Space and Power in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-208
Author(s):  
James F. Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The City

This chapter develops insights from recent social theory in space and place that emphasizes the socially contingent nature of the built environment and its perception by those who dwell within it. Spatial analysis of settlement patterns within the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex illustrates that rather than being evenly distributed across the landscape, as per the vision of territoriality in the modern nation-state, power at the regional scale was highly variable and swift to change, a phenomenon referred to as malleable territoriality. Each kingdom’s capital city was a tightly coordinated nexus of symbols that celebrated royal authority to pedestrians in such a way that no matter where one turned, as one moved through the city, the legitimacy of the royal figure was constantly being reinforced. Yet as soon as one moved into a settlement lower on the settlement hierarchy, one sees that the political is far less evident, even absent. And even in the capital cities themselves, those indicators of royal power are frequently found smashed into pieces. Spatial analysis therefore indicates that not only was power expressed and experienced differently depending on one’s location in the built environment, it was also something that could be contested.

scholarly journals Placing Religious Social Action in the Multicultural City

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 248-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Zavos
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
The City

The cultural geographer Lily Kong argues that spatial analysis is vital for an interrogation of the contemporary complexity of religion. Building on this observation and broader theoretical understandings of the dynamics of space and place, this paper asks what happens when religious ideas and organisations are implicated in contemporary social action initiatives in ethnically diverse cities. Drawing on ethnographic data, it provides a detailed spatial analysis of a range of initiatives aimed at combatting food insecurity and other forms of deprivation in the city of Bradford in northern England. It examines how and why certain types of religious institution are dominant in the delivery of social action and explores the political significance of more fluid initiatives conducted by religiously diverse independent agents. The paper concludes that initiatives such as street kitchens and foodbanks are playing an important role in recalibrating the social location of religion in contemporary multicultural environments.

Sociospatial Transformations in the ‘Postsocialist’ Periphery: The Case of Maputo, Mozambique

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1463-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
J D Sidaway ◽  
M Power
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Portuguese Colonialism ◽  
Do So

As Mozambique was one of a number of Third World states that embraced Marxism-Leninism during the 1970s, the establishment and subsequent collapse of a socialist development project since independence in 1975 has had profound social, political, and economic consequences. Against these contexts, and through a chronological account which begins with the impacts of Portuguese colonialism and Mozambican nationalist responses, we analyse the contradictory impact of political and economic changes accompanying colonialism, independence, attempted socialist transformation, and the end of socialism in Mozambique as they are mediated through the built environment of the Mozambican capital city of Maputo. The combined political, social, and cultural facets within these transformations and continuities are evident throughout the account and we specify some of the ways in which these are intertwined with the political economy of urbanization. In the conclusion we reconsider what the changing trajectory of Maputo represents in global and comparative terms. We do so with reference to debates about the changing forms of international capitalist regulation and the reconfiguration of dependency.

scholarly journals ‘Between life and death’: On land, silence and liberation in the capital city

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
University Of Pretoria ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

This article reflects on the unfinished task of liberation – as expressed in issues of land – and drawing from the work of Franz Fanon and the Durban-based social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. It locates its reflections in four specific sites of struggle in the City of Tshwane, and against the backdrop of the mission statement of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, as well as the Capital Cities Research Project based in the same university. Reflecting on the ‘living death’ of millions of landless people on the one hand, and the privatisation of liberation on the other, it argues that a liberating praxis of engagement remains a necessity in order to break the violent silences that perpetuate exclusion.

The Politics of Planning

2012 ◽  
pp. 738-758
Author(s):  
J. Phillip Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The City

This article examines the political aspect of urban planning. It discusses Robert Beauregard's opinion that planning should not reject modernism entirely or unconditionally embrace postmodernism, and that planners should instead maintain a focus on the city and the built environment as a way of retaining relevancy and coherence, and should maintain modernism's commitment to political reform and to planning's meditative role within the state, labor, and capital. The article suggests that planners should also advocate utopian social justice visions for cities which are not so far-fetched as to be unrealizable so that planning can then attach itself to widespread values such as democracy, the common good, or equality.

Exile, Imprisonment, or Death

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Swann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
The French Revolution

Between the assassination of Henri IV in 1610 and the French Revolution of 1789, thousands of French nobles, including members of the royal family, courtiers, bishops, generals, and judges suffered internal exile, imprisonment, or even death for having displeased their sovereign. For most that punishment was independent of the legal system and was the result of a simple royal command or a written order, known as a lettre de cachet. Yet rather than protest, the victims were willing to obey, spending months, even years in disgrace without any knowledge of when, or even if, their ordeal would end. Their punishment was for many a terrible personal blow, striking at the heart of their own identity and relationship to the king, and it threatened the future of their families, friends, and political allies. This book is the first in-depth study of political disgrace, which was intrinsic to the exercise of royal power, drawing on the mystique of monarchy and the ideologies of divine right, patriarchy, and justice that underpinned royal authority. It explores the rise and consolidation of a new model of disgrace amongst the nobility for which obedience to the king gradually replaced the rebellious attitudes fostered during the years of religious and civil strife. Yet for all the power of royal disgrace, it was always open to challenge and in the course of the eighteenth century it would come under a sustained attack that tells us much about the political and cultural origins of the French Revolution.

scholarly journals The signature of the city: abandonment and dreaming in colonial Williamsburg and Ottawa

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-251
Author(s):  
Mark Kristmanson
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Honorary Degree ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
The City

Exploring the themes of abandonment and dreaming in relation to two North American capital cities, this interdisciplinary narrative essay examines the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's influence on the planning and architecture of Ottawa in relation to his frequent visits to Colonial Williamsburg, the restored former capital of Virginia. At the invitation of John D. Rockefeller Jr., King became a regular guest in Williamsburg during the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the conferral of an honorary degree by the College of William and Mary in 1948. The records of these visits provide a diagnostic used to conceptualize the 'signature' of the capital city. In abandonment and in dreaming, capital cities are especially exposed to latent forces of nature and of 'museumification'. These two forces created a tension that complicated attempts by King and Rockefeller to leave permanent architectural legacies in the signatures of their respective capitals.

The Improbability of a Temple: Hindu Mobilization and Urban Space in the Delhi Shiv Mandir Agitation of 1938

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-250
Author(s):  
Deepasri Baul
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Good Measure ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
Sacred Geography ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
The City ◽  
Religious Polarization

The 1920s and 1930s were decades of intense religious polarization and violence in many parts of British India. These decades were also especially empowering ones for Hindu nationalist organizations in Delhi. So, it rankled Hindu leaders that Delhi’s built environment had a dearth of Hindu sacred structures to attest to their power, on account of the city’s past status as a Mughal capital. Instead, transitory spatial markers of local veneration made up its somewhat ephemeral Hindu sacred geography. The Shiv Mandir agitation of 1938 was a collective attempt by Hindu volunteers to forcibly occupy government land in a prominent arena of the city as a symbolic restitution of this historical inequality. The agitation itself had two parts—first, the occupation of a plot of land as a temple and, second, the aggregation of legal arguments supporting ownership of the plot for the Hindu public. By combining these two strategies, the Shiv Mandir agitation laid out the political and legal preconditions necessary for the production of a more conspicuous and enduring material landscape of organized Hindu religiosity in the city. Through this process, Hindu nationalist organizations consolidated themselves as the ultimate public custodians of temples and temple land. This was a powerful role that drew its prestige in good measure from control over prime urban property.

scholarly journals Obsolescence of urban morphology in Villena (Spain). Spatial analysis of the urban fabric in the ISUD/EDUSI candidature.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Miguel García Martín ◽  
Fernando Navarro Carmona ◽  
Eduardo José Solaz Fuster ◽  
Víctor Muñoz Macián ◽  
María Amparo Sebastià Esteve ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Development Fund ◽  
The City

The Integrated Sustainable Urban Development strategy (English acronym ISUD, Spanish acronym EDUSI) is an urban planning tool that the municipalities with more than 20.000 inhabitants in Spain need to be funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the 2014-2020 period. The city of Villena is located south- east Spain, inland the province of Alicante. The Villena municipality developed this tool in order to have a holistic and integrated vision of the situation of the city from the urban, social, economic and environmental points of view. As a part of the analysis performed to develop this strategy, a spatial analysis of the urban fabric of Villena was carried out. This study employed concepts from the typomorphological schools of Italy, England and France (Moudon, 1994) as well as from the research on relation between density and urban form (Churchman, 1999, Berghauser & Pont, 2009, Steadman, 2014). The data and cartography of the Spanish Cadaster, processed with SIG software, allowed the study. The spatial analysis included different variables of the built environment, including building height and age; plots size; open space ratios, Not-built plots; type of built-plots according to height and built surface; and compactness of the fabrics. The results of this analysis showed a relationship between the morphological variables and the problems identified in the citizen participation meetings carried out for the elaboration of the ISUD. The identified aspects of urban morphology obsolescence allowed proposing strategies of action to update the built environment to current demands. References (100 words) Berghauser Pont, M., & Haupt, P. (2009). Space, density and urban form. TU delft. Retrieved from http://repository.tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid%253A0e8cdd4d-80d0-4c4c-97dc-dbb9e5eee7c2/ Churchman, A. (1999). Disentangling the concept of density. Journal of Planning Literature, 13(4), 389–411. Moudon, A. V. (1994). Getting to know the built landscape: typomorphology. In K. A. Franck & L. H. Schneekloth (Eds.), Ordering space: types in architecture and design (pp. 289–311). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Steadman, P. (2014). Density and built form: integrating “Spacemate” with the work of Martin and March. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 41(2), 341–358.

Power and Identity: The Case of Islamabad

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Saboohi Sarshar
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The City

This article observes how the concept of power and national identity produced space in 1960’s Islamabad, the new capital city of Pakistan. In World War II’s aftermath, many capital cities emerged which were seen as their nation’s representation by negating or reinforcing ties with sovereign or imperial power. Pakistan is one such nation that gained independence from the British in 1947. Islamabad designed by Constantinos A. Doxiadis in 1959 aimed to construct its identity in a postcolonial paradigm. This article studies the urban layout and pattern of the city and emphasizes the relation of power and identity on its social constructs and making.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Urban Spatial Characteristics of the Capitals of Tang and Song Dynasties Based on Space Syntax

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Liran Yin ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Kemi Adeyeye
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Space Syntax ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Tang And Song Dynasties ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Space syntax has been widely used in studies with historical components to developing a common analytical language for the comparative study of urban morphology across time and space by visual diagrams. This paper uses space syntax to analyse the inner and outer city parts of the daily life of residents in the capital cities of two dynasties, Tang and Song, to reveal the impact of changes in urban planning on the overall spatial structure of the city, the structure of commercial space, and the role of urban squares in the two dynasties under centralised rule. Based on the quantitative analysis, the results show significant differences between the Tang and Song dynasties in all three aspects of comparison. The changes in the Tang and Song dynasties’ capital cities result from the interaction between the materiality of the ancient Chinese capital city form and the spatial function of the city, and the analysis of space syntax is useful for interpreting their relevance.

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