Damian Collins's research while affiliated with University of Alberta and other places
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Publications (70)
Weather is an elementary and fundamental characteristic of place. In any given place we encounter the materiality of weather, local meanings attached to weather, and practices adopted in response to living with weather. Winter cities are places defined by their weather—long, cold winters that can pose challenges to urban life. Efforts to address th...
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged and encouraged local governments to reallocate street space. The chief purpose of new regimes of street management is to expand spaces for walking and bicycling, and to ease business interactions such as curbside pickup and dining while maintaining social distancing guidelines. We investigated how North American...
The notion that Housing First (HF) is a human-rights based approach to housing some of society’s most vulnerable citizens is often alluded to in the literature, but seldom interrogated. In this paper, we examine whether HF in Alberta, Canada is practiced in a way that realizes the right to housing for chronically homeless people. We do so using fou...
Historically, governmental responses to homelessness in Canada have defaulted to the most basic of services such as food and shelter. Even under exceptional circumstances, such as the current coronavirus pandemic, governments still demonstrate reluctance to guarantee permanent, adequate and affordable housing to all. In this policy review we argue...
Evictions are a common contributing factor to homelessness and are experienced overwhelmingly by vulnerable populations, including low-income households, single parents, and minority groups. At the same time, social and affordable housing providers serve increasingly vulnerable populations. Although all evictions are potentially problematic, those...
In response to anthropogenic climate change, many governments are adopting policies to reduce carbon emissions. In Canada, federal and provincial governments have implemented carbon pricing. One of the effects of putting a price on carbon is increasing the cost of using private vehicles, which may reduce mobility and increase the risk of social exc...
Housing First (HF) operates on the premise that permanent housing is the first need of people experiencing chronic homelessness. It understands housing as a resource to which everyone is entitled, not a privilege that must be earned. In these respects, HF is consistent with housing as a human right. However, little is known about if or how HF polic...
The service hub concept is strongly associated with deprived areas of North American inner cities, where agglomerations of low‐cost housing and service providers form a space of survival for marginalised populations. In this paper, we contend that service hubs can take other forms, including as small‐scale sites of housing and service provision, in...
Today’s young adults enter a housing market substantively different from that of their parents, within a life-course path that is also profoundly changed. However, relatively little research considers how life-course and housing norms are perceived by young adults themselves, including in contexts where these norms are difficult to fulfil, such as...
Housing First (HF) is an increasingly widespread and influential response to chronic homelessness. Programs using an HF approach typically rely on market apartments to house homeless clients as rapidly as possible. This reliance means HF programs are dependent on the availability and affordability of market housing. Little attention has been given...
A winter city is any urban centre that experiences a long, dark, cold, and/or snowy winter. The Winter Cities movement is a more precise concept, referring to cities taking an active role in becoming more appealing and functional in winter, primarily through physical interventions. The movement also has a social purpose, seeking to counter reclusio...
As code for spaces of mobile dwelling, the camp and its verb “camping” occupy ambivalent territory. For the well-housed, camping out can be a space and time of recreational discretion, while for those living precariously, the camp can offer temporary respite from forced and continual mobility. We argue that notions of camping are defined in part by...
Inner‐city service hubs are vital spaces of survival for homeless populations. They are also vulnerable to gentrification‐induced displacement, putting the populations they serve at increased risk. This paper contributes to recent work on the resilience of inner‐city service hubs through a case study of Edmonton, Canada. Specifically, we theorise t...
Background
Varying forms and locations of retail environments offer different levels of accommodation for active transportation. Like many North American cities, the retail environment in Edmonton, Alberta experienced significant change throughout the last century. Before World War II, traditional retail forms in central areas and main streets were...
This article investigates how Housing First (HF) is practiced in Alberta, Canada, with a focus on the concept of graduation. The dominant HF model, Pathways, holds that client support should be time-unlimited. However, HF is highly mobile and increasingly characterized by ambiguity and drift away from Pathways principles. In Alberta, one prominent...
Freedom camping is a form of tourism entailing overnight stays in public open spaces, rather than formal campgrounds. It presents varied challenges for local governments charged with maintaining safe and orderly public spaces. This article provides empirical and conceptual insights into the regulation of coastal freedom camping in New Zealand, draw...
In partnership, Rotoroa Island and Auckland Zoo in the Hauraki Gulf have established a conservation sanctuary that has linked a literal sea-bound island with an urban and metaphorical island. Each entity (Rotoroa and the Zoo) has a presence in each other's space. Ideas of archipelago as well as Foucault's heterotopia assist our interpretation of th...
The news media play a critical role in shaping the places, social ideologies, and practices that constitute everyday life. This influence encompasses understandings of spaces such as the school, elements of curricula (including sexuality education), and the construction of what it means to be a young person. This chapter takes a framing approach to...
The act of problem formation is integral to the policymaking process. Moreover, the process by which certain situations, experiences or events are rendered problematic hinges upon the places, spaces and networks through which the issue is made visible and intelligible to policy makers and decision makers. In this paper, we explore these epistemic g...
Little is known about the motivations and experiences of freedom campers – travellers who choose to camp in open public spaces rather than formal campgrounds. In particular, the ‘freedom’ in their practices has not been examined – despite this concept being central to tourism, and leisure activities more generally. This article fills a gap in knowl...
In this short commentary, we address the following question: setting aside the issue of translation, do health geographers in France speak the same language as their English-speaking counterparts in various parts of the world? Specifically, do they have comparable empirical, theoretical and political concerns? We briefly survey the ‘states of knowl...
The news media play a critical role in shaping the places, social ideologies, and practices that constitute everyday life. This influence encompasses understandings of spaces such as the school, elements of curricula (including sexuality education), and the construction of what it means to be a young person. This chapter takes a framing approach to...
Second-home owners often establish deep connections with their dwellings, and the broader landscapes of which these dwellings are part. In this research, we consider whether, and to what extent, visitors to commercial tourist accommodation also experience feelings of place attachment and home. These issues were investigated via a case study approac...
International migrants experience first-hand differences between countries in terms of the social meanings, spatial regulation and prevalence of smoking. This research centred on the smoking-related perceptions, experiences and behaviours of recent migrants from China to Canada. Eight focus groups were held in Edmonton, Alberta, in July-October 201...
Restrictions on outdoor smoking are increasingly common, especially for spaces associated with children. In Canada, playground smoking bans are in effect in 102 municipalities. A survey of parents and caregivers at three playgrounds in neighbourhoods of varying income levels was undertaken in Edmonton, Alberta in July 2013. Respondents expressed ve...
In February 2014, MPs in the UK House of Commons voted in favour of a law making it an offence to expose children to tobacco smoke in private vehicles. This decision followed the adoption of similar rules in five other countries, as well as six US states, nine Canadian provinces and every state of Australia. While increasingly widespread, this poli...
A scoping review was carried out to investigate the prevalence and causes of urban homelessness among Indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Relevant information was sought from both academic and grey literatures. Data on prevalence were sourced from homeless count reports. Analysis reveals Indigenous peoples are consistently over...
Island blue spaces are associated with restorative potential, but few studies examine this proposition when an island׳s use has changed over time. We examine Rotoroa Island (near Auckland, New Zealand) where, for almost a century, the Salvation Army ran an alcohol treatment facility. The island׳s relative isolation was central to its mixed therapeu...
This article considers the motivations for rapid mass transit (RMT) development in two mid-sized cities: Auckland, New Zealand and Edmonton, Canada. To understand these cities' investment in RMT, we weigh factors related to interurban competition (around economic and non-economic factors) as well as explanations grounded in utilitarian and local be...
Smoking bans have recently expanded to private vehicles in which children are present. This study considers the place of children's rights and children's voices in this policy initiative, with respect to the Canadian context, where vehicular smoking bans have been widely adopted. First, we examine print media reports, finding children's right to he...
Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is associated with a broad range of health risks. This study assessed the impacts of cooking smoke and environmental tobacco smoke on air quality at outdoor community events in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada). Data were collected at three festivals in July-August 2011 using a portable real-time airborne partic...
The politics of place precipitated by a development proposal for a privately owned sandspit in Ngunguru, Northland, is examined in this article. It centres on residents' place attachment and the ways in which this helped to inform community resistance to development. A framing analysis of 23 stakeholder interviews conducted in 2008–2009 was carried...
This paper conceptualizes recent residential development in New Zealand's coastal countryside, which has entailed dramatic escalations in land and housing values. It considers whether this process should be understood as gentrification, as has recently been suggested. The argument against this interpretation is twofold. First, some qualities of coa...
This paper considers the feelings that are evoked in, and by, coastal places. We are particularly interested in how emotional connections with the coastal environment can be a resource and motivation for place-protective action. We draw on stakeholder interviews undertaken in the northern New Zealand locality of Ngunguru in 2008–2009. This site was...
This article examines the restriction of smoking on university campuses in the Canadian context. Indoor smoking on campus is now completely prohibited by law, and universities are increasingly moving to restrict, or prohibit, outdoor smoking on their grounds. The research focuses on three case studies to identify changes in spatial restrictions on...
Smoking bans offer practical protection against environmental tobacco smoke and highlight the decreasing normative status of smoking. At Canadian universities, indoor smoking is now completely prohibited, but regulations vary with respect to outdoor smoking. The purpose of this research was to conceptualize the interactions of smoking bans on campu...
Smoking bans are the most geographical aspect of contemporary tobacco control policy, and are eliminating smoke from many of the spaces of everyday life, particularly in high-income countries. In this paper, we emphasize that the adoption of bans both reflects, and reinforces, changing social norms around smoking and exposure to environmental tobac...
This paper examines the factors that lead parents to select travel modes for their children’s trip to school. It does so with reference to parents whose children attend a suburban school in Auckland, New Zealand, where walking and driving are the two main travel options. Four focus groups were conducted in order to understand parents’ transport dec...
This article provides a comparative perspective on homelessness in Canada and New Zealand, with a focus on three urban regions. It seeks to document homeless numbers in the chosen cities, to evaluate the utility of counting the homeless, and to identify common and divergent approaches in homelessness policy. Research involved document analysis, key...
Children's journeys between home and school have become increasingly problematic in Western cities as a result of intensifying traffic and safety concerns. Many parents now take their children to school by car and, through driving, exacerbate congestion. In response to this situation, a number of school communities, in partnership with local author...
Demand for both primary residences and second homes in high-amenity areas has led to escalating property values and widespread development pressure in coastal New Zealand. We focus on a major development proposal at Ocean Beach, a greenfield coastal site in the Hawke’s Bay region, and seek to explain the opposition it has provoked. In so doing, we...
Abstract Despite increased sexuality education in New Zealand, concern remains about high rates of sexually transmitted infection and unplanned pregnancy among young people. To understand this ‘gap’, we consider what high school students learn about sexual health, and where they learn it. Narrative evidence reveals the negative, risk-oriented natur...
This article examines the development of walking school buses (WSBs) in Auckland, New Zealand, drawing on five annual surveys. Longitudinal analysis reveals sustained growth in the number of routes, and in levels of participation, although activity remains concentrated in the wealthiest neighbourhoods. Parent coordinators identify four key benefits...
This article considers the importance of beach-front campgrounds in New Zealand, both as physical sites offering affordable public access to coastal environments, and as sites of social and psychological meaning. It traces the evolution of coastal campgrounds from ‘freedom camping’, to more formal (if initially basic) facilities, to the development...
This article considers the contested process of coastal development in New Zealand and the implications of both governmental regulation and public concern for understanding property. Its empirical focus is a proposal for a substantial, new urbanist development at Ocean Beach, located in the Hawke's Bay region of the North Island. Three key sources...
This paper considers the landscape of coastal property in New Zealand through the lens of real-estate advertising. In analyzing a sample of 236 newspaper advertisements, it connects representations of coastal housing to broader concerns about the development of the coastline. Much public anxiety centres on the notion that coastal residential develo...
Recent studies have discussed the important role of the automobile in shaping contemporary urban social life. This research used a series of focus groups in Auckland, New Zealand, to illuminate the complex social attitudes and values associated with walking as well as driving. While the car is the dominant transport mode in Auckland, the shortcomin...
This paper reports on log transportation as a health-related issue in the Hokianga district of Northland at a time when forestry activity in the area is expanding and radical reforms to New Zealand's roading network have been proposed. Drawing on technical information and key informant interviews, the potential impacts of logging trucks on Hokianga...
In this article, we argue that considerations of public space should move beyond a concern for the visual and encompass a more fully embodied approach. On the basis of qualitative research in central Auckland, New Zealand, we explore the ways in which individuals and groups are marginalised through not only concerns for visual social order, but als...
Schools have received less attention from geographers than institutions such as the clinic and the hospital – despite the fact that, for most people, encounters with sites of medicine are rarer than encounters with sites of education. Indeed, schools are central to the geographies of children and young people, and to the organization of much family...
This article investigates the ways in which New Zealand local authorities respond to homelessness. It finds that while some punitive bylaws targeting homeless people exist, they are not widespread, and in three case study cities are accompanied by efforts to support social service providers. This indicates that New Zealand local authorities are p...
This paper examines primary school children’s experiences of travelling between home and school within three neighbourhoods. Our investigation is set in Auckland, New Zealand, where parental practices such as chauffeuring are commonplace, yet are increasingly recognised as limiting children’s physical fitness and environmental awareness. Drawing on...
This article analyzes the role of geographical context in five leading U.S. Supreme Court cases on religious activities in public schools. These cases are part of a broader, highly controversial jurisprudence that has had the effect of secularizing public education, in large part through the creation of boundaries intended to protect the individual...
Links between ozone depletion, sun exposure and the incidence of melanoma in later life have focussed public health attention on risk management, including attempts to curtail children's exposure to sunlight. Schools are potentially valuable sites in sun protection efforts, as they may combine behavioural messages with protective environments. In t...
A distinctive feature of many of New Zealand's coastal landscapes has been the rudimentarily constructed holiday home known as a ‘bach’. In recent years, however, rapidly escalating beachfront property prices, and the associated development of elite residential landscapes, have threatened the status of the bach. This commentary examines the diminis...
This paper considers the political and normative dimensions of local government responses to homelessness in New Zealand. It outlines the context for local government action, the approaches adopted by three case study cities, and arguments for rejecting anti-homeless regulations in favour of supportive policies conducive to forging inclusive publ...
This article considers the spatial, cultural, and legal dimensions of the controversy surrounding the Surrey School Board's religiously motivated refusal to approve three books portraying families with same-sex parents. It examines the issue in terms of debates over the public/private distinction, and the notion of a 'culture war' between progressi...
In the face of mounting concern at traffic congestion in the vicinity of schools and the associated risks of child pedestrian injury, the 'walking school bus' (WSB) idea has been rapidly adopted within metropolitan Auckland. WSBs involve volunteers guiding children to and from school in an orderly manner following established walking routes. This p...
In many Western cities, the journey between home and school has become problematic, due to intensifying traffic and growing fears for children's safety. Accordingly, many parents now chauffeur their children to and from school. This situation has compounded congestion, prompting efforts to identify safe alternatives. One recent innovation is the wa...
In this paper, we discuss recent efforts to improve the safety of children travelling to and from New Zealand's largest primary school. The results of a travel survey completed by parents and pupils are reported, together with our recommendations for reducing congestion at the school gate and promoting healthy alternatives to car travel. Reflecting...
Against a backdrop of widespread panic about children's safety and the unruliness of teenagers, efforts to remove young people from public space are becoming increasingly pervasive. Public space is being constructed as adult space through legal mechanisms such as curfews, which seek to curtail young people's spatial freedoms and contain them within...
This paper considers the ways in which state-supported proposals for an irrigation scheme contributed to reorienting land use and community dynamics in Maungatapere, a semi-rural locality in Northland, New Zealand. This scheme was first proposed in the early 1980s — a time when key preoccupations of the state included protecting primary industry an...
This paper surveys the history and current status of children's health camps in New Zealand, and places these sites within the theoretical context of therapeutic landscapes. The first health camp was established in 1919, and the seven current camps provide respite, education and health care for approximately 4000 children each year. We analyse the...
Daily life in the larger urban centres of Australia and New Zealand is becoming increasingly stressed though influences ranging from traffic congestion, pollution, and loss of green space. Arguably these influences have the greatest impact on children whose lives are most prone to, respectively, injury, contamination, and constrained play space. Fu...
Citations
... The study called for readdressing mobility inequalities through street reallocation. In another study, Shirgaokar >et al., (2021) used Twitter data to evaluate the response to street reallocation in the United States and Canada. The study found that using a curb for dining has opened the possibility of reimaging the innovative use of public spaces. ...
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... While these goals are not mutually exclusive, many of them reflect deep and, at times, conflicting moral perspectives on what is "good" for both beneficiaries and society. For instance, one venture may view job training and behavioral commitments as central to their social mission, while another may view such requirements as exclusionary, divisive-even wrong (Stadler and Collins, 2021). ...
... On reconnaît aujourd'hui que les études en santé ont largement été contraintes par la suprématie ancienne des sciences biomédicales (Ménard, 2002). Pourtant, si la géographie de la santé pouvait être synonyme de géographie médicale ou de l'inventaire, elle s'est affirmée, depuis une trentaine d'années comme une géographie de la santé, multi échelles, et rapportant la santé à ses déterminants sociaux, spatiaux, politiques, culturels, et environnementaux (Collins, Fleuret, Huish, Hoyez, 2011 ;Curtis, 2007 ;Kervasdoué, Macé, Picheral, 2004 ;Rican, Salem, Jougla, 2000). Picheral (1995) défendait aussi cette conception d'une géographie qui ne cède pas au « médico-centrisme », et qui, sans dénigrer les autres disciplines (notamment l'épidémiologie 3 ), était légitime à participer au débat de santé publique. ...
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... Prior studies conducted in a variety of housing contexts have identified that relationships with housing staff impact satisfaction (Reynolds & Beamish, 2003;Rolfe et al., 2020;Varady & Carrozza, 2000). High quality staff with expertise in aging who can build relationships with tenants are especially important in seniors' social housing contexts, as tenants often need additional support upholding their lease obligations and creating healthy tenant communities (Canadian Urban Institute, 2020;Collins et al., 2021;Harris, 2021;Sanders et al., 2021;Sheppard, Kwon et al., 2022). In the current study, the need for stronger customer service skills among frontline staff emerged and tenants expressed a desire for staff to have more expertise and training to work more effectively with older adults. ...
... Their framework rests on three core framings: (i) identification of a problem and the attribution of blame or causality (diagnostic frame), (ii) proposed solution to the diagnosed problem, which entails strategies, tactics and targets, (prognostic frame), (iii) promoting collective action and emphasizing responsibility to resolve the problems identified (motivational frame). In addition to the study of social movements, scholars have used and adapted these frame-categories for a variety of topics, most recently in urban research on, e.g., how the sharing city project is understood and strategically communicated by the municipality of Barcelona (Sánchez Vergara et al., 2021), the way Canadian municipalities frame the challenge of reducing carbon emissions (Reynard et al., 2021) as well as examining urban greening policies in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Park et al., 2021). ...
... Khanam and Begum (2013) classify elements as security of tenure, public goods and services, environmental affordability, habitably, accessibility, location, cultural appropriateness, freedom from dispossession, information, capacity and capacity-building participation and self-expression, resettlement, safe environment, security and privacy. The human rights paradigm is expressed in the widespread adoption of the implied warranty of habitability and more selective adoption of rent control policies and requirements for just cause when evicting tenants and enforcing rent control policies (Collins & Stout, 2021;Moons, 2016). That notwithstanding, some scholars are sceptical on classifying housing as a human right. ...
... Medical tourism is described as travelling abroad with the intent to make use of medical treatment for the purpose of preserving life, enhancing the quality of life or improving one's appearance; because of lower cost, better quality or the inaccessibility of some procedure at the place of residence (resulting from a lack of personnel, knowledge, technical equipment and procedures, as well as long waiting times or legal limitations) often combined with sightseeing the visited place. (Białk-Wolf, 2010, p. 655) Collins et al. (2019) indicate that Americans take into account a country's environment, the tourism destination, medical tourism costs, and medical facilities and services when choosing a medical tourism destination. ...
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... Satisfactory housing remains one of the key anchors for the sense of safety in the modern world (Jones, 1995). Yet, with the concurrent increase of rental prices and the declining capacity for home ownership for the youngest generations, housing careers (spanning one's housing mobilities and property ownership over the life-course) have become increasingly chaotic and often precarious (Hoolachan et al., 2017;Jones & Grigsby-Toussaint, 2021;Furlong & Cartmel, 2006;Severson & Collins, 2020). The complexity of housing transitions reflects the characteristics of contemporary transitions-to-adulthood: many young adults veer and glide through bouts of co-residing with parents, renting with friends, cohabitating with significant others, and other scenarios in-between (e.g., Cairns, 2011;Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1996;Scabini et al., 2006). ...
... Consumer choice is a core principle of Housing First programs; it requires consumers to be actively involved in choosing their housing arrangements, being engaged in their treatment, and being able to pursue their individual goals (Anderson- Baron & Collins, 2019;L€ ofstrand & Juhila, 2012;Tsemberis et al., 2004). Several studies have found that encouraging consumer choice in HF programs promotes housing retention and improved mental health among clients (Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019; Greenwood & Manning, 2017;Martins et al., 2016;Volk et al., 2016). ...
... Moreover, local challenges differ among the eight countries and also within each Arctic country. Despite shared characteristics as winter-cities, the cities display different vulnerabilities to climate and environmental change, as also the Winter Cities movement stressed (Stout et al., 2018). In addition, differences in their socio-economic structures influence their capacities to implement policies towards sustainable development. ...
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