/or are branded.The book will be of interest to students and scholars in geography, sociology, history, cultural studies and business studies who would like to gain an understanding of the intricate and surprising ways in which things, places, and cultural practices become brands.

Understanding where ageing occurs, how it is experienced by different people in different places, and in what ways it is transforming our communities, economies and societies at all levels has become crucial for the development of informed research, policy and programmes.This book focuses on the interdisciplinary field of study – geographical gerontology – that addresses these issues. With contributions from more than 30 leading geographers and gerontologists, the book examines the scope and depth of geographical perspectives, concepts and approaches applied to the study of ageing, old age and older populations. The book features 25 chapters organized into five parts that cover the field’s theoretical traditions and intellectual evolution; the contributions of key disciplinary perspectives from population geography, social and cultural geography, health geography, urban planning and environmental studies; the scales of inquiry within geographical gerontology from the global to the embodied; the thematic breadth of contemporary issues of interest that define the field (places, spaces and landscapes of ageing); and a discussion about challenges, opportunities and agendas for future developments in geography and gerontology.This book provides the first comprehensive foundation of knowledge about the state of the art of geographical gerontology that will be of interest to scholars of ageing around the world.

This book demonstrates the spatialized and multi-scalar nature of Islamophobia. It provides ground-breaking insights in recognising the importance of space in the formation of anti-Muslim racism.Through the exploration of complementary data, both from existing quantitative databases and directly from victims of Islamophobia, applied in two important European capitals - Paris and London - this book brings new materials to research on Islamophobia and argues that Islamophobia is also a spatialized process that occurs at various interrelated spatial scales: globe, nation, urban, neighbourhood and body (and mind). In so doing, this book establishes and advances the new concept of ‘Spatialized Islamophobia’ by exploring global, national, urban, infra-urban, embodied and emotional Islamophobias as well as their complex interrelationships. It also offer a critical discussion of the geographies of Islamophobia by pointing out the lack of geographical approaches to Islamophobia Studies. By using self-reflexivity, the author raises important questions that may have hampered the study of ‘Spatialized Islamophobia’, focusing in particular on the favoured methodologies which too often remain qualitative, as well as on the whiteness of the discipline of Geography which can disrupt the legitimacy of a certain knowledge.The book will be an important reference for those in the fields of Human Geography, Sociology, Politics, Racial Studies, Religious Studies and Muslim studies.

The Human Geography of East Central Europe examines the geography of the transition economies that were not formerly part of the Soviet Union: Albania, Bosnia & Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Yugoslavia and East Germany. There is a thematic treatment beginning with the landscape and historical background, which moves on to the social and economic geography (industry, agriculture and infrastructure) and to issues concerning regional development and environmental protection.