New York and the Origin of the Skyline: The Visual City as Text

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 225-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The North ◽  
Major Period ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Skyline View ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

How do we visualize our large cities? What kinds of shapes, overall, do we imagine them to have? These questions would have brought different answers in each major period of urban change in our country's development. Each period seemed to develop a favored perspective. Eighteenth and early-19th-century New Yorkers thought of the city as it looked when one approached it by sea from the harbor. Mid-19th-century viewers imagined a city seen from a bird's eye view like that provided by the Latting Observatory on 42nd Street, stretching to the north. By the end of the century, the approach to the city by rail and road began to encourage a new perspective on the city, silhouetted against the skywhat we have come to know as the skyline view. Each of these perspectives on the city reflects something about the urban culture of the period that created and favored the perspective. In the values and meaning that have become associated with it, the skyline is no exception.

New York and the Origin of the Skyline: The Visual City as Text

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 225-248
Author(s):  
William R. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The North ◽  
Major Period ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Skyline View ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

How do we visualize our large cities? What kinds of shapes, overall, do we imagine them to have? These questions would have brought different answers in each major period of urban change in our country's development. Each period seemed to develop a favored perspective. Eighteenth and early-19th-century New Yorkers thought of the city as it looked when one approached it by sea from the harbor. Mid-19th-century viewers imagined a city seen from a bird's eye view like that provided by the Latting Observatory on 42nd Street, stretching to the north. By the end of the century, the approach to the city by rail and road began to encourage a new perspective on the city, silhouetted against the skywhat we have come to know as the skyline view. Each of these perspectives on the city reflects something about the urban culture of the period that created and favored the perspective. In the values and meaning that have become associated with it, the skyline is no exception.

The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre's 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-80
Author(s):  
Michelle Granshaw
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Juvenile Delinquents ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Financial Power ◽  
House Of Refuge ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Legal Battle

In 1874, a group of newsboys took on some of the wealthiest, most respected, and most powerful New Yorkers and emerged victorious. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, a philanthropic organization that worked to guard public morals and championed Christian values, faced two challenges that year over the city's theatre licensing fee. Its prominent members and their financial power made the organization a formidable force in local city matters. As a result of the 1872 Act to Regulate Places of Public Amusement in the City of New York, theatre managers were required to pay $500 to the city for an operating license. The city gave the fees to the society, which it used to operate the city's House of Refuge. The society believed that theatres corrupted the city's youth and that, therefore, the theatres should help fund youth reform efforts. In its legal proceedings against theatres without licenses, the society typically targeted cheap entertainment establishments in poor neighborhoods. These playhouses “werenotparticularly powerful and presumably would not put up too strenuous a legal battle.”

Last Subway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
East Side ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Subway System ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and improve transit services all across the city. The book reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. It explains how a series of uninformed and self-serving elected officials have fostered false expectations about the city's ability to adequately maintain and significantly expand its transit system. Since the 1920s, New Yorkers have been promised a Second Avenue subway. When the first of four planned phases opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2017, subway service improved for tens of thousands of people. Riders have been delighted with the clean, quiet, and spacious new stations. Yet these types of accomplishments will not be repeated unless New Yorkers learn from their century-long struggle. The book offers valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock and enormous obstacles to build grand projects. However, it is also a cautionary tale for cities. It reveals how false promises, redirected funds, and political ambitions have derailed subway improvements. Given the ridiculously high cost of building new subways in New York and their lengthy construction period, the Second Avenue subway (if it is ever completed) will be the last subway built in New York for generations to come.

From Apple to Orange: Narratives of Small City Migration and Settlement among the Urban Middle Class

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard E. Ocejo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
New York City ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
York City ◽  
Small City ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The City

As large cities become unaffordable, some people in the urban middle class are moving to small cities but risk replicating gentrification and its harms. Based on a qualitative research project on Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, this paper examines the narratives that middle-class urbanites construct to make sense of this migration, their new urban environment, and their place within it. These narratives describe their decision to move (migration) and their everyday lives in the city (settlement). Most importantly, their narratives are shaped by their social positions as both displaced residents and gentrifiers and as both consumers and producers of space. But despite being self-aware gentrifiers, their settlement narratives lack reflections on their own displacement from New York City, and instead emphasize how they try to mitigate gentrification’s harms. The paper concludes with a discussion of what makes gentrifiers in small cities distinct from those in large ones.

scholarly journals FOREST TERRITORIES IN THE PLANNING STRUCTURE OF LVIV

2021 ◽  
pp. 232-247
Author(s):  
Halyna Petryshyn ◽  
Roman Liubytskyy
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
Large City ◽  
State Ownership ◽  
Territorial Development ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Suburban Forests ◽  
The City

The sphere of life of a large city includes forests as a natural resource and areas of its expansion and now they serve to implement modern eco-trends. In the evolution of Lviv we can distinguish several stages of relation to forested areas: 1 - exemption from forests of areas suitable for farming, horticulture and construction; 2 – the early 19th century. - planting of new forests for economic and rehabilitation purposes; 3 - the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - the development of the recreational function of forests under the influence of hygienists, especially at water sources; 4 - the end of the 19th century and before 1939 - the development of the city of Lviv with new streets and compact plots according to the urban concepts of "villa in the park" and "garden city", which are wedged into the forest park areas; 5 - the second half of the 20th century. The rapid territorial development of industrial Lviv causes the emergence of large residential areas on the outskirts of the city. According to strict regulatory requirements for providing residents with green areas, part of the suburban forests were allocated for the establishment of local parks. A trade union recreation centers are developing around the city; 6 - 1980s - under the influence of the concept of a polarized landscape in conditions of state ownership of land and its resources, in suburban forests and in the city, separate plots with unique characteristics are distinguished, on the basis of which objects of nature reserve fund are created; 7 - from the 1990s and until now - the spreading of the city and the defragmentation of forests are observed. At the same time, the creation of new nature reserve facilities in Lviv and in the suburban area were performed as well as the formation of new reserves and their inclusion into European ecological networks. At the same time, the process of permanent alienation of forest areas in favor of the spread of development is intensifying. The most vulnerable are the territories of Bryukhovychi and Vynnyky forest parks, which are fully included in the united territorial community of Lviv approved in 2020.

scholarly journals PLAN PLESZEWA Z XIX WIEKU – WIZUALIZACJA TEMATYCZNA

1970 ◽  
pp. 101-114
Author(s):  
Dariusz Lorek
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The City

In the early 19th century, cartographic studies typically satisfied military or administrative needs. The idea behind drawing a map of Pleszew in 1806 was to show the condition of the city following a great fire. The plan distinguishes between the burnt down areas and ones saved from the fire. While the legend is small, including few explanations and the markings on the sheet are moderately distributed, the analyzed city map is a valuable resource of information which can be presented in the form of thematic visualizations. The article presents studies into the information provided by the map of Pleszew in terms of the scope of content and its spatial distribution; a method of arrangement thereof has also been proposed. The decision to attribute specific objects to separate layers has offered an opportunity of selecting the content according to various criteria and presenting it in the form of thematic visualizations.

Origins of a Modern Indian Capitalist Class in Bombay

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Boehme
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Western India ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City

In India, as in much of the world, the 19th century witnessed the emergence of urban capitalist classes, effected by the rapid growth of global mercantile capitalism and, later, industrial manufacturing. As a colonial city, Bombay—like its eastern counterpart, Calcutta—developed two connected, but distinct business communities: one, a European community with foreign, imperial connections, and the other, an Indian community with roots in long-standing regional networks. In Bombay, the latter took the form of a class known as the “Merchant Princes,” who capitalized on long-standing commercial traditions in western India and their ability to command both Indian and colonial networks to establish themselves as commercial powerhouses. These commercial networks and patterns of behavior, established before the arrival of the British, had an indelible impact on the character of Indian business in colonial Bombay. The business community brought such traditions with them when they migrated to Bombay at the end of the 18th century and used them to build the famous mercantile firms of the early 19th century. The Indian business elite likewise built collaborative links within their own community to expand their business interests; when barriers erected by the colonial establishment sought to limit their expansion, Indian businessmen used the resources at their disposal (both in the Indian hinterland and within the city itself) to circumvent them. Class identity similarly began to emerge as they cooperatively campaigned for particular agendas, intended to improve the fortunes of the entire community. They fought for greater influence in the Bombay government—in line with the wealth they then commanded—and used their financial resources to mold the physical and intellectual landscape of the city in their favor.

Conditional morphology in New York heritage Spanish: General and variable usage patterns

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Martillo Viner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
External Variables ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

Abstract This paper analyzes the use of conditional morphology by second-generation Spanish speaking New Yorkers. We consider both overall usage patterns and variation, the latter exclusively in the apodosis of hypothetical utterances where three forms occur: the conditional, the subjunctive, and the indicative. The data are from semi-controlled sociolinguistic interviews with 26 Spanish-English second-generation bilingual participants from New York City. The participants stem from the six largest Spanish-speaking national origins in the city: Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Mexican, Colombian, and Ecuadorian. The findings show that conditional morphology is active in the grammars of these bilinguals, but variation does manifest between the three aforementioned forms in the apodosis. Furthermore, three of the 10 external variables identified for the investigation are found to be statistically significant in the cohort: level of English skill, level of education, and areal origin.

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