Chasing the Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Landscapes in Skate Video

2020 ◽  
pp. 120633122091639
Author(s):  
Duncan McDuie-Ra
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
China’S Cities

This article explores the centrality of China’s cities to skate video; the most popular form for capturing, circulating, and consuming skateboarding. China’s urban growth produces endless spots to skate; a spot is assemblage of objects and surfaces that offer the opportunity to perform skateboarding maneuvers (tricks). Skate video is the substance of skate culture, the once quintessentially Californian pastime turned global subculture and industry. After skateboarding left the skatepark for the streets in the 1990s, and once video became easier to circulate digitally through streaming platforms in the mid-2000s, the search for spots to perform and capture unsanctioned street skateboarding spread to China’s urban landscapes, beginning with Shenzhen. China’s cities are sites of global desire among skateboarders for the perfect surfaces and obstacles created in the built environment and the speed at which they are produced. Using skate video as an archive I make four arguments. First, China’s cities imputed with a mythical character; endless spots produced with miraculous speed. Second, skate videos re-map China’s cities through the skater’s gaze, a form of urban knowledge both unique and widely shared. Third, the search for spots indexes urban development in China, privileging the recent and shunning the past. Fourth, skateboarding in China’s cities create spaces for inter-cultural encounter between skateboarders and authority, the public and other skateboarders. The article concludes by discussing the utility of skate video as an alternative visual archive of urban China for foreign audiences and increasingly for skate communities in China itself.

The Italian Apennines between earthquakes, high naturalness and urban growth

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Zullo ◽  
Alessandro Marucci ◽  
Lorena Fiorini ◽  
Bernardino Romano
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Seismic Hazard ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Seismic Risk ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Territorial Planning ◽  
Cultural Conservation ◽  
Italian Apennines

This paper sets out the results of a study conducted in the inland areas in central Italy on certain phenomena that, for decades, have evolved separately: urban and socio-economic growth, environmental and cultural conservation and the curbing of seismic risk. The study was carried out by analysing the urban conversion of land in the Italian Apennines over the past 50 years, focusing on areas of varying seismic hazard. Our analysis highlights that territorial planning has failed to tackle this risk in an integrated manner, implementing entirely uncoordinated actions that have produced poor results. Thus, our main goal is to study urban development and its effects on the Apennine system and devise possible strategies to mitigate the seismic risk in this area of significant worth, but made extremely vulnerable by policies and solutions that have never been “nature-based”.

URBAN LANDSCAPES IN TRANSITION, LESSONS FROM INTEGRATING BIODIVERSITY AND HABITAT MODELLING IN PLANNING

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (01) ◽  
pp. 1250002 ◽  
Author(s):  
ULLA MÖRTBERG ◽  
ANDREAS ZETTERBERG ◽  
BERIT BALFORS
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Impact Prediction ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Landscape Ecological ◽  
Sustainability Assessments ◽  
The City

Sustainable urban development has been widely recognized as requiring energy and transport efficient urban growth, while ecological issues are often not well integrated in sustainability assessments and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). In order to achieve such integration, methods and tools based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in a Landscape Ecological Assessment (LEA) framework were developed and integrated in planning in four case studies in and around the city of Stockholm, Sweden. This involved the application of recently developed methods for impact prediction and for integration into the planning processes. The aim of the study was to compare the case studies concerning strengths and weaknesses of LEA and its GIS-based components. The methodology enabled identification of important structures in the landscape to support biodiversity, across administrative borders. The LEA facilitated discussions on consequences of alternatives for localisation of built-up areas, infrastructure and other developments as well as management. The GIS-based LEA approach could thus contribute to a sustainable urban development with consideration of the landscape-level biodiversity values integrated with energy-efficient urban growth trajectories.

Collective individualities: cultural and political reception in Taiwan's history, architecture and cities

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Chia-Hui Lin
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Representations Of Architecture ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Second World

Reception is an idea which deals with the reinterpretation of knowledge. Reception therefore appears as an important issue in studies of historiography that see textual forms of history as representations of the past. Reception in history varies from agent to agent: different subjects who hold different ideological positions, in different positions with respect to power relations, receive the same object differently. Public reception, for instance, plays an important role in shaping the spatial representations of architecture and cities, which can be regarded as textual forms of history and therefore as a form of historiography which reinterprets and integrates the facts of the past. The work of Ackbar Abbas, in his depiction of the skyscrapers in Hong Kong which inscribe capitalism in the fabric of that city, offers a remarkable example. He illustrates how Hong Kong's spatial routine plays out in the reception of styles; for example, design oriented towards economy, the phenomenon of constant building and rebuilding, and the pursuit of hyper-density in Hong Kong's built environment. In different time periods, locations and cultural-political contexts, therefore, the public reception of architecture and cities differs. This paper takes Taiwan as an example. It examines a transformational period – from Taiwan's post-Second World War development to the present – scrutinising the reception of its history, architecture and cities.

Ecological and urban development balance and prospects of the Almaty agglomeration

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (80) ◽  
pp. 101-107
Author(s):  
B.U. Kuspangaliyev ◽  
◽  
T.S. Darkenbaev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Foreign Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
The Creation

The purpose of the article is to analyze the domestic and foreign experience of updating the urban environment and infrastructure. The development of Almaty and the suburban territory should be based on detailed and comprehensive urban ecodiagnostics, the achievement of environmental and urban planning balance, the introduction of advanced and environmentally acceptable technologies and materials in construction, on modern architectural solutions, which contributes to convergence - rapprochement, the unification of all processes and factors of urban planning activities in order to create a favorable environmental environment. Almaty, which has been actively implementing convergence over the past years (sometimes with great costs) in the form of the transformation of the zone of special urban planning regulation (ZOGR), inevitably has a problem: to remain a competitively capable metropolis in a constantly changing world. The design of urban landscapes takes place according to the type of natural, urban planning processes do not violate natural laws and the creation of man and nature takes place.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

E-Projects Challenges in India – Role of Human Resource Management and Technology

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 263
Author(s):  
Ramnik Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Services ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government ◽  
Traditional Approaches

E-governance is a paradigm shift over the traditional approaches in Public Administration which means rendering of government services and information to the public by using electronic means. In the past decades, service quality and responsiveness of the government towards the citizens were least important but with the approach of E-Government the government activities are now well dealt. This paper withdraws experiences from various studies from different countries and projects facing similar challenges which need to be consigned for the successful implementation of e-governance projects. Developing countries like India face poverty and illiteracy as a major obstacle in any form of development which makes it difficult for its government to provide e-services to its people conveniently and fast. It also suggests few suggestions to cope up with the challenges faced while implementing e-projects in India.

Prawne regulacje pobierania i transplantacji narządów oraz tkanek w ujęciu europejskiej konwencji bioetycznej

2016 ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Patryk Kołodyński ◽  
Paulina Drab
Keyword(s):  
Ex Vivo ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Additional Protocol ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Source Of Information

Over the past several years, transplantology has become one of the fastest developing areas of medicine. The reason is, first and foremost, a significant improvement of the results of successful transplants. However, much controversy arouse among the public, on both medical and ethical grounds. The article presents the most important concepts and regulations relating to the collection and transplantation of organs and tissues in the context of the European Convention on Bioethics. It analyses the convention and its additional protocol. The article provides the definition of transplantation and distinguishes its types, taking into account the medical criteria for organ transplants. Moreover, authors explained the issue of organ donation ex vivo and ex mortuo. The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine clearly regulates the legal aspects concerning the transplantation and related basic concepts, and therefore provides a reliable source of information about organ transplantation and tissue. This act is a part of the international legal order, which includes the established codification of bioethical standards.

6. Melancholia and the Public

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Benjamin Baez
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Diagnosis ◽  
Mourning And Melancholia

Abstract In these preliminary reflections, I propose a re-reading of left-leaning political projects’ attachment to the liberal idea of the “public.” I will argue that this attachment is a wounded one that forces nostalgia for the past and prevents dealing with present realities. I want us to attend to this notion of the public by attending to some ideas in psychoanalysis, particularly Sigmund Freud’s and specifically those of mourning and melancholia. This reading does not purport expertise in psychoanalysis and does not offer any kind of psychological diagnosis. I intend on reading psychoanalysis as allegory, as offering us imaginative devices for thinking about the present.

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