scholarly journals Urban robotics and responsible urban innovation

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nagenborg
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Participatory Approaches ◽  
City Life ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
Normative Implications

Abstract Robots are leaving factories and entering urban spaces. In this paper, I will explore how we can integrate robots of various types into the urban landscape. I will distinguish between two perspectives: (1) the responsible design and use of urban robots and (2) robots as part of responsible urban innovations. The first viewpoint considers issues arising from the use of a robot in an urban environment. To develop a substantive understanding of Responsible Urban Robotics, we need to focus on normative implications of city life as the context in which in robots are being used. I will refer to the desirable qualities of city life as “cityness” and will argue that we should design for cityness. The second approach asks how robots might be used to address challenges specific to cities. From the perspective of RRI, this may require participatory approaches in which the needs of the stakeholders are addressed. But we may also find inspiration in the work undertaken in architecture on expanding the concept and field to ensure that architects not only provide services to the lucky few but also create useful and beautiful spaces for the many. A dialogue with architects, urban designers, and urban planners may also be needed to successfully address the spatial issues raised by the presence of robots in the city.

scholarly journals The sustainable urban design on the example of Oświęcim

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 00080
Author(s):  
Krystyna Paprzyca
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Environmental Aspects ◽  
Spatial Management ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

The quality of the urban environment determines a lasting relationship between a man and his place of residence. Sustainable management of the urban spaces is crucial as it directly affects their quality. The article analyses the results of the sustainability regarding spatial, socio-economic, technical and environmental aspects, which are one of the many conditions that contribute to the proper functioning of urban life. They also influence the quality of life and residence in the urban environment. There are different ways of expressing the development of the cities defined by specific indicators. They focus mainly on development of the quality of life - social, economic and environmental development. The sustainable urban design is related to issues connected with the form and spatial management. This topic is presented on the example of the city of Oświęcim - the Old Town district with the surrounding area.

scholarly journals The visual-landscape analysis during the integration of high-rise buildings within the historic urban environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 01044
Author(s):  
Vera A. Akristiniy ◽  
Elena A. Dikova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Landscape Analysis ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Visual Landscape ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Typological Structure ◽  
The City ◽  
Information Database

The article is devoted to one of the types of urban planning studies - the visual-landscape analysis during the integration of high-rise buildings within the historic urban environment for the purposes of providing pre-design and design studies in terms of preserving the historical urban environment and the implementation of the reconstructional resource of the area. In the article formed and systematized the stages and methods of conducting the visual-landscape analysis taking into account the influence of high-rise buildings on objects of cultural heritage and valuable historical buildings of the city. Practical application of the visual-landscape analysis provides an opportunity to assess the influence of hypothetical location of high-rise buildings on the perception of a historically developed environment and optimal building parameters. The contents of the main stages in the conduct of the visual - landscape analysis and their key aspects, concerning the construction of predicted zones of visibility of the significant historically valuable urban development objects and hypothetically planned of the high-rise buildings are revealed. The obtained data are oriented to the successive development of the planning and typological structure of the city territory and preservation of the compositional influence of valuable fragments of the historical environment in the structure of the urban landscape. On their basis, an information database is formed to determine the permissible urban development parameters of the high-rise buildings for the preservation of the compositional integrity of the urban area.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gendered Spatializations: A Study of Cityscapes in Manu Joseph’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
City Image ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.

scholarly journals Social conditions and urban environment associated with participation in the Ciclovia program among adults from Cali, Colombia

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 257-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Fernando Gómez ◽  
Janeth Mosquera ◽  
Olga Lucia Gómez ◽  
José Moreno ◽  
Jose D. Pinzon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Traffic Fatalities ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
High School Degree ◽  
The City

Abstract The Ciclovia program (CP) has emerged as an effective initiative to promote active living in urban spaces in Latin America. This study assessed the association between social conditions, the urban environment and participation in the CP among adults living in the city of Cali, Colombia. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2011 and 2012 among 719 adults aged 18 to 44. Urban environment measures were obtained using Geographic Information Systems. A multilevel logistic regression was used for the analysis. Slightly more than 7% of participants had participated in the CP in the previous four weekends. Being male and having a high school degree were positively associated with participation in the CP. Participation in the CP was positively associated with living in neighborhoods with Ciclovia lanes. In contrast, a negative association was found among those living in neighborhoods with a presence of traffic fatalities. This study provides new insights about a recreational program that has potential health benefits in a region marked by urban inequalities in terms of opportunities for physical activity.

scholarly journals Ibis and the city: bogan kitsch and the avian revisualization of Sydney

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-390
Author(s):  
Paul Allatson ◽  
Andrea Connor
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Nesting Sites ◽  
White Ibis ◽  
Australian City ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

The Australian White Ibis (Ibis) ( Threskiornis molucca) is one of three endemic Ibis species in Australia. In a short time frame beginning in the 1970s, this species has moved from inland waterways to urban centres along the eastern and southeastern seaboards, Darwin and the Western Australian southwest. Today Ibis are at home in cities across the country, where they thrive on the food waste, water resources and nesting sites supplied by humans. In this article, the authors focus on Sydney to argue that the physical and cultural inroads of Ibis, and the birds’ urban homeliness, are resignifying urban surfaces and the multispecies ecologies in which contemporary Australians operate. They explore how the very physical and sensory presence of Ibis disrupts the assumptions of many urban Australians, and visitors from overseas, that cities are human-centric or human-dominant, non-hybrid assemblages. They also introduce to this discussion of disrupted human expectations a cultural parallel, namely, the recent rise of Ibis in popular culture as an icon-in-the-making of the nation and as a totem of the modern Australian city itself. This trend exemplifies an avian-led revisualization of urban spaces, and is notable for its visual appeals to Ibis kitsch, and to working class or ‘bogan’ sensibilities that assert their place alongside cosmopolitan visions of being Australian. Sometimes kitsch Ibis imagery erupts across the urban landscape, as occurs with many Ibis murals. At other times it infiltrates daily life on clothing, on football club, university and business logos, as tattoos on people’s skin, and as words in daily idiom, confirmed by terms such as ‘picnic pirates’, ‘tip turkeys’ and ‘bin chickens’. The article uses a visual vignette methodology to chart Ibis moves into Sydney and the realms of representation alike, and thus to reveal how new zoöpolitical entanglements are being made in the 21st century.

scholarly journals A Landscape Study of Sediment Formation and Transport in the Urban Environment

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1320
Author(s):  
Ilia Yarmoshenko ◽  
Georgy Malinovsky ◽  
Elena Baglaeva ◽  
Andrian Seleznev
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
City Life ◽  
Sediment Formation ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Sedimentation Processes

Background: Sediment deposition in the urban environment affects aesthetic, economic, and other aspects of city life, and through re-suspension of dust, may pose serious risks to human health. Proper environmental management requires further understanding of natural and anthropogenic factors influencing the sedimentation processes in urbanized catchments. To fill the gaps in the knowledge about the relationship between the urban landscape and sedimentation, field landscape surveys were conducted in the residential areas of the Russian cities of Ekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, and Murmansk. Methods: In each city, six elementary urban residential landscapes were chosen in blocks of multi-story apartment buildings typical for Russian cities. The method of landscape survey involved delineating functional segments within the elementary landscapes and describing each segment according to the developed procedure during a field survey. Results: The complexity of sedimentation processes in the urban environment was demonstrated. The following main groups of factors have significant impacts on sediment formation and transport in residential areas in Russian cities: low adaptation of infrastructure to a high density of automobiles, poor municipal services, and bad urban environmental management in the course of construction and earthworks. Conclusion: A high sediment formation potential was found for a considerable portion of residential areas.

scholarly journals Enhancing urban autonomy: Towards a new political project for cities

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 702-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Bulkeley ◽  
Andrés Luque-Ayala ◽  
Colin McFarlane ◽  
Gordon MacLeod
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Regional Politics ◽  
Empirical Question ◽  
Political Ideal ◽  
The City

As the 21st Century world assumes an increasingly urban landscape, the question of how definitive urban spaces are to be governed intensifies. At the heart of this debate lies a question about the degree and type of autonomy that towns and cities might have in shaping their economic, environmental, social and cultural geography. This paper aims to examine this question. Starting with the premise that the degree of autonomy any particular town or city has is inherently an empirical question – one which can only be conceptualised in relational terms vis-à-vis the distributed, networked and territorialised responsibilities and powers of the city and the nation-state and other zones of connection – we examine four different contexts where debates over autonomy have intensified in recent history (Brazil, UK, India and South Africa). Drawing on recent respective histories, we identify key elements and enablers in the making of urban autonomy: a characteristic that exists in a variety of guises and forms and creates a patchwork landscape of differentially powerful fragments. We reveal how, beyond its characteristic as a political ideal, autonomy surfaces as a practice that emerges from within specific sectors of particular societies and through their relationship with national and regional politics. Four alternative forms of urban autonomy are delineated: fragmented, coerced (or enclave), distributed and networked. We contend that the spatial templates for autonomy are not predetermined but can be enhanced in multiple different sites and forms of political space within the city. This enhancement appears essential for the integration and strengthening of capacities for sustainable and just forms of development throughout the urban.

scholarly journals The Authenticity Concept of Sh. Zukin: “Schizoid” Category in Urban Studies

Inter ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-28
Author(s):  
Kseniia N. Kalashnikova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the consideration of the concept of authenticity set forth by S. Zukin in the book “Naked City: Death and Life of Authentic Urban Spaces”. The sources of the concept are traced in the author’s early works, the main subjects described in them are: the process of gentrification; power relations forming the urban landscape; symbolic economy and the power of cultural characteristics. These subjects became the basis of the idea of authenticity. Its manifestations are described by the example of “uncommon” and “common” urban spaces. A separate place in the article is considered by the development of individual ideas of Sh. Zukin, their interpretations, as well as applications for specific studies in the work of followers. The conclusion is drawn about the variety of interpretations offered by researchers and the ambiguity of using authenticity as a tool for analyzing the city.

scholarly journals The Contested Gallery: street art, ethnography and the search for urban understandings

AmeriQuests ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
The Road ◽  
The City

This is a paper on street art and its role as a form of artistic insurrection that challenges popular understandings of public space and urban visual culture. I would like to think of it as a field guide to urban seeing, a means of revising the way in which we view the cityscape and its imagery. It is a way of imagining the city as a canvas onto which ideas may be inscribed and reinterpreted, where resistance percolates up to those who look for it. It is here, in what Kathleen Stewart has called a “place by the side of the road” that the work of the street artist exists, slowly gurgling up through the cracks in the sidewalk and briefly illuminated by the yellow-white glow of the street lights. Street art most often takes the form of adhesive stickers, spray-painted stencils, and wheat-pasted posters, and while it shares many similar aesthetic and cultural characteristics with graffiti, street art embodies a unique ideology. Graffiti represents a territorialization of space (‘tagging’, or reclaiming urban spaces through the use of pseudonyms as territorial markings); street art represents a reterritorialization of space. Rather than taking space, street art attempts to re-purpose the existing urban environment. This paper seeks to reflect the changing dynamic of urban space through an analysis of the practice of street art. By examining the roles that street artists play in disrupting the flow of visual noise in the city, I will illuminate the cultural value and significance of this form of urban artistic resistance.

scholarly journals The Sensorial Latency of Urban Spaces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dylan Kanagaratnam
Keyword(s):  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
City Life ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Meaningful Experiences ◽  
Everyday Performance ◽  
Meaningful Connections ◽  
The City

<p>Architecture provides the platform for the inherent connections between people and their city to flourish. The urban realm naturally invites diverse people to inhabit and interact together, giving city life its vibrancy. Urban spaces encourage spontaneous interactions between people and with architecture, to produce creative acts of play and liberating moments of leisure. It has been suggested that these events encapsulate the everyday performance of the city and are the antithesis to everyday life. It is argued this performance is often ignored in modern urban design. It has been noted that Wellington’s waterfront offers areas where momentary and impotent engagement can be developed into meaningful experiences.  Simultaneously, the importance and potency of sound within urban spaces may be undervalued. It is often argued that modern cities assault our senses with sounds leading to discomfort and distracted inhabitation, contributing to a lack of engagement. Urban sounds are commonly dampened in public spaces to combat this assault, but with more thoughtful design these sounds can be reinterpreted to augment the innate everyday performances. This thesis proposes that controlling how people experience urban sounds through architecture can create a deep sensory performance that increases engagement, awareness and interaction.  This research explores ways to harness the latent sounds of the city to form meaningful connections between people and their city while providing moments of play and leisure. Once isolated and harnessed, the urban sounds’ unique and intrinsic power can aid the development of urban spaces, thus producing greater significance within the urban fabric. There will be focus on the connection between the senses, performance and the urban context. The opportunity to enable the acceptance of the environment and reflection on their city marks an important role within the urban fabric.  Concurrently, this research explores how an intuitive drawing-led process can integrate and challenge the boundaries of both interior and the exterior urban realm. Other interior architectural strategies, together with soundscape design and urban interior principles aid this interdisciplinary exploration.</p>

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