scholarly journals The signature of the city: abandonment and dreaming in colonial Williamsburg and Ottawa

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-251
Author(s):  
Mark Kristmanson
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Honorary Degree ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
The City

Exploring the themes of abandonment and dreaming in relation to two North American capital cities, this interdisciplinary narrative essay examines the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's influence on the planning and architecture of Ottawa in relation to his frequent visits to Colonial Williamsburg, the restored former capital of Virginia. At the invitation of John D. Rockefeller Jr., King became a regular guest in Williamsburg during the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the conferral of an honorary degree by the College of William and Mary in 1948. The records of these visits provide a diagnostic used to conceptualize the 'signature' of the capital city. In abandonment and in dreaming, capital cities are especially exposed to latent forces of nature and of 'museumification'. These two forces created a tension that complicated attempts by King and Rockefeller to leave permanent architectural legacies in the signatures of their respective capitals.

scholarly journals ‘Between life and death’: On land, silence and liberation in the capital city

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
University Of Pretoria ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

This article reflects on the unfinished task of liberation – as expressed in issues of land – and drawing from the work of Franz Fanon and the Durban-based social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. It locates its reflections in four specific sites of struggle in the City of Tshwane, and against the backdrop of the mission statement of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, as well as the Capital Cities Research Project based in the same university. Reflecting on the ‘living death’ of millions of landless people on the one hand, and the privatisation of liberation on the other, it argues that a liberating praxis of engagement remains a necessity in order to break the violent silences that perpetuate exclusion.

Power and Identity: The Case of Islamabad

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Saboohi Sarshar
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The City

This article observes how the concept of power and national identity produced space in 1960’s Islamabad, the new capital city of Pakistan. In World War II’s aftermath, many capital cities emerged which were seen as their nation’s representation by negating or reinforcing ties with sovereign or imperial power. Pakistan is one such nation that gained independence from the British in 1947. Islamabad designed by Constantinos A. Doxiadis in 1959 aimed to construct its identity in a postcolonial paradigm. This article studies the urban layout and pattern of the city and emphasizes the relation of power and identity on its social constructs and making.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Urban Spatial Characteristics of the Capitals of Tang and Song Dynasties Based on Space Syntax

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Liran Yin ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Kemi Adeyeye
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Space Syntax ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Tang And Song Dynasties ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Space syntax has been widely used in studies with historical components to developing a common analytical language for the comparative study of urban morphology across time and space by visual diagrams. This paper uses space syntax to analyse the inner and outer city parts of the daily life of residents in the capital cities of two dynasties, Tang and Song, to reveal the impact of changes in urban planning on the overall spatial structure of the city, the structure of commercial space, and the role of urban squares in the two dynasties under centralised rule. Based on the quantitative analysis, the results show significant differences between the Tang and Song dynasties in all three aspects of comparison. The changes in the Tang and Song dynasties’ capital cities result from the interaction between the materiality of the ancient Chinese capital city form and the spatial function of the city, and the analysis of space syntax is useful for interpreting their relevance.

scholarly journals SOCIAL IDENTITY OF “POWER CITIES” IN MODERN RUSSIA: BASIC SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-374
Author(s):  
O.A. Bogatova
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Financial Flows ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Political Mythology ◽  
The City

The article analyzes domestic theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of administrative centers of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The author states a wide application of the concept of "capital city" in relation to the regional administrative centers, which are described by researchers as points of concentration of regional (or federal) ruling elites, dominating over the controlled and dependent on them "peripheral" territory of the region in political, economic and cultural relations, having access to global or federal financial flows, providing the population of the city and the region with social chances and access to a variety of services, creating and centralizing information and communication flows on the territory under their control, as well as cultural and symbolic foundations of regional identity. It is noted that there are opposing approaches to the analysis of regional and urban territorial identities in the research: essentialist one, based on the identification of "territories of belonging" and "territorial spaces" as objects of social identification of the population and symbolic formation of territorial identity politics with the self-consciousness of the region and its capital; and constructivist approach, focusing on the activity and interest of regional elites in the production of their capital identities. Culturalization is characterized as the predominant frame for the study of urban identity in contemporary Russia, with less pronounced attention to the civic component of urban identity, which is based on a sense of responsibility for the city and local civic activism. Among the distinctive characteristics of the capital cities identity of the republics within the Russian Federation, domestic researchers refer to the tendency to its "ethnicization" and absorption of republican identity through the reduction of cultural and symbolic components to cultural symbols and performative (including socio-political) practices, attributed by regional elites to the ethno-national identity of "titular" ethnic communities of the republics. Nevertheless, almost the same parameters of identity - local symbols, regional and capital cities’ "political mythology", its heroes and narratives, public events are considered as "natural" or constructed bases of capital city identity in the studies devoted to both the capitals of the republics and other subjects of the Russian Federation.

Symbols of civic pride, national history or European tradition? City halls in Scandinavian capital cities

Urban History ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA KOLBE
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Capital City ◽  
National History ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Civic Pride ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The City ◽  
Local Narratives

ABSTRACTUsing case studies of city halls in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, this article contributes towards the creation of an iconographic reading of this building type. This article argues that the symbolic aim of the city hall was to express the burgher's pride and values, and to symbolize the local and national history. To understand the multifaceted architecture of a city hall in a capital city, one must also understand the ideas behind nation-building in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The second part of the article analyses how European, national and local narratives were used in the city halls.

Breaking from and building on the past: Helsinki and Dublin after independence

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (160) ◽  
pp. 238-255
Author(s):  
Marjaana Niemi
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World War ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clean Break ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

AbstractCapital cities play a significant role in interpreting a country’s past and charting its future. In the aftermath of the First World War nine new European states, Finland and Ireland among them, were confronted with the question of how to create a capital city befitting their new status and national identity. Instead of designing and constructing an entirely new capital city which would have marked a clean break from the past, all these states chose an existing city as the capital. This article will examine processes through which two capitals, Helsinki and Dublin, were renewed physically and symbolically to make the political change ‘real’ to people, but also to reinterpret the past and create a ‘teleology for the present’. The aim is to discuss the ways in which the changes, planned and implemented, both reflected and reinforced new interpretations of the history of the city and the nation, and the continuities and discontinuities the changes created between the past and the present. Some elements and versions of the past were chosen over others, preserved and reinvented in the cityscape, while others were ignored, hidden or denied.

Space and Power in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-208
Author(s):  
James F. Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The City

This chapter develops insights from recent social theory in space and place that emphasizes the socially contingent nature of the built environment and its perception by those who dwell within it. Spatial analysis of settlement patterns within the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex illustrates that rather than being evenly distributed across the landscape, as per the vision of territoriality in the modern nation-state, power at the regional scale was highly variable and swift to change, a phenomenon referred to as malleable territoriality. Each kingdom’s capital city was a tightly coordinated nexus of symbols that celebrated royal authority to pedestrians in such a way that no matter where one turned, as one moved through the city, the legitimacy of the royal figure was constantly being reinforced. Yet as soon as one moved into a settlement lower on the settlement hierarchy, one sees that the political is far less evident, even absent. And even in the capital cities themselves, those indicators of royal power are frequently found smashed into pieces. Spatial analysis therefore indicates that not only was power expressed and experienced differently depending on one’s location in the built environment, it was also something that could be contested.

James Cook bicentenary celebrations in New Zealand

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-193
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Main Flow ◽  
Capital City ◽  
James Cook ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City

THE enthusiasm with which the Government and people of New Zealand celebrated the bicentennial of the Endeavour's landfall and the first landing of Europeans on 9 October 1769, at the site where the City of Gisborne now stands, has firmly established James Cook as the outstanding national hero in the history of this young country. In the capital city of Wellington, national celebration of the bicentenary began on 3 October when the Prime Minister, The Rt Hon. Keith Holyoake, opened a Cook Exhibition in the Dominion Museum that will remain open to the public for ten months. Guests on that occasion also previewed the film prepared in New Zealand for exhibition overseas: ‘Your humble and obedient servant, James Cook.’ The Government had agreed that the main national celebrations should be focused on Gisborne. This country town of somewhat less than 30,000 people (not without some similarities to the Endeavour’s home port of Whitby) responded warmly to the honour. Somewhat peripheral to the main flow of tourist and industrial traffic, Gisborne is the business, administrative and market centre for the East Coast, an extensive area of hilly grazing country producing wool and mutton; Gisborne also ranks fourth in New Zealand as a fishing port and the fishing industry continues to grow. Gisborne district has a large and increasing population of Maori people (Ngati-porou tribe) who play a prominent and increasing role in the life of the city. They comprise a higher percentage of the population than in any other district of New Zealand and actively promote their cultural heritage, following the inspiration of the late Sir Apirana Ngata, a notable leader in the district.

scholarly journals The Impact of Ancient Landscape Changes on the City Arrangement of the Early Shang Dynasty Capital Zhengzhou, Central China

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Panpan Chen ◽  
Peng Lu ◽  
Shugang Yang ◽  
Michael Storozum ◽  
Ruixia Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Central China ◽  
Shang Dynasty ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Activity Areas

Buried underneath modern Zhengzhou city in Henan Province, China, lies the archeological remains of one of the ancient capital cities of the Shang dynasty (1766 – 1122 BCE). Although it is likely that people planned this Shang capital city according to the demands of the surrounding environment, there is no clear relationship between the current environment, such as the hydrology and topography, and the ancient city’s layout. To better understand the relationship between planning principles used during the Shang dynasty and the nearby environment at Zhengzhou, we measured and sampled stratigraphic exposures at excavation locations throughout Zhengzhou. Through these excavations we obtained both absolute and relative chronological data from each culture layer, enabling us to use geospatial interpolation and analysis methods to reconstruct the ancient landscape. The results show that ancient city’s different activity areas had a close relationship with their environmental context. For example, the Shang dynasty palace was located on high ground and workshops were located down below along the courses of ancient rivers. In conclusion, we argue that research that merges geomorphology and archeology is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the development of urban areas.

Psychological Foundations of the Cleanliness Initiative in Ahmedabad City of India

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-27
Author(s):  
Ramadhar Singh ◽  
Neeraj Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
The City

Spitting on the roads of and littering around a city in India have been of concern to national leaders and civil servants since the pre-independence years. It was unsurprising, therefore, that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) as a nation-wide cleanliness campaign on October 2, 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi. The cleanliness initiative by the Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner (i) dissuades spitting on the roads and littering around the city, (ii) collects fines from those whose photos are captured by CCTV cameras, and (iii) invites active participation of all residents of Ahmedabad in the cleanliness drive. The authors present psychological foundations of this initiative, arguing that all residents ought to hold the offender and anyone else associated with such an offense as accountable. Further, they raise four new issues with the current cleanliness drive and offer suggestions for how to resolve them.

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