scholarly journals FACTUAL REFLECTION OF URBAN SPACE IN WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S SHORT PROSE

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia L. Fesyanova ◽  
Ekaterina A. Khuzina
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Modern World ◽  
American Writer ◽  
The Road ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The City ◽  
Artificial World ◽  
Intensive Search

American writer William Dean Howells led an intensive search for artistic means to represent reality throughout his creative journey. His creative method was characterized by an acute sensation of the world's objectivity and the understanding of art as a special language. In this article, various types of art (landscape, music) are examined by which the writer created a factographic reflection of the urban space that determined the artistic specifics of his works. The theme of the city and the motive of the road in W. D. Howells creative destiny became fundamental ones and were reflected in his small prose. The studied texts of the American writer focused the attention on the inner world and the feelings of the author-narrator. He has a phenomenal memory that helps to save not only the experienced events, but also the emotional fabric of his wanderings in detail. The urban pictures conveyed by W.D. Howells are as detailed as possible, demonstrate both the author's picture of the world and the specific norms of the urban space of the XIXth century. In the stories the writer shows such power of the urban environment, which adversely affects the development of urban culture, not only ecological but also psychological pollution occurs, the break with the surrounding reality and the construction of an artificial world. Thus, it allowed the author to combine documentality and artistic generalizations, confirming everything with specific names, titles, and events. Throughout the narrative in the small prose by W. D. Howells, the idea of the organic development of small towns and the existence in harmony with the surrounding natural environment is the main one, which is of enormous importance for the modern world. An original translation from English in the article was performed by the author.

The sound space of the city as a reflection of ‘‘the spirit of the times’’ and the inner world of the film hero

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Elena A. Rusinova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
The City

The theme of the artistic image of the city in film has been repeatedly considered in film studies from both historical and cultural perspectives. However, two aspects of the study of the theme remain virtually unexplored because they are associated with a professional analysis of such a specific area of filmmaking as sound directing. The first aspect is the role of the city in films as both visual and audio space; the second aspect is the significance of urban sounds in the creation of the inner world of a film character. This essay explores the director's vision of urban space and the possibilities of sound directing in the formation of the inner world of a character and his/her various mental conditions - through the use of sound textures of the urban environment. The author analyses several films about Georgia's capital Tbilisi, produced in different time periods. The vivid "sound face" of Tbilisi allows one to follow changes in the aesthetic approaches to the use of the city's sounds for the formation of the image of film characters in the cultural and historical context of particular films. The essay concludes that the urban space, with its huge range of sound phenomena, contributes to the formation of a polyphonic phonogram which could bring a film's semantics to higher aesthetic and intellectual levelsl.

scholarly journals The Contested Gallery: street art, ethnography and the search for urban understandings

AmeriQuests ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
The Road ◽  
The City

This is a paper on street art and its role as a form of artistic insurrection that challenges popular understandings of public space and urban visual culture. I would like to think of it as a field guide to urban seeing, a means of revising the way in which we view the cityscape and its imagery. It is a way of imagining the city as a canvas onto which ideas may be inscribed and reinterpreted, where resistance percolates up to those who look for it. It is here, in what Kathleen Stewart has called a “place by the side of the road” that the work of the street artist exists, slowly gurgling up through the cracks in the sidewalk and briefly illuminated by the yellow-white glow of the street lights. Street art most often takes the form of adhesive stickers, spray-painted stencils, and wheat-pasted posters, and while it shares many similar aesthetic and cultural characteristics with graffiti, street art embodies a unique ideology. Graffiti represents a territorialization of space (‘tagging’, or reclaiming urban spaces through the use of pseudonyms as territorial markings); street art represents a reterritorialization of space. Rather than taking space, street art attempts to re-purpose the existing urban environment. This paper seeks to reflect the changing dynamic of urban space through an analysis of the practice of street art. By examining the roles that street artists play in disrupting the flow of visual noise in the city, I will illuminate the cultural value and significance of this form of urban artistic resistance.

scholarly journals Improving road safety in small towns based on a systematic approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 341 ◽  
pp. 00028
Author(s):  
Irina Makarova ◽  
Gulnara Yakupova ◽  
Eduard Mukhametdinov
Keyword(s):  
Road Safety ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Road Accidents ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
The Road ◽  
Preliminary Identification ◽  
Priority Task ◽  
The City ◽  
Haddon Matrix

Currently improving road safety is the priority task in the field of transport management. In our opinion, making management decisions to reduce the road accidents number and injuries rate should be based on a systematic approach to identifying the accidents’ causes and severity. This can be achieved using, among other things, the analysis of statistical data on violations and accidents in dynamics. A model so-called the Haddon Matrix was used as a method of preliminary identification of influencing factors and possible measures for their elimination. The statistical analysis results are presented a particular settlement. It was revealed that the city specifics, namely the residents’ number, motorization rate and the road network and infrastructure characteristics, are reflected in the factors affecting the level of accidents rate and, as a consequence, on the measures necessary to reduce it.

scholarly journals POST-CATASTROPHIC CITY TEXT: THE CITY READING IN THE CITY IN THE POSTWAR EAST AND CENTRAL EUROPE

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Uilleam Blacker
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Practice Literature

In the material, the author addresses a multidimensional memory problem - not only as a constituent of social life but also as a feature of its functioning in urban space. The author presents the interpretations of memory against the background of urban transformations. The complexity and multidimensionality of this phenomenon are emphasized not only in the usual methodological field but also in literary practice. Literature acts as a means of accumulating memory despite the disappearance or destruction of one or the other in urban space. The traumatic experience is of particular importance. The example of the twentieth century reflects the various cases of the existence of memories of the tragic past. Kyiv, Lviv, Wroclaw, Kaliningrad and several other cities during the Second World War have faced the transformation of the usual landscape. That was both the realities of time and the policies against certain groups who have been harassed and destroyed. The practice of work and interaction with one or another component of the past, measures of governmental bodies are analyzed. After these tragic periods, the memory in a peculiar manner was lost. The cities in the region in one way or another came to return and actualization of this experience in the modern world. Critical in this process is the literary practice that "returns" and "opens" the memory of urban space. Complex topics require the involvement of a large number of disciplines in order to form an objective vision of the urban past.

Cities in the Roman World

Classics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Sears
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Public Writing ◽  
Mediterranean History ◽  
Rural Sites ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

The Roman Empire was an empire of cities. The city was the primary organizational building block of the empire; almost the whole empire was divided into city territories. Despite this, there are problems when defining a Roman city. In this article the “Roman city” is understood as an urban space within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Even on these terms, given that this definition encompasses over a thousand years of history and a space that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, the “Roman” city is a much-varied entity. Furthermore, many of these cities predated the Roman conquest, complicating analysis of what is “Roman” about them; it is perhaps better to think of them as cities that existed under Roman rule. It is also important to note that the Roman legal definition of the city did not just comprise the urban area but also the rural hinterland with its villages and small towns that were dependent on it. In any definition of the Roman city, there is also a question of whether we should include the vici (small towns) of these territories. Although not institutionally independent, some demonstrate aspects of urban life, for instance the erection of public buildings, while others contain more-industrial installations than many cities. If these settlements developed enough, they might petition for their freedom and become a city in their own right; Orcistus in Asia Minor famously managed to free itself from Nacolia by appealing to Constantine I (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum III 352 = 7000). The city itself, as a special category of study, has come under attack on numerous fronts. Horden and Purcell 2000 (The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, cited in the City and Economic Models), for instance, argues that the city was not ontologically different from other settlement types (although others have pointed to the importance of the density of specialists making such places qualitatively different), while the concentration on the “Roman” city at the expense of rural sites has sometimes been viewed as an expression of cultural colonialism. Because of the nature of the evolution of urban space, the examination of the Roman city has been inherently bound up in the study of Romanization and has benefited and suffered as a result. Examinations of the Roman city encompass a variety of approaches, from assessments of institutions and legal charters to demography, urban religion and Christianization, monumentalization, public writing, and the city as lived experience.

From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-42
Author(s):  
Amal Eqeiq
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Palestinian Literature ◽  
Literary Topography ◽  
The City

This article explores border crossing and the Palestinian city as a literary metropolis—two major themes in the works of emerging Palestinian novelists in Israel. It looks at the “re-Palestinization” of urban space by writers who belong to a post-Oslo generation of Palestinian intellectuals that left villages and small towns in Israel to go and study, work, and live in the city. What distinguishes the literature of this generation is its negotiation of border crossing in a fragmented geography and its engagement with the city as a space of paradoxical encounter between a national imaginary and a settler-colonial reality. Based on a critical reading of their works, the article argues that Adania Shibli and Ibtisam Azem challenge colonial border discourse, exposing the ongoing Zionist erasure of the Palestinian city and creating a new topography for Palestinian literature. The article also traces the role of these writers in the “twinning” of Haifa and Ramallah starting in the late 1990s, and it examines how this literary and cultural “sisterhood” informs spatial resistance.

scholarly journals Shopping, Surfing, and Sightseeing: Lessons from the City of Choice, Branson, Missouri

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Sanders ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Ozark Mountains ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Disney World ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Tv Watching ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City

Branson, the largest in the cluster of small towns in the southwestern section of Missouri has become the fastest growing, particularly in terms of greatest tax revenue, in the state as well as the Number One Coach Destination for American vacationers and the Number Two Vacation Destination in America, just behind Disney World in Orlando and just ahead of the Mall of America in Minneapolis. 4500 miles from Lisbon, nestled in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the once sleepy little town of Branson, with an actual population 3706, is now the “country music capital of the universe,” as so stated in 1991 by Morley Safer on the Number One news show “60 Minutes.” This presentation will examine Branson, Missouri as an emblematic “City of Choice” in which the future public realm in America is designed by and constructed with an architecture of entertaining leisurely delights and an urban space confined to the interior of the automobile which seem to embody and epitomize our post-industrial desires as we search for “souvenirs of experience.” If, the apparent “success” of Disney World, Mall of America and Las Vegas portend of a society that regards shopping as a cultural engagement, leisure as a means of self-definition and history as a passive theme-park experience, then one can propose that Americans love to shop, surf and sightsee. It will be the assumption of this paper that Americans love to shop, to shop in the traditional sense; to surf as it applies and extends shopping, thereby making it the most pervasive paradigm for the exercise of choice; and to sightsee as it is a spectator activity similar to TV watching and auto-driving in America.

scholarly journals Problematization of the development of non-capital cities in the works of Soviet and post-Soviet researchers

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-154
Author(s):  
Olga A. Bogatova ◽  
Guzel I. Makarova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Spatial Inequality ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
General Dynamics ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

The article is dedicated to a critical analysis of the theoretical and methodological developments of Soviet and Russian scientists in the field of urbanism and sociology of the city. The relevance of this work is seen in the fact that today the desire of a significant part of Russian citizens (especially young people) to move to Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of large cities - centres of the subjects of the Russian Federation leads to a weakening of the spatial framework of the country. This makes it important to study the topic in the context of urbanisation processes in general. The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of the approaches of domestic scientists to the problems of the city, and non-capital cities in particular, as well as their general dynamics in the late Soviet, post-Soviet and modern periods. In the 1970s–1980s urbanisation processes in the USSR were subordinated to production (the leading theme was “city and labor”); the settlement strategy continued, the advantages and contradictions of new cities were noted, the importance of including small towns in the agglomeration was emphasised. The foundations of urban social planning were developed, the ideology of "developed socialism" contributed to the formation of the problematics of the urban way of life and communities. During the Perestroika period, many of the principles of urban development were formulated in opposition to the Soviet ones. The city was understood as a self-developing system, the individual was declared the measure of urban processes. The settlement system, that determines the most acute problems of new cities, was critically assessed. Differentiation of the capital and non-capital cities of Russia, serious contradictions in the development of small towns, and the weakening of agglomerations were noted. The focus was made on maintaining the large and largest urban centres. In the 2000s, extreme criticism of Soviet urbanisation was overcome, strategic urban planning, the idea of preserving the network of small and medium-sized cities, and the development of agglomerations as the basis for the country's spatial development were promoted. The direction of research of intercity and intracity stratification in the context of problems of spatial inequality, urban activism and urban social environment was being developed. The authors come to the conclusion that Russia has accumulated a wealth of experience in studying urbanisation processes. This suggests that in the future it will be possible to successfully combine the use of cities as reference points for the country's integration with the planning ideas developed during the Soviet period and models for the formation of a comfortable urban space, based on the activities of local communities.

scholarly journals Transformações urbanas em Juiz de Fora-MG: a avenida Barão do Rio Branco e a história da cidade / Urban transformations in Juiz de Fora-MG: the Barão do Rio Branco avenue and the city's history

Redes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
Antonio Ferreira Colchete Filho ◽  
Tiago Goretti Ribeiro ◽  
Victor Hugo Godoy Nascimento
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Urban Transport ◽  
Urban Center ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
The Road ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So

Resumo A relação entre as cidades e os meios de locomoção nela introduzidos influenciam diretamente as características do espaço urbano ao longo dos anos de sua formação. Neste sentido, o presente artigo busca apresentar as intervenções ocorridas no espaço/tempo em Juiz de Fora/MG, sobretudo as relacionadas a avenida Barão do Rio Branco, com mais de 6 km de extensão no centro urbano, como potencialidade de evidenciar fatos e transformações vivenciadas pela cidade. Para tanto, abordou-se questões sobre o dimensionamento e características das vias como conformadoras do espaço urbano, apresentando documentos que registram desde a origem do município, formação, transformações e intervenções que se deram nesta avenida desde sua primeira formação em 1836. Os principais fatos foram organizados de forma cronológica e analisados com o viés urbanístico, verificando-se que grande parte destas intervenções estão relacionados à estrutura viária da área central da cidade, sobretudo a partir dos anos de 1970, quando as demandas por transporte urbano se intensificavam. A necessidade das intervenções na avenida como um reflexo do crescimento da população e de suas novas necessidades, confirmam a importância desta via no desenvolvimento do centro urbano do município. Abstract The relationship between cities and the means of locomotion within it directly influences the characteristics of urban space over the years of its formation. In this sense, this article aims to present the interventions occurred in the space/time in Juiz de Fora/MG, especially those related to Barão do Rio Branco Avenue, street with more than 6Km of extension that cuts through the inner city, as potential evidence of facts and changes experienced by the city. In order to do so, we address questions about the design and characteristics of the roads as conformers of the urban space, presenting documents that record, from the origin of the municipality, the formation, transformations and interventions that have taken place in this avenue since 1836. The main events were organized chronologically and analyzed with the urban approach, verifying that most of these interventions are related to the road structure of the central area of the city, especially since the 1970s, when the demand for urban transport was intensified. The need of interventions on the avenue as a reflection of the urbanization process and its changing needs, confirm the importance of this pathway in the development of the urban center of the city.

The City

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Humpherys
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Modern World ◽  
City Life ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The 19th century saw the rise of the world’s first great metropolis, London, and the transformation of several northern British small towns into the first major industrial cities. These great cities offered the pleasures of anonymity and the dangers of alienation. Urbanization was both a great leveler and a producer of new classes such as the merchant, the professional classes, and the gentry. Perhaps the most important element in these developments was the railway, the building of which transformed the landscape, the cityscape, and individual lives. Though at the beginning of the century little could be recognized as modern, by the end all the elements that would identify the modern world were in place—seemingly infinite variety, endless change in the built environment, and startling contrasts, as well as overcrowding, dirt, noise, crime, poverty, and ostentatious display. New opportunities of all sorts also arose in these cities—for work, for criminal activity, for adventure, and for pleasure and distress. The Victorians themselves were both fascinated and horrified by their cities, especially London, which, though not an industrial city, also presented the combined effects of rapid and uncontrolled growth. The contradictory responses generated by all this change and development resulted in an impressive amount of writing, especially in the periodical press, which itself was a product of urbanization. Journalists, a new class dubbed the Fourth Estate, tried to gain an overview of the constantly changing city, and novelists devised narrative and symbolic ways to represent the totality of the city. Much of this work was about the social problems, but there were also many sketches that were full of delight at the variety and oddity of city life. Most serious scholarship on the Victorian city, however, began only after World War II, partly due to early-20th-century negative responses to the Victorians’ perceived moralistic values and limitations on personal development. Among the first to react against anti-Victorianism were campaigners seeking to preserve Victorian buildings—the founding of the Victorian Society in 1957 was a sign of this shift. Historians were not far behind in collecting and mining the archives not only of London but of all the great cities, especially Manchester. Literary scholars also began to analyze the impact of the city on literary and artistic production. Though the scholarly interest in urban history never ceased, later-20th-century scholars and critics also began to write about more specific aspects of the city—gender, nationalism, race, and sectarianism. Finally, the subject of the problematics of representing the city, in particular London, came under critical attention in the first decade of the 21st century.

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