A scenic walk through Brenner’s New Urban Spaces in Toronto

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 732-744
Author(s):  
Cary Wu ◽  
Joanne Ong
Keyword(s):  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Recent Monograph ◽  
The City ◽  
Epistemological Perspectives

This article reviews Brenner’s most recent monograph, New Urban Spaces, in which he demonstrates his systematic and decades-long effort into developing new epistemological perspectives, conceptual proposals, and methodological strategie for urban investigation in our so-called global ‘urban age’. We use images taken in the city of Toronto to interpret and visually explain some of Brenner’s key concepts and arguments. In our critical assessment, we point out that Brenner’s abstract theorizing and overgeneralization may have provoked an ignorance of the local variations in effect globally and a failure to tease out specific testable hypotheses for urban investigation. To conclude, we introduce a newly developed scenic approach, one that extends Brenner’s view on the urban by stressing the importance of local variations and testable hypotheses.

Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 285-311
Author(s):  
Paul Niell
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New World ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
American Architecture ◽  
Political Norms ◽  
The City

The Baroque in Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism, in parts of the Americas formerly comprising the Spanish and Portuguese empires, has been traditionally studied as a question of adherence to or deviation from a Counter-Reformation style promoted primarily by ecclesiastical institutions. This article expands upon what is meant by “Baroque” in the architecture and urbanism of the Iberian empires in the Americas. Through the analysis of urban plans, images of the city, architectural interiors and exteriors, physical urban spaces, and other forms of material culture, this article argues that Ibero-American architecture and urbanism in the age of the Baroque belonged to a phenomenon of ordering and thereby creating the “New World” as ideologically constituted colonial spaces that reified social and political norms. Furthermore, human subjects actively negotiated the spaces created by architecture and the city, making the American Baroque also part of a process of negotiating order and thereby producing American spaces.

scholarly journals A Framework for Implementing and Tracking Circular Economy in Cities: The Case of Porto

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1813 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Cavaleiro de Ferreira ◽  
Francesco Fuso-Nerini
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Research Gaps ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Population Research ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Significant Barrier ◽  
The City

Circular economy (CE) is an emerging concept that contrasts the linear economic system. This concept is particularly relevant for cities, currently hosting approximately 50% of the world’s population. Research gaps in the analysis and implementation of circular economy in cities are a significant barrier to its implementation. This paper presents a multi-sectorial and macro-meso level framework to monitor (and set goals for) circular economy implementation in cities. Based on literature and case studies, it encompasses CE key concepts, such as flexibility, modularity, and transparency. It is structured to include all sectors in which circular economy could be adopted in a city. The framework is then tested in Porto, Portugal, monitoring the circularity of the city and considering its different sectors.

THE FREEDOM OF THE AESTHETIC: MONTSERRAT ROIG’S USE OF THE CITY IN RAMONA, ADÉU

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Caragh Wells
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
Catalan Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The City

This article suggests that over recent decades Catalan literary criticism has paid too little attention to the aesthetic attributes of Catalan literature and emphasised the social, political and cultural at the expense of discussions of narrative poetics. Through an analysis of Montserrat Roig’s metaphorical use of the city in her first novel Ramona, adéu, I put forward the view that the aesthetic features of Catalan literature need to be re-claimed. This article provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic importance of Roig’s representation of the city in her first novel and argues that she uses Barcelona as a critical tool through which to explore questions of both female emancipation and aesthetic freedom. Following a detailed discussion of Roig’s descriptions of how her female characters interact with particular urban spaces, I examine how Roig makes subtle shifts in her semantic register during these narrative accounts when her prose moves into the realm of the poetic. I conclude that this technique enables us to read her accounts of urban space as metaphors for aesthetic freedom and are inextricably linked to her wider concerns on the importance of liberating Catalan literature from the discourse of political nationalism.

COVID-19 pandemic and the poor in the urban spaces of India with special reference to Mumbai

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujayita Bhattacharjee ◽  
Sanjukta Sattar
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Socioeconomic Crisis ◽  
The City

PurposeThe lives of the poor in the urban spaces of India are filled with hardships. They live amidst poverty and struggle to survive within other problems such as insecure jobs, lack of proper housing, unsanitary conditions and low levels of health immunity. This vulnerable section of the population has been rendered furthermore vulnerable by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that were never imagined before. Taking this into consideration, the purpose of this article is to examine the vulnerability of the poor in the urban settings of India with special reference to Mumbai in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology adopted in the study is based on the analysis of secondary data and content analysis of the existing literature. In addition to this, the study also makes use of certain narratives of the urban poor in Mumbai that have been captured by various articles, reports and blogs.FindingsThe findings of the study reveal how the urban poor of India, with special reference to Mumbai, the financial capital of India, has emerged as the worst sufferers of the socioeconomic crisis caused by the social distancing and lockdown measures imposed for combating the pandemic.Originality/valueThe study tries to explore the reality of the urban poor's right to the city in the wake of the pandemic.

Conclusion: Detroit and the future of the city

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Doucet
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Marginal Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

In this concluding chapter, the main strands of through within the book are brought together. The main narrative of Detroit as a symbol of urban failure is briefly discussed before shifting to a critical assessment of the city’s emerging narrative: that of comeback and renaissance. Both these one-dimensional narratives are treated as problematic and critiqued by using relevant chapters from the book. Two main policy and political insights are highlighted. The first is that much of Detroit’s decline has been a factor produced outside its boundaries so its solutions need to be thought of at these geographic scales. The second relates to working towards including different voices and perspectives about the future of the city and rethinking how power relations can give marginal groups real input into the systems which shape their lives. The many interviews and perspectives in this book provide pathways towards inclusive, fair and just cities.

scholarly journals The Role of Urban Morphology Design on Enhancing Physical Activity and Public Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 2359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadegh Fathi ◽  
Hassan Sajadzadeh ◽  
Faezeh Mohammadi Sheshkal ◽  
Farshid Aram ◽  
Gergo Pinter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Physical Activity ◽  
Space Syntax ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Physical Activities ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
The City

Along with environmental pollution, urban planning has been connected to public health. The research indicates that the quality of built environments plays an important role in reducing mental disorders and overall health. The structure and shape of the city are considered as one of the factors influencing happiness and health in urban communities and the type of the daily activities of citizens. The aim of this study was to promote physical activity in the main structure of the city via urban design in a way that the main form and morphology of the city can encourage citizens to move around and have physical activity within the city. Functional, physical, cultural-social, and perceptual-visual features are regarded as the most important and effective criteria in increasing physical activities in urban spaces, based on literature review. The environmental quality of urban spaces and their role in the physical activities of citizens in urban spaces were assessed by using the questionnaire tool and analytical network process (ANP) of structural equation modeling. Further, the space syntax method was utilized to evaluate the role of the spatial integration of urban spaces on improving physical activities. Based on the results, consideration of functional diversity, spatial flexibility and integration, security, and the aesthetic and visual quality of urban spaces plays an important role in improving the physical health of citizens in urban spaces. Further, more physical activities, including motivation for walking and the sense of public health and happiness, were observed in the streets having higher linkage and space syntax indexes with their surrounding texture.

scholarly journals Sensing the (media) city

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Anna Notaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Engagement ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Research Association ◽  
Interactive Art ◽  
Sensory Environment ◽  
The Media ◽  
Radical Construction ◽  
The City

This article, originally delivered at the 16th international conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (University of Dundee, November 2019), seeks to engage with the ‘emotive’, ‘sensorial’ and ‘affective turn’, as defined by authors in the humanities, social and cultural studies in order to consider the emotional responses to the mediated experiences of place and to inquire into how individuals and collectives react to a changing sensory environment. It adopts a multi-disciplinary approach that blends historical, cultural and mediated dimensions of urban spaces and places while maintaining a focus on the kind of locative/interactive art which is less concerned with representation and more with radical construction, social engagement and communication. The purpose is to try and provide an answer to the question: what does ‘sensing the city’ exactly entail when the city’s form, as Baudelaire memorably put it, ‘changes faster than the human heart?’

scholarly journals Seasted Floating City. Innovative Development of a New City Model

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Lina K. Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Medical Tourism ◽  
Economic Incentive ◽  
Real Estate Market ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Marine Habitat ◽  
Organizational System ◽  
Market Growth ◽  
City Model ◽  
New City ◽  
The City

Seastead is a floating city experiment for international waters based on economic studies carried out by the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to increase real estate market growth, driven by an economic incentive dedicated to medical tourism, aquaculture, technology incubators, and support platforms for offshore rigs. A new pre-conceptual model of a floating city was created, conceptualizing an analysis of the floating habitat as a means for development and expansion. is new habitat style was designed taking into account considerations of the marine habitat, current habitats, utopian projects and studies regarding the expansion of urban spaces. e city was designed on a semi-submersible offshore platform chosen through a parametric model made by the Seasteading Institute, which allowed for a final modular array comprised by 300 containers organized by a crane system, this being the organizational system of the city. 

scholarly journals Possibilities of applying the concept of “winter city” in the Russian Arctic (on the example of the city of Nadym)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-303
Author(s):  
R.Y. Fedorov ◽  
◽  
O.S. Sizov ◽  
V.V. Kuklina ◽  
A.A. Lobanov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Ecosystems ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City

On example of the city of Nadym, located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area, the authors consider the socio-ecological problems of the development of green, blue and white open urban spaces. The research approach presented in the article is based on the study of a multifaceted complex of urban social and natural systems in their integrated unity, not just as public places, but as biomes — highly integrated urban ecosystems. A posteriori the reserchers based on the materials of interviews conducted in 2020 with experts who in different years took part in the study or planned the development of the open urban spaces in Nadym, as well as on the analysis of available publications on this topic and publicly available data. The study found that factors such as the short summer, during which many residents leave the city, as well as the prevalence of freezing temperatures for almost eight months, in fact, transform the green and blue spaces of Nadym into white. This situation indicates the advisability of a more active appeal to the concept of a “winter city” in the development of the city urban environment. The application of the concept principles can be in demand in the process of creating more comfortable living conditions and spatial mobility of the Nadym residents, as well as for developing the recreational opportunities of the city open spaces and integrating them into the natural environment surrounding the city, which in general can be considered as one of the factors for the sustainable development of the city and the formation of post-industrial features in its socio-economic life.

scholarly journals Vuoret ja kaupunki vastakohtaisina tiloina Alisa Ganijevan teoksissa

2016 ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Anni Lappela
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Real ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The City ◽  
Geographical Space

Mountains and City as Contrary Spaces in the Prose of Alisa Ganieva I analyze Alisa Ganieva’s novel Prazdnichnaia gora (2012) and her novella Salam tebe, Dalgat! (2010) from a geocritical (Westphal, Tally) point of view. Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but she grew up in Dagestan, in North Caucasia. Since 2002, she has lived in Moscow. All Ganieva’s novels are set in present-day Dagestan, not only in the capital Makhachkala but also in the countryside.  I study the ways the two main spaces and main milieus, the mountains and the city, oppose each other in Prazdnichnaia gora. I also analyze how this opposition constructs the utopian and dystopian discourses of the novel. In this high/low opposition, the mountains appear as the utopian place of a better future, and the city in the lowlands is depicted as a dystopian place of the present-day life. The texts’ multilayered time is also part of my analysis, which follows Westphal’s idea of the stratigraphy of time. Furthermore, the mountains are associated with the traditional way of life and the Soviet past. In this way, the mountains have two kinds of roles in the texts. Nevertheless, the city is a central element of the postcolonial dystopian discourse of Prazdnichnaia gora. In my opinion, Ganieva’s texts problematize referentiality, one of the key concepts of geocriticism. Whilst the city tends to be very referential, the mountains escape the referential relationship to the “real” geographical space.

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