Landscaping Selves Through Parkour: Reinterpreting the Urban Environment of Singapore

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen Bin Loo ◽  
Tim Bunnell
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
The Self ◽  
Complex Relationships

Drawing on cultural geographical work on mobilities and landscape, this article examines parkour in Singapore, a context in which everyday mobile practices are conventionally understood to be heavily constrained and disciplined. As an urban mobile practice that involves bodily adaptation to and dynamic interaction with the prevailing built environment, parkour reveals complex relationships between the self and the landscape. For its practitioners, the doing of parkour holds potential not only for reimagining what Singapore’s urban landscape is or can be but also for reconfiguring understandings of themselves. The term landscaping captures the continuous and concurrent shaping of self and landscape through parkour; landscapes affect individual bodies and are actively (re)constituted through embodied movement. The article engages parkour in more-than-representational terms. By segueing between discursive and phenomenological approaches to mobilities and landscape, a dual emphasis on corporeal experience and representational frameworks highlights how both create and/or regulate such mobile bodies and practices within the landscape.

scholarly journals Managing Urban Landscape towards the Sustainable City: A Case Study from Northern Greece

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 518-524
Author(s):  
Sofianou Paraskevi-Kali
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Development Policies

One of the areas of human activity which exerts severe pressure on the environment is the management of urban landscape. Many of the modern Greek cities have experienced intense urbanization and expanding, but without the appropriate means to support them. The continuous expansion of the built environment, the degradation of living conditions due to pollution etc., are some of the factors that threaten the contemporary urban environment and hinder progress towards the sustainable city.In this paper an attempt is made to explore the problems and opportunities that a city of Northern Greece, Komotini, presents, with rich natural, historical and multicultural backgrounds. Through thorough planning and targeted development policies can be determined the appropriate actions in urban environment, in order to prevent and legalize some of the principles of the sustainable city.

Parkour, Masculinity, and the City

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Kidder
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
The People ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Performance Of Gender ◽  
Spatial Appropriation ◽  
The City ◽  
A Performance

Parkour is a new, and increasingly popular, sport in which individuals athletically and artistically negotiate obstacles found in the urban environment. In this article, I position parkour as a performance of masculinity involving spatial appropriation. Through ethnographic data I show how young men involved in the sport use the city (both the built environment and the people within it) as a structural resource for the construction and maintenance of gender identities. The focus of my research highlights the performance of gender as a spatialized process.

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.

scholarly journals Estimation of Impact From Surface Runoff on Water Objects in Urban Landscape Conditions

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Surface Waters ◽  
Surface Runoff ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Salt Content ◽  
Atmospheric Precipitation ◽  
Quality Of Water ◽  
The Impact

The quality of surface water remains an important issue today. This is particularly acute for water bodies located in the urban-basin geosystems. Purpose. To estimate pressure of atmospheric precipitation within the urban landscape basin geosystem on the river water (by example of the Kharkiv river). Methods. Field landscaping, ecological, landscape-geochemical; analytical; system analysis; chemical analytical; statistical Results. An assessment of the state of surface waters under the impact from the surface runoff of atmospheric origin during 2014-2016, and partly from 2017-2019, formed under the influence of the transport (partly residential) subsystem of the urban area and surface waters in Kharkiv. On the salt content, the characteristic of water quality is "moderately polluted" (1,6); on the tropho-saprobiological indicators, the quality of water is characterized as "polluted" (from 3.1 to 2.75 along the river). It is in this context the impact of waters, which is formed in the conditions of the urban environment for the quality of natural waters, is well demonstrated. The presence of high values of pollutants and natural factors. The assessment of the quality of water on the content of specific indicators is "moderately polluted" (from 2.28 to 1.85). Conclusions. The water of the Kharkiv region, which has a strong influence from the urban environment, has a grade III quality; the water is "moderately polluted". Environmental assessment indicates the impact of surface runoff already on the middle part of the river, which increases in accordance with the conditions of the operation of urban landscapes and anthropogenic (transport) load.

Suburban Networks and Urban Villages: Community and the Built Environment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Dotson
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Coarse Graining ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Third Places ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
Suburban Sprawl ◽  
Ray Oldenburg

This chapter interrogates the built environment with respect to its compatibility with thick community. Echoing and extending the analyses of Jane Jacobs and Ray Oldenburg, it is argued that much of the urban environment in technological societies – from suburban sprawl to urban renewal high rises – effectively legislates that citizens live as networked individuals. Not only does the coarse graining of these spaces functionally segregate different facets of everyday life, they ensure that social ties are diffuse and single-threaded. Their lack of appropriate density and walkable amenities limits serendipitous interactions and other activities that support the growth of place-based social connection. Moreover, their poor affordances for “third places” such as pubs and cafes limits the sociability of most neighborhoods. Finally, the governance structures of most areas is either weakly democratic, unable to support constructive ways of working through conflict, or not scaled so as to match the physical boundaries of urban communities.

Computational Design and Built Environments

3D Printing ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 361-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Filippucci ◽  
Fabio Bianconi ◽  
Stefano Andreani
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Computational Design ◽  
Parametric Modeling ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Computer Screen ◽  
Modeling Practices ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Opening Up

Drawing has always been the most powerful instrument for the conceptualization, interpretation and representation of spaces and forms. Today, the computer screen complements the eye-brain telescope with an additional lens that increases the ability to understand, visualize and ultimately design the built environment. Computational design is dramatically shifting not only established drawing and modeling practices, but also ? and perhaps most importantly ? design thinking processes in the very conception and morphogenesis of forms and of their complex relationships in space. Specifically parametric modeling allows to understand geometry and manipulate shapes in dynamic, articulated and yet intuitive ways, opening up unprecedented design opportunities but also diminishing the importance of the design process for the sake of formal complexity. This chapters offers some insights on the incredible design opportunities offered by new computational instruments, as well as highlighting circumstances in which the act of ‘modeling' takes over the ‘design.'

The Role of the Built Environment in the Creation, Cultivation and Acquisition of a Knowledge-Base

2010 ◽  
pp. 211-221
Author(s):  
Kristine Peta Jerome
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Physical Design ◽  
The Creation

This chapter explores the role of the built environment in the creation, cultivation and acquisition of a knowledge base by people populating the urban landscape. It examines McDonald’s restaurants as a way to comprehend the relevance of the physical design in the diffusion of codified and tacit knowledge at an everyday level. Through an examination of space at a localised level, this chapter describes the synergies of space and the significance of this relationship in navigating the global landscape.

Computational Design and Built Environments

2016 ◽  
pp. 790-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Filippucci ◽  
Fabio Bianconi ◽  
Stefano Andreani
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Computational Design ◽  
Parametric Modeling ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Computer Screen ◽  
Modeling Practices ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Opening Up

Drawing has always been the most powerful instrument for the conceptualization, interpretation and representation of spaces and forms. Today, the computer screen complements the eye-brain telescope with an additional lens that increases the ability to understand, visualize and ultimately design the built environment. Computational design is dramatically shifting not only established drawing and modeling practices, but also ? and perhaps most importantly ? design thinking processes in the very conception and morphogenesis of forms and of their complex relationships in space. Specifically parametric modeling allows to understand geometry and manipulate shapes in dynamic, articulated and yet intuitive ways, opening up unprecedented design opportunities but also diminishing the importance of the design process for the sake of formal complexity. This chapters offers some insights on the incredible design opportunities offered by new computational instruments, as well as highlighting circumstances in which the act of ‘modeling' takes over the ‘design.'

scholarly journals Built environment and autism: towards a set of spatial requirements for autism friendly cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
G Tola ◽  
V Talu ◽  
J Lindert
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Wide Variability ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Spatial Needs

Abstract Background The opportunity for people functioning in an atypical way to autonomously and fully interact with the city is often compromised or denied, due to the gap between their specific spatial needs and the physical and functional organization of the urban environment. The need to reconsider the living environments taking into account the vast diversity of people gained an increasing importance in the overall debate and specifically in the field of urban planning and design. The research aims at investigating the relationship between the urban environment and people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Methods A scoping review of current available original studies research exploring the relationship between autism and built environment was conducted. PubMed, Scopus, PsychInfo and Web Of Science where searched. Studies included provided spatial requirements for designing autism friendly environment. Results In total, 801 studies were identified and 22 were included. Current researches and applications investigating the role of spatial configuration as a means for improving the autonomy of people with ASD almost exclusively focus on closed and dedicated spaces (residences, schools, care facilities, healing gardens) mostly devoted to children. Starting from this and the data collected, a first set of enabling urban spatial requirements addressing the atypical urban functioning of people with ASD - the reduction of sensory overload and the use of visual supports - in order to promote their possibility to walk autonomously and safely across the everyday city is proposed. Conclusions Despite the wide variability of the spectrum which makes it very difficult to define effective design criteria for all people with ASD, it's possible to identify a set of recurrent spatial needs. Furthermore, designing cities for people with ASD can also contribute to healthier and more inclusive urban environments for other groups of vulnerable inhabitants.

scholarly journals A Landscape Study of Sediment Formation and Transport in the Urban Environment

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1320
Author(s):  
Ilia Yarmoshenko ◽  
Georgy Malinovsky ◽  
Elena Baglaeva ◽  
Andrian Seleznev
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
City Life ◽  
Sediment Formation ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Sedimentation Processes

Background: Sediment deposition in the urban environment affects aesthetic, economic, and other aspects of city life, and through re-suspension of dust, may pose serious risks to human health. Proper environmental management requires further understanding of natural and anthropogenic factors influencing the sedimentation processes in urbanized catchments. To fill the gaps in the knowledge about the relationship between the urban landscape and sedimentation, field landscape surveys were conducted in the residential areas of the Russian cities of Ekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, and Murmansk. Methods: In each city, six elementary urban residential landscapes were chosen in blocks of multi-story apartment buildings typical for Russian cities. The method of landscape survey involved delineating functional segments within the elementary landscapes and describing each segment according to the developed procedure during a field survey. Results: The complexity of sedimentation processes in the urban environment was demonstrated. The following main groups of factors have significant impacts on sediment formation and transport in residential areas in Russian cities: low adaptation of infrastructure to a high density of automobiles, poor municipal services, and bad urban environmental management in the course of construction and earthworks. Conclusion: A high sediment formation potential was found for a considerable portion of residential areas.

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