The Calgary 2026 Olympic Bid Plebiscite as Affective Urbanism

2020 ◽  
pp. 019372352096497
Author(s):  
Harry H. Hiller

An analysis of the Calgary 2026 Olympic bid plebiscite/referendum held in 2018 adds a new perspective to the literature on bidding by shifting from the cognitive/organizational elements of the bid to the emotive dynamics within the bid city conceptualized as affective urbanism. The socioeconomic and political context and the binary nature of the plebiscite question provide the framework to explain the negative vote. Using the civic discourse of local residents as data for the study, the public emotions created by confusion, fear, and anger are identified, which resulted in two opposing but competitive affective voting options: affirming affectivity and aversive affectivity. A binary reversal made a negative vote into an instrument of power and a positive affirmation of the city’s future.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Cheol Kang ◽  
Ilhak Lee

AbstractThis article examines the development of the Republic of Korea’s strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 with particular focus on ethical issues and the problem of politicization of public communication. Using prominent examples of stakeholders who have acted and expressed themselves in highly contradictory ways on the topic of the pandemic, we provide an analysis of how the public health policy discourse has entered into the realm of politicization and elaborate on the danger that this phenomenon poses in terms of rational debate and appropriate policy measures geared toward the public’s safety. Considering the role that the Republic of Korea have had in global media coverage of quarantine policies and epidemic prevention, we believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it provides a new perspective and insights into the forces at work within and around a prevention strategy that has both been lauded and seen as highly controversial.


Global Jurist ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocco Alessio Albanese

Abstract This paper intends to discuss some major European legal issues by building on the critique of a certain narrow relevance of human basic needs, according to traditional Western legal conceptions of the subject as well as of the public-private divide. In particular it aims at verifying the potentiality of consumer law for rethinking the right to housing, within recent trends of European Private Law, by adopting a remedial approach. For this reason the paper analyzes three well-known cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) – namely Aziz, Sanchez Morcillo and Kušionová – as examples of this meaningful trend. Through the combination of the fairness test over contractual terms with the criteria of effectiveness and proportionality, a broader protection of right to housing is recognised even in horizontal private relationships. Art. 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFREU) could represent the constitutional reference for this new perspective. The paper also intends to show how the relevance of the basic need for housing is traced to debtor's families. CJEU's interpretative itinerary seems to start from a fairness test about contractual terms, but eventually comes to give protection to subjective situations that are even out of the domain of the contract.


Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Michael Pearce

In this article I analyse how Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play Fairview makes white audience members feel white. As a play that exposes whiteness and calls white people to account for their racism, Fairview speaks to contemporary global antiracist activism efforts. Therefore, I begin by situating Fairview in the transatlantic cultural and political context of Black Lives Matter. I then discuss the theatrical devices Drury employs in Fairview in order to make whiteness felt before going on to analyse a range of white audience responses to the production at London’s Young Vic Theatre in 2019/2020. I reflect on these responses in relation to how white people react to accusations of white privilege and power in the public sphere and identify shared strategies for sustaining whiteness. In conclusion, I consider Fairview as a model of affective antiracist activism.


Author(s):  
Luciano Cupelloni

AbstractThe theme is the urban re-qualification, applied in particular to the architectural heritage and the public space. The goal is the ongoing challenge of outlining a new perspective aimed at “common good” and sustainability. The instrument chosen is the “environmental technological design,” understood as a cultural, scientific, and social position, that is, as a position on the role of architecture. The contribution reiterates the urgency of restoring the transformative power of the design mission to the project, too often reduced to a set of technical compilation procedures. In the best cases, a position that is lost in the complication of procedures, in the extension of time, in the waste of economic and human resources. A crisis of the project as “anticipation” of progressive scenarios, precisely in the most acute, ever more serious phase, of the urgency of the reorganization of urban systems, with a view to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Not a recent urgency, today only brought to light, dramatically, by the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Among the solutions, the design experimental research, well beyond the objective of flexibility, up to the notion of “functional indifference,” understood not as shapeless neutrality, but as the maximum functionality of spatial, architectural and urban quality.


Author(s):  
Kathrin Deventer

Festivals have been around, and will always be around; no matter the political context they are embedded in, supported by, or hindered by. Why? Simply because society develops, it transforms, it is dynamic and it needs space for reflection and inspiration. Festivals are platforms for people to meet, and for artists to present their work, their creations. This gives festivals an enduring, quite independent mission and reason to exist: as long as festivals strive to offer a biotope for artists and audiences alike and point to questions which concern the way we live and want to live, they will be a fertile ground for a meaningful development of society – and an offer for serving the public wellbeing. What are the challenges festivals are facing today? There are a series of very complex questions related to festivals’ positioning us as human beings in an interconnected, global society, our relation to nature and the immediate surroundings, our stories of life so that as many citizens as possible can be part of the societal discourse, can be enriched, can be touched, can be heard, can be moved. Individuals, interest groups, nationalities, countries, even continents are interconnected. What does this mean for a festival? Travelling across Europe for work and pleasure and meeting citizens from all walks of life has taught me that citizens, a term that connects individuals to some larger constructed community, are just people, everyday people, going about their lives. People connect with other humans and their human stories, real life encounters. Abstract theory and jargon are meaningless when they lack real life connections. Meaningful festivals of the future will offer possibilities for new connections among people: they invite people to travel in time and in space; they inspire to connect human stories, enriching them with new, unexpected, colourful stories!


2022 ◽  
pp. 1238-1265
Author(s):  
Pilvi Nummi ◽  
Susa Eräranta ◽  
Maarit Kahila-Tani

Planning competitions are used as a way to determine alternatives and promote innovative solutions in the early phase of urban planning. However, the traditional jury-based evaluation process is encountering significant opposition, as it does not consider the views of local residents. This chapter describes how web-based public participation tools are utilized in urban planning competitions to register public opinion alongside the expert view given by the jury. The research focus of this chapter is on studying how public participation can be arranged in competition processes, how the contestants use the information produced, and how it has been utilized in further planning of the area. Based on two Finnish case studies, this study indicates that web-based tools can augment public participation in the competition process. However, the results indicate that the impact of participation on selecting the winner is weak. Instead, in further planning of the area, the public opinions are valuable.


Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia-Jia Chin ◽  
Hong-Wai Tham

Genetic testing aids patients in making important decisions in the prevention, treatment, or early detection of hereditary disorders. Low awareness of the importance of genetic testing contributes to the increase in the incidence of hereditary disorders. This study aims to explore the knowledge, awareness, and perception of genetic testing for hereditary disorders among local residents of the Klang Valley, Malaysia, and the potential variables that influence their understanding of genetic testing. A survey was conducted in different municipalities of the Klang Valley through self-administered questionnaire assessing the public's knowledge, awareness, and perception of genetic testing. Overall, the results revealed adequate knowledge and positive awareness of genetic testing, in which both were influenced by the respondent's educational level (P < 0.001), field of study (P < 0.001), and status of heard or unheard of genetic testing (P < 0.001). The perception of genetic testing was generally positive and influenced by the respondent's differences in age (P < 0.016), educational level (P < 0.001), field of study (P < 0.001), and status of heard or unheard of genetic testing (P < 0.001). Although positive responses were obtained, ~20.2% of the respondents had never heard of genetic testing. Of the respondents, 24.5% were unwilling to undergo genetic testing, with 25.1% believing that genetic testing tampers with nature and 18% believing that it opposes religion and their beliefs. Such attitude calls for the need to conduct programs to eliminate any misconception, as well as to educate the public to lessen any perceived misunderstanding of the concepts of genetic testing.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document