scholarly journals Bodies and everyday practices in designed urban environments

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Monica Degen ◽  
Gillian Rose ◽  
Begum Basdas
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
New Town ◽  
Shopping Centre ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
The City

In recent years, the centres of many towns and cities have been reshaped by urban design projects, but little attention has been paid to how these transformations are experienced everyday by users of the city. In other words: how do the users of urban centers, such as shoppers, cleaners, or workers, perceive these changes, as embodied subjects in specific material environments? This paper analyses how bodies in two intensely designed urban spaces–the shopping centre of Milton Keynes, a 1960s new town, and Bedford’s recently redeveloped historic town centre–are affected by elements of the built environment. ’Affected’ is a term borrowed from Latour (2004),and the paper works with, and elaborates, some of his and others’ work on how bodies are effectuated by other entities. Such Latourian work pays a great deal of attention to how bodies are affected by both human and non-human entities of many kinds, and we examine how certain aspects of the built environment in these two towns affect bodies in specific ways. However, we also emphasise the variability in this process, in particular that bodies seem unaware–or ambivalently aware–of many entities’ affordances.

The Urban Improvise

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Kloeckl
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Design Theory ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Embedded Devices ◽  
Fluid Behavior ◽  
Planned Behaviors

The built environment in today's hybrid cities is changing radically. The pervasiveness of networked mobile and embedded devices has transformed a predominantly stable background for human activity into spaces that have a more fluid behavior. Based on their capability to sense, compute, and act in real time, urban spaces have the potential to go beyond planned behaviors and, instead, change and adapt dynamically. These interactions resemble improvisation in the performing arts, and this book offers a new improvisation-based framework for thinking about future cities. The book moves beyond the smart city concept by unlocking performativity, and specifically improvisation, as a new design approach and explores how city lights, buses, plazas, and other urban environments are capable of behavior beyond scripts. Drawing on research of digital cities and design theory, the book makes improvisation useful and applicable to the condition of today's technology-imbued cities and proposes a new future for responsive urban design.

scholarly journals Street Cries and the urban ritornelle

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Jacob Kreutzfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Northern European ◽  
The Social ◽  
Environmental Relations ◽  
The City ◽  
Fertile Area

Street cries, though rarely heard in Northern European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban spaces. Paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call ‘the refrain’, the ritualised and stylised practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material, documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen in the years 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as a musical and a spatial phenomenon, respectably. Such studies – from their individual perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are developed and heard specifically in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.

scholarly journals Comparison of Spatial Layout of Tall Buildings Clustered in Circular, Rectangular, and Linear Geographical Areas and Impact on Skyline

Buildings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Ayu Wandira Puspitasari ◽  
Jongwook Kwon
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Tall Building ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The City ◽  
Linear Cluster

Modern cities with tall building clusters can create powerful and distinctive features on the skyline more so than those with scattered tall buildings. In terms of their role in the city, tall building clusters can improve the image of the city, provide for high population density, and distinguish the urban centers. However, the planning of tall building clusters needs to be conducted using in-depth analysis in response to the spatial context to create an attractive skyline. This research attempts to compare different layouts of tall building clusters organized in circular, rectangular, and linear geographical areas. Their impact on the skyline was determined by analyzing the visibility and height transitions of these tall building clusters. Grasshopper was used to calculate the degree of surface visibility of these tall buildings from observers in urban spaces. To quantify the height transition of the cluster, the obstructed buildings were identified and mapped on the skyline viewed from a specific viewpoint. The results showed that the linear cluster had high visibility, followed by the circular and rectangular clusters. Decreasing the heights from the center to the periphery supported the focal point of the cluster.

scholarly journals Supporting Children’s Independent Activities in Smart and Playable Public Places

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8352
Author(s):  
Chiara Garau ◽  
Alfonso Annunziata
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Historic Center ◽  
Physical Attributes ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
The City

The global process of urbanization, and the modification of social interaction determined by the pandemic crisis, poses the issue of the place of vulnerable users and, in particular, children, within the contemporary city. This research aimed to elaborate a theoretical and methodological framework, based on the concepts of affordance and capability, for analyzing the potential of public spaces to enable and support children’s independent activities. This potential, or meaningful usefulness, is expressed by the Index of Meaningful Usefulness of public Urban Spaces (IUIS). The latter is calculated via the tool ‘Opportunities for Children in Urban Spaces’ (OCUS). This methodology is applied to the analysis of significant public spaces within the historic center of the city of Iglesias in Sardinia, Italy. The results reveal adequate usefulness of the selected spaces, while underlining criticalities related to intrinsic spatial and physical attributes. The application to the case study confirms the validity of the theoretical and methodological framework embodied in the OCUS tool for supporting urban design and planning by orienting place-shaping processes towards the acknowledgement of children’s needs.

scholarly journals The sustainable urban design on the example of Oświęcim

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 00080
Author(s):  
Krystyna Paprzyca
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Environmental Aspects ◽  
Spatial Management ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

The quality of the urban environment determines a lasting relationship between a man and his place of residence. Sustainable management of the urban spaces is crucial as it directly affects their quality. The article analyses the results of the sustainability regarding spatial, socio-economic, technical and environmental aspects, which are one of the many conditions that contribute to the proper functioning of urban life. They also influence the quality of life and residence in the urban environment. There are different ways of expressing the development of the cities defined by specific indicators. They focus mainly on development of the quality of life - social, economic and environmental development. The sustainable urban design is related to issues connected with the form and spatial management. This topic is presented on the example of the city of Oświęcim - the Old Town district with the surrounding area.

Integrated urban design and open storm drainage in our urban environments: merging drainage techniques into our city's urban spaces

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misagh Mottaghi ◽  
Henrik Aspegren ◽  
Karin Jönsson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Transition ◽  
Storm Drainage ◽  
Local Integration ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Technical Solutions

Flooding is the most common natural hazard in Europe. Cities cannot rely only on underground solutions which are expensive and inflexible. In order to reduce the negative impacts of flood, open and surface solutions play a key role in the efficiency of urban drainage systems. Utilizing the earth's surface as part of sustainable water infrastructure, also as powerful element for creating the space, adds multiple values to our urban environments. This article suggests a framework to increase the likelihood of turning the idea of flood resilient city to a best practice. The paper is clarifying the design principles. The target is turning a space to a functional place by applying drainage techniques in urban design, which requires robust local integration between the urban space and technical solutions. The study of storm water management in the Swedish and Dutch contexts was an important base for this formulation. Considering the important share of urban design in urban transition success, the paper is focusing on categorizing the required steps of flood resilient urban design.

Narrating and explaining urban stories through inherited visual urban vocabulary

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matevz Juvancic ◽  
Spela Verovsek
Keyword(s):  
Educational Research ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Visual Sociology ◽  
Psychological Theories

This article proposes and formulates the visual urban vocabulary for tacit, intuitive, experiential, but none-the-less fast, plausible, generative, informative, sketch-like composition and visualization of urban stories. Through visual and socially ‘inherited’ clues, the authors explain the complexities of urban spaces, their elements, interrelations and cause–effect phenomena to expert and non-expert public alike. The rules, syntax and overall advantages of such a vocabulary are grounded in the existing linguistic, cognitive, psychological theories, visual sociology and theories of urban design, combined and supported by the authors’ own research into visualizations and tools for evaluating, understanding and presenting urban spaces. With many illustrations, the article demonstrates the use for – and the use of – generic urban stories in discussions about urbanity, urban environments, livable places, etc. and positions them into educational, research and participatory planning and commercial contexts.

scholarly journals Supporting Children’s Independent Activities in Smart and Playable Public Places

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Garau ◽  
Alfonso Annunziata
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Historic Center ◽  
Physical Attributes ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
The City

The global process of urbanization, and the modification of social interaction determined by the pandemic crisis poses the issue of the place of vulnerable users, and in particular children, within the contemporary city. This research aims to elaborate a theoretical and methodological framework, based on the concepts of affordance and capability, for analyzing the potential of public spaces to enable and support children’s independent activities. This potential, or meaningful usefulness, is expressed by the Index of Meaningful Usefulness of public Urban Spaces (IUIS). The latter is calculated via the tool ‘Opportunities for Children in Urban Spaces’ (OCUS). This methodology is applied to the analysis of significant public spaces within the historic center of the city of Iglesias in Sardinia, Italy. The results reveal adequate usefulness of the selected spaces, while underlining criticalities related to intrinsic spatial and physical attributes. The application to the case study confirms the validity of the theoretical and methodological framework embodied in the OCUS tool for supporting urban design and planning by orienting place-shaping processes towards the acknowledgement of children’s needs.

Introduction: music, the city and the modern experience

Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-605
Author(s):  
MARKIAN PROKOPOVYCH
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Local Development ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Cultural Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
The City

It is somewhat surprising that music has only recently become a serious subject for urban historians. Musicologists and music historians, urban geographers, planners and all others who deal with diverse aspects of local development, cultural industry and the built environment have fared much better in tackling the fundamental social implications of music in a particular locality. It is not an accident that, for example, the recent volume ofBuilt Environment, ‘Music and the city’, edited by an economic geographer, Robert C. Kloosterman, deals with urban spaces of creativity and the role of black music today, some of which have by now an ascribed ‘urban’ adjective in North America.1It is also only natural, however, that Kloosterman's enquiry should concentrate on music in the city of the present and rarely venture into the time periods before World War II.

Choreographing atmospheres in Copenhagen: Processes and positions between home and public

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110229
Author(s):  
Mikkel Bille ◽  
Bettina Hauge
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Urban Atmosphere ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Dynamic Positioning ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The City

This article explores how people choreograph spaces to feel particular ways through material objects and intangible phenomena like light and sound. Drawing on theories of atmospheres and ethnographic fieldwork in Copenhagen, we argue that while there has been a proliferation of research on atmospheres in urban studies, we also need to attend empirically to the processes through which they come into being, consolidate and coagulate. Through exploring the interplay between domestic and urban spaces, we highlight the volatility and inherently social character of atmospheres. This entails how people’s dynamic positioning within an urban atmosphere comes to matter for people’s sense of the city. We exemplify with one such sensation of the city through the concept of ‘midding’, as the feeling of comfortably being on the perimeter of a situation. Exploring atmospheric positionings and processes enlightens our understanding of the urban atmosphere and shows how shared atmospheric moments connect people in time and space, stressing the importance of urban design to allow for such sharing.

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