scholarly journals ‘Empty’ space in Central European medieval towns through an interdisciplinary perspective

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Paweł Cembrzyński ◽  
Maciej Radomski
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Central European ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective

Abstract Empty, abandoned or covered with vegetation – such areas were inherent to the medieval urban space, yet remain overlooked in research. Here, we describe three major types of ‘empty’ space of various origins and functions in Central European towns and suggest how these types can be investigated and interpreted through an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, written, pictorial and cartographical sources. We propose a simple interdisciplinary protocol to trace empty spaces in the urban context. This study will help to change our perception of medieval urban space into one that is more dynamic and heterogeneous than commonly believed.

scholarly journals Re-defining urban space through performance

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Χαρίκλεια Μαρίνη
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Spatial Spectrum ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
City Life ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Dynamic Quality

This thesis contributes to discourses concerned with urban space and performancepractice. It identifies ways in which built environments become performative; how thebuilt environment performs meaning(s) within the urban context and how spatialpractices of contemporary performance engage with city-spaces. The programmingand order of urban space tends to fix meanings; increasingly regulated and singlepurposecity-spaces seem unable to react to informal or unplanned activities. However,this thesis suggests that urban space entails inherent opportunities for conceiving andpractising space otherwise and looks at a spatial spectrum – from leftover spaces toLondon’s landmarks. It analyses incomplete presences in the built environment andtheir unexpected (re)uses, which make urban space an arena of ideas, interaction andcreativity. It examines how spatial practices of performance, such as site-specificperformance, audio-walks and installations, inform our (re)thinking of space, itsmeaning and its re-appropriation. It argues that through performative concepts andactions, space manifests a changeable and dynamic quality, rather than motionlessness and inertia.The thesis involves an interdisciplinary approach employing geography, urban,architectural and performance studies. It looks at four types of built spaces that havebeen used for performance purposes; a disused warehouse at 21 Wapping Lane, theconverted power station housing the Tate Modern art gallery, the exterior of theNational Theatre’s building and the London district of Wapping. All of these sites areawaiting, or are undergoing, major alterations in their design or planning, involvingreconstruction and expansion, or total demolition. The uncertain future of these sitesand buildings, the inevitable decay of their material, and the temporality of the builtenvironment invite questions of architectural design and urban planning in terms ofperformance. The examination of these sites at this moment of change and thepotential impact of the redevelopment plans on city life make this research timely,since the thesis emphasises the imperative of re-defining concepts of space, planningstrategies, and design processes so as to imagine a less determinate, more creative urban space.

scholarly journals The Voices of Berlin: Busking in a ‘Creative’ City

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Claudia Seldin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Image ◽  
Creative City ◽  
Creative Workers

The city of Berlin is often advertised as one of the most prominent creative cities today. In the past two decades, its marketing agencies have constructed a carefully crafted urban image designed to attract the young, mobile and creative workers that move the contemporary economy. To do that, they rely on cultural temporary uses that enable selected urban spaces to have the desired ‘cool’ and authentic ambiance that distinguishes this city from others within the competitive global network. This paper investigates the phenomenon of abundant street performers in the German capital to find out if and how these artists perceive their role and instrumentalisation within these creative policies. The field research carried out through the method of ethnography reveals that their understanding of their art as small resistances in urban space often clashes with their use in broader placemaking schemes that have negative consequences. The article begins with a discussion of creative policies in Berlin from an Urban Planning point of view, highlighting how it encourages the migration of young artists and creative professionals. It then analyses the definitions of busking in the existing literature in the Social Sciences to understand its potential as a builder of sociability. Moreover, it draws on theories that speak of the “looseness” of space and the idea of tactically appropriating a place through art to build an interdisciplinary approach between the different fields. Lastly, it presents the case study, using the performers’ own testimonials to draw conclusions about the temporary uses of urban space within a broader urban context.

scholarly journals URBAN STUDIES IN THE CONTEXT OF THEORIES OF VISUAL PRACTICES

2017 ◽  
pp. 93-97
Author(s):  
A. M. Tormakhova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
The City

One of the leading trends in contemporary cultural studies is the appealto the field of visual. Thepurpose of the article is to investigate the range of problems associated withthe existence, functioning of various visual practices in the urban space and the disclosure of the specifics of communication carried out through their intermediation. In urban space, there are many forms, such as monumental architecture, urban sculpture, outdoor illumination, landscape art, street art, graffiti and others. These artifacts are the subject of cultural research within different disciplines - aesthetics, cultural studies, design, and art. It may be noted that in recentdecades, significant development gets such a direction as Urban Studies, in which the focus of research serves the city. The methodology of the study includes an appeal to an interdisciplinary approach that relies on the achievements of practical cultural studies, Urban studies,and aesthetics theory by Ukrainian and Western authors. Scientific novelty consists in analyzing the connection ofactual visual practices presented in the urban space and forming of Internet activity, which facilitates the mutual influence of these spheres one on another. The author noted that urban space is gradually becoming not only interactive, but also fully assuming the characteristics of WEB 2.0, which means active rethinking and transforming the environment, urban residents involvement in decision-making that becomes a norm of everyday life. City is a kind of text that reflects changing tastes, politicaland economic factors in visualform. Town and city public spaces play an important role in shaping the interaction within society. One of the pressing problems of practical cultural studies in general and urban areas in particular, should be integrated into organization of the urban environment and design the image of the city. The practical significance lies in the fact that the results of the research can beused in developing the urban sphere in particular and in actualizing the issue of organizing the urban environment and constructing the image of the city.

scholarly journals Conflictos por el espacio y orden urbano / Spatial Conflicts and Urban Order

2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Duhau ◽  
Ángela Giglia
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Private Spaces ◽  
Space Organization ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
Space Production ◽  
Metropolitan Zone

En este artículo se explora una interpretación de los conflictos en torno al espacio en la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México (ZMCM) con base en los conceptos de orden y de contextos urbanos. Para ello se presenta en primer término un conjunto de formas históricas de producción del espacio urbano que, de acuerdo con los autores, conforman en la actualidad cuatro “ciudades”, es decir, otros tantos contextos urbanos que se diferencian entre sí, entre otras cuestiones, por el tipo de conflictos por el espacio que en cada uno de ellos aparece como dominante. En segundo término se examina el concepto de orden urbano y se propone una línea de interpretación de los conflictos relacionados con el espacio que marcan en la actualidad dicho orden en la metrópoli. Por último se describen e ilustran las dinámicas que caracterizan a cada uno de los cuatro contextos urbanos o “ciudades” a partir de las formas en que se combinan diferentes modalidades de organización del espacio, usos del espacio público y privado y conflictos dominantes por el espacio. AbstractResorting to the concepts of urban order and urban context, this paper explores an interpretation of conflicts concerning the uses and modes of appropriation of urban space in the metropolitan zone of Mexico City. To this end, it firstly characterizes a group of historical forms of urban space production that, according with the authors, have given place to four types of “cities” or urban contexts which are differentiated, among other things, because of the dominant spatial conflicts in each case observed. Then it discusses the concept of urban order and proposes an interpretation line of those spatial conflicts that, at present, shape the metropolitan urban order. Finally, it describes and exemplifies the four urban contexts dynamic, considering the ways in which different modalities of urban space organization, uses of public a private spaces, and dominant space conflicts are combined.

scholarly journals Student Homelessness: Sheltering Our Future: An Adaptable Approach to Underutilised City Spaces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Caryl Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Test Site ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
The City

<p>The increasing housing demands from population growth creates a persistent housing shortage and unaffordability in our cities. Students are one demographic that is dramatically affected as they move closer to their education provider for study. The student influx at the start of the semester creates a large demand in the already inadequate housing market. Students with a limited budget have reduced accommodation options and this consequently drives many into a state of homelessness. A study from University of Otago measures that over a quarter of New Zealand’s homeless population are students (Amore, 2016). This considerable number of students are living in cars, tents, couch-surfing and sleeping rough for weeks during their studies. The desperate situation impinges on the student’s health and well-being and thus their academic performance.  In this context, the scope of this research focuses on the requirements of homeless tertiary students in the urban setting. Their vulnerability, insecurity and distress are explored to provide direction to solutions that will alleviate the existing problems of their insufficient living environments. As proximity to the education providers and amenities are key factors, this thesis examines underutilised and leftover spaces within the city as opportunities for inhabitation, and to create efficient use of urban space. Currently, there are successful examples of activating overlooked laneways into vibrant spaces. However, these transformations rely on the activities in the lane and the interventions are largely landscaping and installations. By investigating the successful regeneration of previously undesirable and neglected spaces through architectural re-imagination, this thesis identify laneways to be a potential site to the urgent need for shelters.  The architectural experiments and design development are informed by the combination of site challenges and programme to form an overall design-led research. The thesis tests how temporary modular design has a significant role in the design of economic and adaptable solutions for the increasing issue of homelessness. This establishes that through a critical design, we may shelter those in desperate need within the urban context. The architecture provides a safe environment that is empathetic to its users and the larger urban scale while also creating a statement and awareness to homelessness. The thesis concludes with the design framework for a single test site and assesses its suitability for future application to other leftover spaces in the city.</p>

At the Intersection of Urban and Care Policy: The Invisibility of Eldercare Workers in the Global City

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1163-1178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Strauss ◽  
Feng Xu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Creative Cities ◽  
Demographic Aging ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Comparative Case Studies ◽  
A Site ◽  
Gendered Ideologies

Demographic aging can alter physical and social infrastructures in cities, and reshape the broader dynamic processes that theories of urbanization seek to describe and analyze. We argue that both urban and eldercare policy often render paid reproductive labor and the workers who do it invisible. They are invisiblized in both policy and urban space. A neoliberal bias in urban policies, reconstructed in the rhetoric of global cities/creative cities, denies care needs. Normative approaches exacerbate this issue, as in gendered ideologies of home, care and familial responsibility. These approaches too often detach the delicate social problem of eldercare in itself from its feasibility and desirability as a site for paid labor. In that separation, the paid workforce typically disappears from the spotlight. We use comparative case studies and the concept of territorialization to refocus on the urban context of paid eldercare work in two “aspiring” global cities, Shanghai and Vancouver.

scholarly journals Emerging Biophilic Urbanism: The Value of the Human–Nature Relationship in the Urban Space

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 5487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Totaforti
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Biophilic Design ◽  
The Future ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The research presented in this article adopts an urban sociology perspective to explore the relationship between spaces designed with biophilic principles and people’s pro-environmental values and behaviors. The research hypothesized that biophilic design and planning promote connectedness with nature and are positively related to pro-environmental and more sustainable values and behaviors. The contemporary city asserts the need for new paradigms and conceptual frameworks for reconfiguring the relationship between the urban environment and the natural environment. In order to understand whether biophilic design, planning, and policies can meet the global challenges regarding the future existence on earth of humans, focus groups were conducted to investigate how people’s relationship with the built-up space and the natural landscape is perceived, and to what extent the inclusion of nature and its patterns at various levels of urban planning meets people’s expectations. The results suggest that biophilic design and planning can be considered a useful paradigm to deal with the challenges that are posed by the city of the future, also in terms of sustainability, by reinterpreting and enhancing the human–nature relation in the urban context.

The social context and politics of large scale urban architecture: Investigating the design of Barcode, Oslo

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bengt Andersen ◽  
Per Gunnar Røe
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Architecture ◽  
Class A ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transnational Companies ◽  
City Centres

The well-known and much investigated rise of urban entrepreneurial policies has fuelled a transformation of urban spaces and landscapes, and has led to changes in the social composition of city centres. This is the case for Oslo, Norway’s capital, where increasingly urban policies are designed to attract transnational companies and those in the creative class. A key strategy to achieve this has been to transform the city’s waterfront through spectacular architecture and urban design, as has taken place in other European cities. Transnational and local architects have been commissioned to design the Barcode, one of the most striking waterfront projects. This article investigates the role of architecture and architects in this process, because architects can be seen as influential generators of urban spaces and agents for social change, and because there is remarkably little published empirical research on this specific role of architects. It is argued that although there was an overall planning goal that the projects along the waterfront of Oslo should contribute to social sustainability, with the implication that planners and architects possessed information about the local urban context and used this knowledge, in practice this was not the case. It is demonstrated that the architects paid little attention to the social, cultural and economic contexts in their design process. Rather, the architects emphasized the creation of an exciting urban space and, in particular, designed spectacular architecture that would contribute to the merits of the firms involved. It is further argued that because of this the Barcode project will not contribute to the making of a just city.

scholarly journals Neurophenomenology and Intersubjectivity: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Axiomathes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirko Di Bernardo
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Interpersonal Experience

AbstractThe article aims to provide the main conceptual coordinates in order to fully understand the state of the art of the most recent research in the field of neurobiology of interpersonal experience. The main purpose of this work is to analyze, at an anthropological, phenomenological and epistemological level, how the fundamental characteristics of the recognition of otherness and intercorporeity among human beings contribute to changing the image of nature in the light of a possible new relationship between living bodies, neurophysiological systems and empathy. From this point of view, the hypothesis to investigate is that neurophenomenology, understood as a new evolutionary, multidimensional and autopoietic approach, is capable of probing the preconditions of the possible delineation of a phenomenology of intersubjectivity shaped by the neuroscientific turning point, represented by the discovery of mirror neurons. At this level, the neuroscientific data are interpreted according to a specific interdisciplinary perspective, thus trying to offer a possible unitary and integrated theoretical framework.

scholarly journals Young Jazz Musicians and Negotiation of Public Space in Yogyakarta Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Oki Rahadianto Sutopo
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Local Narratives

Using Bourdieusian approach, this article explores the reflexive strategies of young jazz musicians in order to develop their musical practices in a contemporary urban context of Yogyakarta, a city of culture and activism in Indonesia. In detail, the reflexive strategy (Sweetman 2003; Threadgold & Nilan 2009) will be explained as the manifestation of struggle in the field of cultural production (Bourdieu 1993). As an implication, young jazz musicians have to negotiate their musical practices with the reproduction of doxa and the representation of dominant agents in the jazz music field including the availability of public spaces in contemporary Yogyakarta. The resistance towards doxa will be explained based on the local narratives of the Yogyakarta jazz community as a mixture of the local and the trans-local scene (Bennett & Peterson 2004). Furthermore, the reflexive strategy will be analysed through the lens of the youth culture perspective specifically as a manifestation of a mixture between post-subculture (Bennett 1999) and subculture (Blackman 2005). In their everyday musical practices, young jazz musicians produce their musical practices fluidly and flexibly as a lifestyle distinction as well as a form of everyday life resistance. In summary, this article shows the complexity of the musical processes of young jazz musicians in contemporary urban space of Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

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