Artists and the Public Spaces of the City

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Vivien Lovell
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Sport Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Health Sport ◽  
The City

The paper presents the variety of ways in which contemporary artists and curators are engaging with the city today. Public art, in its many manifestations, from monument to ephemeral sculpture, forms our mental image and memory of a city. Artists are contributing to the vibrancy of the city right across the public realm, from development, transport, health, sport, education and faith, and finding ways of engaging the public meaningfully in the creative process. Focusing on London, a sample of formal and informal commissioning practices in 'public art' is presented, from its procurement through the planning process to non-commissioned 'guerilla' street art. The role of artists on design teams and the value of one-off installations and temporary programmes of sculpture and light will be explored, alongside the range of patronage of public art today. Aff ordable studio spaces for artists are a continual issue in a city with rising property values: the paper cites models for retaining artists' homes and studios as well as problems encountered by creatives being forced ever further from now peripheral areas. Many contemporary art galleries are also finding themselves 'priced out' of the centre, bar the more established international galleries. Since artists and galleries have been responsible for regenerating entire districts, can their presence be safeguarded through planning regulations?

scholarly journals Making Space. Singapore, Artists & Art in the Public Realm

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Sharmila Wood
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Community Arts ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Art Community

In recent times Singaporean artists have undertaken audacious artistic performances, actions and interventions in public space, highlighting the role of artists as provocateurs of debates around public space and their engagement with issues related to ethical urbanism. Between 2010 – 2020 artists working in diverse fields of artistic practice including visual art, street art, performance art, community arts and new genre public art begun to locate their artwork in public spaces, reaching new audiences whilst forging new conversations about access, inclusion and foregrounding issues around spatial justice. In contesting public space, artists have centralized citizens in a collective discourse around building and shaping the nation. The essay documents key projects, artists and organisations undertaking artistic responses in everyday places and examines the possibility of public art in expanding concepts of ‘the public’ through actions in Singapore’s public space, and demonstrating the role of artists in civil society.

scholarly journals Sari, Femininity, and Wall Art: A Semiotic Study of GuessWho’s Street Art in Bengaluru

Tripodos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Benson Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Street Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Resistance ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Graffiti has been conversing with the public for millions of years. In India, this art form is prominent in spaces like historical monuments, schools, colleges, classrooms, public bathrooms, benches, desks, and local transports. With the coming of the Covid 19 pandemic, this art from the streets has come alive in people’s smartphones. This paper explores and interprets the works of GuessWho, a prominent stencil graffiti artist working in the city of Bengaluru, Karnataka, and originally belonging to Kochi, Kerala. This study seeks to understand how the discourse around graffiti can help empower women in their struggle to claim the streets. By focusing on Instagram as a medium of social resistance, the paper explores the role of graffiti and social media in challenging the patriarchal status quo. Semiotics is used to understand the ways in which the production and consumption of forms of street art and graffiti are increasingly shaping the way Bengaluru city negotiates with gender. GuessWho’s graffiti symbolically targets and contests gender discrimination and particularly challenges some of the existing classist, racist, or sexist biases by subverting the use of sari, technology, and gender roles in the artwork.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Testbed Planning: Urban Planning in the Intersection between Experimental and Public Sector Logics

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Berglund-Snodgrass ◽  
Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Experimental Logic

Urban planning is, in many countries, increasingly becoming intertwined with local climate ambitions, investments in urban attractiveness and “smart city” innovation measures. In the intersection between these trends, urban experimentation has developed as a process where actors are granted action space to test innovations in a collaborative setting. One arena for urban experimentation is urban testbeds. Testbeds are sites of urban development, in which experimentation constitutes an integral part of planning and developing the area. This article introduces the notion of testbed planning as a way to conceptualize planning processes in delimited sites where planning is combined with processes of urban experimentation. We define testbed planning as a multi-actor, collaborative planning process in a delimited area, with the ambition to generate and disseminate learning while simultaneously developing the site. The aim of this article is to explore processes of testbed planning with regard to the role of urban planners. Using an institutional logics perspective we conceptualize planners as navigating between a public sector—and an experimental logic. The public sector logic constitutes the formal structure of “traditional” urban planning, and the experimental logic a collaborative and testing governance structure. Using examples from three Nordic municipalities, this article explores planning roles in experiments with autonomous buses in testbeds. The analysis shows that planners negotiate these logics in three different ways, combining and merging them, separating and moving between them or acting within a conflictual process where the public sector logic dominates.

scholarly journals Hindi Print Media Content Analysis Of Bhopal Gas Tragedy: In The Context Of Reflect And Effect Study Of Media On Society

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 01-10
Author(s):  
Armendra Amar
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Effect Study ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Industrial Accidents ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gas Leak ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

The 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak tragedy has been classified as one of the World’s major Industrial accidents of the 20th century, recorded post 1919, by a United Nations Report. This tragedy killed thousands of people and maimed thousands. Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released approximately 40 tonnes of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas which went on to touch the lives of more than 500,000 people of the city. In a way, even after it immediately killed and maimed in thousands, it is still a continued disaster as the generations exposed to the toxic gases have been consistently showing up signs of physical and mental deformity. This gruesome event’s impacts on society are beyond time and space. The crucial question that renders is that how media dealt with the situation and to what extent it affects the everyday life of masses. This study came into initiation when the researcher visited the Methyl Ico-Cynate gas-affected area of Bhopal. During the pilot study, the researcher saw that people of the affected place were living in inadequate conditions. Thus, a concern piqued the interest of the researcher, and evoked an indispensible question: Is media fulfilling its responsibility as the fourth pillar of society in times of chaos and devastation, towards the public? For examining his queries researcher has taken renowned print media outlet’s articles of Bhopal gas tragedy as the content of the analysis. Hence on the basis of Hindi print media content of Bhopal gas disaster the researcher has taken the initiative to search appropriate answers to questions which examine the role of media after the tragic occurrence has taken place in society.

scholarly journals ARQUITETURA, IDEOLOGIA E PRODUÇÃO: o uso do edifício público como veículo de comunicação no período do “Regime Militar” brasileiro

Revista Labor ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (18) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Eneas de Araújo Arrais Neto
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
The Public ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Architectural Language ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar os edifícios sedes dos órgãos públicos federais construídos na cidade de Fortaleza durante os anos de vigência do “Regime Militar”. Parte da compreensão de que a arquitetura, enquanto objeto de fruição coletiva, assume o papel de meio de comunicação de massa no espaço urbano e, como tal, foi um dos instrumentos de divulgação ideológica dos governos militares dirigidos aos setores sociais urbanos; veiculando principalmente idéias de modernização, desenvolvimento, racionalidade, onipotência do poder estatal e autoritarismo. Analisa igualmente as influências, neste processo, da cultura de classe do setor burocrático-estatal, e propõe que estas edificações, ao estabelecerem novos padrões estéticos e de utilização de materiais e equipamentos de procedência tecnológica estrangeira, se constituíram em elementos importantes do processo de abertura da economia nacional ao capital multinacional, em particular no que diz respeito ao mercado da construção civil.Abstract This paper presents the arquitectural critique of a specific group of edifications built in the city of Fortaleza during the period of the military governments in Brazil. The character of the architecture developed by the military government in public buildings in this period is common all over the country: the facilities were built to with the intention to occupy the cities as out-doors of the military governments, diffusing images of modernization, rationality, economic development and the power of the state.   Through the use of architectural language, by the means of design, project, materials, forms and other ways, the architecture of the public sector played the role of ideology, besides introducing imported materials and equipment previously unused in the building sector of the country.

scholarly journals Possibilities to Apply the Urban Acupuncture Concept in Kaunas: Social Aspect

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Aurelija Daugelaite ◽  
Indre Gražulevičiūte-Vileniške ◽  
Mantas Landauskas
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Ecological Design ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The City

The concept of urban acupuncture, which has been gaining ground in recent decades, is based on the activation and revitalization of urban environments using small architectural or landscape architectural interventions in precise carefully selected locations of urban fabric. However, the rapid and unexpected design solutions of urban acupuncture, based on ecological design, nature dynamics, street art, material re-use, can cause different social and psychological reactions of urban population and these reactions may vary depending on cultural contexts. Consequently, in order to implement successful urban acupuncture projects in Lithuanian cities, it is very important to find out public opinion and priorities in the fields of public space management, aesthetics, and public art. The aim of the research was to analyze the opinion of Kaunas city residents regarding these issues. For this purpose, a sociological questionnaire survey was used. The questionnaire containing 20 questions was designed, with the aim to find out the trends of use of public spaces in the city, the attitudes of residents towards street art and other small-scale initiatives in public spaces implemented in the recent years, possibilities of creating landscape architecture based on ecological ideas in urban environment, the attitude of inhabitants towards community spaces and community space design in the city, etc. 100 residents of Kaunas participated in this online administered survey. The survey has demonstrated general positive attitude towards contemporary design trends of public spaces and public art; however, the surveyed population expressed preferences towards fully equipped public spaces offering possibilities for a wide range of activities.

scholarly journals An Urban Revolution Through Age Friendly Cities? The Case Of Toronto

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Joy
Keyword(s):  
Senior Citizens ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Public Provision ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
Policy Program ◽  
The City

This dissertation examines the claim that Age Friendly Cities (AFCs) represents an effective and revolutionary policy approach to population aging. The AFC approach is a placebased policy program intended to enhance the ‘fit’ between senior citizens and their environment. Mainstream accounts of AFCs claim that the program represents a paradigmatic shift in the way we think about aging, to move away from an individual health deficit approach to one that seeks to improve local environments by empowering seniors and local policy actors. However, initial critical literature notes that while AFCs may offer the potential to expand social and physical infrastructure investments to accommodate diverse population needs, they are being popularized in a conjuncture where the public sector is being restructured through narrow projects of neoliberalism that call for limiting public redistribution. This literature calls for further empirical studies to better understand the gap between AFC claims and practice. I heed this call through a qualitative case study of AFCs in the City of Toronto; a particularly relevant case because the recent Toronto Seniors Strategy has been critiqued for being more symbolic than substantive. My research represents a critical policy study as I understand AFCs not as a technical policy tool but as a political object attractive to conflicting progressive and neoliberal projects that use rhetorical and practical strategies to ensure their actualization. My approach is normative as I seek to provide insight for a transformative ‘right to the city’ for senior citizens through the AFC approach. I use literature on citizenship to understand the multiplicity of political projects that seek to expand or narrow the relations between people, environments and institutions through the AFC program. This understanding is based on the meanings 82 different policy actors from local government, the non-profit sector, academia, and other levels of government make of their everyday work in creating age-friendly environments. The broad question I ask is: How do local policy actors understand the rhetoric and practice of AFCs in Toronto and how do these understandings illustrate particular expansive and narrow political projects that affect the development of a right to the city for senior citizens through this policy program? I begin with an initial Case Chapter that scopes age friendly policy work in Toronto from a ‘seeing like a city’ perspective that identifies the complex multi-scalar and multi-actor nature of this policy domain. The Recognizing Seniors and Role of Place Chapters then examine AFCs rhetorically with respect to how local policy actors understand the ‘person’ and the ‘environment’. The Rescaling Redistribution and Restructuring Governance Chapters explore the practice of AFCs, including how local policy actors understand their capacities to design and deliver age-friendly services and amenities and the institutional mechanisms at their disposal to action AFCs. My findings challenge the claim that the AFC policy approach is effective, let alone revolutionary. I learn from policy actors that narrow projects of restructuring work to assemble seemingly progressive rhetoric and practice around active aging and localism to reduce universal public provision, expand the role of private citizens and their families to provide care, and use local policy actors as residual providers of last resort. My research documents how more expansive understandings of senior citizens as rights bearers and the role of the public and non-profit sector to recognize and redistribute on this basis are also in operation. Understanding these political projects more deeply through the AFC policy program helps me to offer policy insight as to what is needed both rhetorically and practically to craft a more effective and revolutionary alternative AFC model based on a right to the city for senior citizens.

City Boosterism through Internet Marketing

2011 ◽  
pp. 130-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Isabel Huerta-Carvajal ◽  
Luis Felipe Luna-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Strategy Development ◽  
City Marketing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Marketing Activities ◽  
The City

Local governments around the world are becoming aware of the importance of identifying and marketing their local assets to promote economic competitiveness. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have proven useful in supporting marketing activities in the private sector, but there is still little exploration on their use in the public sector. However, ICT effectiveness is constrained by institutional arrangements and the coordination of the marketing efforts with other government processes such as urban planning and strategy development. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the strategic scaffolding for ICT as a key component of a city’s marketing strategy using as an example the city of Puebla in Mexico. Although city marketing efforts and ICT use are still at its initial stages in the city, lessons from current efforts in Puebla are related to the key role of stakeholder networks, ICT interoperability, Geographic Information Systems, and government program continuity.

Exercising Power in the City

2020 ◽  
pp. 398-464
Author(s):  
Veronica West-Harling
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The City

This chapter shows the exercising of power in action in the public space. It looks at who ‘owns’ this, the Christianization of it in Rome, and the increasing role of the papacy in appropriating and in running it, revalorizing it as part of Rome’s Christian past and present, expressed through pilgrimage. This appropriation is contested by the secular aristocracy, which in turn appropriates the public space and rewrites the topography of the city in the tenth century. The use of the public space as an area of either social cohesion or conflict is studied, through the ceremonies, elections, oaths, processions, assemblies, justice and defence meetings; but also riots, conspiracies, and contested elections. This space of cohesion or conflict is fundamental to the creation of the unity and sense of identity of the city, especially around the patron saint or, sometimes, around or indeed against an imperial ruler

Branding Ideas for the Tokyo Olympics 2020

2017 ◽  
pp. 304-322
Author(s):  
Erica Liu
Keyword(s):  
Planning Process ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Event Tourism ◽  
Mega Event ◽  
The City

Tokyo successfully won the bid for the 2020 Olympic Games. When planning for mega event tourism such as the Olympics, cities reorder public spaces and arenas often with a long term vision, a legacy. This vision expresses the role of the event in achieving the desired future and goals of the hosting city. The planning process involves not only animating the city for staged spectacles; but also rebranding the city and managing how tourism is consumed - the planned and unplanned experience of consumption. Leisure motivated event tourists are seeking unique, personal and socially rewarding experiences (Getz, 2010). These experiences may be managed through the context in which people act. By altering the context, people's experience of the event changes; hence the perception of the host city and the Olympics' brand may also change. The author is therefore proposing branding directions to enhance these experiences.

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