Back in September, I presented these two papers at the Italian Geographic Congress in Turin (2025).
🎥 Placing screens in the urban fabric: Cinema types and socio-spatial inequalities in London and Beijing
BALLATORE Andrea and GONG Qi, Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab, King’s College London, UK
This contribution presents an empirical analysis of cinema consumption and its socio-spatial dynamics in the post-COVID urban context. While digital streaming has redefined media access, the enduring importance of physical cinema spaces as sites of cultural participation, spatial identity, and socio-economic differentiation remains. Focusing on Greater London and the metropolitan area of Beijing as case studies, we investigate how the accessibility of cinema venues reflects and reproduces broader patterns of inequality, and how different types of cinemas—such as multiplexes, independent venues, and cultural centres—exhibit distinct geographies. Using a comparative methodological approach, we integrate geographic information systems (GIS), census data, and spatial accessibility modelling.
By generating walking and public transit isochrones at different temporal thresholds around each cinema and analysing the surrounding population data, we assess the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of communities with access to different cinema types. Significant differences emerge between UK and Chinese cinema types. While UK classifications include independent, specialised, and multiplex cinemas, China’s exhibition system features additional types such as high-end, video-on-demand (VOD), and rural cinemas. The market structure in the UK supports a relatively decentralised, independent model, whereas Chinese cinemas operate under centralised chain ownership, often linked to broader and explicit commercial or policy-driven urban development strategies.
Our findings reveal that cinemas are unevenly distributed, with a persistent concentration in central urban areas despite some visible presence in suburban areas. In London and Beijing, different cinema types are associated with markedly different urban environments and audience profiles: for example, multiplexes tend to cluster in commercial zones with high proportions of white and affluent residents, while independent and specialised venues are often embedded in culturally vibrant but socio-economically diverse neighbourhoods.
🏛️ Beyond the City: Museums across urbanity and rurality in the UK
BALLATORE Andrea and WRIGHT George, Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab, King’s College London, UK
In this contribution, we investigate the enduring tension between urban and rural contexts in the geography of UK museums. While museums are often conceived as inherently urban institutions—emerging historically from civic, educational, and imperial infrastructures—we argue that this urban bias conceals a more complex spatial reality. Drawing on a comprehensive quantitative dataset from the Mapping Museums project, we systematically analyse the distribution of over 3,300 museums across the United Kingdom, intersecting institutional characteristics such as governance, subject matter, and size with national urban-rural classification schemes. Our analysis reveals a striking urban-rural paradox: although a majority of museums are situated in cities, rural areas exhibit a higher density of museums per capita. This is especially pronounced in Scotland and the South West of England, where rural museums are tightly intertwined with local identity, heritage tourism, and community-led cultural initiatives.
We identify a historical turning point in the mid-20th century, when independent museums proliferated outside traditional urban centres, reframing rural space as culturally productive rather than peripheral. We also uncover a pronounced “suburban gap,” where museum provision is notably limited despite high residential populations—an overlooked blind spot in both cultural policy and scholarly discourse. This gap underscores the need to move beyond simplistic binary classifications and engage with the hybrid, transitional geographies that fall between urban and rural extremes.
Our contribution speaks directly to ongoing debates about how museums shape and are shaped by the territories they inhabit. We argue for a reimagining of museum geographies that recognises the cultural, social, and political significance of rural and peri-urban spaces. In doing so, we align with broader calls to understand cities not only as physical infrastructures, but as lived, cultural spaces, where museums can act as connective tissue across diverse and evolving landscapes.
Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab 