scholarly journals Milan and its lost river: when surviving images represent unique narrations of invisible relationships

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Andrea Oldani
Keyword(s):  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
World Cities ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

One of the most predictable implications of photography consists of the ability to fix some images returning them in a variable timeframe for the observation. In all the major world cities, it is common to incur in some book where recent photos are compared to old ones searching the same point of view in order to make the comparison more accurate and stimulate the critical ability of the observer. An exercise that sometimes stimulates a sort of regret for the past, pointing out a diffused excess of nostalgia for times gone by. Nevertheless, the reality and meaning of modern city images are not always so prosaic. What happens when photographs are evocative of a reality that is completely lost in the collective imaginary even though it still exists and functions, despite being forgotten and buried in the depths of the city? This is the case of very few pictures capable of telling the story of a city, Milan, and its only “real” river, the Olona, whose waters, humiliated and rejected, continue to flow in total amnesia. It is a different story when photography does not have the role of nourishing nostalgia, but the power to make visible and explain the variation of a presence and its progressive obliteration. Some pictures testify to the passage from the bucolic amenity of the river and its banks in a pre-urban context to a muscular urban infrastructure. A rigid channelized river, shown with confidence, is trying to keep its presence, until the moment of its inevitable decline and disappearance. It is in these images that the possibility of reconsidering the Olona as a part of the new project for the city lies.

scholarly journals Post-Pandemic City: Historical Context for New Urban Design

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Veaceslav MIR
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City

Cities have been almost completely unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Urban history has known many epidemics and pandemics, and there are clear historical parallels between the 13th and 19th century plague pandemics and cholera epidemics and the 21th century COVID-19 pandemic, from an administrative point of view. However, the cities’ public administration did not take into account the experience of the cities of the past to be prepared for the future problems. This requires developing flexible pandemic strategies and focusing on the decentralization of urban space through an even distribution of population in the urban environment. The COVID-19 pandemic will change the city, as previous pandemics and epidemics did. Urbanism v.3.0. will emerge, combining a green vector of development and digital technologies to ensure the autonomy and sustainability of buildings, districts and cities. At the same time, the role of culture will increase, which will become an effective tool for consolidating the soft power of the city in order to attract new people as the opposition of nowadays trend for living in the countryside.

scholarly journals An Attitude of Gratitude: Older Japanese in the Hopeful Present

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Iza Kavedzija
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Meaningful Existence ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

In this article I explore ideas of the good and meaningful life in older age, based on ethnographic research with older Japanese in the city of Osaka. Some of my interlocutors and friends in the field spoke about the approaching end of their life. When speaking about the time remaining, many expressed their sense that the future ‘will somehow turn out [all right]’ (nantonaku). This statement of quiet hope acknowledged change and encapsulated a desire to support others; it also shifted emphasis away from the future. This is not to say that the experience was for my interlocutors primarily marked by an orientation towards the past: by reminiscing and recollection. Inhabiting the moment was equally important. While reminiscing and narrating past events clearly relate to meaning-making, then, what is the role of dwelling in the moment for maintaining a meaningful existence? I will argue that dwelling in the moment allows for the cultivation of an attitude of gratitude, which lends meaning to a life. This attitude of gratitude binds together both reflection on the past and attention to the present moment in its fullness. It also, I suggest, opens up space for a particular kind of hope, grounded in the moment. Thus, the sense of the good and meaningful life that my older friends conveyed encapsulates an attitude of gratitude as a way of inhabiting the present, rather than dwelling in the past or leaping towards the future. 

scholarly journals TRANSPORT INTERMODAL INTERCHANGES: SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS AT LILLE EUROPEAN METROPOLIS

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile HEDDEBAUT ◽  
Floridea DI CIOMMO
Keyword(s):  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Urban City ◽  
New Business ◽  
The City

Within the framework of the “City-HUB” FP7 European research project 27 interchanges were studied in nine European countries. It investigated how transport interchanges work from the point of view of governance and the organization of facilities. On this basis a typology of interchanges has been defined for classifying the interchanges and selecting the key elements for improving the interchanges location, construction, and organization of an interchange. The paper focus on the implementation of the City-HUB interchange typology to the case study of Lille European Metropolis (MEL) where two contingent railways stations Lille Flandres and Lille Europe were analysed as a potential unique interchange. Indeed, the article is related to the creation of a joint interchanges able to attract more public transport users than private users such as it is now the case. These two main railways interchanges have different territorial and transport functions (i.e. one is oriented to regional traffic and the other one to national and international traffic). Urban planners and transport authorities would like to connect both stations creating a unique interchange. A key point of the Lille’s City-HUB analysis is related to the involvement of the stakeholders. Their involvement is at the origin of the interactions between City-HUB and its socio-economic and urban context. We demonstrate that combining transport and land use planning policies could boost commercial development, new business offices or housing. The urban City-Hub overcomes its role of transport infrastructure for being a “place”.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3856

Chelovek.RU/Человек.RU

Chelovek RU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 18-53
Author(s):  
Sergei Avanesov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian Philosopher ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pavel Florensky ◽  
The Moment

Abstract. The article analyzes the autobiography of the famous Russian philosopher, theologian and scientist Pavel Florensky, as well as those of his texts that retain traces of memories. According to Florensky, the personal biography is based on family history and continues in children. He addresses his own biography to his children. Memories based on diary entries are designed as a memory diary, that is, as material for future memories. The past becomes actual in autobiography, turns into a kind of present. The past, from the point of view of its realization in the present, gains meaning and significance. The au-thor is active in relation to his own past, transforming it from a collection of disparate facts into a se-quence of events. A person can only see the true meaning of such events from a great distance. Therefore, the philosopher remembers not so much the circumstances of his life as the inner impressions of the en-counter with reality. The most powerful personality-forming experiences are associated with childhood. Even the moment of birth can decisively affect the character of a person and the range of his interests. The foundations of a person's worldview are laid precisely in childhood. Florensky not only writes mem-oirs about himself, but also tries to analyze the problems of time and memory. A person is immersed in time, but he is able to move into the past through memory and into the future through faith. An autobi-ography can never be written to the end because its author lives on. However, reaching the depths of life, he is able to build his path in such a way that at the end of this path he will unite with the fullness of time, with eternity.

Portuguese Sardines - from the ritual to the brand

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Cecília Avelino Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
City Council ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
City Branding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Behavioral Expression ◽  
The City ◽  
City Identity

Place branding is a network of associations in the consumer’s mind, based on the visual, verbal, and behavioral expression of a place. Food can be an important tool to summarize it as it is part of the culture of a city and its symbolic capital. Food is imaginary, a ritual and a social construction. This paper aims to explore a ritual that has turned into one of the brands of Lisbon in the past few years. The fresh sardines barbecued out of doors, during Saint Anthony’s festival, has become a symbol that can be found on t-shirts, magnets and all kinds of souvenirs. Over the year, tourists can buy sardine shaped objects in very cheap stores to luxurious shops. There is even a whole boutique dedicated to the fish: “The Fantastic World of Portuguese Sardines” and an annual competition promoted by the city council to choose the five most emblematic designs of sardines. In order to analyze the Sardine phenomenon from a city branding point of view, the objective of this paper is to comprehend what associations are made by foreigners when they are outside of Lisbon. As a methodological procedure five design sardines, were used of last year to questioning to which city they relate them in interviews carried in Madrid, Lyon, Rome and London. Upon completion of the analysis, the results of the city branding strategy adopted by the city council to promote the sardines as the official symbol of Lisbon is seen as a Folkmarketing action. The effects are positive, but still quite local. On the other hand, significant participation of the Lisbon´s dwellers in the Sardine Contest was observed, which seems to be a good way to promote the city identity and pride in their best ambassador: the citizens.

L’absence chez Michel Butor. L’Emploi du temps et Degrés

2012 ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Michał Mrozowicki
Keyword(s):  
Human Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
The City

Michel Butor, born in 1926, one of the leaders of the French New Novel movement, has written only four novels between 1954 and 1960. The most famous of them is La Modification (Second thoughts), published in 1957. The author of the paper analyzes two other Butor’s novels: L’Emploi du temps (Passing time) – 1956, and Degrés (Degrees) – 1960. The theme of absence is crucial in both of them. In the former, the novel, presented as the diary of Jacques Revel, a young Frenchman spending a year in Bleston (a fictitious English city vaguely similar to Manchester), describes the narrator’s struggle to survive in a double – spatial and temporal – labyrinth. The first of them, formed by Bleston’s streets, squares and parks, is symbolized by the City plan. During his one year sojourn in the city, using its plan, Revel learns patiently how to move in its different districts, and in its strange labyrinth – strange because devoid any centre – that at the end stops annoying him. The other, the temporal one, symbolized by the diary itself, the labyrinth of the human memory, discovered by the narrator rather lately, somewhere in the middle of the year passed in Bleston, becomes, by contrast, more and more dense and complex, which is reflected by an increasinly complex narration used to describe the past. However, at the moment Revel is leaving the city, he is still unable to recall and to describe the events of the 29th of February 1952. This gap, this absence, symbolizes his defeat as the narrator, and, in the same time, the human memory’s limits. In Degrees temporal and spatial structures are also very important. This time round, however, the problems of the narration itself, become predominant. Considered from this point of view, the novel announces Gerard Genette’s work Narrative Discourse and his theoretical discussion of two narratological categories: narrative voice and narrative mode. Having transgressed his narrative competences, Pierre Vernier, the narrator of the first and the second parts of the novel, who, taking as a starting point, a complete account of one hour at school, tries to describe the whole world and various aspects of the human civilization for the benefit of his nephew, Pierre Eller, must fail and disappear, as the narrator, from the third part, which is narrated by another narrator, less audacious and more credible.

City’s Cultural Memory: Modern Practices of Symbolizing the Past

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-364
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Fedotova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the discourse of the city’s cultural memory. The relevance of studying this topic is determined not only by the fundamental aspect associated with the episodicity of existing studies of this phenomenon. From an applied point of view, the city’s cultural memory is a symbolic resource that can be used to create an appealing image, form a sustainable urban identity, and strengthen the citizen’s sense of belonging to the city. The accumulation and objectification of cultural memory take place in symbolic forms, which makes it important to study the practices of symbolizing the urban past, the essence of which is to generate the significance of the relevant or latent layers of cultural memory for the citizens.The article presents the results of the final stage of research related to the study of the process of constructing the cultural memory of the city. The purpose of the article is to analyze modern practices of symbolizing fragments of the urban past, which mean their significance for contemporaries. Basing on the culturological cross-section of the issue, the author integrates different research contexts. The methodological basis of the article is the communicative approach that focuses on the processes of meaning formation, and the constructivist method that considers memory as a multi-layered and dynamic construct. Analyzing the practices of symbolizing the urban past by the example of Russian cities, the author of the article demonstrates how the episodes of the city’s memory are updated in the modern world, how cultural meanings become memorable for citizens. The author uses the results of previous studies and identifies the following elements of the symbolization of the urban past: a) ways of encoding fragments of the past; b) communicative trajectories of memory symbolization; c) factors of producing meanings about the collective past of the city. The obtained results open up new frontiers in understanding the processes of formation of the collective ideas about the city, and prospects for empirical research, forecasting and constructing the cultural memory of Russian cities, giving them the opportunity to change their present and future.

scholarly journals Malaysia’s Vision 2020 and the Role of leadership in Economic Development

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Safy Mahmoud ◽  
Hoda Mitkees
Keyword(s):  
National Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Vision 2020 ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

Malaysia has adopted several developmental plans since 1969 starting with the New Economic Policy (NEP), passing by the National Development Plan (NDP) and ending with the Vision 2020 adopted in 1991 under the rule of Mahathir Mohammed (1981-2003), whereby Malaysia has aimed to become a developed country by 2020. Looking for the future, Malaysia 2020 should build upon the older developmental plans; however there are some new elements that need to be considered if Malaysia is to continue on its successful developmental path. This paper aims at focusing on the issues that still need to be considered in Vision 2020 from an outsider point of view. This paper addresses the questions of what Malaysia’s economic plans adopted in the past which were able to achieve high economic growth rates while preserving at the same time the social aspects. And the paper focuses on trade policy in Malaysia under Mahathir rule, identifying how was it shaped and how likely it will continue in 2020. The paper identifies the challenges likely to be faced by Malaysia in the coming period and how such issues should be tackled in Vision 2020.

scholarly journals Symposium: ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’

2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110522
Author(s):  
Niall Duggan ◽  
Bas Hooijmaaijers ◽  
Marek Rewizorski ◽  
Ekaterina Arapova
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic

Over the past decades, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries have experienced significant economic growth. However, their political voices in global governance have not grown on par with their economic surge. The contributions to the symposium ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’ argue there is a quest for emerging markets and developing countries to play a more significant role in global governance. There is a widening gap between the actual role of emerging markets and developing countries in the global system and their ability to participate in that system. However, for the moment, various domestic and international political-economic challenges limit this quest. To understand why this is the case, one should understand the BRICS phenomenon in the broader context of the global power shift towards the Global South.

scholarly journals Conzenian Tradition in Polish Urban Historical Morphology

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Kulesza
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Scientific Heritage ◽  
Morphological Studies ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Historic Development ◽  
The City

The scientific heritage of M. R. G. Conzen, who is considered one of the most outstanding historical geographers and urban morphologists in the world, has made a huge impact on the contemporary urban historic morphology. Nowadays it would be very hard to imagine this scientific discipline without his achievements. He created a new point of view on the city, first within the Anglo-Saxon, and afterwards within European and world geography. Morphogenetic methods, the conceptualisation of historic development, terminological precision as well as cartographic analysis that were typical of his approach, more and more often were considered essential for the development and the role of research on historic urban landscape. This resulted in the increasing interest in morphological studies on an international scale. In Poland, M. R. G. Conzen’s opinions have become recognizable since 1960, finding permanent place in urban historic morphology and providing stimuli for its significant development in the following decades.

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