scholarly journals Augmenting the City: The Photo-Realistic Animation of a Historic Building and its influence on spatial perception and meaning

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Moritz Schweiger ◽  
◽  
Jeffrey Wimmer ◽  
Gregor Nagler ◽  
Ruben Schlagowski ◽  
...  

Augmented Reality (AR), defined as the holographic overlay of physical space with virtual objects in real time (Azuma, 1997), can be considered a prime example of mediatization. This development is particularly evident in the public space of the “mediatised city” (Hepp, Simon & Sowinska, 2018), being a focal point of the latest media technologies already overlaid with a multitude of AR content. But how does AR change the perception and meaning of urban space? And how can researchers capture methodically the appropriation of complex, large-scaled AR content experienced via high-tech AR glasses? To answer these questions, a historical building, that had been destroyed during the Second World War, was reconstructed as a holographic animation on a public city square. In order to resurrect this building in AR, old photographs, paintings and postcards were evaluated and used to create a virtual model in the original size and place it at its original location. The test subjects were then able to view the hologram from various different angles using AR glasses (Microsoft HoloLens 2), move freely around the square and even enter it. Combining quantitative, before-and-after questionnaires and qualitative thinking-aloud protocols, our results show that the holographic animation of a historical building can influence both the sensual-aesthetic perception and the personal meaning of a public square for city dwellers. Specifically, our test subjects perceived differences in its accessibility, coherence and aesthetics, simplicity, atmosphere and legibility. The meaning of the square was altered with regard to personal memories (= the self), typical groups of people (= others) and certain opportunities (= environment) associated with it by city dwellers.

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 253-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asri A. MUHAMMAD ◽  
Firdawaty MARASABESSY ◽  
Arif KUSUMAWANTO ◽  
Ardhya NARESWARI

Crowded city will be impact to the temperature of urban areas. This condition is commonly known as the urban heat island effect. It’s impact to the activity that happened in the urban space. Recently, Fort Oranje (urban space/square) that has history value has been revitalized as an urban public space that is crowd visited by Ternate’s people. Therefore, the thermal comfort becomes an important thing and that is available to the users. The research is aim to know the influence of space configuration change to the aspect of thermal comfort in the urban public space. The method that is used in this research is empirical measurement and simulation method using Envi-MET software. This method is used to simulate the condition of thermal area in Fort Oranje. The result of this research showed that space configuration that change before and after the development of Ternate waterfront city impact to the thermal conditions in Fort Oranje public space.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-551
Author(s):  
Olga V. Artemova ◽  
Natalia M. Logacheva ◽  
Anastasia N. Savchenko

Urban studies examine the development of industrial cities regarding the well-being of citizens, their needs and quality of life. Due to a new understanding of industrial cities as towns for people, the role and place of man in the urban space should be reconsidered. We developed a model for structuring the industrial city space based on a retrospective analysis of urban development. Further, we revealed the characteristics of shrinking cities and determined how the harmonisation of the urban environment influences the society. The interaction between physical and social spaces was analysed from the perspective of object- subject relations, enriching the understanding of the categories of place and entity (residential area, public space, etc.), as well as allowing citizens to deliberately transform their environment. Using content analysis, we confirmed that the harmonisation of the urban environment (physical space) stabilises social relations, since the population, government and business should reach a consensus to achieve the city’s goal and satisfy their own needs and interests. The results of the urban space analysis reveal the disparities between historical and modern buildings, natural and urbanised areas, industrial and residential city areas, etc., that should be eliminated. The directions of harmonisation of the urban space (revitalisation of industrial facilities and marginal areas, housing renovation) are proposed. We tested different approaches on the example of cities in the Chelyabinsk region by analysing their development stages, signs of decline, and urban characteristics. We are continuing to study the development of industrial cities. Public authorities and local governments can use the obtained results to elaborate urban development strategies, as well as implement the national projects «Housing and Urban Environment» and «Demography» at the regional and municipal levels.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1192-1209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Willems

Recent characterizations of publics – as expressed through concepts like ‘networked publics’, ‘hashtag publics’, ‘ad hoc publics’, ‘calculated publics’, and ‘engineered publics’ – or notions describing processes of circulation – such as ‘virality’, ‘shareability’, and ‘spreadability’ – fail to appreciate that publics are not just digitally constituted but also manifest themselves in, and are intimately connected to, physical spaces. ‘The politics of things’ refers to the way in which things, objects, infrastructures, and physical space remain crucial to political communication in a digital age as well as to the manner in which bodies, objects, and urban space become politicized and digitally remediated. Drawing on fieldwork carried out during the 2011 and 2016 Zambian elections, this article proposes a material, mobile, and spatial approach to political communication. It hereby extends the relevance of the recent material and infrastructural turn in media and communications in a political context. It examines the physical recirculation of digital content, the digital remediation of physical space, and the communicative role of bodies, objects, and the built environment. Problematizing common dualisms between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ as well as ‘public sphere’ and ‘public space’, it argues for an exploration of publicness and processes of circulation across digital and physical spaces.


Author(s):  
Deonnie Moodie

At the turn of the twenty-first century, middle-class men and women formed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and filed public interest litigation suits (PILs) in order to expand temple space, knock down buildings that block views of Kālīghāṭ’s façade, and remove undesirable materials and populations from its environs. Employing the language of cleanliness and order, they worked (and continue to work) to make Kālīghāṭ a “must-see” tourist attraction. Scholarship has shown that India’s new middle classes—those produced through India’s economic liberalization policies in the 1990s—desire highly visible forms demonstrating their modernity as well as their uniqueness on the international stage of urban space. The example of Kālīghāṭ indicates how India’s new middle classes build on the work of the old middle classes to deploy the temple as emblematic of both their modernity and their Indian-ness. In so doing, they read the idioms of public space onto sacred space.


Food Security ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kiaka ◽  
Shiela Chikulo ◽  
Sacha Slootheer ◽  
Paul Hebinck

AbstractThis collaborative and comparative paper deals with the impact of Covid-19 on the use and governance of public space and street trade in particular in two major African cities. The importance of street trading for urban food security and urban-based livelihoods is beyond dispute. Trading on the streets does, however, not occur in neutral or abstract spaces, but rather in lived-in and contested spaces, governed by what is referred to as ‘street geographies’, evoking outbreaks of violence and repression. Vendors are subjected to the politics of municipalities and the state to modernize the socio-spatial ordering of the city and the urban food economy through restructuring, regulating, and restricting street vending. Street vendors are harassed, streets are swept clean, and hygiene standards imposed. We argue here that the everyday struggle for the street has intensified since and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobility and the use of urban space either being restricted by the city-state or being defended and opened up by street traders, is common to the situation in Harare and Kisumu. Covid-19, we pose, redefines, and creates ‘new’ street geographies. These geographies pivot on agency and creativity employed by street trade actors while navigating the lockdown measures imposed by state actors. Traders navigate the space or room for manoeuvre they create for themselves, but this space unfolds only temporarily, opens for a few only and closes for most of the street traders who become more uncertain and vulnerable than ever before, irrespective of whether they are licensed, paying rents for vending stalls to the city, or ‘illegally’ vending on the street.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5284
Author(s):  
Timothy Van Renterghem ◽  
Francesco Aletta ◽  
Dick Botteldooren

The deployment of measures to mitigate sound during propagation outdoors is most often a compromise between the acoustic design, practical limitations, and visual preferences regarding the landscape. The current study of a raised berm next to a highway shows a number of common issues like the impact of the limited length of the noise shielding device, initially non-dominant sounds becoming noticeable, local drops in efficiency when the barrier is not fully continuous, and overall limited abatement efficiencies. Detailed assessments of both the objective and subjective effect of the intervention, both before and after the intervention was deployed, using the same methodology, showed that especially the more noise sensitive persons benefit from the noise abatement. Reducing the highest exposure levels did not result anymore in a different perception compared to more noise insensitive persons. People do react to spatial variation in exposure and abatement efficiency. Although level reductions might not be excessive in many real-life complex multi-source situations, they do improve the perception of the acoustic environment in the public space.


2021 ◽  
pp. 204361062199583
Author(s):  
Thaís de Carvalho

In Andean countries, the pishtaco is understood as a White-looking man that steals Indigenous people’s organs for money. In contemporary Amazonia, the Shipibo-Konibo people describe the pishtaco as a high-tech murderer, equipped with a sophisticated laser gun that injects electricity inside a victim’s body. This paper looks at this dystopia through Shipibo-Konibo children’s drawings, presenting composite sketches of the pishtaco and maps of the village before and after an attack. Children portrayed White men with syringes and electric guns as weaponry, while discussing whether organ traffickers could also be mestizos nowadays. Meanwhile, the comparison of children’s maps before and after the attack reveals that lit lampposts are paradoxically perceived as a protection at night. The paper examines changing features of pishtacos and the dual capacity of electricity present in children’s drawings. It argues that children know about shifting racial dynamics in the village’s history and recognise development’s oxymoron: the same electricity that can be a weapon is also used as a shield.


Author(s):  
Martin Lundsteen ◽  
Miquel Fernández González

AbstractRecent studies have argued for more nuanced understandings of zero tolerance (ZT) policing, rendering it essential to analyze the significance and actual workings of the policies in practice, including the context in which they are introduced. This article aims to accomplish this through a comparison of two case studies in Catalonia: one in the neighborhood of Raval in Barcelona and one in Salt—a municipality in the comarca (or county) of Girona. We identify a transformation in the use of ZT policies in Catalonia and a contradiction between their social effects and proclaimed objectives. This article attempts to address how specific sociocultural groups gain power and privilege from these policies. The main argument is that a set of commonsensical ideas have become hegemonic, which allows and naturalizes certain sociocultural practices in urban space, while persecuting others, fundamentally pitting two categories against each other: the desired civil citizen and the undesirable and uncivil stranger.


2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Bessière ◽  
Taoufik Elkemali

Purpose – This article aims to examine the link between uncertainty and analysts' reaction to earnings announcements for a sample of European firms during the period 1997-2007. In the same way as Daniel et al., the authors posit that overconfidence leads to an overreaction to private information followed by an underreaction when the information becomes public. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, the authors test analysts' overconfidence through the overreaction preceding a public announcement followed by an underreaction after the announcement. If overconfidence occurs, over- and underreactions should be, respectively, observed before and after the public announcement. If uncertainty boosts overconfidence, the authors predict that these two combined misreactions should be stronger when uncertainty is higher. Uncertainty is defined according to technology intensity, and separate two types of firms: high-tech or low-tech. The authors use a sample of European firms during the period 1997-2007. Findings – The results support the overconfidence hypothesis. The authors jointly observe the two phenomena of under- and overreaction. Overreaction occurs when the information has not yet been made public and disappears just after public release. The results also show that both effects are more important for the high-tech subsample. For robustness, the authors sort the sample using analyst forecast dispersion as a proxy for uncertainty and obtain similar results. The authors also document that the high-tech stocks crash in 2000-2001 moderated the overconfidence of analysts, which then strongly declined during the post-crash period. Originality/value – This study offers interesting insights in two ways. First, in the area of financial markets, it provides a test of a major over- and underreaction model and implements it to analysts' reactions through their revisions (versus investors' reactions through stock returns). Second, in a broader way, it deals with the link between uncertainty and biases. The results are consistent with the experimental evidence and extend it to a cross-sectional analysis that reinforces it as pointed out by Kumar.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 685-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Anderson ◽  
Kai Ruggeri ◽  
Koen Steemers ◽  
Felicia Huppert

Empirical urban design research emphasizes the support in vitality of public space use. We examine the extent to which a public space intervention promoted liveliness and three key behaviors that enhance well-being (“connect,” “be active,” and “take notice”). The exploratory study combined directly observed behaviors with self-reported, before and after community-led physical improvements to a public space in central Manchester (the United Kingdom). Observation data ( n = 22,956) and surveys (subsample = 212) were collected over two 3-week periods. The intervention brought significant and substantial increases in liveliness of the space and well-being activities. None of these activities showed increases in a control space during the same periods. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of the research methods, and the impact of improved quality of outdoor neighborhood space on liveliness and well-being activities. The local community also played a key role in conceiving of and delivering an effective and affordable intervention. The findings have implications for researchers, policy makers, and communities alike.


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