{"title":"“We Participate, You Participate—They Decide”: Istvan Mészáros, Henri Lefebvre, and the Social and Ecological Contradictions of the Just Energy Transition","authors":"Daniel Auerbach, Cole Schliebe, Arielle d’Arge","doi":"10.1111/gec3.70078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70078","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This review critically examines the contradictions of the just energy transition while developing a theoretical framework for moving analysis forward. We address how the current energy transition is beset with numerous ecological and social contradictions. Renewable energy production is on the rise but has not substantively displaced fossil fuels while meaningful participation in this process is partial and limited. We review the literature on energy transition technologies and participation as elements of an energy transition while paying close attention to the different levels of analysis employed (moving from the individual to the institutional). These perspectives, while important, miss out on macro-level, structural processes, neglecting systemic dynamics that impede just energy transitions. We argue that, through synthesizing the theoretical insights of Istvan Mészáros and Henri Lefebvre, we can develop a robust orientation for future just energy transition research. More specifically, we focus on the significance of placing the energy transition within the historically specific context of capital's social metabolism. Our discussion highlights how capital's adversarial class structure, in conjunction with its growth imperative, creates contradictory spaces limiting the potential of a just energy transition to address the climate emergency. Lefebvre's radical project of autogestion provides a guideline for the just energy transition to transcend capital's alienated socio-spatial metabolism.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51411,"journal":{"name":"Geography Compass","volume":"20 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148050435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Complex Geography of Cultural Networks","authors":"Andrea Ballatore","doi":"10.1111/gec3.70077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70077","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the cultural sector as complex, sprawling, and uneven spatial networks, shaped by the interactions of people, institutions, goods and services. At the intersection of network science and geography, it synthesises how spatial network approaches have been applied to the study of cultural and creative industries, including art, museums, heritage, publishing, film, and music. Core concepts, such as small-world topology, preferential attachment, homophily, and brokering, are contextualised to illuminate mechanisms of clustering and persistent inequalities in global cultural flows. While network science offers a compelling framework for understanding the sector's dynamics, the review also highlights its limitations, especially a tendency toward oversimplification and a lack of engagement with geographical thinking. It concludes by outlining a research agenda that calls for stronger integration with geographical theory, methodological innovation, and improved data on local cultural participation and inequalities.</p>","PeriodicalId":51411,"journal":{"name":"Geography Compass","volume":"20 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gec3.70077","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148049735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Relational Food Geographies, Underwater: Discussing Food and Oceans' Entanglements Along Urban Waterfronts","authors":"Ginevra Montefusco","doi":"10.1111/gec3.70074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70074","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Food is emerging as a geographical lens to investigate socioecological relations. A growing body of research is exploring food in the city, considering it not only as a commodity but also as an archive of practices and their spatial and ecological transformations. While land-based foodways are increasingly questioned, the relationship between food, oceans, and urban spaces is largely overlooked. This essay provides an overview of the contemporary debate on food geographies, with a focus on relational approaches to urban foodways. Radical Food Geographies will be analysed as a theory and praxis that tackles food and spatial injustices, interconnecting critical geographical lenses and food studies. To foster the emerging focus within Radical Food Geographies on more-than-human relations, this review proposes contamination across ocean and food geographies, discussing the entanglements between food and oceans along urban waterfronts. Geographies of urban marine foodways are introduced to explore socioecological relationships mediated by food in urban natures. Highlighting the uneven processes that mutually construct oceans, cities, and foodways through feminist, southern, and political ecological perspectives, artisanal fishing is framed as a relational practice amid the ruins of extractive and neoliberal waterfront development. Drawing from the definition of food as a visceral and lively matter and grounding its material and political implications, this review invites food geographies to delve underwater, questioning artisanal fishing through the mirror of urban oceans.</p>","PeriodicalId":51411,"journal":{"name":"Geography Compass","volume":"20 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gec3.70074","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148048386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rise of Vertical Urbanism: Imaginaries, Mobilities, and Lived Realities","authors":"Anna Maria Vargas, Jean-Paul D. Addie","doi":"10.1111/gec3.70076","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gec3.70076","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Vertical urbanization is reshaping cities across the Global North and South, driven by population growth, land scarcity, and speculative development. This shift includes the proliferation of high-rise towers, underground networks, elevated infrastructures, multi-level public spaces, and self-built settlements. As urban futures are increasingly imagined in vertical terms, the challenges and opportunities presented by distinct vertical urbanisms raise pressing questions about densification, equity, and the transformation of both urban space and life in 21st-century cities. In this paper, we review a decade of scholarship marking a “vertical turn” in urban studies to assess how geographers have explored the spatial, social, and political dimensions of urban verticality. We organize this review around three themes: (1) vertical imaginaries, the ways height and depth are envisioned and symbolically understood; (2) vertical mobilities, tracing circulation through multi-layered infrastructures; and (3) lived vertical urbanisms, examining experiences of stratification, security, and sustainability. In synthesizing these literatures, we highlight the uneven geographies of access and inequality that vertical urbanism produces and outline future research directions to address the complex social, ecological, and ethical challenges of life in three-dimensional urban environments.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51411,"journal":{"name":"Geography Compass","volume":"20 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147686256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}