Transnationalistic memories: Frédéric Boissonnas’ photographic construction of a Greek-Christian European Thessaloniki in Salonique et ses basiliques (1919)

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 531-546
Author(s):  
Colette Wilson

Frédéric Boissonnas’ album, Salonique et ses basiliques, captures the city at a very precise moment in its history. The album’s photographs were taken between 1912 and 1913, that is, just at the end of the Ottoman and the beginning of Greek rule, but before the great fire of 1917 that destroyed the city centre, removing virtually all traces of the Turkish and Jewish quarters. The album also predates the forced exchange of Muslim and Christian populations in 1923 that finally brought the transculturalism of the city to an abrupt end. Through a close reading of Boissonnas’ photographs, within the theoretical framework of past transnationalistic and present-day transcultural memories, this article argues that political and ideological allegiances directed the creation, dissemination and consumption of an artistic product. The article concludes with a reflection on the city’s return to its transcultural roots.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7183
Author(s):  
Piotr Lorens ◽  
Łukasz Bugalski

The Gdańsk Shipyard—the birthplace of the Solidarity movement—is host to a unique example of a multi-layered brownfield redevelopment project, an area that is burdened by a complex history, overlapping heritage, and multiple memories. These circumstances require an integrated yet differentiated approach to the site’s heritage and make the creation of one homogeneous narration of its future impossible. At the same time, the size of the area, as well as its location within Gdańsk city centre, has meant that its future has been the subject of numerous discussions and speculations conducted over the last 20 years—starting from the creation of a large-scale open-air museum and continuing to the localization of the new Central Business District of the city. Consequently, that broad discussion carried out regarding the scope of redevelopment projects has been rooted in the possible introduction of diverse models of adaptive reuse. This variety of possible approaches also includes discussion on the mode of integrating heritage in the redevelopment processes. The goal of this paper—written just before the initiation of the final stage of the conceptual part of the project—is to present the complexity of approaches to issues related to redevelopment and heritage preservation.


Author(s):  
Svava Riesto ◽  
Henriette Steiner

This article discusses the understanding of urbanity invoked by the Norwegian drama series SKAM. It does so by revisiting the four short preambles to each of the series’ four seasons, thus outlining the central narratives used to frame each season. Norwegian culture is characterised by a long-lived tradition for valuing nature and life in the countryside over and above urban life. In this context, SKAM arguably appears as a sea change, using new media and narrative forms to aestheticize the life of a new generation of teenagers in Oslo. However, this article’s close reading of selected sequences of the series illuminates SKAM’s indebtedness to an anti-urban tradition. According to this tradition, the city centre is seen as dark and dangerous and full of corrupting temptations, and, in contrast, what lies outside the city is regarded as authentic, liberating and morally superior. What is at stake is a dual-sided evaluation of city and countryside – building on binaries such as genuine vs. superficial - which may be seen to mirror human emotions, ethical concerns and affects. In this way, SKAM becomes a vehicle for recirculating dual-sided understandings of the urban condition, which become evaluated according to well-known criteria.


Author(s):  
Adam Brown

Digitally generated views of Townsville's recent city centre redevelopment attempt to overlay visions of a European urban space on the contested territory of the tropical city. Such views obscure the site of an uneven relationship between the various communities which inhabit the city space, by representing a space of apparent completeness and fixity. Applying insights<br />from critical spatial studies and psychogeography, such representations of the city appear to ossify public discourse rather than work towards the creation of genuine multi user spaces, which are always problematic to successfully design and visualise.


Author(s):  
Tomasz Moskal

The creation of the city centre occurs through evolution as a process of transformations involving buildings and technical infrastructure in a physical form, and social and ownership issues in a non-physical form. When the transformation process is fluid, there is the opportunity to build harmonious systems and forms. When this process takes place in a revolutionary step, it is likely that it will leave a mark on the urban structure. The contemporary spatial shape of Śródmieście Rzeszów is the result of the process of transforming the original structure that occurred along with the dynamic development of the city in the post-war years. This structure reflects both the actions taken and omissions. The article deals with the issues of shaping the city centre in a rapidly developing centre, based on the example of Rzeszów city centre.


Author(s):  
Azhari Amri

Film Unyil puppet comes not just part of the entertainment world that can be enjoyed by people from the side of the story, music, and dialogue. However, there is more value in it which is a manifestation of the creator that can be absorbed into the charge for the benefit of educating the children of Indonesia to the public at large. The Unyil puppet created by the father of Drs. Suyadi is one of the works that are now widely known by the whole people of Indonesia. The process of creating a puppet Unyil done with simple materials and formation of character especially adapted to the realities of the existing rural region. Through this process, this research leads to the design process is fundamentally educational puppet inspired by the creation of Si Unyil puppet. The difference is the inspiring character created in this study is on the characters that exist in urban life, especially the city of Jakarta. Thus the results of this study are the pattern of how to shape the design of products through the creation of the puppet with the approach of urban culture.


Author(s):  
Rafael Salas ◽  
María José Pérez Villadóniga ◽  
Juan Prieto Rodríguez ◽  
Ana Russo
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Ying Long ◽  
Jianting Zhao

This paper examines how mass ridership data can help describe cities from the bikers' perspective. We explore the possibility of using the data to reveal general bikeability patterns in 202 major Chinese cities. This process is conducted by constructing a bikeability rating system, the Mobike Riding Index (MRI), to measure bikeability in terms of usage frequency and the built environment. We first investigated mass ridership data and relevant supporting data; we then established the MRI framework and calculated MRI scores accordingly. This study finds that people tend to ride shared bikes at speeds close to 10 km/h for an average distance of 2 km roughly three times a day. The MRI results show that at the street level, the weekday and weekend MRI distributions are analogous, with an average score of 49.8 (range 0–100). At the township level, high-scoring townships are those close to the city centre; at the city level, the MRI is unevenly distributed, with high-MRI cities along the southern coastline or in the middle inland area. These patterns have policy implications for urban planners and policy-makers. This is the first and largest-scale study to incorporate mobile bike-share data into bikeability measurements, thus laying the groundwork for further research.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Said Munir ◽  
Martin Mayfield ◽  
Daniel Coca

Small-scale spatial variability in NO2 concentrations is analysed with the help of pollution maps. Maps of NO2 estimated by the Airviro dispersion model and land use regression (LUR) model are fused with measured NO2 concentrations from low-cost sensors (LCS), reference sensors and diffusion tubes. In this study, geostatistical universal kriging was employed for fusing (integrating) model estimations with measured NO2 concentrations. The results showed that the data fusion approach was capable of estimating realistic NO2 concentration maps that inherited spatial patterns of the pollutant from the model estimations and adjusted the modelled values using the measured concentrations. Maps produced by the fusion of NO2-LCS with NO2-LUR produced better results, with r-value 0.96 and RMSE 9.09. Data fusion adds value to both measured and estimated concentrations: the measured data are improved by predicting spatiotemporal gaps, whereas the modelled data are improved by constraining them with observed data. Hotspots of NO2 were shown in the city centre, eastern parts of the city towards the motorway (M1) and on some major roads. Air quality standards were exceeded at several locations in Sheffield, where annual mean NO2 levels were higher than 40 µg/m3. Road traffic was considered to be the dominant emission source of NO2 in Sheffield.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justyna Jaworek-Jakubska ◽  
Maciej Filipiak ◽  
Adam Michalski ◽  
Anna Napierała-Filipiak

Knowledge about urban forests in Poland is still limited, as it is primarily based on aggregate, formal data relating to the general area, ignoring the spatial dimension and informal green areas. This article describes and analyses spatio-temporal changes in the actual urban forest resources in Wrocław in 1944–2017, which covers the first period of the city’s rebuilding after its destruction during World War II and its development during the nationalised, centrally-planned socialist economy, as well as the second period of intensive and only partly controlled growth under conditions of market economy. The study is based on current and historical orthophotomaps, which were confronted with cartographic data, as well as planning documents. We found that between 1944 and 2017, the percentage contribution of informal woodlands increased tenfold (from 0.5 to 4.9% of the present total area of the city). The area occupied by such forests has grown particularly during the most recent years of the city’s intensive development. However, the forests have been increasingly fragmented. During the first period, new forest areas were also created in the immediate vicinity of the city centre, while during the second one, only in its peripheral sections. The post-war plans regarding the urban green spaces (UGS), including the current plan, are very conservative in nature. On the one hand, this means no interference with the oldest, biggest, and most valuable forest complexes, but on the other hand, insufficient consideration of the intensive built-up area expansion on former agriculture areas. Only to a limited extent did the above-mentioned plans take into account the informal woodlands, which provide an opportunity for strengthening the functional connectivity of landscape.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belén Mª Castro Fernández ◽  
Rubén Camilo Lois González ◽  
Lucrezia Lopez

Santiago de Compostela is an iconic place. From the 9th century through to the present day the city has acted as the final destination of a major pilgrimage route named after it. In the article we ask ourselves how the contemporary reinvention of the pilgrimage and pilgrimages on the Way of St. James has boosted tourism development in the city. Development has been concentrated in the historic city centre and in the area around the cathedral. The importance of tourism has transformed the significance of the city itself, which acquires a magical component as a place of arrival and encounter for all kinds of visitors. The historic city has been set up in the 20th century as a destination for the Way and for cultural tourism. The buildings, particularly those connected with the pilgrimage route, become highly attractive and symbolic places and tourists carry out a number of rituals in them. They travel and enjoy Santiago as a unique experience. The study of tourism and of the tourist transformation of Santiago de Compostela is undertaken using a qualitative and quantitative method. The article analyses the heritage and symbolic value of the historic centre, together with the growth of its tourism activities. Numerical data are also provided on the perceptions and behaviour of visitors using surveys carried out by the city's Tourism Observatory.


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