From Compound Houses to Villas: The Incremental Transformation of Dakar’s Urban Landscape

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Emilie Pinard
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
Housing Typology ◽  
The City ◽  
House Building ◽  
Constructive Logics ◽  
Spatial Logics

This paper examines the transformation of the housing typology in informal neighbourhoods located on the periphery of Dakar, Senegal. More specifically, it documents the spatial logics and factors guiding the construction of new multi-storey houses called “villas”, which are significantly transforming the landscape of the city. Studies have thus far examined villas through the lenses of migrants’ investments and lifestyles, associating these houses with new functions and decorative elements and materials inspired by time spent abroad, with innovative ways of building and dwelling that disrupt more popular housing practices. Based upon an architectural survey of seventeen houses and the detailed stories of their construction, this paper argues that while the Senegalese villa is influenced by global networks and symbols of success, it is also deeply rooted in popular housing forms and building practices. Moreover, because house-building processes are predominantly incremental, the construction of this new house type is not limited to migrants and other privileged dwellers. Although at different speeds, most residents are building and transforming their houses according to spatial and constructive logics characteristic of villas. These results have implications for housing policies and programmes because they contribute to challenging assumptions about residential production, new housing typologies and the pivotal actors of these urban transformations.

Analyzing, Classifying, Safeguarding

2018 ◽  
pp. 93-108
Author(s):  
Valentina Castagnolo
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
City Image ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Graphic Model ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
The City

A modern city can be studied through its representation, from the urban to the architectural and detail scales. The image of a city is characterized by a plurality of architectural shapes that are visible across the urban landscape. This chapter describes the scientific method of the representation science, namely the architectural survey and drawing, as knowledge methods, that play the role of tools for the analysis of the structuring place dynamics. The methodology includes the retrieval of existing documentary material and the redrawing of the façades and their subsequent composition within the urban space. The research aim is to show the city image of Bari in its architectural, historical, and cultural essence, implementing a graphic model that can be an effective tool for protection, which contains the reference documentation of each architecture, that can be viewed and studied individually or placed in relation to other façades of the city.

scholarly journals Resource Industries in the Post-Industrial City

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Adams ◽  
◽  
Marie Law Adams ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Primary Industry ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City

Resource industries are present in the post-industrial city in a mutable state, as the goods of global trade pass through as interim piles (salt, sand, and gravel), in holding tanks (petroleum), and silos (cement). The flow of resources is fundamental to urban life and shapes the urban landscape, yet engagement with this mode of industry in the city has been largely outside the realm of the design disciplines. If Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles was made legible through the mediating lens of the windshield and the rear-view mirror, then the constructed landscapes of primary resources in today’s post-industrial city are only understandable through the windshield of the front-end loader that acts as the mediator between global networks and local distribution. The material terminals that these loaders serve are not classified by permanent structures, but rather by the through put dictated by the demands of the city. This dynamic relationship of primary industry to the contemporary city is better understood through the relational terms of ecology than formal conventions of architecture. As such, the environments created by the flows of primary industry to urban centers require new modes of engagement from designers. The current architectures of such resource industries in cities- containers, sheds, fences – result from practices of use-based zoning, homeland security, and offsite mitigation, but such static structures fail to engage the dynamic dimensions of a fluid industry. In order to create a new framework, this paper analyzes the spatial and programmatic opportunities that result from re-conceiving these three regulatory conventions through an analysis of a realized project with a global marine terminal in Boston Harbor.

Wenn stadtpolitische Bewegungen das Terrain des Staats betreten

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (191) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Diesselhorst
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
City Government ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Hierarchical Decision Making ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Hierarchical Decision ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This article discusses the struggles of urban social movements for a de-neoliberalisation of housing policies in Poulantzian terms as a “condensation of the relationship of forces”. Drawing on an empirical analysis of the “Berliner Mietenvolksentscheid” (Berlin rent referendum), which was partially successful in forcing the city government of Berlin to adopt a more progressive housing policy, the article argues that urban social movements have the capacity to challenge neoliberal housing regimes. However, the specific materiality of the state apparatus and its strategic selectivity both limit the scope of intervention for social movements aiming at empowerment and non-hierarchical decision-making.

Emplacing Berlin: Digital Itineraries and Short-term Study Abroad in the City

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Apgar
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Short Term Study ◽  
The City

As destination of choice for many short-term study abroad programs, Berlin offers students of German language, culture and history a number of sites richly layered with significance. The complexities of these sites and the competing narratives that surround them are difficult for students to grasp in a condensed period of time. Using approaches from the spatial humanities, this article offers a case study for enhancing student learning through the creation of digital maps and itineraries in a campus-based course for subsequent use during a three-week program in Berlin. In particular, the concept of deep mapping is discussed as a means of augmenting understanding of the city and its history from a narrative across time to a narrative across the physical space of the city. As itineraries, these course-based projects were replicated on site. In moving from the digital environment to the urban landscape, this article concludes by noting meanings uncovered and narratives formed as we moved through the physical space of the city.

‘Otherwise in London’ or, the ‘Essence of Things’: Modernity and Estrangement in the Nineteenth-Century Cityscape

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Thomas De Quincey ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Representation ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.

Research and application of new media urban landscape design method based on 5G virtual reality

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Guangchao Zhang ◽  
Xinyue Kou
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
New Media ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Environmental Design ◽  
Landscape Design ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
The City

In recent years, with the rapid development of VR technology, its application range gradually involves the field of urban landscape design. VR technology can simulate complex environments, breaking through the limitations of traditional environmental design on large amounts of information processing and rendering of renderings. It can display complex and abstract urban environmental design through visualization. With the support of high-speed information transmission in the 5G era, VR technology can simulate the overall urban landscape design by generating VR panoramas, and it can also bring the experiencer into an immersive and interactive virtual reality world through VR video Experience. Based on this, this article uses the 5G virtual reality method in the new media urban landscape design to conduct research, aiming to provide an urban landscape design method with strong authenticity, good user experience and vividness. This paper studies the urban landscape design method in the new media environment; in addition, how to realize the VR panorama in the 5G environment, and also explores the image design of each node in the city in detail; and uses the park design in the city As an example, the realization process of the entire virtual reality is described in detail. The research in this article shows that the new media urban landscape design method based on 5G virtual reality, specifically to the design of urban roads, water divisions, street landscapes, and people’s living environment, makes the realization of smart cities possible.

scholarly journals Remote Sensing-Based Analysis of Urban Landscape Change in the City of Bucharest, Romania

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Constantin Nistor ◽  
Marina Vîrghileanu ◽  
Irina Cârlan ◽  
Bogdan-Andrei Mihai ◽  
Liviu Toma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Landscape Heterogeneity ◽  
Real Estate Market ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Complex Structural ◽  
The City

The paper investigates the urban landscape changes for the last 50 years in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Bucharest shows a complex structural transformation driven by the socialist urban policy, followed by an intensive real-estate market development. Our analysis is based on a diachronic set of high-resolution satellite imagery: declassified CORONA KH-4B from 1968, SPOT-1 from 1989, and multisensor stacked layers from Sentinel-1 SAR together with Sentinel-2MSI from 2018. Three different datasets of land cover/use are extracted for the reference years. Each dataset reveals its own urban structure pattern. The first one illustrates a radiography of the city in the second part of the 20th century, where rural patterns meet the modern ones, while the second one reveals the frame of a city in a full process of transformation with multiple constructions sites, based on the socialist model. The third one presents an image of a cosmopolitan city during an expansion process, with a high degree of landscape heterogeneity. All the datasets are included in a built-up change analysis in order to map and assess the spatial transformations of the city pattern over 5 decades. In order to quantify and map the changes, the Built-up Change Index (BCI) is introduced. The results highlight a particular situation linked to the policy development visions for each decade, with major changes of about 50% for different built-up classes. The GIS analysis illustrates two major landscape transformations: from the old semirural structures with houses surrounded by gardens from 1968, to a compact pattern with large districts of blocks of flats in 1989, and a contemporary city defined by an uncontrolled urban sprawl process in 2018.

Guerrilla art in the city: Urban and social revitalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrica Lovaglio ◽  
Manuel Scortichini
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Collaborative Action ◽  
Economic Revitalization ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
The City ◽  
The Ideal

Without a permit, a masterplan, or corporate or public funding, artists have evaded conventional norms to accomplish a feat: the urban and socio-economic revitalization of abandoned or depressed cities worldwide. In Rio’s favelas and America’s impoverished suburbs, artists are the political force that promotes local economies, defines collective identities, gives people a sense of belonging, while covering the land with beauty. To act at the city’s scale, artists teach their craft to the locals and use art to empower the community, and unveil needed urban policies, bringing economic development, expertise and collaborative action. As a result, public art becomes instrumental for infusing new life in marginalized neighbourhoods, and the city becomes the ideal canvas for free expression without bureaucracy. This article is a bird’s eye view of two public art interventions that have highlighted the political and pedagogical implications of a citizen-design approach to urban renewal. Ultimately, it is a call for artists to activate as impactful makers of urban transformations.

scholarly journals The visual-landscape analysis during the integration of high-rise buildings within the historic urban environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 01044
Author(s):  
Vera A. Akristiniy ◽  
Elena A. Dikova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Landscape Analysis ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Visual Landscape ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Typological Structure ◽  
The City ◽  
Information Database

The article is devoted to one of the types of urban planning studies - the visual-landscape analysis during the integration of high-rise buildings within the historic urban environment for the purposes of providing pre-design and design studies in terms of preserving the historical urban environment and the implementation of the reconstructional resource of the area. In the article formed and systematized the stages and methods of conducting the visual-landscape analysis taking into account the influence of high-rise buildings on objects of cultural heritage and valuable historical buildings of the city. Practical application of the visual-landscape analysis provides an opportunity to assess the influence of hypothetical location of high-rise buildings on the perception of a historically developed environment and optimal building parameters. The contents of the main stages in the conduct of the visual - landscape analysis and their key aspects, concerning the construction of predicted zones of visibility of the significant historically valuable urban development objects and hypothetically planned of the high-rise buildings are revealed. The obtained data are oriented to the successive development of the planning and typological structure of the city territory and preservation of the compositional influence of valuable fragments of the historical environment in the structure of the urban landscape. On their basis, an information database is formed to determine the permissible urban development parameters of the high-rise buildings for the preservation of the compositional integrity of the urban area.

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