John Rennie Short


John Rennie Short is a professor of geography and public policy in the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Early life and education

Short was born in Stirling, Scotland. He was raised in nearby Tullibody, a village in the County of Clackmannanshire. He attended the county grammar school, Alloa Academy. He received the MA in geography from Aberdeen University in 1973. followed by a PhD in geography from the University of Bristol, with a received dissertation, "Residential Mobility in The Private Housing Market of Bristol". From 1976 to 1978, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences.

Career

In 1978, Short was appointed lecturer in geography at the University of Reading.  From 1985 to 1987, he was also visiting senior research fellow at the Urban Research Unit of the Australian National University. He left Reading in 1990 to join Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as professor of geography. In 2002, he left Syracuse for an appointment as professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He was appointed to his current position in the School of Public Policy at UMBC in 2005.
Short has published in human geography's subfields, including the urban, the political, the environmental, the economic, and the cultural. His scholarship incorporates social and cultural theory methodologies, archival research strategies, and data analyses.
Short's work has been presented in television and radio interviews, print interviews in national and special newspapers and essays on scholarly/journalistic websites.

Scholarship

Short's research papers contribute to four main areas of political economy.
The first is an exploration of urban society. Amongst many articles and book chapters, his work includes a long engagement with analysing housing dynamics to broader concerns with generating models of metropolitan change, urban cultural economy, traffic issues, immigration, suburban change, the relationship between globalisation and cities, measuring the extent of globalisation in cities, urban flânerie, urban environmental issues, in a time of climate change, how city regions seek to reposition themselves in discursive space through branding campaigns and event hosting. More recent work has focused on the Global South including the rise of new middle class and the informal economy in the Colombian city of Cali.
A second body of work contributes to broader issues of cultural economy and politics. An influential text, Imagined Country first published in 1991 and reissued in 2005, was an important part of the cultural turn. In that book Short elaborated the idea of national environmental ideologies though the depictions of wilderness, countryside and city in landscape painting, cinema and novels. Other work focuses on globalisation, language, wealth, wealth and political power, and wealth and immigration.
A third contribution is to political geography and geopolitics. His work on the US includes analyses of elections,
voting systems, gerrymandering, and legitimation crisis. Work on geopolitics includes issues in the East China and South China Seas. In 2020 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research the geopolitics of the South China Sea.
The fourth theme, mainly expressed in book form, is the history of cartography. Short builds upon and extends the work of the critical cartographic theorist John Brian Harley to deconstruct maps as social and political texts. Short explores the power dynamics in how the USA and Korea were represented in maps, the creation of a spatial sensitivity in the early modern era, the role of indigenous people in so-called exploration and discovery of the New World, and the emergence of the national atlas as important feature of modern nationalism. He has also penned a general introduction to the subject.
He has promoted the publication of younger scholars’ work through editorship of three book series Space Place and Society, Cities and Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City.

Publications

Authored books

2020  World Regional Geography. Oxford University Press..
2018  The Unequal City: Urban Resurgence, Displacement and The Making of Inequality in Global Cities. Routledge,.
2018 Human Geography: A Short Introduction. Oxford University Press,.
2018  Hosting the Olympic Games: The Real Costs for Cities. Routledge,.
2018  A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada: Toward A Sustainable Future. Rowman and Littlefield,,.
2014  Urban Theory Palgrave Macmillan.,
2014 Human Geography A Short Introduction. Oxford University Press,.
2013  Stress Testing The USA: Public Policy and Reaction to Disaster Events. Palgrave Macmillan,.
2013  Cities and Nature Routledge,.
2012  Korea: A Cartographic History. University of Chicago Press,
2012 Globalization, Modernity and The City. Routledge,.
2010  Cities and Suburbs: New Metropolitan Realities in the US. Routledge,.
2009  Cartographic Encounters: Indigenous Peoples and The Exploration of The New World. Reaktion/University of Chicago Press,.
2008  Cities and Economy. Routledge.,.
2008 Cities and Nature. Routledge..
2007  Liquid City: Megalopolis Revisited. Resources for The Future Press/Johns Hopkins University Press,.
2006  Alabaster Cities: Urban US Since 1950. Syracuse University Press,.
2006  Urban Theory. Palgrave Macmillan.,
2005  Imagined Country. Syracuse University Press,.
2004  Making Space: Revisioning The World, 1475–1600. Syracuse University Press,.
2004  Global Metropolitan. Routledge.,.
2004  Representing the Republic. Reaktion/University of Chicago Press,.
2003 The World Through Maps. Firefly,.
2001 Global Dimensions: Space, Place and The Contemporary World Reaktion University of Chicago Press,.
2000 Alternative Geographies. Prentice Hall,.
1999 Globalization and The City. Addison Wesley Longman , .
1999 Environmental Discourses and Practice.  Blackwell,.
1998  New Worlds, New Geographies. Syracuse University Press,.
1996  The Urban Order.  Blackwell,.
1993  An Introduction to Political Geography. Routledge .
1991 Imagined Country: Environment, Culture and Society. Routledge,.
1989 The Humane City.  Blackwell,.
1986 Housebuilding, Planning and Community Action. Routledge .
1984 The Urban Arena. Macmillan.
1984 An Introduction to Urban Geography. Routledge.
1982 Housing in Britain. Methuen.
1982 An Introduction to Political Geography. RKP.
1980 Urban Data Sources. Butterworths.
1980 Housing and Residential Structure.  Routledge.,.

Edited books

2017 A Research Agenda for Cities. Edward Elgar Agendas,.
2008 The Sage Companion to The City. Sage,.
2002 Globalization and The Margins. Palgrave,.
2000 Environmental Discourses and Practice: A Reader. Blackwell,.
1992 Human Settlement. Oxford University Press,.
1985 Developing Contemporary Marxism. Macmillan,.
1984 The Human Geography of Contemporary Britain. Macmillan,.