Department of Geography
Alec Brownlow
Ph.D., Clark University
M.E.S., Yale University
B.A., University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Professor Brownlow's interests and teaching span the urban environmental interface. First, his research explores how processes and struggles of social control shape urban environments and public spaces. He is especially interested in how urban environments are used and coopted to confer or deny rights of citizenship and access. His publications explore the dynamics and processes involved in urban environmental change in Philadelphia, and reveal how these changes are incorporated into grassroots social justice politics and the politics of gentrification. Second, Dr. Brownlow explores the role of ‘safety’ in urban renewal politics and policies. In particular, he is interested in the politics of safety’s production and representation and the consequent injustices and contradictions underpinning the ‘safe city’.
Courses Offered:
GEO 103 Urbanization
GEO 205 Justice, Inequity & the Urban Environment
GEO 210 Environmental Conservation
GEO 260 Global Resources
GEO 269 Political Ecology
Selected Publications:
Brownlow, A. 2009. Keeping up appearances: profiting from patriarchy in the nation’s 'safest city'. Urban Studies 48(6):1681-1702.
Brownlow, A. 2008. A Political Ecology of Neglect: Race, Gender and Environmental Change in Philadelphia. Verlag DM.
Brownlow, A. 2006. An archaeology of fear and environmental change in Philadelphia. Geoforum 37:227-245.
Brownlow, A. 2006. Inherited fragmentations and narratives of environmental control in entrepreneurial Philadelphia, In: N. Heynen, M. Kaika, & E. Swyngedouw (eds.) In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. Routledge, New York. Pp 208-225.
Brownlow, A. 2005. A geography of men’s fear. Geoforum 36:581-592.
Brownlow, A. 2000. A wolf in the garden: Ideology and change in the Adirondack landscape, In: C. Philo and C. Wilbert (eds.). Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. Routledge Press, New York. Pp. 141-158.
Wolch, J., A. Brownlow, and U. Lassiter. 2000. Reconstructing the animal worlds of inner-city Los Angeles, In: C. Philo and C. Wilbert (eds.). Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. Routledge Press, New York. Pp. 71-97.
