scholarly journals A Study of Islamic and Arab Markets' Role in Revitalizing Urban Spaces

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Mohamed Yasser Lotfy ◽  
Abdullah Soliman ◽  
Alaa Mandour

<p>Market places have occupied a major role in most cities around the world, being a site for more than just economic interactions, but rather a cultivating agent for social and cultural growth. The Arab and Islamic cities have a proud history of market places, most of the times being the main core of the city, with urban development encompassing it, and till the present day market places are in the heart of most communities. The <em>modern city </em>brought with it a devaluing of the traditional market places, making it a tourist attraction as in the case of <em>"khan el Khalil",</em>or leaving it to rust like <em>"bab el louq" </em>market. Those markets while playing a big role historically, <em>modern city planning </em>moved the services and markets into other form, thus becoming less important, abandoned, or even demolished at cases.</p><p>The issue at hand deals with how the contemporary urban planning affected market places, with emphasis on <em>closed markets</em> (Bab el-louk)which can be said to be the successor of the ancient <em>Bazaar </em>or <em>Wekala</em>.  Bal el-Louk market was once in the heart of Cairo and vital part of its community life, but now the market after more than a 100 years, is in ruins, but hope is not yet all lost, since the market can still be revived and revitalized.</p><p>To tackle this issue a combination of <em>comparative and field studies </em>must occur. On the one hand, comparative studies with <em>markets </em>in the US or closed markets in European cities such as Paris or Copenhagen would be done to find the necessary elements and goals that would make those markets vital, and the necessary steps to revitalize our own forgotten markets. The other study would have to deal with the current condition of bab el louk market in Cairo, finding out the reason behind its demise, the owners and users feedback on said market, and the opportunities for change.</p><p>With the results of the studies, general recommendations would be made for the <em>revitalization </em>of the Egyptian marketplaces, using an urban framework that would lead to those markets be available for costumers again and back to playing their major cultural and social rule.</p>

Author(s):  
Timur Ergen

This chapter brings together arguments from economics, sociology, and political economy to show that innovation processes are characterized by a dilemma between the advantages of aligned expectations—including greater coordination and investment—and those of diversity, including superior openness to new technological possibilities. To illustrate the argument, the chapter discusses a historical case involving one of the largest coordinated peace-time attempts to hasten technological innovation in the history of capitalism, namely the US energy technology policies of the 1970s and 1980s. Close examination of the commercialization of photovoltaics and synthetic fuel initiatives illustrates both sides of the dilemma between shared versus diverse expectations in innovation: coordination but possible premature lock-in on the one hand, and openness but possible stagnation on the other. The chapter shows that even the exploration and interpretation of new technologies may be as much a product of focused investment as of trial-and-error search.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-238
Author(s):  
Malika S. Tovsultanova ◽  
Rustam A. Tovsultanov ◽  
Lilia N. Galimova

In the 1970s, Turkey was in a state of political turbulence. Weak coalition governments changed frequently and could not bring order to the country. The city streets turned into an arena of battles for various armed radical groups of nationalist, communist, Islamist and separatist persuasions. For 9 years from 1971 to 1980, 10 governments changed in Turkey. The political crisis was accompanied by an economic downturn, expressed in hyperinflation and an increase in external debt. Chaos and anarchy caused discontent among Turkish financial circles and generals with the situation in the country and led to the idea of a military coup, already the third in the republican history of Turkey. The US State Department was extremely concerned about the situation in Turkey, hoping to find a reliable cover against further exports of communism and Islamism to the Middle East, approving the possibility of a coup. The coup was led by the chief of the General Staff K. Evren. Political events of the second half of the 1970s allow us to conclude that, despite the interest of the financial and military circles of the United States in it, the military coup on September 12, 1980 had mainly domestic political reasons.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Ferréol Salomon ◽  
Darío Bernal-Casasola ◽  
José J. Díaz ◽  
Macarena Lara ◽  
Salvador Domínguez-Bella ◽  
...  

Abstract. Today, coastal cities worldwide are facing major changes resulting from climate change and anthropogenic forcing, which requires adaptation and mitigation strategies to be established. In this context, sedimentological archives in many Mediterranean cities record a multi-millennial history of environmental dynamics and human adaptation, revealing a long-lasting resilience. Founded by the Phoenicians around 3000 years ago, Cádiz (south-western Spain) is a key example of a coastal resilient city. This urban centre is considered to be one of the first cities of western Europe and has experienced major natural hazards during its long history, such as coastal erosion, storms, and also tsunamis (like the one in 1755 CE following the destructive Lisbon earthquake). In the framework of an international, joint archaeological and geoarchaeological project, three cores have been drilled in a marine palaeochannel that ran through the ancient city of Cádiz. These cores reveal a ≥50 m thick Holocene sedimentary sequence. Importantly, most of the deposits date from the 1st millennium BCE to the 1st millennium CE. This exceptional sedimentary archive will allow our scientific team to achieve its research goals, which are (1) to reconstruct the palaeogeographical evolution of this specific coastal area; (2) to trace the intensity of activities of the city of Cádiz based on archaeological data, as well as geochemical and palaeoecological indicators; and (3) to identify and date high-energy event deposits such as storms and tsunamis.


Author(s):  
Ryan Robert Mitchell

Guy Ernest Debord (1931–1994) was a French radical political theorist, writer, activist and filmmaker. After his early involvement with French avant-garde art movements in the 1950s, Debord founded a revolutionary organization, the Situationist International (SI), in 1957. Inspired by earlier avant-garde movements like Dada and surrealism, Debord sought to create an explicitly political and critical art practice that could be employed to transform everyday life. The SI attracted sound poets, architects, writers, activists, graphic artists and painters. The movement sought to merge everyday life, art and politics through such practices as radical city planning, the beautification of the city through graffiti, and rambling psycho-geographic drifts through urban spaces, seeking to uncover the desire and beauty that had been hidden by advanced capitalism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-79
Author(s):  
Nicholas Gamso

AbstractThrough a reading of Teju Cole’s novel Open City (2011), this article argues that the exposure of black migrants constitutes the principal organizing conceit of global literary culture and knowledge production. The novel’s protagonist, a Nigerian emigre named Julius, is faced with ceaseless scrutiny as he traverses urban spaces in the US, Europe, and West Africa, meeting other migrants. In staging Julius’ encounters with others, the novel allegorizes a structure of racialized subjection continuous with the modern history of western epistemology and glaringly present in the contemporary. Yet it also provides grounds for a recursive ethic of opacity, which Julius eagerly endorses. The article surveys critical studies of race, migration, infrastructure, and world literature, in addition to Cole’s writings on photography. The aim is not only to uncover the logics of racialization at play in the enactment of culture, but also to conceive of culture itself as a historical infrastructure of privation and control.


Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Gamsa

AbstractThis article has two goals. It reflects on the recent developments and agenda of an approach to historical writing that is now becoming known by the name global microhistory, and it analyses the attention which this approach pays to individual lives. It also explores some of the challenges in writing the biography of a city alongside the life history of a person. The city is Harbin, a former Russian-managed railway hub in Manchuria, today a province capital in Northeast China. The person is Baron Roger Budberg (1867–1926), a physician of Baltic German origin who arrived in Harbin during the Russo-Japanese war and remained there until his death, leaving published works and unpublished correspondence in German and Russian. My forthcoming book about Budberg and Harbin challenges the distinction between writing “biography”, on the one hand, and “history”, on the other, while navigating between the “micro” and “macro” layers of historical enquiry.


2013 ◽  
Vol 357-360 ◽  
pp. 1935-1938
Author(s):  
Jun Wang ◽  
Bai Hao Li

Shenyang is one of provincial capital, along the railway, opening the commercial of early-modern Chinese, which is the ancient capital city that has experienced modernization. Shenyang early-modern city planning is completed in the process of centralization and colonial invasion and local autonomy, the diverse of city administrative system is to promote the different regions feature of Shenyang early-modern city. Based on the subject of administration perspective, takes as the object of study by the theory and implementation of Shenyang early-modern city planning, makes the analysis and location to the history of Shenyang early-modern city planning, to provide historical and theoretical basis for the construction of modern urbanization and regional system.


For close on two hundred years, from the late-seventeenth till the mid-nineteenth century, the two houses in New College Lane which stand in the immediate approaches of the College were closely connected with a succession of distinguished scientists—among them John Wallis, Edmund Halley and James Bradley. The houses, with two others further west, occupy the area between the western wall of the cloisters of New College and Hell Passage, the whole length of which formed part of the original endowment of the College, though separated from the street by a narrow strip of ground which until 1850 belonged to the City. On this New College freehold there stood in late medieval times a building known as Stable Hall. In 1560 this tenement was leased to Thomas Nele and Henry Edmonds on the condition that they should ‘nue builde and repaire the said house called Stable Hall,’ the College allowing them sufficient timber, laths and boards for the purpose. Whether this was the beginning of the architectural history of the two houses with which this paper is concerned is an open question. On the one hand, it is clear from a note in the New College Lease Book, made when Nele obtained a new lease fourteen years later, that he had engaged in building by that time. Formerly a Fellow o f New College, he is said, on being appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew, to have ‘entered himself a commoner at Hart Hall and built little lodgings opposite thereunto, joining to the West End of New Coll. Cloister, wherein he lived several years’. On the other hand, Agas’s map of 1578 appears to show a house too hard against the cloister wall to be even the easternmost of the houses that we have today.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 574-575
Author(s):  
Camilla Gibb

Jeffrey Nedoroscik's book is a sensitive sociological survey of life in Cairo's City of the Dead, where more than 500,000 people are now enlisted to reside. In an attempt to both demystify and account for this phenomenon, Nedoroscik argues that life in the City of the Dead is as old, and as rich, as life in Cairo itself. Today, residence in and among the family tombs stretching across some five square miles at the base of the muqattam Hills, constitutes an informal housing sector that has developed as a response to Cairo's severe housing crisis. Historically, though, the cemetery also teemed with life as a religious center housing some of the Muslim world's most important monuments, and a site of temporary and permanent shelter to relatives to the deceased, guardians of tombs, itinerants, the poor, the sick, Sufis, and other religious leaders.


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