scholarly journals City Tour Guides: Urban Alchemists at Work

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Tour Guides ◽  
Walking Tour ◽  
The City

Urban sociology, often and quite reasonably, emphasizes the effects of large–scale and corporate cultures of cities and yet, at the smaller scale, there is a diverse and complex set of practices that reinvigorate the urban landscape. By pairing ethnographic fieldnotes with interviews, this paper offers a limited rejoinder to these narratives, evincing the lived interactions of one set of characters that reenchants cities. for the purposes of this article, walking tour guides serve as examples of “urban alchemists,” and three of their practices are advanced for discussion: their use of myths and revelatory stories to uproot banal visions of the city; their aim to incorporate chance and serendipity into their interactions; and their attempts to transform their participants into “better” urban dwellers.

A Neighbourhood under Storm Zhabei and Shanghai Wars

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Henriot
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Major Aspect ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The City

AbstractWar was a major aspect of Shanghai history in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, because of the particular political and territorial divisions that segmented the city, war struck only in Chinese-administered areas. In this paper, I examine the fate of the Zhabei district, a booming industrious area that came under fire on three successive occasions. Whereas Zhabei could be construed as a success story—a rag-to-riches, swamp-to-urbanity trajectory—the three instances of military conflict had an increasingly devastating impact, from shaking, to stifling, to finally erase Zhabei from the urban landscape. This area of Shanghai experienced the first large-scale modern warfare in an urban setting. The 1927 skirmish established the pattern in which the civilian population came to be exposed to extreme forms of violence, was turned overnight into a refugee population, and lost all its goods and properties to bombing and fires.

scholarly journals Learning from Italian Typology- and Morphology-Led Planning Techniques: A Planning Framework for Yingping, Xiamen

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuyi Xie
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
City Center ◽  
Planning Techniques ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Planning Framework ◽  
Planning Scheme ◽  
The City ◽  
Planning Problems

As a vital historic neighborhood with an indeterminate large-scale planning scheme, Yingping, located in the city center of Xiamen, China, is struggling with poor livability and growing incoherent private additions and renovations that largely undermine the local historic urban landscape. Inspired by Italian typology- and morphology-led planning techniques, this study explores the possible interpretations and implications of their applications in Yingping to address its interconnected, heterogeneous, and stratified urban fabric and planning problems. The research is developed through a two-pronged multi-layered planning framework. Firstly, from the maintenance perspective, five intervention approaches are grouped, with a specific focus on the leading structural elements of the urban fabric—the arcade streets. Secondly, from the morphological view and through the ecological lens, six characterized areas are identified and classified with respective morphological features and crucial planning problems being faced. This framework provides a strategic thematization of corresponding optimizing strategies and suitable guidelines to direct future governmental actions and to support the self-maintenance of local inhabitants toward sustainable development. The study also presents the possibility that such techniques are applicable to the Chinese context and is expected to inspire further research and practices in China and beyond.

Urban Consumers on Two Wheels

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 90-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás López-Pumarejo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Outdoor Advertising ◽  
The World ◽  
Street Furniture ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Large-scale public bicycle rental programs represent the latest grand venture for outdoor advertising corporations. By supporting these programs, advertisers gain unfettered access to street furniture and municipal billboard space and thus acquire the power to transform the city dwellers' experience of the urban landscape both visually and kinetically. These public-private bike rental programs have mushroomed around the world due in part to the impact of Paris' Vélib, which is the world's largest. This paper discusses the role of outdoor advertising in this trend, and focuses on two existing and two projected public bicycle programs. The existing programs are Vélib and Montreal's Bixi; and the projected ones are slated for New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico.1

scholarly journals Processes of Commercial Territorialization in the Polycentric Region of the Marche. New Commercial Hierarchies in the Doric Capital

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-125
Author(s):  
Carmelo Maria Porto
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
City Center ◽  
Urban Network ◽  
Stable Relationship ◽  
The Past ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
The City

The gradual modernization of commercial activities during the past 20 years has had a deep impact on the urban landscape of Ancona and has strongly affected the stable relationship that for decades had marked the city center and its suburbs. The traditional hierarchy of commercial areas has undergone a new configuration due to suburban territorialization processes brought by a large-scale polarization of the city’s suburbs. Understanding these new commercial hierarchies represents a valid tool for planning proper territorial policies and boosting more resilient-based processes which aim at restoring the primary role of a city center that has slowly lost its social appeal and its functional status-quo within the city’s metropolitan area and in the urban network of the Marche.

scholarly journals The Perception of the City as a Growth Machine and Space of Flows

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 453-456
Author(s):  
Ana Rusta
Keyword(s):  
Urban Growth ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Scale Growth ◽  
Growth Machine ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Dynamic Growth ◽  
Manuel Castells ◽  
The City ◽  
Space Of Flows

Abstract Two of the main features of the city over the last 50 years include intense urbanization and large scale growth. These two phenomena have produced new social, political and economical dynamics that have radicalized our understanding of the city. Many disciplines, among which urban sociology, are facing a crisis of old paradigms to explain these innovations. Consequently, contemporary urban sociology has articulated two new paradigms that try to explain and analyze the new processes of global urbanization. In the view of new models of urban growth, under intense globalization process, these phenomena are completely renovating the perception of the city under the models of a growth machine and the space of flows. These two views attempt to explain and understand the dynamic growth and changes in contemporary cities. In this essay we will put expose a critical analysis of the city as a growth machine and space of flows of the most important authors that unfold a latest development of the city in contemporary conditions. The main authors whose work will be addressed here are Harvey Molotch and Manuel Castells. Molotch reveals a new perception of the city as a growth machine that is based on the terms of strong economic urban development, while Castells introduces the notion of "network city" and "space of flows" for a new social structure to explain the complexity of connection within and between the cities (global cities). Under the new conditions, the perception of the city is understood as the space of flows that create global networks and new forms of interaction.

scholarly journals Verticality and Conflicting Identities in the Contemporary Chinese City: The Urban Development of Suzhou Industrial Park

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Raffaele Pernice
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Industrial Park ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Residential Communities ◽  
The City

The unprecedented pace of urbanization and modernization of China in the last three decades has led to a huge restructuring of the pre-existent urban fabrics and the progressive reshaping of the city form, its inner structure and urban landscape, by promoting the growth of many new high-rise residential superblocks and suburban commercial, industrial, and business districts built around major Chinese cities. Famous for the UNESCO protected urban gardens, Suzhou has over 2,500 years of history. Like in many Chinese cities, the low-rise urban landscape of the old city clashes visually with the verticality of the contemporary built environment, especially evident in the new residential urban zones of Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). Focusing on four selected case studies of large-scale housing projects in SIP, the paper explores how these new residential communities have engaged the themes of verticality and high-density living to create extensive constellations of modern but uniform high-rise urban communities. It also considers how and comment about the contradictions within this acontextual modern urban landscape, which mirror to some extent a larger trend in Chinese and other East Asian cities, in a phase of exceptional urban development and economic growth at the turn of the 21st century.

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.

CONCEPT OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF A KEY PUBLIC SPACE (USING THE EXAMPLE OF «ALLEY OF ARCHITECTS», VORONEZH)

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-109
Author(s):  
С. Л. Подвальный ◽  
О. А. Сотникова ◽  
Я. А. Золотухина
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Ecological Condition ◽  
Territory Design ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Modern Technologies ◽  
Intensive Growth

Постановка задачи. В настоящее время формирование современной комфортной городской среды приобретает особое социально-экономическое значение и выдвигается в число приоритетных государственных масштабных программ. В связи с этим необходимо разработать концепцию благоустройства ключевого общественного пространства, а именно: определить основные и сопутствующие функции данной территории, создать эскизное предложение проекта благоустройства с учетом всех необходимых норм и стандартов, внедрить современные технологии. Результаты. Выполнен эскизный дизайн-проект «Аллеи архитекторов» по ул. Орджоникидзе г. Воронеж, включающий в себя основные элементы по зонированию территории, проектированию акцентных объектов и внедрению инновационных технологий «умного города», позволяющих повысить уровень комфорта горожан. Выводы. Благоустройство населенных мест приобретает особое значение в условиях дискомфорта среды. С выполнением комплекса мероприятий, направленных на благоустройство, и с внедрением современных технологий значительно улучшается экологическое состояние, внешний облик города. Оздоровление и модернизация среды, которая окружает человека в городе, благотворно влияет на психофизическое состояние, что особенно важно в период интенсивного роста городов. Statement of the problem. Currently the formation of the modern comfortable urban environment is gaining a special social and economic value and moving forward in the priorities of state large-scale programs. The purpose of development of the concept of improvement of public space is definition of the main and accompanying functions of this territory, design of the outline offer of the project of improvement considering all necessary norms and standards and implementation of modern technologies. Results. The conceptual project of “Alley of Architects” includes the basic elements of territory zoning, design of accent objects and implementation of technologies of a “smart-city”. These elements allow one to increase the level of comfort of inhabitants. Conclusions. Improvement of the inhabited places is of particular importance in the conditions of discomfort of the environment. Carrying out a complex of the actions directed to gardening and improvement, introducing modern technologies, the ecological condition, the physical appearance of the city considerably improves. Improvement and modernization of the environment which surrounds the person in the city influences a psychophysical state well that especially important during intensive growth of the cities.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document