I interrupt my New Urban Precincts series to say that I have finally uploaded my presentation at the recent Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New York on 28th Feb on Slideshare, complete with (re-enacted) audio.  I’m not that audio-genic I’m afraid but I hope that doesn’t distract from the content of the presentation.

The abstract for this paper, which was my Master’s Thesis at Goldsmiths College in London is as follows:

“Adopting an ethnographic and heuristic approach, my study uncovers the everyday pleasures, frustrations and constraints young mobile professionals experience in moving to and making a new home in six global cities – London, New York, Paris, Dubai, Shanghai and Singapore; and how their sense of home and other associated invariables such as belonging, identity, community, place and people relationships have been impacted as a result.  It demonstrates that for these persons, home is not a singular concept but a complex and multifarious phenomenon. 

My presentation shall consider home a) as a gentrified but generic living space (Home is a Non-place); b) as the often insurmountable challenge of home-making or -configuring (Home is an In-between Place); c) as a loose collection of material possessions (Home is a Bricolage of Ordinary E/Affects); d) as the mechanical but not in the least mundane set of practices involved in securing and maintaining a base of operations (Home is a State of Emergency); e) as people and relationships (Home is a Strong Network of Weak Ties); and finally, f) as a new cutting-edge phenomenon in user-centric communications technology (Home is a Cloud). ”