Being on the mailing lists of the omnipresent Crit Geog and Urban Geog Forum journals, I’ve recently been reading a few posts on academic authors who are boycotting some of the major publishing bodies. Some interesting ideas that have got me thinking…
Perhaps there is scope to start up a journal which runs in a different way – dare I say it, a 21st century way?
My research and my interests lie in the role of design. Now as a geographer, this discipline has got huge scope to look into the geographies of design. I’ve currently been enjoying reading through John Bryson (a professor in Economic Geography at University of Birmingham) and Grete Rusten’s book ‘Design Economies and the Changing World Economy – Innovation, production and competitiveness’.
It seems to me that there is a huge gap in the so-called ‘sub-disciplines’ of geography. ‘Geographies of design’ seems to be massively undervalued by geographers. Perhaps this is because there is often a notable seperation between cultural and economic geographies?
So what if I tried to start a ‘Geographies of Design Journal’? Could it be possible to create in an open access format in order to reach beyond the discipline of ‘geography’ to encorporate other people and ideas for urban design, architecture etc…? Perhaps it would need a different name? I might suggest this to some of the other design-obsessed geographers I share ideas with at work….
