scholarly journals Ontological Boundaries or Contextual Borders: The Urban Ethics of the Asylum

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 106-120
Author(s):  
Ebba Högström ◽  
Chris Philo
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Royal Hospital ◽  
Healthcare Facilities ◽  
Border Zones ◽  
The City

What and where is ‘the asylum’ today? To what extent do mental healthcare facilities stand out as clearly bounded entities in the modern urban landscape, perhaps reflecting their history as deliberately set-apart and then often stigmatised places? To what extent have they maybe become less obtrusive, more sunk into and interacting with their urban surroundings? What issues of urban ethics are at stake: concerning who/what is starkly demarcated in the city, perhaps subjected to exclusionary logics and pressures, or more sensitively integrated into the city, planned for inclusion and co-dwelling? These questions underscore our article, rooted in an in-depth case study of Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow, opened as a ‘lunatic asylum’ on its present, originally greenfield, site in the 1840s and remaining open today surrounded by dense urban expansion. Building from the ‘voices’ of patients, staff and others familiar with the site, we discuss the sense of this asylum as ‘other’ to, as ‘outside’ of, or merely ’beside’ the urban fabric. Drawing from concepts of ‘orientations’ (Ahmed, 2006), sites as spatial constructions (Burns & Kahn, 2005), the power of borders and boundaries (Haselsberger, 2014; Sennett, 2018), issues of site, stigma and related urban ethical matters will be foregrounded. Where are the boundaries that divide the hospital campus from the urban context? What are the material signifiers, the cultural associations or the emotional attachments that continue to set the boundaries? Or, in practice, do boundaries melt into messier, overlapping, intersecting border zones, textured by diverse, sometimes contradictory, bordering practices? And, if so, what are the implications?

Emplacing Berlin: Digital Itineraries and Short-term Study Abroad in the City

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Apgar
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Short Term Study ◽  
The City

As destination of choice for many short-term study abroad programs, Berlin offers students of German language, culture and history a number of sites richly layered with significance. The complexities of these sites and the competing narratives that surround them are difficult for students to grasp in a condensed period of time. Using approaches from the spatial humanities, this article offers a case study for enhancing student learning through the creation of digital maps and itineraries in a campus-based course for subsequent use during a three-week program in Berlin. In particular, the concept of deep mapping is discussed as a means of augmenting understanding of the city and its history from a narrative across time to a narrative across the physical space of the city. As itineraries, these course-based projects were replicated on site. In moving from the digital environment to the urban landscape, this article concludes by noting meanings uncovered and narratives formed as we moved through the physical space of the city.

scholarly journals PLANNING OF PRIVATE GATED DEVELOPMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF GATED VS NON-GATED NEIGHBOURHOODS, CITY OF GURUGRAM, INDIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay Kaushik
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Space Syntax ◽  
Gated Community ◽  
Neighbourhood Environment ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
The City

The cities are expanding rapidly all over the world. India has also experienced this phenomenon and has continued the pace of growth. The recent trends in spatial growth of the cities are a new phenomenon in Indian urban landscape. The cities in India are witnessing development with the help of private developers for the last couple of decades. Being private properties these are by nature of exercising control have gates and boundaries. In scholarly literature these are called as Gated Community/Gated Development. Authors have argued them from various perspectives of anthropology, law, management and sociology etc. but very little has been discussed about their planning and morphology. Although, the rise of Gated Development is majorly attributed to the sense of fear and need for security, yet architects and urban designers, and even sociologist stress upon other methods to make the neighbourhoods secured. Hence the security aspects are not made part of the research here. The aspects of how these gated development impacts the perception of neighbourhood by residents is not touched upon. The paper discusses the distinction between the gated and non-gated neighbourhoods and also how residents perceive their neighbourhoods at large. For explaining this phenomenon, three neighbourhoods in the city of Gurugram in Haryana state in India have been identified as case study. These are identified on the basis of different morphological images that are identified. Space syntax and space cognition through sketch mapping is used for the analysis of the three neighbourhoods. The paper suggest that the continuity and connectivity of any spatial configuration is of utmost importance to make neighbourhood environment worthy of living life more socially connected.

Smart Place Making Through Digital Communication and Citizen Engagement

2022 ◽  
pp. 1220-1237
Author(s):  
Angel Bartolomé Muñoz de Luna ◽  
Olga Kolotouchkina
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
New Information ◽  
The City

The disruptive growth of new information technologies is transforming the dynamics of citizen communication and engagement in the urban context. In order to create new, smart, inclusive, and transparent urban environments, the city governments of London and Madrid have implemented a series of innovative digital applications and citizen communication channels. Through a case study approach, this research assesses the best practices in the field of digital communication and citizen engagement implemented by London and Madrid, with a particular focus on the profile, content, and functions of these new channels. The results of this research are intended to identify relevant new dynamics of interaction and value co-creation for cities and their residents.

Community Resilience and Urban Planning during the Ninth-Century Maya Collapse: A Case Study from Actuncan, Belize

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Mixter
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Ritual Space ◽  
Maya Collapse ◽  
The City

To remain in place in the immediate aftermath of the ninth-century Maya collapse, Maya groups employed various resilient strategies. In the absence of divine rulers, groups needed to renegotiate their forms of political authority and to reconsider the legitimizing role of religious institutions. This kind of negotiation happened first at the local level, where individual communities developed varied political and ideological solutions. At the community of Actuncan, located in the lower Mopan River valley of Belize, reorganization took place within the remains of a monumental urban centre built 1000 years before by the site's early rulers. I report on the changing configuration and use of Actuncan's urban landscape during the process of reorganization. These modifications included the construction of a new centre for political gatherings, the dismantling of old administrative buildings constructed by holy lords and the reuse of the site's oldest ritual space. These developments split the city into distinct civic and ritual zones, paralleling the adoption of a new shared rule divorced from cosmological underpinnings. This case study provides an example of how broader societal resilience relies on adaptation at the local level.

A Novel Indicator for Assessing the Spatial Sustainability of Cities in Developing Countries - A Case Study of Xi’an City

2012 ◽  
Vol 616-618 ◽  
pp. 1335-1342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Hui Ding ◽  
Shuo Xin Zhang ◽  
Wei Zhou Zhong ◽  
Yu Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Landscape Ecology ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Sensing Technology ◽  
The City ◽  
Geographical Dimension

The geographical dimension of urbanization is of major importance in depicting the influences of urbanization on the development of a city, since complex social-ecological systems interact in a multitude of ways at many spatial scales across time. This research introduced an indicator for assessing the spatial sustainability of a city from the perspective of landscape ecology, to provide a reasonable way for quantifying the spatial dynamic of the urban area of a city and how close the pattern of urban expansion close to a ‘compact’ way. A case study has been done in Xi’an. With the application of remote sensing technology, landscape ecology and other necessary software, the spacial sustainability of Xi’an from 1988 to 2010 were calculated, the rapid urbanization in Xi’an has significantly promoted the spatial sustainability of city from 1988 to 2000 and 2006 to 2010, whereas exerted negative effects on the spatial sustainability of the city from 2000 to 2006.

The Vertical Space Problem

2013 ◽  
pp. 9-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Adam Perdue
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Residential Patterns ◽  
Space Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The City

Populations in contemporary cities are being measured, analyzed, or represented in less than optimal ways. Conventional methods of measuring density of populations in cities rely on calculating the number of people living within a bounded surface space. This approach fails to account for the multiple floor residential patterns of the contemporary urban landscape and exposes the vertical space problem in population analytics. To create an accurate representation of people in contemporary urban spaces, a move beyond the conventional conception of density is needed. This research aims to find a more appropriate solution to mapping humans in cities by employing a dasymetric method to represent the distribution of people in a city of vertical residential structures. The methodology creates an index to classify the amount of floor space for each person across the extent of the city, a metric called the personal space measure. The personal space measure is juxtaposed with the conventional population density measurements to provide a unique perspective on how population is concentrated across the urban space. The personal space metric demonstrates how improved metrics can be employed to better understand the social and structural landscape of cities. Chicago, with a large population and a high vertical extent, makes an ideal case study to develop a methodology to capture the phenomena of urban living in the 21st century and to explain alternative approaches to accurately and intelligently analyze the contemporary urban space.

scholarly journals The cost of building for the future: the reconciliation of sustainable housing issues in Toronto

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Adam Erlichman.
Keyword(s):  
Urban Context ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sustainable Housing ◽  
Green Housing ◽  
The Future ◽  
Private Housing ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

Although some green housing elements have become more commonplace in residential renovations in Canada, the undertaking of complete green retrofits is relatively uncommon. This paper explores the barriers to green retrofits, such as affordability and bureaucracy, in the urban context of the City of Toronto. The research was informed by one main case study, one supplementary case study, and six interviews with sustainable housing experts. The research has yielded nine recommendations that are directed towards three levels of government and related public and private housing organizations. These recommendations have been made in the hopes of making sustainable housing more ubiquitous in Toronto.

scholarly journals The cost of building for the future: the reconciliation of sustainable housing issues in Toronto

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Adam Erlichman.
Keyword(s):  
Urban Context ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sustainable Housing ◽  
Green Housing ◽  
The Future ◽  
Private Housing ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

Although some green housing elements have become more commonplace in residential renovations in Canada, the undertaking of complete green retrofits is relatively uncommon. This paper explores the barriers to green retrofits, such as affordability and bureaucracy, in the urban context of the City of Toronto. The research was informed by one main case study, one supplementary case study, and six interviews with sustainable housing experts. The research has yielded nine recommendations that are directed towards three levels of government and related public and private housing organizations. These recommendations have been made in the hopes of making sustainable housing more ubiquitous in Toronto.

scholarly journals Understanding the Informal Morphology of Villages-in-the-City: A Case Study in Hanoi City, Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13136
Author(s):  
Ngo Kien Thinh ◽  
Yun Gao
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Informal Urbanism ◽  
The City ◽  
Practical Level

This paper explores the production of space in the villages-in-the-city (ViCs) through a morphological perspective. During the urbanization process, rural villages originally located in the peri-area of a metropolis are eventually merged into the urban landscape. Due to lack of proper planning, these villages have faced serious criticism due to informality, self-organized development and sub-standard living conditions, and planning policies tend to focus on demolition rather than on incrementally upgrading ViCs on the same site. In this paper, we focus on the fluidity of spaces in ViCs by drawing on a case study in Hanoi, Vietnam. The key research methods are mapping, observation and visual recording. The findings illustrate how informal urbanism works in ViCs regarding spatial structure, public/private interfaces and incremental upgrading. On a theoretical level, this research helps to enrich the description of the morphological characteristics of ViCs with relation to the effects of rapid urbanization. On a practical level, this study contributes to the ways in which researchers and planners can engage with incremental changes in the integrated village.

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