Brian Page

Ph.D. Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
M.A. Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 1988
B.A. Environmental Studies and B.A. Community Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1984

Brian Page is an historical geographer working to understand the social, spatial, and environmental dynamics of industrialization and urbanization processes. His research approach combines archival methods, field-based methods, and the new techniques of geo-spatial science. Regionally, he has active interests in both North America and China. 

In North America his research has two areas of concentration. First is 19^th and early 20^th Century resource-based industrialization and environmental change, including work that documents the centrality of the relationship between cities and their agricultural hinterlands in the process of regional settlement and development, and work on regional climate change associated with extractive industry. This work has been supported by several years of NSF funding (1997-2002). Second is the spatial history of American urban landscapes, with emphasis on shifts in urban morphology and the evolving relationship between architectural practice and urban identity. 

In China, his research also concentrates on landscape history. His first China project was the book Beijing Then and Now (2007, revised 2017), a spatial and architectural study that used paired historic and contemporary photographs to explore the dramatic process of urban landscape transformation unfolding in the Chinese capital. His current China project focuses on remnant foreign landscapes in China – places that show the physical imprint of Western culture through land division, urban layout, and architecture and thus bear witness to a century of foreign political and economic influence. He explores the legacy of such landscapes for China today using case studies of the Kuling summer retreat in the Lushan Mountains and the Legation District in Beijing.

2017 Beijing, Then and Now. London: Pavilion.

2016 "Legacies of a Contested Campus: Urban Renewal, Community Resistance, and the Origins of Gentrification in Denver." Urban Geography 38 (9)" 1293-1328.

2015 "Envisioning the Urban Past: The A GIS Reconstruction of Denver’s Oldest District." (with Eric Ross) Frontiers in Digital Humanities (digital history section) 2:3 doi: 10.3389/fdigh.2015.00003

2007 Beijing, Then and Now. London/San Diego: Anova Books/Thunder Bay Press.

2003 "Atmosphere, Weather, and Baseball: Does the Ball Really Fly Farther at Denver's Coors Field?" (with Frederick Chambers and Clyde Zaidins). The Professional Geographer 55(4): 493-506

2003 "Labor and the Landscape of American Gothic." Labor History 44 (1): 97-112.           

2000 "Agriculture." In: Sheppard, E. and Barnes, T. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography. (pp. 422-447) Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

GEOG 6300 Foundations in Human-Environment Interaction
GEOG 4640/5640 Urban Geography
GEOG 4350/5350 Environment and Society in the American Past
GEOG 4995/ENVS 5995/SUST 4960 Sustainability Along the Yangtze: Globalization, Environment, and Society in China
GEOG 3411 Globalization and Regional Development
GEOG 1302 Introduction to Human Geography
GEOG 1102 World Regional Geography