scholarly journals User-generated insight of Rio’s Rocinha favela tour: Authentic attraction or vulnerable living environment?

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 680-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wise ◽  
Maurício Polidoro ◽  
Gareth Hall ◽  
Ricardo Ricci Uvinha
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
User Perceptions ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Living Environments ◽  
The City ◽  
Everyday Living

Urban transformations help shape new opportunities and create/re-create awareness in everyday living environments. It is not transformation in the infrastructural sense, but transformation in the form of a service industry producing socio-economic change that can result in inclusion and exclusion of people in the community, thus affecting the everyday living environment. Within this, we need to consider the tourist gaze and how users who visit/tour vulnerable living environments report perceptions of their experiences on forums such as TripAdvisor, which helps researchers frame understandings of commodification, opportunities/awareness and even authenticity (each addressed in this paper). This paper evaluates TripAdvisor posts of ‘Rio’s Rocinha Favela Tour’. In many respects, the notion of commodification, and even authenticity, runs through each theme, but the analysis and data posted to TripAdvisor challenges us to consider how a favela becomes a consumer product or a tourist attraction. The Rocinha Favela tour is widely publicised to prospective visitors as a chance to experience a living and working favela, the focus of the first theme presented in this paper. Given Rocinha has become a popular attraction in Rio, this leads to the second theme: opportunity or awareness. Opportunities do exist for people in the community to get involved in tourism, and turning the favela into a product helps shape and maintain awareness. The third theme builds on and relates to the previous two, but focuses more on the semblances of authenticity that emerges. To link the points highlighted in this paper, a discussion of soft power concerns relationships bonded through economic and cultural influence. Because favelas have become distinct attractions, it is cultural appeal and a different (residential) side of the city that persuades travellers to visit. Online and social media platforms for more than a decade now have played an important role today in projecting images and promoting authentic experiences based on user-perceptions, and this paper looks at how the users communicate their experiences.

scholarly journals Invisible Body and the Predicaments of Existence in an Urbanizing China

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-197
Author(s):  
Meiqin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
The City

This article contextualises the art practice of Beijing-based artist Liu Bolin and examines ways in which his artworks illuminate the sociopolitical conditions that regulate the everyday reality of underprivileged social groups amid China's spectacular urban transformation in the 2000s. The tension between individual existence and the force of urbanization underlays Liu's most important work, entitled Hiding in the City. This performance photographic series, in which Liu covered his body thoroughly with paint so that he “disappeared” into the background, was initiated as a response towards the demolition of an artist village in Beijing where the artist resided and worked. The series has since been developed into an ambitious and years-long project in which the artist surveys the disparate urban living environment of the city, bringing to the surface dominant forces that render the existence of the individuals “invisible”.

scholarly journals Architectural Space of the City as a Factor of Identity Formation (Exemplified by the City of Volgograd

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Viktoriya Khrapova ◽  
◽  
Maria Latysheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
City Image ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Architectural Space ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the study of the architectural space of the hero-city of Volgograd and its role in the formation of urban identity. The methodological basis is the cultural-historical approach, phenomenological and hermeneutic methods. It is concluded that the disparate eclectic architectural environment does not contribute to the creation of regional identity, does not develop ideas about the uniqueness of the place, which negatively affects the formation of the city image and urban identity. At the same time, a conscious approach to the organization of the architectural environment in any of its forms can become the soft power of implicit management, a prerequisite for resource states, a technology for harmonizing and optimizing social space. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the explication of the mechanism of architectural space influence on a person as a biopsychosocial being. The authors distinguish archetypal, symbolic, and conceptual levels of perception, showing that the influence of the archetypal is implicit but necessary. This is the level of perception at the level of sensations, which are the basis of feelings, are the prerequisite for emotions and mental attitudes. This lies at the origins of the identityformation as the involvement of a person in the significant experience of the past, others, relatives. Symbolic and conceptual levels of perception are related to the process of cognition, rational and logical attitudes. In the conditions of modern social dynamics, a competent organization of the architectural landscape, which contributes to the optimization and harmonization of living activities, can become an important factor of integration and a prerequisite for the formation of a positive identity. The authors consider that modern identity can be formed in the course of new practices that remove traditional restrictions around life-affirming values and meanings that underlie the organization of the living environment, taking into account the principles of ecology.

Afterword II

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamran Asdar Ali
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Therapeutic Process ◽  
Working Women ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Labor Activists ◽  
Cultural Healing ◽  
The City ◽  
Everyday Living

The second afterword to the book by Kamran Asdar Ali returns us to the city, and to the lives of Karachi’s working women and working classes. He draws on women’s poems, diaries, and memoirs to capture some more ephemeral qualities of everyday living and dying. These contrast with the violent suppression of an underclass of trade unionists and labor activists by a coalition of the state, military courts and industrialists, since the fifties. Given the long, progressive erosion of peace in Karachi how, he asks, might we imagine a therapeutic process of social, economic and cultural healing? Through an image of citizens “at work” creating citywide networks and connections, we are offered finally some possibilities of dreaming. Namely, through increased understandings, not of conflict, but also of each other’s intimate everyday lives, the dream emerges of a new political space or public where even intractable disagreements can be managed through gestures of kindness, compromise, and fresh vocabularies of how to carry on and get by.

scholarly journals The Overview of the Conservation and Renewal of the Industrial Belgian Heritage as a Vector for Cultural Regeneration

Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Jiazhen Zhang ◽  
Jeremy Cenci ◽  
Vincent Becue ◽  
Sesil Koutra
Keyword(s):  
Textile Industry ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Industrial Heritage ◽  
Industrial History ◽  
Tourism Experience ◽  
Industrial Civilization ◽  
The City ◽  
Protection And Renewal ◽  
Cultural Regeneration

Industrial heritage reflects the development track of human production activities and witnessed the rise and fall of industrial civilization. As one of the earliest countries in the world to start the Industrial Revolution, Belgium has a rich industrial history. Over the past years, a set of industrial heritage renewal projects have emerged in Belgium in the process of urban regeneration. In this paper, we introduce the basic contents of the related terms of industrial heritage, examine the overall situation of protection and renewal in Belgium. The industrial heritage in Belgium shows its regional characteristics, each region has its representative industrial heritage types. In the Walloon region, it is the heavy industry. In Flanders, it is the textile industry. In Brussels, it is the service industry. The kinds of industrial heritages in Belgium are coordinate with each other. Industrial heritage tourism is developed, especially on eco-tourism, experience tourism. The industrial heritage in transportation and mining are the representative industrial heritages in Belgium. There are a set of numbers industrial heritages are still in running based on a successful reconstruction into industrial tourism projects. Due to the advanced experience in dealing with industrial heritage, the industrial heritage and the city live together harmoniously.

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.

Some Reflections on Making Popular Culture in Urban Africa

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
AbdouMaliq Simone
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
The City ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract:In contemporary urban Africa, the turbulence of the city requires incessant innovation that is capable of generating new ways of being. Rather than treating popular culture as some distinctive sector, this article attempts to investigate the popular as methods of bringing together activities and actors that on the surface would not seem compatible, and as experimental forms of generating value in the everyday life of urban residents. This investigation, sited largely in Douala, Cameroon, looks at how youth from varying neighborhoods attempt to get by, and at the unexpected forms of contestation that can ensue.

Goods and States: The Political Logic of State-Socialist Material Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The City ◽  
State Socialist

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).

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.

Everyday agency and transformation: Place, body and story in the divided city

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
Keyword(s):  
Coping Mechanisms ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Generative Capacity ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Analytical Work ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

How do we identify and understand transformative agency in the quotidian that is not contained in formal, or even informal structures? This article investigates the ordinary agency of Palestinian inhabitants in the violent context of the divided city of Jerusalem. Through a close reading of three ethnographic moments I identify creative micropractices of negotiating the separation barrier that slices through the city. To conduct this analytical work I propose a conceptual grid of place, body and story through which the everyday can be grasped, accessed and understood. ‘Place’ encompasses the understanding that the everyday is always located and grounded in materiality; ‘body’ takes into account the embodied experience of subjects moving through this place; and ‘story’ refers to the narrative work conducted by human beings in order to make sense of our place in the world. I argue that people can engage in actions that function both as coping mechanisms (and may even support the upholding of status quo), and as moments of formulating and enacting agential projects with a more or less intentional transformative purpose. This insight is key to understanding the generative capacity of everyday agency and its importance for the macropolitics of peace and conflict.

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