The Creative Destruction of the Chicago River Harbor: Spatial and Environmental Dimensions of Industrial Capitalism, 1881–1909

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-275
Author(s):  
Joshua A. T. Salzmann

This essay examines the implications of rapid technological and economic change, or what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” for the urban environment. Taking the Chicago River Harbor as a case study, it argues that industrial capitalism was marked by fundamental spatial and environmental contradictions that resulted in the frequent destruction and reinvention of urban landscapes. The essay shows how transformations in the Great Lakes shipping industry and the rise of the steel industry rendered Chicago River Harbor infrastructure obsolete. That obsolescence, in turn, sparked a public debate over whether the port should be retrofitted or if the river should be harnessed for different uses. So many stakeholders—streetcar companies, commuters, City Beautiful advocates, and sanitary engineers—had conflicting ideas about the use of the river that it was practically impossible to retrofit the port. The resulting decline of industrial freight traffic on the Chicago River enabled urban planner Daniel Burnham to reinvent the riverfront as a site of leisure and consumption.

Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Marzieh Setayesh ◽  
Leila Shokrollahi

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Hye Hwang ◽  
Anuj Jain

Abstract Urban landscapes have the potential to conserve wildlife. Despite increasing recognition of this potential, there are few collaborative efforts to integrate ecology and conservation principles into context-dependent, spatial and actionable design strategies. To address this issue and to encourage multi-disciplinary research on urban human–wildlife interactions, we ask the following questions. To what extent should design and planning actions be aligned with urban ecology in the context of a compact city? How can wildlife conservation meet the seemingly conflictual demands of urban development and public preference? To answer these questions, we refer to the relevant literature and a number of design projects. Using the compact tropical city of Singapore as a case study, we propose 12 design strategies. We encourage designers and planners to strengthen the links between wildlife and urban dwellers and promote wildlife conservation within cities.


10.1068/a3237 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Gagen

At the turn of the 20th century, children's play came under new and heightened scrutiny by urban reformers. As conditions in US cities threatened traditional notions of order, reformers sought new ways to direct urban-social development. In this paper I explore playground reform as an institutional response that aimed to produce and promote ideal gender identities in children. Supervised summer playgrounds were established across the United States as a means of drawing children off the street and into a corrective environment. Drawing from literature published by the Playground Association of America and a case study of playground management in Cambridge, MA, I explore playground training as a means of constructing gender identities in and through public space. Playground reformers asserted, drawing from child development theory, that the child's body was a conduit through which ‘inner’ identity surfaced. The child's body became a site through which gender identities could be both monitored and produced, compelling reformers to locate playgrounds in public, visible settings. Reformers' conviction that exposing girls to public vision threatened their development motivated a series of spatial restrictions. Whereas boys were unambiguously displayed to public audiences, girls' playgrounds were organised to accommodate this fear. Playground reformers' shrewd spatial tactics exemplify the ways in which institutional authorities conceive of and deploy space toward the construction of identity.


JOURNAL ASRO ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Ikhwan Syahtaria ◽  
Sukarno Sukarno ◽  
Ali Mashudi ◽  
Edy Widodo

Sea transportation is a major factor connecting the islands of Indonesia which has strategic and important value in supporting the sustainability of the national economy. Along with the government's policy on the sea highway program and the development of the domestic shipping industry, the growth of the commercial fleet, especially vessels, is currently experiencing rapid progress. In supporting the government program and the demand for reparation and procurement of new ships in domestic production, readiness is required from the shipyard. However, the current condition of the shipyard is only able to meet 83% of the demand for new shipbuilding so that the shipyard still needs to be developed in order to improve its capabilities, so that it can meet the needs and be able to carry out its functions in accordance with the progress of shipping technology. In this study discusses the strategy of developing shipbuilding using qualitative descriptive methods and quantitative SWOT analysis. In this case study shipyard development strategy by increasing the ability of shipyards to meet the demands of ship building by increasing supporting facilities and accompanied by increasing the ability of human resources in the mastery of science and technology. Besides also by conducting cooperation with the domestic shipping industry in the procurement of supporting partsKeywords: Shipyard, Maintenence, SWOT Analysis, Developmen Strategy


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE GUTHRIE

AbstractBy the outbreak of the Second World War in Britain, critics had spent several decades negotiating the supposed distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, as recent scholarship has shown. What has received comparatively little attention is how the demands of wartime living changed the stakes of the debate. This article addresses this lacuna, exploring how war invited a reassessment of the relative merits of art and popular music. Perhaps the most iconic British singer of the period, Vera Lynn provides a case study. Focusing on her first film vehicle,We'll Meet Again(1942), I explore how Lynn's character mediated the highbrow/lowbrow conflict – for example, by presenting popular music as a site of community, while disparaging art music for its minority appeal. In so doing, I argue, the film not only promoted Lynn's star persona, but also intervened in a broader debate about the value of entertainment for a nation at war.


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