The Dictionary of Human Geography

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spaces of public housing) and address percep-
tions and fear of crime as well as actual crime.
The Safe Cities Program in particular empha-
sizes a broad community-oriented approach to
problem-solving. Recent efforts to control crime
throughsurveillance, such as security cam-
eras, are distinct from the concept of defensible
space, which emphasizes the need to create the
architectural framework to enable residents
to control their own environment. gp


Suggested reading
Wekerle and Whitzman (1995).


deindustrialization A sustained decline in
industrial (especially manufacturing) activity
and capacity (cf.industrialization). It may
involve the absolute and/or relative decline
of industrial output, employment and other
means of production. Such changes are quite
normal in the course of economicdevelop-
ment. However, when they are linked to the
declining competitiveness of industrial pro-
duction to meet extra-regional, domestic and
international demand within reasonable levels
of employment and a sustainable balance
of payments, deindustrialization represents a
process of underdevelopment. The causes
of deindustrialization are complex. In the
contemporary global economy, they lie in a
combination of local circumstances and loca-
tional adjustment to global conditions. In a
capitalisteconomy, the rate of profit and
its determination must lie at the centre of
any explanation of these changing spatial
configurations of industrial activity. (See also
rustbelt.) rl


Suggested reading
Bluestone and Harrison (1982); Martin and
Rowthorne (1986).


deliberative mapping The collaborative
creation ofmapsby multiple authors who share
a common interest or complementary exper-
tise. Also known as ‘collaborative mapping’,
‘participatory mapping’ or ‘geocollaboration’,
deliberative mapping is a form of distributed
mapping supported bygeographic informa-
tion systemsand online software designed for
group decision-making in map design, envi-
ronmental planning, political redistricting
or emergency response (MacGillavry, 2003).
Collaboration can be in real time or asyn-
chronous, over a period of days, weeks or
even years (Schafer, Ganoe, Xiao, Coch and
Carroll, 2005). The dialogue is both verbal
and graphic, as participants at adjoining


workstations or continents apart suggest
applications as well as modifications. mm

Suggested reading
MacEachren and Brewer (2004).

democracy The term ‘democracy’ has a
simple meaning: ‘Rule by the people’. But
the meaning of ‘people’ and ‘rule’ are far from
straightforward. Thehistorical geography
of democracy is therefore the ongoing process
of finding answers to variouspracticalprob-
lems:whoshould rule,howrule should be
organized, and overwhatscope of activities.
But these practical issues are internally related
to questions ofjustification, which means that
democracy is a highly contested concept in both
theory and practice. As a result, the empirical
analysis of democratic politics cannot avoid
issues of normative democratic theory.
Modern democratic theory depends on
a distinctivegeographical imagination.It
assumes that democracy is framed by bounded
territories, involving a nested hierarchy of
scales contained within the nation-state
(see alsoboundary). Key thinkers of this trad-
ition have focused considerable attention on
the geographical organization of democratic
politics in complex, spatially extensive territor-
ies (Dahl, 1989). The limitations of this terri-
torial framing of democracy are increasingly
subjected to critical investigation in political
science (Shapiro and Hacker-Cordo ́n, 1999).
Until very recently, there has been little
explicit focus inhuman geographyon the nor-
mative questions that are at the core of debates
about the relationship between democracy and
spatiality. This is the result ofpolitical geo-
graphy’s avoidance of reflection on the norma-
tive basis of political issues. However, the
1990s saw a shift in various sub-disciplines
towards investigating the entwinement of prac-
tical issues with normative issues central to
democratic theory; for example, issues ofpar-
ticipationin development geography, issues of
deliberationin urban planning, and issues of
citizenshipin environmental studies. Aspects
of democratic theory are now present across
human geography (Barnett and Low, 2004).
electoral geographyis the sub-field in
which the geographies of democracy have
always been a concern. Much of this has
focused on mapping distributions of votes, but
recent attention has focused on developing
more sophisticated, spatially sensitive explan-
ationsforvotingbehaviour(Agnew,1996).The
spatial organization of electoral systems effects
how votes are translated into representative

DEINDUSTRIALIZATION


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