Doreen Massey
1944–2016
British geographer who redefined place: not a closed territory with its own identity, but a crossing of relations.
Massey rejected the idea that a neighbourhood has an essence to protect. For her a place is the sum of the relations running through it at a given moment — who lives there, who works there, what arrives and what leaves — and is therefore always under construction and always plural.
Hence her critique of globalisation's «power geometry»: we are all connected, but not on the same terms. Some decide the flow, some make use of it and some simply receive it, and those three positions coexist within the same city.
On Doreen Massey in this archive
- Public space
Urban Space: Power and Resistance
Urban space is not merely a physical setting where human activities take place; it is also a space deeply charged…
Michel Foucault 3 min read - Public space
Doreen Massey: space has a gender too
Massey showed that moving through the city does not cost everyone the same, and called that geographical inequality…
Doreen Massey 2 min read
