scholarly journals The City of Alexandria: Its Identity and Environment in the works of Alexandria’s Pioneer Painters

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Laila Abu El Seoud Mohamed Fadl

The unique location of Alexandria city in the Mediterranean Basin has attracted several artistic civilizations ever since the time of Ptolemy. This has been the case during the Roman era, and the subsequent eras throughout which Alexandria remained the window of Egypt and most of the Middle East to the European cultures and arts. As a result, Alexandria has witnessed the cultural and artistic renaissance during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, since "Muhammad Ali" –and his family–permitted the foreign delegations to come and form colonies fused with the human component of Alexandria that had a unique character. Consequently, the foreign artists’ rooms were widely spread and the Alexandrian pioneers of painting art, of the first and second generations, studied under their supervision. Despite being trained by foreigners, their sense of belonging to the Egyptian identity or their participation in laying groundwork for a national art project deeply rooted in the heritage of the nation wasn’t affected. However, they were receptive to maturely cope with the modernity of the western schools of arts. Mahmoud Said, a painter, after completing the art foundation phase, employed his art to portray the modern Egyptian man as a national hero. This portrayal was possible through his use of environmental elements and characters. Seif Wanli was one of the most receptive Egyptian painters to the modern and contemporary western schools of art. He was allegedly known to be unconcerned with the issue of national identity; however, Alexandria kept its high rank in his art despite being characterized by global features. Adham Wanli remained loyal to his impressive and symbolic realism as Alexandria, with all its components, was the core of his artistic creativity. Hamid Aweys left his hometown and went to Alexandria and spent most of his age therein. His belonging to the identity and environment of that ancient coastal city was the same as that of the previously mentioned artists. He was inspired by the city’s environmental and cultural elements in a distinctive way.

Author(s):  
Giovanna Borradori

As the processes of globalization transform cities into nodes of accumulation of financial and symbolic capital, it is fair to assume that urban contexts have never been more vulnerable to the systemic imperatives of the market. It is thus surprising that cities continue to be the site where the deepest social and political transformations come to the surface. What, then, preserves the city as a space of dissent? The claim of this chapter is that a critical reflection on the political agency of Northern and Southern cities has to start from asking what it means today to occupy the pavement of their streets. The argument explored here is that, in this age of molecular neoliberal encroachment and restructuring, it is a certain experience of dispossession, rather than the quest for identification and recognition, that makes the city the core of a shared experience of refuge and resistance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 47-82
Author(s):  
Dolly Kikon ◽  
Duncan McDuie-Ra

This chapter unravels the core tensions at the heart of Dimapur’s urban politics, the growth of a migrant city in a tribal territory. Beginning with the public lynching of rape accused Syed Farid Khan, we analyse the centrality of the incident to Dimapur’s demographic anxieties. Dimapur is a space settled from multiple directions by different communities (tribal and non-tribal) that engage in a variety of tactics turning settlements into neighbourhoods. We focus on place-making in Dimapur to explore the ways in which different communities from within and outside Nagaland create a sense of belonging in patches of the city, arguing that the tensions between migrant city and tribal territory produce and reflect a spatial order particular to Dimapur. This order appears cosmopolitan, though as the lynching showed, it can also be extremely fragile.


Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 51-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biljana Arandjelovic

Berlin Mitte is one of the most interesting parts of the city, located in the core of Berlin where every corner and stone can tell a story. Mitte, the cultural center of Berlin is also known as the political and economic hub of Berlin. This paper explores the urban and historical image of two important parts of Berlin Mitte district: Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsta?e. Friedrichstra?e, as the main shopping and business street in this area, was planned with great attention by Prussian authorities, while the area around Alexanderplatz grew up randomly and its streets did not follow any special urban patterns. All potential international investors wanted to come to Friedrichstra?e after the fall of the Wall, while Alexanderplatz was not so attractive to them. Many famous architects took part in numerous competitions regarding urban planning reconstructions of the famous Alex throughout the 20th century. These two areas of the Mitte district, Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsta?e, are very important for contemporary Berlin and both areas have different problems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ni Putu Suda Nurjani

Cities in Indonesia were initially formed through the transformation of various influences of power and power. Strength as an identity that can attract the outermost area to come to an area, while power lies in the personal strength of man as the leader of a region. These conditions have an impact on the development of the world of industry in the country. Transforming traditional city structures into a modern city, not only physically but also a basic transformation towards the concept of urbanity of its citizens. The urban village as an element of the city which is the identity of a region, still holds a traditional urbanity value system that is different from the conception of modern urbanity. This condition affects the development of industrial zones, such as what happened in Bajera Village, Selemadeg District, Tabanan Regency. The heterogeneity of the population of Bajera Village is one of the biggest indicators of the formation of an industrial zone. The existence of a transportation mode that connects the outermost areas of Bajera with the Core of Bajera Village is another driving factor that influences the growth of industrial estates. This study tried to explain descriptively qualitatively, a fact of regional development based on Asiatica Euphoria McGee's theory. The special attraction in the core of Bajera Village encourages residents in the outermost areas of Bajera to migrate to the core areas of Bajera Village with the aim of staying temporarily and to settle for long periods of time. This phenomenon is in line with the theory put forward by McGee, that the CBD (central business district) is formed due to the attraction of the core (core) and the ease of modes of transportation from peri urban areas to the CBD. This condition makes Bajera village the center of industrial and trade areas in the Selemadeg Barat region, Tabanan, Bali.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (March 2018) ◽  
Author(s):  
S.A Okanlawon ◽  
O.O Odunjo ◽  
S.A Olaniyan

This study examined Residents’ evaluation of turning transport infrastructure (road) to spaces for holding social ceremonies in the indigenous residential zone of Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. Upon stratifying the city into the three identifiable zones, the core, otherwise known as the indigenous residential zone was isolated for study. Of the twenty (20) political wards in the two local government areas of the town, fifteen (15) wards that were located in the indigenous zone constituted the study area. Respondents were selected along one out of every three (33.3%) of the Trunk — C (local) roads being the one mostly used for the purpose in the study area. The respondents were the residents, commercial motorists, commercial motorcyclists, and celebrants. Six hundred and forty-two (642) copies of questionnaire were administered and harvested on the spot. The Mean Analysis generated from the respondents’ rating of twelve perceived hazards listed in the questionnaire were then used to determine respondents’ most highly rated perceived consequences of the practice. These were noisy environment, Blockage of drainage by waste, and Endangering the life of the sick on the way to hospital; the most highly rated reasons why the practice came into being; and level of acceptability of the practice which was found to be very unacceptable in the study area. Policy makers should therefore focus their attention on strict enforcement of the law prohibiting the practice in order to ensure more cordial relationship among the citizenry, seeing citizens’ unacceptability of the practice in the study area.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvira Tarsitano ◽  
Alba Giannoccaro Rosa ◽  
Cecilia Posca ◽  
Giovanni Petruzzi ◽  
Michele Mundo ◽  
...  

AbstractThe sustainable urban redevelopment project to protect biodiversity was developed to regenerate the external spaces of an ancient rural farmhouse, Villa Framarino, in the regional Natural Park of Lama Balice, a shallow erosive furrow (lama) rich in biodiversity, between two suburbs of the city of Bari (Apulia, Italy) and close to the city airport. This work includes a complex system of activities aimed not only at a spatial revaluation, necessary to relaunch the urban image, but it is accompanied by interventions of a cultural, social, economic, environmental and landscape nature, aimed at increasing the quality of life, in compliance with the principles of sustainability and social participation. One of the means to revitalize a territory subject to redevelopment is the planning of events and activities of socio-cultural value that involve the population to revive the sense of belonging to the territory and the community and at the same time to protect the biodiversity of the urban park of the protected natural area.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402098725
Author(s):  
Susanne Frank

Since 2000, the City of Dortmund has pursued an ambitious flagship project in the district of Hoerde. On the enormous site of a former steel plant, and in the middle of an impoverished working class district, a large new upper-middle class residential area (Phoenix) has been developed around an artificial lake. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that the project has generated mixed feelings among longtime working class dwellers in the old part of Hoerde. Widespread enthusiasm about new lakeside living is interwoven with emotions of sadness and loss, reflecting a neighborhood transformation which unmistakably demonstrates their social, cultural, and political marginalization – feelings that were not allowed to become part of the jubilant official discourse which has marketed the Phoenix project as a shining example of the City’s successful post-industrial structural change. Ever since its announcement, the project has been blamed for triggering gentrification processes – despite the fact that there are still no empirical signs of rising rents or displacement. I argue that the concept of gentrification has been taken up so readily because it is popular, polyvalent, polemical, and critical, enabling citizens to find a language to denounce the blatant social inequalities and power imbalances that competitive urbanism has fostered in Dortmund. However, I also claim that the core of the prevailing sadness – the loss of the familiar neighborhood which could not be grieved over – remains under the radar of standard gentrification discourse. The article thus proposes neighborhood melancholy as a concept to account for the unclear, subconscious, and deeply ambivalent ways in which long-established residents experience their neighborhood’s transformation, expressed within the rubric of gentrification.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147737082098881
Author(s):  
Heleen J Janssen ◽  
Gerben JN Bruinsma ◽  
Frank M Weerman

The aim of the current study is to provide an empirical test of containment theory of Walter Reckless (1899–1988). The theory proposes that outer and inner containment hold adolescents back from delinquency even when external factors pull and push them toward it. This early control theory was ahead of its time, but never received the empirical attention it deserves. This article outlines the core theoretical concepts and the basic propositions in order to empirically examine their validity. We employed hybrid linear regression analysis using longitudinal survey data of 612 adolescents (12–18 years old) in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. The results indicate that outer and inner containment can be meaningfully distinguished, and that several but not all propositions of the theory are supported. Inner and outer containment function as a buffer against external pulls and are able to counteract the effect of increases in environmental pulls during adolescence. We conclude that containment theory is still a promising interaction theory that can help us understand why adolescents who experience external pulls toward delinquency are able to resist these influences.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahaa Mohamadi ◽  
Timo Balz ◽  
Ali Younes

Urban areas are subject to subsidence due to varying natural and anthropogenic causes. Often, subsidence is interpreted and correlated to a single causal factor; however, subsidence is usually more complex. In this study, we adopt a new model to distinguish different causes of subsidence in urban areas based on complexity. Ascending and descending Sentinel-1 data were analyzed using permanent scatterer interferometry (PS-InSAR) and decomposed to estimate vertical velocity. The estimated velocity is correlated to potential causes of subsidence, and modeled using different weights, to extract the model with the highest correlations among subsidence. The model was tested in Alexandria City, Egypt, based on three potential causes of subsidence: rock type, former lakes and lagoons dewatering (FLLD), and built-up load (BL). Results of experiments on the tested area reveal singular patterns of causal factors of subsidence distributed across the northeast, northwest, central south, and parts of the city center, reflecting the rock type of those areas. Dual causes of subsidence are found in the southwest and some parts of the southeast as a contribution of rock type and FLLD, whereas the most complex causes of subsidence are found in the southeast of the city, as the newly built-up areas interact with the rock type and FLLD to form a complex subsidence regime. Those areas also show the highest subsidence values among all other parts of the city. The accuracy of the final model was confirmed using linear regression analysis, with an R2 value of 0.88.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Edmund W. Cheng

Abstract This paper surveys the process of discursive contestation by intellectual agents in Hong Kong that fostered a counter-public sphere in China's offshore. In the post-war era, Chinese exiled intellectuals leveraged the colony's geopolitical ambiguity and created a displaced community of loyalists/dissenters that supported independent publishing venues and engaged in the cultural front. By the 1970s, homegrown and left-wing intellectuals had constructed a hybrid identity to articulate their physical proximity to, yet social distance from, the Chinese nation-state, as well as to appropriate their sense of belonging to the city-state, through confronting social injustice. In examining periodicals and interviewing public intellectuals, I propose that this counter-public sphere was defined first by its alternative voice, which contested various official discourses, second by its multifaceted inclusiveness, which accommodated diverse worldviews and subjectivities, and third by its critical platform, which nurtured social activism in undemocratic Chinese societies. I differentiate the permissive conditions that loosened constraints on intellectual agencies from the productive conditions that account for their penetration and diffusion. Habermas's idealized public sphere framework is revisited by bringing in ideational contestation, social configuration and cultural identity.


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