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In the early twentieth century, St. Pauli was not the only place in Hamburg to go to have fun. In the city's East End, a wide range of pubs, clubs, and ballrooms turned working-class quarters into a vibrant pleasurescape. Based on historical-topographic and archival research, this paper explores eastern Hamburg's forgotten pleasurescape with the aim of drawing attention to pleasure culture as a social driving force and of redressing the balance in the city's one-sided history of pleasure culture. In the course of the study, the term "pleasurescape" is more clearly nuanced and geo-spatial historical mapping further explored as a tool for urban history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses nihilism as it relates to contemporary urban multiculture in outer East London. It addresses how contemporary discourses on, and performances of, nihilism signal shifts in the constitution of urban multiculture. Attention is paid to acts of anti-sociability (and sociability) for what they reveal about contemporary urban rearrangement, and in particular the re-formation of urban multiculture in a moment defined by globalization, virtual communication, ethnic diversity and neoliberal marginalization. Through addressing discourses on, and performances of, nihilism the overall argument of the paper is for a renewal of the terms on which we understand and engage with urban multiculture, and for an appreciation of how relations between class, race and culture have shifted since key texts on the subject were published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games (CWG) legacy proposals regarding the regeneration of the East End. It provides a preliminary pre-event evaluation by examining local progress towards urban regeneration legacies, primarily physical and economic renewal. Following an examination of the events' legacy landscape and problems within the legacy planning process, the paper outlines the socio-economic profile of the locale. Thereafter, the relevance of the CWG to the area is highlighted and an evaluation of the progress towards physical and economic urban regeneration goals is charted. Key risks in the legacy planning process are identified. It is suggested that while there are elements of good practice in local progress towards legacy planning and regeneration, there are community issues that could pose tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minority ethnic population of Britain has grown rapidly in recent decades, but the percentage of minority ethnic pupils has increased more rapidly. This is particularly the case in inner London where over 50% of secondary school pupils are now from minority ethnic groups. The paper examines the issue of schooling and ethnic mix in East London with a focus on parental perceptions of school ethnic mix and parental decision making. It draws on secondary data on school ethnic mix and in-depth interviews with parents. It shows that, while most parents are happy with some degree of ethnic mix, the mix found in many schools is far from their ideal mix, particularly for White parents, and influences their decision making, possibly intensifying the segregation of ethnic groups in schools. The situation is made more complex by an element of class avoidance and attraction to schools with a strong aspirational and attainment ethos, irrespective of their ethnic mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the trials and tribulations of a loose alliance of urban conservationists seeking to create and maintain spaces for brownfield wildlife in East London. It focuses, in particular, on the construction of living roofs—an innovative conservation strategy where wildlife habitat is created on top of new and old buildings in the city. The paper identifies three obstacles that have challenged the development of brownfield conservation, which relate to the urban geographies, lively temporalities, and inconspicuous forms of brownfield wildlife and wild-living. These obstacles differ markedly from those of the nonhumans prioritised in mainstream conservation. Brownfield conservationists have developed a novel and fluid model of practice, whose emergence and characteristics can be linked to wider developments in UK nature conservation. This model chimes clearly with new approaches to theorising human-nonhuman interaction that have been developed in nonequilibrium ecology and relational geography. Drawing together these empirical and theoretical innovations, the paper concludes by outlining the parameters of a fluid biogeography of UK wildlife conservation to help understand and guide future conservation practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital industries cluster known as Silicon Roundabout has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Rebranded Tech City, it is the focus of huge public and government attention. National and local policy makers wish to accelerate the local area's development: such cluster policies are back in vogue as part of a reawakened interest in industrial policy. Surprisingly little is known about Tech City's firms or the wider ecosystem, however, and cluster programmes have a high failure rate. We perform a detailed mixed-methods analysis, combining rich enterprise-level data with semistructured interviews. We track firm and employment growth from 1997 to 2010 and identify several distinctive features: branching from creative to digital content industries; street-level sorting of firms; the importance of local amenities and a lack of conventional cluster actors such as universities or anchor businesses. We also argue that the existing policy mix embodies a number of tensions, and suggest areas for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]