Happy December, again. I just received exciting news from my esteemed colleague Ron Kalafsky. This past spring, I TA’d for his class on the Global Economy this last spring, and we conducted something of an experiment with our students. Ron had the idea to use the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) paradigm that business-minded folks (unlike myself) employ when analyzing whether to invest in a new market. We chose a set of regional, mid-size cities and assigned them throughout the class as a mechanism for teaching geography. The set of essays we received gave us a mountain of material with which to work, but the result of the project was published today in the Journal of Geography.

Take a look.

Per usual with Taylor & Francis, a subscription or University Affiliation is required, but if you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get to read it. I’m glad to have co-authored a piece that hopefully points anybody teaching economic geography in a certain direction. Of course, always grateful to get to work with Dr. Kalafsky, even if he is a Penguins fan. At least his musical and action-movie preferences are all solid.

Not that any of you seemed worried, but the whole flâneur thing is coming around sometime soon, too.