scholarly journals Where the Sidewalk Ends: Automobility and Shame in Tbilisi, Georgia

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Maxfield Waldman Sherouse

In recent years, cars have steadily colonized the sidewalks in downtown Tbilisi. By driving and parking on sidewalks, vehicles have reshaped public space and placed pedestrian life at risk. A variety of social actors coordinate sidewalk affairs in the city, including the local government, a private company called CT Park, and a fleet of self-appointed st’aianshik’ebi (parking attendants) who direct drivers into parking spots for spare change. Pedestrian activists have challenged the automotive conquest of footpaths in innovative ways, including art installations, social media protests, and the fashioning of ad hoc physical barriers. By safeguarding sidewalks against cars, activists assert ideals for public space that are predicated on sharp boundaries between sidewalk and street, pedestrian and machine, citizen and commodity. Politicians and activists alike connect the sharpness of such boundaries to an imagined Europe. Georgia’s parking culture thus reflects not only local configurations of power among the many interests clamoring for the space of the sidewalk, but also global hierarchies of value that form meaningful distinctions and aspirational horizons in debates over urban public space. Against the dismal frictions of an expanding car system, social actors mobilize the idioms of freedom and shame to reinterpret and repartition the public/private distinction.

2013 ◽  
Vol 409-410 ◽  
pp. 883-886
Author(s):  
Bo Xuan Zhao ◽  
Cong Ling Meng

City, is consisting of a series continuous or intermittent public space images, and every image for each of our people living in the city is varied: may be as awesome as forbidden city Meridian Gate, like Piazza San Marco as a cordial and pleasant space and might also be like Manhattan district of New York, which makes people excited and enthusiastic. To see why, people have different feelings because the public urban space ultimately belongs to democratic public space, people live and have emotions in it. In such domain, people can not only be liberated, free to enjoy the pleasures of urban public space, but also enjoy urban life which is brought by the city's charm through highlighting the vitality of the city with humanism atmosphere. To a conclusion, no matter how ordinary the city is, a good image of urban space can also bring people pleasure.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
Maimunah Ramlee ◽  
Dasimah Omar ◽  
Rozyah Mohd Yunus ◽  
Zalina Samadi

The success of the revitalization program of urban public space is viewed through attractions that have been identified. This study aims to investigate the perception of users in public space through the on-site survey. In summary, the motivations, behavioural patterns, impressions on the public space as an attraction and the perceived importance of urban public spaces in the development of the city are important attraction for successful public space. The findings of this study will show main attraction in successful revitalization of urban public space based on users perception and can be used in a meaningful way to the users.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Public space; successful attraction; users perception; revitalization


2012 ◽  
Vol 209-211 ◽  
pp. 235-239
Author(s):  
Xue Chen Bai ◽  
Liu Yang ◽  
Zhu Hui Zhang

Good landscape design has an important role for improving the public space thermal environment quality of the city and increasing the person's thermal comfort. This article chooses the typical park of xi’an city---QuJiangChi site park as the research object , we used the in-situ test and questionnaire survey , investigated and analyzed the thermal comfortableness and influencing factors. In order to get comfortable thermal environment of urban public space, we put forward some key points of ecological design from different aspects .


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Maimunah Ramlee ◽  
Dasimah Omar ◽  
Rodzyah Mohd Yunus ◽  
Zalina Samadi

The success of the revitalization program of urban public space is viewed through attributes that have been identified. This study aims to investigate the perception of users in public space through the on-site survey. In summary, the motivations, behavioural patterns, impressions on the public space as an attraction and the perceived importance of urban public spaces in the development of the city are important attributes for successful public space. The findings of this study will show main attributes in successful revitalization of urban public space based on users perception and can be used in a meaningful way to the users. Keywords: Public space; successful attributes; users perception; revitalization eISSN 2398-4279 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. https://doi.org/10.21834/ajqol.v3i11.118


Author(s):  
David Churchill

This chapter assesses the impact of policing on urban order. It argues that the nineteenth-century police forces were especially attentive to local perceptions of nuisance and improvement in their efforts to tame urban popular culture and to sanitize urban public space. Police efforts to impose public order were modified by structural constraints, exercise of discretion in law enforcement, and resistance on the part of the public. And yet, the psychological repercussions of street order policing were profound, as large sections of the urban population came under an unprecedented level of official scrutiny. Hence, this chapter argues that—faced with a highly officious and, at times, repressive form of police authority—the urban public became ‘police-conscious’ in the nineteenth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
Adil Moustaoui

Abstract This article examines the use of Moroccan Arabic (MA) in the new Linguistic Landscape (LL) in Morocco, and in particular in the city of Meknés, in a new neighbourhood known as (حمرية) Hamriya or La Ville Nouvelle. In particular, the ways in which current socio-economic transformations produce new spaces of communications are explored, highlighting the extent to which MA is used in urban public spaces as new linguistic practices. In turn, the increasing visibility of MA in the LL and its subsequent nourishing of hybrid practices are discussed. The data points to a re-semiotisation of space in a Moroccan linguistic regime historically characterized by a well-established linguistic hierarchy. Ultimately, the use of MA creates new language practices and policies that resist and transform the sociolinguistic regime which is analysed here by a close examination of linguistic variation in Arabic in the public space.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Óscar Salguero Montaño ◽  
Hutan Hejazi

In plural and secular societies today, religious communities understand access to public space as a right to the city. Thisright legitimises their status as social actors and, through various notions linked to modernity and transparency, entitlesthem to have a public life and be recognised by others. By examining the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Lavapiés, oneof Madrid’s multicultural district undergoing intense gentrification and touristification processes, this article analyses theconditions through which this community accesses public space and achieves legitimisation and recognition through different practices and discourses displayed in a variety of events and festivities.


Author(s):  
Rong Guo ◽  
◽  
Ye Gao ◽  
Yujing Bai ◽  
◽  
...  

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in early 2020, cities in China and even around the world have encountered great challenges, placing higher demands on urban governance and urban resilience, and the creation of healthy urban resilience public spaces is imminent. As an important stage of life for urban residents, urban public space is a complex manifestation of urban functions and an indispensable link in strengthening the city's resilience. In this paper, through the analysis of the connotation of urban resilience and related research at home and abroad, we further interpret the connotation and characteristics of urban public space resilience, and build a model of urban public space resilience based on the timeline of disasters. 1. Optimize the structure of public space and create a resilient spatial pattern; 2. Improve the infrastructure of public space and reserve emergency sites during disasters to use urban land flexibly; 3. Adjust the internal and external transportation system of public space to create healthy and green transportation; 4. Optimize the city Ventilated corridors to improve the resilience of the public space environment; 5. Make full use of the intelligent analysis of the GIS platform to improve the ecological disaster prevention capabilities of public spaces


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Xu ◽  
Yuning Cheng ◽  
Xiaodong Xu

The layout relationship between the public space system and the natural system of cities determines the trend of urban spatial forms. From the perspective of the integration of landscape architecture and urban design discipline, this paper generalizes three restriction/dependence relationship modes between urban public space and natural landscape layout: (1) overlapping mode, (2) separation mode, and (3) the mode of edge combination. Using Zurich, Switzerland, as a case study, this paper quantitatively explores the layout relationship between public space and natural landscape using the location quotient method. The research findings reveal an obvious layer distribution trend of Zurich urban public space and natural factors: the public space and mountain layout have a clear separation relationship. The regressive equation is PQ = −0.188lnMQ + 0.660, forming the mutually supplementary mechanism of the advantageous resources of public activities. The Zurich model shows that when a proper relationship is established among the natural system and the urban public space, human activities, and the public activity centers of the city, the new system provides significant ecological and social benefits. This finding provides an exemplary reference for urban construction in other countries.


Author(s):  
Normunds Kozlovs ◽  
Ilva Skulte

The modern urban space is inevitably the site of different striking messages from advertisement to graffiti. The last are used as an alternative medium of subculture, even if majority of the public fails to notice it or else interprets it, contrary to culture’s ordered world of meanings, as chaotic “dirt” more closely related to nature than culture. The discourse of messages found in the public space - on the façades of surfaces forming urban space, can be interpreted in a countercultural code and is for the subculture of graffiti itself, a battle taking place for the aesthetization of the public space. This is the answer provided by the rebellious sons to the “fathers of the city”, who possess money and power with which to design urban public space using architectural means. The generation of sons, who are excluded from this real estate discourse due to a lack of means, put into play the only thing they own, i.e. their body, which they subject to the danger of imprisonment, because graffiti is an illegal activity, which in legal terms is interpreted as vandalism, a view that also prevails within the mass media. In this paper we analyze the meaning of visual messages of Riga stencil graffiti using social semiotics' methodology (Kress & Leewen, 1996; Jewitt & Oyama, 2004). We find that the utilization of the street as an alternative and independent medium in the form of civil disobedience manifested through the translation of radical political ideas, thus to a certain extent performing the work of propaganda, is an example of creative idealism. 


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