Cleanliness and squalor in inter-war Tel-Aviv

Urban History ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANAT HELMAN

Pressures for cleanliness in inter-war Tel-Aviv stemmed from the British government, the autonomous Jewish Municipality, local residents and visiting Zionists. This article reconstructs Tel-Aviv's sanitation during the 1920s and 1930s, describes and analyses attempts to clean the urban public space and their limited success. It is argued that the sanitary reality and the issue of cleanliness and squalor in Tel-Aviv, ‘The First Hebrew City’, reflected British colonial policies, Zionist national ideologies, ethnic and social stereotypes.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1932
Author(s):  
Jorg De Winne ◽  
Karlo Filipan ◽  
Bart Moens ◽  
Paul Devos ◽  
Marc Leman ◽  
...  

The design of urban public spaces is typically performed by architects and urban planners, which often only focus on the visual aesthetics of the urban space. Yet, a visually pleasing public open space designed for relaxing will be underused if it sounds unpleasant. Ideally, sonic design should be integrated with visual design, a need the soundscape approach answers. The current trend of co-creating the urban space together with all stakeholders, including local residents, opens up new opportunities to account for all senses in the urban design process. Unfortunately, architects and urban planners struggle to incorporate the soundscape approach in the urban design process and to use it in the context of co-creation. In this work, a hackathon is proposed to generate creative concepts, methods and tools to co-create the urban public space. A soundscape hackathon was organized in the spring of 2019. Participants were challenged to apply their own immersive approaches or virtual and/or augmented reality solutions on selected urban soundscapes. They presented their results to colleagues in the field and to a professional jury. This paper describes the process and results of the event and shows that a hackathon is a viable approach to accelerate the co-creation of the urban public space.


Author(s):  
E. Yu. Vanina ◽  

Bhopal, one of the ‘princely states’ and vassals of the British Empire (Central India), enjoyed special favour with its sovereign. Throughout a century, it was ruled by four generations of women who gained themselves, in India and outside, the reputation of enlightened and benevolent monarchs. Archival documents and memoirs allow glancing at the hitherto hidden world of domestic servants who not only ensured the comfortable and luxurious life of the princely family, but its high status too, both for fellow Indians and for British colonial administrators. Among the numerous servants employed by the Bhopal rulers, freely hired local residents prevailed. However, the natives of some other countries, quite far from India, were conspicuous as well: the article highlights West Europeans, Georgians and Africans (“Ethiopians”). In the princely household, foreign servants performed various functions. While British butlers and Irish or German nannies and governesses demonstrated the ruling family` s “Westernized” lifestyle, Georgian maids and African lackeys showcased the affluence and might of the Bhopal queens. Some foreign servants came to Bhopal by force: the reputation of ‘progressive’ was no obstacle for the Bhopal queens to use slave labour. When such cases became public, the British authorities responded with mild reproaches: condemning slavery, they nevertheless loathed any discord with their trusted vassals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 102765
Author(s):  
Jie Su ◽  
Xiaohai He ◽  
Linbo Qing ◽  
Tong Niu ◽  
Yongqiang Cheng ◽  
...  

Noise Mapping ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Lavandier ◽  
Pierre Aumond ◽  
Saul Gomez ◽  
Catherine Dominguès

AbstractThe noise maps that are currently proposed as part of the EU Directive are based on the calculation of the Lday, Levening and Lnight. These levels are calculated from emission and propagation models that are expensive in time. These noise maps are criticized for being distant from the perception of city users. Thus, calculation models of sound quality have been proposed, for being closer to city users’ perception. They are either based on perceptual variables, or on acoustic measurements, or on georeferenced data, the latter being often already integrated into the Geographic Information Systems of most French metropolises. Considering 89 Parisian situations, this article proposes to compare the sound quality really perceived, with those from models using geo-referenced data. It also looks at the modeling of perceptual variables that influence the sound quality, such as perceived loudness, the perceived time ratio of traffic, voices and birds. To do this, such geo-referenced data as road traffic, the presence of gardens, food shops, restaurants, bars, schools, markets, are transformed into core densities. Being quick and easy to calculate, these densities predict effectively sound quality in the urban public space. Visualization of urban soundscape maps are proposed in this paper.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Maxfield Waldman Sherouse

In recent years, cars have steadily colonized the sidewalks in downtown Tbilisi. By driving and parking on sidewalks, vehicles have reshaped public space and placed pedestrian life at risk. A variety of social actors coordinate sidewalk affairs in the city, including the local government, a private company called CT Park, and a fleet of self-appointed st’aianshik’ebi (parking attendants) who direct drivers into parking spots for spare change. Pedestrian activists have challenged the automotive conquest of footpaths in innovative ways, including art installations, social media protests, and the fashioning of ad hoc physical barriers. By safeguarding sidewalks against cars, activists assert ideals for public space that are predicated on sharp boundaries between sidewalk and street, pedestrian and machine, citizen and commodity. Politicians and activists alike connect the sharpness of such boundaries to an imagined Europe. Georgia’s parking culture thus reflects not only local configurations of power among the many interests clamoring for the space of the sidewalk, but also global hierarchies of value that form meaningful distinctions and aspirational horizons in debates over urban public space. Against the dismal frictions of an expanding car system, social actors mobilize the idioms of freedom and shame to reinterpret and repartition the public/private distinction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (special issue) ◽  
pp. 199-226
Author(s):  
Aliye Menteş ◽  
Valentina Donà

Cinemas emerged as a new and genuine expression of culture at the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1920s cinema buildings became important for developing city life and especially as a social public space for entertainment. The period of great success of cinemas was inevitably destined to fade with the arrival of TV. However, this period left behind interesting architectural heritage. On the other hand, the “box of dreams”, the cinema industry, is a suggestive media contributing in defining other aspects of popular culture in a period of hectic changes and progress. The scope of this paper aims to investigate this specific building type, cinemas, within the context of modern heritage value in northern Cyprus. The purpose is to raise awareness on significance of cinema buildings thus to foster their protection and enhancement. The study also aims to investigate the historical relation of these buildings to their environments and neighborhoods as well as their transformed current situations. Some buildings were replaced with new ones, some were abandoned, and some others were converted into different uses. These transformed situations are results of changing economic, socio-cultural life styles and changing morphology of the cities. This paper aims also to stress the role of Cypriot architects and architecture in the international panorama within the Mediterranean area, in a peculiar multicultural context. Common features with other countries and local characteristics of the selected buildings are detected and analysed. Architectural qualities and solutions are studied to understand the reflections of the studied period. This study follows a qualitative research approach. The key discussions are made through investigating the cinema buildings and spaces in Nicosia, Northern Cyprus, as a case study method. This research investigates these buildings and spaces through historical archives, photographic surveys and producing maps for showing the location of these within the historic Walled City of Nicosia and its close surrounding. This stage provides significant data about their historic conditions and surroundings and comparisons with today’s current situations. In addition, interviews with local residents who used these cinemas in those periods are also carried out to support historical information and highlight the socio-cultural and economic understanding of those days.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-55
Author(s):  
Miira Kuvaja ◽  
Pia Olsson

Stadi Derby is a local football match played in Helsinki, Finland appreciated for its atmosphere and excitement. Simultaneously, the negative characteristics connected to the international football fan culture have become familiar also to those living in the capital area and especially in the surroundings of the stadium. The threat of violence is visible e.g. in the media coverage reporting about the derby. All this has also effect on the way the city dwellers experience the urban public space. In our article, we ask what kind of discourses can be found concerning the relationship between Stadi Derby and the right to public space and what kind of consequences i.e. reactions these discourses create among those city dwellers not involved in the football culture. In order to understand the ways these events and the media coverage over them have effect on urban dwellers we apply securitization theory. We look for speech acts from the media coverage and analyse the ways people respond to these speech acts through material produced via Facebook and a focus group interview. The division between insiders and outsiders to the football culture is clear: The outsiders feel distress, even fear, in consequence of media materials.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document