Abstract Flooding induced by sea level rise, intense rainfall events, land subsidence, and storm surges adversely impacts coastal cities worldwide. Flooding events are understood to disproportionately affect places, communities, and individuals that are already socioeconomically disadvantaged, while various flood mitigation and prevention actions may inadvertently deepen existing injustice by further redistributing flood risk to marginalised groups. The specific dynamics of these processes in China remain poorly understood. This article examines the dynamics of flooding and injustice in Ningbo, a major Chinese coastal city that is among the top 20 cities globally in terms of flood exposure. By identifying who is affected, who is protected, and who may bear more of the risks from adaptation actions, the article reveals the uneven nature of flooding impacts and protection measures in Ningbo and the intersection with social injustice in Chinese cities. We detail how residents’ living locations, socioeconomic attributes, past flood experiences and different adaptation actions shape the dynamics of flood injustice and identify how some residents benefit from flood protection interventions, while others are excluded, thus heightening their vulnerability to flooding. Our analysis speaks to flood (in)justice in coastal cities worldwide by showing how social inequalities shape flood risk.

Abstract In the contemporary academic literature, rural population decline has generally been regarded as a long‐running and almost natural phenomenon. This paper examines the complex temporal, spatial, and cultural dynamics of the population of an inland, largely agriculturally dependent rural region, the New South Wales New England and North West region (SA4 level) from the late 1990s to the 2021 Census. It investigates the key demographic processes that have driven the region’s spatially and temporally uneven experiences of population change—including decline—over this tumultuous period, using these as portents of the regional population’s likely future trajectories. Drawing on custom‐created population estimates for the Indigenous and non‐Indigenous populations of this expansive region, the paper explores these processes and trajectories for the population as a whole, then for the non‐Indigenous and Indigenous segments. The analysis identifies that a profound ageing process is underway across the entire region, is becoming more severe over time, and is leading to natural decrease for some Shires. However, the region’s Indigenous population presents a striking contrast to the non‐Indigenous one, growing rapidly, and increasing its share of the population.

Abstract Within a context of pronounced attention towards urban greening, the inclusion of food‐producing trees (FPT) in the public realm remains a marginal practice. In this paper, we consider why this may be the case. Building on recent scholarship investigating more‐than‐human care infrastructure (Alam & Houston, 2020; Power & Williams, 2020; Power & Mee, 2020), we consider the socio‐material relations that enable (and limit) care of, and by, FPT in the urban context. To do so, we draw on document analysis and interviews with council staff in metropolitan Melbourne to unpack how FPT come to be understood as offering and deserving of care (or not), and how such characterisations impact if, and how, FPT come to be ‘welcome’ in urban public places. Our analysis, first, highlights dominant ways in which urban trees are understood through local government strategy and policy, and how an orientation towards (care‐through) canopy works to exclude FPT. Second, we explore competing valuations of FPT and their capacity to contribute to sustainable cities. Across these accounts, FPT care and belonging remains ambiguous and contested. Third, we examine actual and imagined relations of FPT care and belonging, and how these work with but also remain limited by, dominant strategic directions and norms. Based on this analysis, we find that while an openness to FPT in council documentation is a significant step in enabling FPT inclusions, it is also necessary to recognise and value extant and/or potential care relations among people and FPT.

Abstract We apply a relational multiscalar model of the sustainability of social organisation to the management of COVID‐19 in Australia to analyse systems resilience and outcome fairness. Our model encompasses the structures, processes, functions, and contents of social organisation across micro, meso, and macro scales. We developed four data sets linked to COVID‐19 and analysed these as variables in our model: (1) letters to the editor in public newspapers; (2) net weekly payroll jobs growth; (3) income/wealth inequality; (4) COVID‐19 mortality and case/infection rates. These variables are used as proxies for democratic systems resilience, economic systems resilience, socioeconomic systems fairness, and public health systems efficacy, respectively. We found that as the pandemic progressed, public opinion shifted from favouring structural‐societal transformation to favouring incremental adaptation. Spatial scale and geographical location impacted the resilience of weekly payroll jobs, with ‘urban’/densely populated areas having less job growth than ‘regional’/less dense locations, and ‘national’ scale net jobs growth being greater than ‘job growth in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Victoria, in decreasing order. Transitions in pandemic policies of border restrictions and vaccination constrained net job losses, or enabled net gains over time, with the federal JobKeeper wage support preventing ‘breakout’ unemployment. Mobility restrictions and vaccination minimised mortality rates with self‐administered (RAT) testing possibly decreasing infection rates. While our findings affirm that the complexity and ‘messiness’ of social policy means that management outcomes are not easily predictable nor will necessarily match expectations, our model provides a framework for assessing system dynamics and outcome fairness.

No abstract is available for this article.

Abstract In March of 2020, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) escalated into a global health emergency. In Madrid, public institutions were overwhelmed by this crisis, and mutual aid networks were deployed in multiple neighbourhoods to assist thousands of families—approximately 15,000 households—with food and care in the absence of actions taken by the Madrid City Council. Drawing on a mixed methodology that combines discourse analysis and statistical data from social actors and multi‐level institutions, this study aims to highlight the patterns of socio‐spatial inequalities in Madrid in light of the urban impact of pandemic regulations and the role of public institutions in re‐territorialising its already existing inequalities through legal zoning. In particular, this study examines the relationship between the territorial irruption of COVID‐19‐related collective action initiatives and the re‐spatialisation of social inequalities in Madrid. In line with this objective, two additional questions are addressed. The study highlights the value of a legal geography theoretical framework in examining how law works as a political technology over territory and also shows how social organisations and networks have claimed legal regulations as bottom‐up social change processes, challenging the dynamics in the political production of law. The aim of this work is twofold: on the one hand, we wonder to what extent the solidarity networks could be related to urban territorialities and the spatialisation of social inequalities in Madrid. On the other hand, we aim to show how a legal geography perspective could be useful in examining how law is used over territory as a political technology and as a surveillance tool and, conversely, how from social movements representing social networks in pandemic, many regulations are demanded and vindicated as bottom‐up social change processes that mean a contention of former dynamics in the political production of law.

Abstract Climate change is generating levels of environmental risk that are jeopardising modern development. As the management of water systems becomes more difficult, approaches to governance and engagement within regions are increasingly shaping adaptation successes and failures. We use theory on hydrosocial systems and risk to critically analyse stakeholder experiences of a transition in South Australian water management in peri‐urban Adelaide, with detail from the Langhorne Creek viticultural region. Local prescription of water resources has limited over‐exploitation and supported landowners to use water in sophisticated ways. When community stakeholders deliberated on common concerns with governance organisations for mutually beneficial outcomes, decision‐making supported successful hydrosocial adaptation. Ongoing challenges, such as a lack of confidence in the scientific knowledge guiding decisions, were accentuated when the process was politicised and engagement became inauthentic. If trust between governance organisations and local stakeholders is broken, it is difficult to re‐engage the farming community with adaptation decision‐making. In contrast, by working closely with community end‐users, government can enable appropriate behaviour and guide adaptive management. Attention to hydrosocial processes will be crucial to facilitate effective local adaptation policy in response to climate risk.

Abstract Amidst intensifying climate breakdown and inadequate climate change education, young people are increasingly taking part in a global movement for climate justice. Young climate justice activists are disseminating stories of injustice and possibility intended to inform and activate their peers, parents, politicians, powerholders, and the public for sweeping systems‐level change. Using in‐depth interviews with 16 youth activists aged 15 to 17 from the United States, this study explored youths’ stories into activism, defined as the counterstories motivating youths’ initial and sustained engagement in the climate justice movement. Using reflexive thematic analysis, two interrelated thematic categories were generated: redefining the problem of climate breakdown and challenging dominant climate solutionism. First, activists spoke of questioning dominant, depoliticised discourses that regard climate change as a primarily scientific or environmental problem that adults are currently “solving” to prevent future harms. Youths’ counterstories emphasised that climate change is an issue of present‐day and future injustices perpetuated by inadequate action by today’s adult leaders. Second, youths’ counterstories emphasised the powerful role of young people in spurring societal transformation towards climate justice—an inherently political and radical project requiring systems change through collective action. The research draws upon and contributes to recent scholarship in children’s geographies and critical geographies of education, while responding to urgent calls for reimagining climate pedagogies with young people’s well‐being and political agency at the centre. By examining the counterstories employed by young activists, this research highlights storylines educators may mobilise to activate learners’ political imaginations and spur their active engagement in societal transformation.

Abstract This article explores the involvement of the Australian railways in the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. Focusing on the visions and voices of Aboriginal peoples who were taken away from their families by train, the article considers how railways were used in the attempted assimilation of First Nations peoples into White society. The last train ride, an artwork by South Australian Yankunytjatjara artist and Stolen Generations survivor Kunyi McInerney, serves as a point of departure to study how the settler colonial infrastructure of rail operationalised the Australian government policies of assimilation. I ask how railway infrastructures have affected Aboriginal peoples and how Aboriginal peoples have responded to railway infrastructures. In centring the artworks and narratives of Aboriginal people taken away by train, I extend an invitation to readers to rethink geography through the visual expressions and stories of First Nations peoples. Close attention to the perspectives of affected peoples opens possibilities to view infrastructures in a different light. The visions and voices of Aboriginal families impacted by assimilation policies show that the railways played a pivotal role in the separation of Aboriginal children from families and that railway infrastructures have also been sites of resistance to and subversion of assimilation and child removal. Paying careful attention to First Nations voices and visions, the article informs how the Australian railways have been complicit in assimilation policies and how Aboriginal peoples have used the railways to resist and survive such settler colonial projects.