Thursday 18 September 2008

Creative Urban Regions

Creative Urban Regions: Harnessing Urban Technologies to Support Knowledge City Initiatives.
Book launched last February and edited by Tan Yigitcanlar, Koray Velibeyoglu and Scott Baum, with many contributions by different scholars about knowledge-based urban developments. The official description of the book goes like that:
"In a knowledge economy urban form and functions are primarily shaped by global market forces rather than urban planning. As the role of knowledge in wealth creation becomes a critical issue in cities, urban administrations and planners need to discover new approaches to harness the considerable opportunities of abstract production for a global order.Creative Urban Regions: Harnessing Urban Technologies to Support Knowledge City Initiatives explores the utilization of urban technology to support knowledge city initiatives, providing scholars and practitioners with essential fundamental techniques and processes for the successful integration of information technologies and urban production. Converging timely research on a multitude of cutting-edge urban information communication technology issues, this Premier Reference Source will make a valuable addition to every reference library."
This book can be found at:
http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?id=7433

Monday 15 September 2008

Information, Knowledge and Value

It’s coming out the book "informação, conhecimento e valor" (information, knowledge and value) by my colleague Ruy Sardinha Lopes (Architecture school, USP São Carlos). Only in Portuguese for now.
I haven’t had the opportunity to lay my hands on this book yet, but I know the excellent PhD thesis of which this book stems from. Thus, despite different formatting and updates from the book to the thesis, this work must have maintained the same high level of the research which it comes from.

It is of especial interest to this blog as it helps us think through the importance of discussions which poses central attention to ICTs as a ‘technical fix’, disembodied from its intrinsic historic and, more importantly, social roles. It also contributes with indirect considerations about the (re)construction of concepts and ideas of territorialisation, urbanisation, spatialisation, even relating itself (without admitting so) to the important group of socio-constructivist theories such as social construction of technologies.

In the author’s words (in Portuguese, from the abstract of his PhD thesis):
"Esta tese analisa o papel da informação, do conhecimento e das novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TICs) no atual estágio do capitalismo, em curso desde o final da década de 1960. Reconhece a centralidade econômica destes elementos e as mudanças significativas na lógica do sistema de acumulação e reprodução capitalista, embora se contraponha àqueles que advogam tratar-se do surgimento de uma nova ordem societária "pós-capitalista" ou que atribuem às novas tecnologias, notadamente às redes eletrônicas, papel democratizante e emancipador [...] Analisa também a dialética entre a vocação "desterritorializante" do capital, sua busca por maior flexibilidade e liquidez, e as necessidades "territoriais" dos poderes locais e das infra-estruturas tecnológicas que lhes dão sustentação Aborda, por fim, as subjetividades geradas por esse processo e a possibilidade destas se contraporem ao estado atual das coisas".

The book can be found at:
https://www.saraiva.com.br/produto/produto.dll/detalhe?pro_id=2592291&ID=42F947857D8081010132E0369

http://www.idealshop.com.br/loja/produtos_descricao.asp?lang=pt_BR&codigo_produto=792861

Sunday 14 September 2008

A Necessary Man - 6

PART VI: MORE ON MILTON SANTOS

See also:
"Geographer with a Cause" (http://www.brazzil.com/pages/p07jul01.htm)
"Um encontro: Gilberto Gil e o Professor Milton Santos" (http://www.gilbertogil.com.br/sec_textos_view.php?id=12&language_id=1)
"Recent Joaquim Nabuco Chairs in Brazilian Studies" (http://www.stanford.edu/group/las/people/nabuco_faculty_former.html)

Some of his more than 300 papers (languages other than Portuguese, mostly in chronological order):

  • LA NATURE DE L'ESPACE (1997) Milton Santos Géographies en liberté GÉOGRAPHIE.
  • "L'administration et l'amenagement de l'espace: le cas du Brèsil", Développement et Civilisations nº 29, mars, Paris, França, 1967, pp. 109-116.
  • "Villes et économie urbaine dans les pays sous-développés", Revue de Géographie de Lyon, Lyon, França, 1968.
  • "Vers une classification des villes en pays sous-développés, instrument indispensable en géographie appliquée", Congrés et Colloques de l'Université de Liège, vol. 48, 1968, pp. 277-284.
  • "Projet d'étude de l'organisation urbaine dans les pays sous-développés", Bulletin de Liaison Cartographie et Statisque nº 1, Alger, jan/avril, 1968.
  • "Natureza de la urbanizacion y problemas de su planificacion", Cuadernos de la Sociedad Venezolana de Planificacion, nº 69, nov., Caracas,1969, pp. 48-66.
  • "La ciudad como modelo de desarrollo", Cuadernos de la Sociedad Venezolana de Planificacion, nº 69, nov., Caracas, 1969, pp. 27-47.
  • "Une approche théorique du développement de la ville", Bulletin de Liaison Cartographie et Statisque nº 6, Alger, out/dez, 1969.
  • Aspects de la géographie et de l'économie urbaine des pays sous-développés, 2 fasc (100 e 92 p.), Centre de Documentation Universitaire (CDU), Paris, França, 1969.
  • "Une nouvelle dimension dans l'étude des réseaux urbains dans les pays sous-développés", Annales de Géographie, ano 79, nº 434, Paris, França, 1970, pp. 425-445.
  • "Géographie et interdisciplinarité", Développement et Civilisations nº 45/46, set/dez, Paris, 1971, pp. 22-32.
  • "Modernisation, Metropolisation et Développement", Développement et Civilisations, vol. XXI, nº 2/3, Paris, 1971, pp. 23-32.
  • "Villes et métropoles incomplètes: possibilités et processus de promotion", Revue de Géographie Alpine, tome LIX, nº 4, Grenoble, 1971, pp. 525-532.
  • "Analyse régionale et aménagement de l'espace: vers une méthode d'étude des forces 'externes' d'élaboration des sous-espaces dans les pays sous-développés", Revue Tiers Monde, Presses Universitaires de France, tome XII, nº 45, jan/mars, 1971, pp. 199-203.
  • "Urban crisis or epiphenomenon?", Proceedigs of the International Population Conference, Liège, Bélgica, 1973, pp. 287-291.
  • "Economic development and urbanization in underdeveloped countries: the two-flow systems of the urban economy and their spatial implications", In: Urbanization and the development process, D. McKee and Leahy eds., The Free Press, New York, 1973.
  • Underdevelopment and poverty: a geographer's view, The Latin American in Residence Lectures, University of Toronto, Canadá, 1972-1973, 1975.
  • L'espace partagé, Editions Librairies Techniques, M. Th. Génin, Paris, França, 1975.
  • "The periphery in the pole, the case of Lima, Peru", In: H. Rose and G. Gappert, The Social Economy of Cities, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, USA, 1975, pp. 335-360.
  • "Space and domination: a marxist approach", International Social Science Journal, vol. XXVII, nº 2, pp. 346-363 (também em edição francesa, pp. 368-386), 1975.
  • Société et espace: la formation economique et social comme théorie et comme méthode", Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, vol. LX, 1º de setembro, Paris, França, 1977, pp. 261-276.
  • "Society and Space: social formation as theory and method", Antipode, vol. 9, nº 1, fevereiro, 1977, pp. 3-13.
  • "The spatial dialectics: the two circuits of the urban economy in underdeveloped countries", Antipode, vol.9, nº 3, dezembro, Worcester, USA, 1977, pp. 49-60.
  • De la société au paysage: la signification de l'espace humain", Hérodote, nº 9, jan/mar., Paris, França, 1978, p. 66-73.
  • "Rêve et cauchemar: problèmes spatiaux de la transition dans la periode technologique: le cas de Tanzanie", Revue Tiers Monde, tomo XIX, nº 75, jul/set., Paris, França, 1978, pp. 563-572.
  • La Noción de Espacio, Cuadernos de la Cooperativa de Estudiantes de Geografia, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela, 1978.
  • The shared space: the two circuits of the urban economy and its spatial repercussions, Methuen, Londres, 1979.
  • "Research for the urban future: the case of Latin America", Congress Proceedings, 22nd. Internacional Geographical Congress, Ottawa, Canadá, 1979, pp. 125-129.
  • "The cities of the third world: industrialization and spatial repercutions" Papers/Communication 22nd. International Geographical Congress, agosto, Montrel, 1979, pp. 10-17.
  • "Structure, totalité, temps. L'espace du monde d'aujourd'hui", Espaces-Temps nº 18-19-20, nº special: Une geographie à visage humaine? Espaçe/Marxisme. Traces, empreintes, pistes, jan. 1981, pp. 103-122.
  • Pour une géographie nouvelle. Editions Publisud, Paris, 1985, (2ª edição, 1986). "Spatial Dialectics: "The two circuits of urban economy in underdeveloped countries", Antipode: a radical journal of geography, vol. 17, nº 2 e 3.
  • Espace et Méthode, Publisud, Paris, 1990.
  • "Modernisation, milieu tecnico-scientifique et urbanisation au Brésil", in Annales de Géographie, Paris, 1991.
  • "Temps-Monde et Espace-Monde. Relever le défi conceptuel", in Strates 7, 1992-1993.
    "Raison universelle, raison locale. Les espaces de la rationalité", in Espaces et Sociétés nº 79, 1995, pp. 129-135.

A Necessary Man - 5

PART V: THE PHILOSOPHER OF GEOGRAPHY
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

For some time already, the health of professor Milton Santos, called the philosopher of Geography by some colleagues, had required serious care. Finally his health became worse in the last weeks of last June, and on the twenty-fourth he passed away. The sun, in its apparent annual displacement, had fled to the other tropic, leaving Sâo Paulo with the "friagem" of its subtropical winter, at the time his burial was taking place in the Cemetery of Peace, in the first hours of that Sâo Paulo afternoon, accompanied by many friends and colleagues. The press of the great city gave testimony of his disappearance. The network of internet users immediately covered the planet with the news of the event. The Brasilian Association of Geographers would thank later the messages of sympathy received from all parts of the world. Milton Santos left an incomparable body of work in the geographical and humanistic environments. He was an intellectual committed to society and the excluded, a citizen that gathered the knowledge of the world of his time to think of the needs of his country, of the role of intellectuals and of the contribution of geography to the comprehension of our material and social environment. A hopeful man, he wrote a few days before dying that "By definition, an intellectual life and the refusal to assume ideas do not combine… The true intellectual is the man who seeks, tirelessly, the truth, but not only to enjoy it intimately, but to tell, write, and support it in public", and therefore "intellectual activity is never comfortable"

He noticed that "observers of the university, in the past and in the present, fear for their present destiny, since protest demonstrations derived from its practices are rare, leaving, at times, the impression that the academy may prefer the situation of mere witnesses of history, instead of assuming a role of guide in search of better roads for society"; "when the intellectuals reject that duty, whatever the circumstances, a cloak of darkness covers social life, as the possible debate turns, by nature, false"; and finally, "the authentic strength of the university comes from the academic spirit shared by professors and students…" and "the outer strength of the university… is fatally injured if the ideas and practices of the academic spirit are abandoned in favour of pragmatic considerations".

The above lines belong to his article called "O intellectual anónimo", published at the beginning of June in the Sâo Paulo press as a contribution to the needed university reformation, when he was fighting against the progress of his illness. Milton Santos was a necessary man. The reproduction of his words here, as a small sample of his message, a universal message in so far as it transcends the territorial context where they were written, seems to us a small testimony of the homage he deserves.

A Necessary Man - 4

PART IV: THE POWER OF PLACE
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

Theoretical matters did not set Milton Santos apart from actuality or social commitment. Intellectual observation of the situation of regional environment was a constant in his work. For him, Latin America had shown sufficient proof of having accepted external modernisation models; with the resulting social, territorial, economic, and political contradictions and distortions which characterize such behaviour. This vision was always with him. The population of the various Latin-American countries had to face the challenge of increasing the importance of certain autoctonous values, where social values should take precedence over technology. Geography should not content itself only with being critical, he wrote, but should be analytical and not just discursive in order to be useful and also used. He added, "Criticism can even be destructive, as long as it has something to propose, explicitly or implicitly, without which it would not contribute to the advance of knowledge."

Milton Santos visited the University of Castilla-La Mancha on two more occasions during the last decade of the twentieth century. At the start of that decade, the documents that would be debated in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 in the World Conference on Environment and Development were being prepared. His thinking was an adequate reflection on the first of these last visits to Castilla-La Mancha to participate in the 1994 course on Urban Environment, which our regional university holds every summer. His proposals about environmental social components would be developed a year later in the paper "A questao do medio ambiente: desafíos para construçao de uma perspectiva interdisciplinary", included in the volume of Anales de Geografía de la Universidad Complutense, homage to Professor Joaquín Bosque. His second stay took place in March, 1997 at the end of the winter in Cuenca, to participate in the IV America Latina Group Congress organised by the Association of Spanish Geographers (AGEAL). The illness that would end his days was already visible at this time.

In his last visit, Milton Santos developed a definition of territory as a banal aggregate of spaces, a question that he had integrated in his speech of acceptance of the doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Barcelona some months earlier. The formulations stated here would appear later in his last writings, making up the conceptual nucleus of the work "O papel ativo de la geografía; um manifesto", his last intellectual bequest, presented at the international community of geographers in Florianápolis, Brasil, a little later, at its "XI Encontro Nacional" in July, 2000. In Castilla-La Mancha, again, Milton Santos offered an approach to the comprehension of territory by analysing the process of changes that this geographical object has suffered throughout the history of Humanity. The course of an organization that in the beginning was the result of isolated community actions characterized by a high degree of organic solidarity, to the appearance of the States-Nation in the last centuries with their new forms agreed upon, and eventually the present moment where absolute internationalisation and globalisation have been imposed. A time, our time, in which the hegemonic actors are transnational businesses and supranational institutions, that impose a new regionalisation governed by money violence and information.

To puzzle out the meaning of the concept of territory as a geographical object he proposed to dispossess it of its material sense and consider it as a "thing used", retake the Perrouxian idea of "banal space", to understand it like a space of all the institutions, all the businesses, all the persons, setting it apart from the view of private spaces, or businesses, institutions and concrete persons. In his redefinition of the goals of the discipline he suggested reflection on dialectical pairs; upon "territory and world", important due to the existence of extreme modernity activities; upon "place and world" that include the influence of the routine on the upper scales; and upon "place and territory", and "territory and social formation". This methodological approach would allow us to understand our complex reality. On the one hand, the structure of the processes of the division of labour on a global scale, that is derived from rigid economic and decisional verticality and is responsible for the sphere of "global work", compared to the more plastic expressions produced in the horizontal relations in territory encouraged by "local work"; and on the other hand, the meaning of the existence of a territory of the quotidian associated with the scientific-technical-informational period, in which world society is currently embedded. His two last books reveal the content of his intellectual worries to the edge of the century change; the penultimate, "Por uma otra globalizaçâo. Do pensamento unico à consciência universal" (2000), and "O Brasil. Territorio e sociedade no inicio do seculo XXI" (2001). Both, published by the Brasilian editorial Record, provide "a portrait of the new quantities and above all of the qualities of the territory that…already used by society gains current uses, that overlap and permit the reading of interruptions in the physiognomy of regions. Certain regions are more utilized in a particular historic moment than in others. Therefore each region does not receive modernisations nor their dynamic actors in a uniform way, crystallising old uses and awaiting new rationalities".

A Necessary Man - 4

PART IV: THE POWER OF PLACE
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

Theoretical matters did not set Milton Santos apart from actuality or social commitment. Intellectual observation of the situation of regional environment was a constant in his work. For him, Latin America had shown sufficient proof of having accepted external modernisation models; with the resulting social, territorial, economic, and political contradictions and distortions which characterize such behaviour. This vision was always with him. The population of the various Latin-American countries had to face the challenge of increasing the importance of certain autoctonous values, where social values should take precedence over technology. Geography should not content itself only with being critical, he wrote, but should be analytical and not just discursive in order to be useful and also used. He added, "Criticism can even be destructive, as long as it has something to propose, explicitly or implicitly, without which it would not contribute to the advance of knowledge."

Milton Santos visited the University of Castilla-La Mancha on two more occasions during the last decade of the twentieth century. At the start of that decade, the documents that would be debated in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 in the World Conference on Environment and Development were being prepared. His thinking was an adequate reflection on the first of these last visits to Castilla-La Mancha to participate in the 1994 course on Urban Environment, which our regional university holds every summer. His proposals about environmental social components would be developed a year later in the paper "A questao do medio ambiente: desafíos para construçao de uma perspectiva interdisciplinary", included in the volume of Anales de Geografía de la Universidad Complutense, homage to Professor Joaquín Bosque. His second stay took place in March, 1997 at the end of the winter in Cuenca, to participate in the IV America Latina Group Congress organised by the Association of Spanish Geographers (AGEAL). The illness that would end his days was already visible at this time.

In his last visit, Milton Santos developed a definition of territory as a banal aggregate of spaces, a question that he had integrated in his speech of acceptance of the doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Barcelona some months earlier. The formulations stated here would appear later in his last writings, making up the conceptual nucleus of the work "O papel ativo de la geografía; um manifesto", his last intellectual bequest, presented at the international community of geographers in Florianápolis, Brasil, a little later, at its "XI Encontro Nacional" in July, 2000. In Castilla-La Mancha, again, Milton Santos offered an approach to the comprehension of territory by analysing the process of changes that this geographical object has suffered throughout the history of Humanity. The course of an organization that in the beginning was the result of isolated community actions characterized by a high degree of organic solidarity, to the appearance of the States-Nation in the last centuries with their new forms agreed upon, and eventually the present moment where absolute internationalisation and globalisation have been imposed. A time, our time, in which the hegemonic actors are transnational businesses and supranational institutions, that impose a new regionalisation governed by money violence and information.

To puzzle out the meaning of the concept of territory as a geographical object he proposed to dispossess it of its material sense and consider it as a "thing used", retake the Perrouxian idea of "banal space", to understand it like a space of all the institutions, all the businesses, all the persons, setting it apart from the view of private spaces, or businesses, institutions and concrete persons. In his redefinition of the goals of the discipline he suggested reflection on dialectical pairs; upon "territory and world", important due to the existence of extreme modernity activities; upon "place and world" that include the influence of the routine on the upper scales; and upon "place and territory", and "territory and social formation". This methodological approach would allow us to understand our complex reality. On the one hand, the structure of the processes of the division of labour on a global scale, that is derived from rigid economic and decisional verticality and is responsible for the sphere of "global work", compared to the more plastic expressions produced in the horizontal relations in territory encouraged by "local work"; and on the other hand, the meaning of the existence of a territory of the quotidian associated with the scientific-technical-informational period, in which world society is currently embedded. His two last books reveal the content of his intellectual worries to the edge of the century change; the penultimate, "Por uma otra globalizaçâo. Do pensamento unico à consciência universal" (2000), and "O Brasil. Territorio e sociedade no inicio do seculo XXI" (2001). Both, published by the Brasilian editorial Record, provide "a portrait of the new quantities and above all of the qualities of the territory that…already used by society gains current uses, that overlap and permit the reading of interruptions in the physiognomy of regions. Certain regions are more utilized in a particular historic moment than in others. Therefore each region does not receive modernisations nor their dynamic actors in a uniform way, crystallising old uses and awaiting new rationalities".

A Necessary Man - 3

PART III: SPACE AND METHOD
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

This was the emotional and intellectual field Milton Santos was dealing with at those moments. A little later, in the autumn of 1990, he returned to La Mancha to take part in two more conferences. He attended the meeting of the CEISAL working group of "Regional Studies", organized by the Department of Geography of Castilla - La Mancha University in the historic city of Almagro, and later in Albacete, in a series of lectures where he was accompanied by the Chilean regionalist Sergio Boisier. His works during this phase would give testimony to his splendid intellectual maturity: Space and Method (1985), O espaço do cidadao (1987), Metamorphoses do espaço habitado (1988), Metrópole corporativa fragmentada. O caso de Sâo Paulo (1990).

In Almagro, where we spent some days of reflection and companionship, it became clear that the thoughts of our guest had become even richer and, in the debates that followed, his delicately-presented and at times ironic opinions would describe stunning and clarifying lines. Milton Santos again questioned there the consequences of the interrelations between technological revolution and territory, and the model of the new specific spatial realities of our time. His theoretical framework was perfect. In the present phase of history (scientific-technical period), the geographical space, to which he attributed a privileged role and identified as "scientific-technical informational means", would strengthen its place between the past and the future. The new signs that defined this time and, at the same time, shaped our space, were the perception of event simultaneity on a global scale, the uniqueness and universality of the technique, the globalisation of the added values thanks to the planetary diffusion of businesses and international banks, the emergence of metropoli as omnipresent realities and, finally, the growing role of information as a means of change in society and territory.
He showed that all these signs belong to the same system of relations. The expansion of the banking system accompanied by the increment of the salaried jobs and the growing demand for fixed capital, phenomena which are present in an ever growing number of territories where space accumulates science and technology incessantly. As the productive process would tend to concentrate in more limited spaces, the new world space necessarily should be configured as a unique market. The role of large businesses in this reorganization, which at the same time was a disorganization of the preceding spatial order, had given rise to a "vertical" segmentation of territory.

A Necessary Man - 2

PART II: INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

The international community has recognized the value of his contributions, bestoying him with academic distinctions such as Doctor Honoris Causa in the Universities of Toulouse, France, the Complutense de Madrid and Barcelona, Spain; Federal de Bahia, Federal de Sergipe; Federal de Rio Grande do Sul, Estadual de Ceará, de Passo Fundo and the Estadual del Sudoeste of Bahia, all in Brasil; and the University of Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Finally, in 1994, he was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize, the highest international scientific distinction in the field of geography. With the publishing of his final book "O mundo do cidadâo. Um cidadâo do mundo", colleagues from all parts of the world, professors and students from the University of Sâo Paulo, celebrated his 70th birthday. It is this work which also attests to Milton Santos' presence in Spain since the mid-eighties. It was at this time when Milton Santos returned to teach to Sâo Paulo. His theories were by then well-known to Spanish geographers. In university bibliographies his works were cited profusely, and one of his books, published by Oikos-Tau in Barcelona under the title of Geografía y economía urbanas en los países subdesarrollados (1973), was no doubt one of his dearest, as was his contribution about "La urbanización dependiente de Venezuela" included in M. Castells' book "Imperialismo y urbanización en América Latina" published that same year by Gustavo Gili. Other works include L' espace partagé (1975), Por uma geografía nova (1978), Pobreza urbana (1978), El trabajo del geógrafo en el Tercer Mundo (1978), Espaço e sociedade (1979), Economía Espacial (1979), Pensando o espaço do homem (1982), Ensaios sobre a urbanizaçao latinoamericana (1982), which were less widely received. Being aware of this situation, Professor Milton Santos readily accepted an invitation to take part in our initial debates on theoretical and methodological frameworks applied to the analysis of urbanization in Latin-America.

We therefore organised the "Conference on Urban Planning and Underdevelopment in Latin America", an event which took place on the Albacete campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha during the harsh February of 1986. John Cole and Milton Santos were speakers at this event, and in the animated debates that followed their presentations, various Spanish colleagues who participated soon gained their friendship and esteem. I will never forget my first meeting with our guest at the Madrid airport. Squeezed into his elegant navy blue overcoat, he was protecting himself from the contrast between the torrid Sâo Paulo summer he had just left and our icy winter. We then had a friendly and regrettably short walk through the streets of old Madrid before coming to Albacete, the final destiny of his trip.

The conference offered Professor Milton Santos a forum for the teachings and scientific worries that guided his thoughts in those moments. He spoke of the characteristics of the New International Order, of the "globalization" of social phenomena, of the growing interconnection among events around the world. During the second half of the eighties, he perceived a set of deep changes, generalized and immediate, which extended throughout the entire world, and whose first consequence was an accentuation of dependent relations. He reminded us of the growing importance of information under these circumstances, and the urgency of an "informational society" whose originality lay in giving new meaning to all geographical objects and spatial distributions.

To illustrate the development of these phenomena, he went on to present an expressive description of some characteristic processes in large metropolitan areas, with the example of Sâo Paulo, which perhaps after that of Bahia, received the most attention from our guest. He traced the distribution of social classes and income levels in urban space and also indicated some consequences derived from the size of metropolitan cities upon their poorest inhabitants, on their accessibility, and on their unequal participation in urban services. He pointed out the existing relations between size and speculation, the rapid increase of land values in the disadvantaged city peripheries when investments improve their infrastructures, along with the simultaneous expulsion process of their poor inhabitants toward places more distant, degraded and bare. Finally, he spoke of the inconsistency of the planning proposals imported from the "North" and the necessity of resorting to indigenous models to relegate the useless "modernity by imposition" of these importations. He emphasized, with the vibrating and alluring tone of his speech, the geographer's role in planning and what his priorities should be, inviting our scientific community to illustrate for other disciplines the applicable spatial modalities of productivity for each country. Other themes were also discussed, such as the changes taking place in the territory itself and the need to forget "prejuicios", which give way to inertia, and the need for confronting this social inertia with action.

A Necessary Man - 1

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
My intention with this weblog is to expose (sometimes in Portuguese, but mostly in English) some of my work and concerns about the nature of space, and how we, "urban beings", get along organising our lives in space, essentially in urban space. Personal and professional work will appear here along with other references and things I will find on the internet, in books and papers.

I see no better way of openning this weblog, but with a series of 6 posts about the man once called the philosopher of space and geography, the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos. As his work is not well known by many Anglo-Saxon scholars, I will reproduce in these 6 posts, the text in English "Milton Santos (1924-2001), a necessary man" by Miguel Panadero Moya (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) for the occasion of Santos' death in 2001.

Your comments are very welcome. I hope you enjoy this PLACE of SPACE.

PART I: THE HUMANIST
[From the text "Milton Santos (1926-2001), A Necessary Man" (2001), by Miguel Panadero Moya Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha]

In the last week of June [2001] the worldwide web transmitted messages from all over Latin America and Europe announcing the death of one of the most illustrious personalities of 20th Century social sciences, the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos. As the President of the Brazilian Association of Geographers mentioned in her message, we were saying farewell to an intellectual who thought and struggled for a different and better world, for a slower existence, for a kinder world, for respect of differences, for a new way of living our history and geography, and for a different globalization in which citizenship would be complete and space for emotion possible.

The disappearance of Milton Santos leaves an important void in the culture of the nascent 21st century, deprived of one of its treasures. A lucid and brilliant geographer, his opinions were characterized by the firmness and depth of his judgement, qualities that are also prominent in his numerous publications. Milton's proposals are an inexhaustible source of stimulating ideas towards which nobody can be passive at.

Born in Brotas de Macaúbas, in the Brazilian Chapada Diamantina, Bahia State, on May 3rd, 1926, he completed his university studies in Salvador; and then graduated with a degree in Law from the Federal University of Bahia in 1948. Nevertheless, it would not be the field of law where Milton Santos' vocation would lie, but in that of teaching. In 1954 he became a lecturer at the Catholic Faculty of Philosophy in Salvador de Bahia, where he was greatly influenced by French geographers, thus determining his future interest in this field.

From this moment on the life of Milton Santos has been described as a sequence of triumphs, misfortunes, honours, and worries. He received his doctorate in Geography from the University of Strasbourg, France (1958) and was a Lecturer (1960) and Professor (1961) of Geography in the Federal University of Bahia. His numerous positions held include that of President of the Commission of Economic Planning for Bahia in 1962. Being an avid reader, an untiring observer, a traveller by obligation, and an exile in France in 1964, he accumulated knowledge and experiences in Europe and Africa during this decade and that of the seventies, as well as in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon America. "Maítre des Conférences Associé of Geographie", University of Bordeaux, France (1967); Professor of Geography at the University of Paris, Sorbonne (1968); Research Fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, (1971); Full Visiting Professor, University of Toronto, Canada, (1972); Professor of the National University of Engineers, Lima, Peru, (1973); Professor of the Economics Faculty of Sciences, Central University of Venezuela, (1974); Professor at the University of Dar is Salam, Tanzania, (1974); Visiting Professor at the University of Campinhas, Sâo Paulo, (1975); Professor of Geography and Urban Planning at Columbia University, New York, (1976)… At the end of the 70's, he returned to Brazil to become fully integrated in academic activity, first as a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Sâo Paulo, (1978); then as a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, (1979); and finally as a Professor of Human Geography in the University of Sâo Paulo, where he would produce a bounteous corpus academic work until the end of his days. His ideas on discipline and social problems in the second half of the 20th century have been collected in an extensive bibliography which stands out for its originality, scientific precision, and acuteness. Milton Santos wrote more than 40 books, some of which are considered important theoretical contributions to the field of Human Geography and Urbanism. In addition, he published dozens of essays and contributions in collective books and the daily press, as well as 200 research papers in journals. His intellectual inheritance is outlined in one of his last books, "A natureza do espaço. Técnica e tempo. Razâo e emoçâo", published in 1996 by the Brasilian firm Hucitec, and recently translated into Spanish by Ariel.