scholarly journals Peter Ackroyd’s Distorted Psychogeography

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Khanim Garayeva

Abstract This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd’s unique type of psychogeographical writing. Therefore, apart from an overall elaboration on his works about London, it addresses his historiographic metafictional novels Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993). These esoteric novels provide insight into Ackroyd’s writing about the city in different time periods and make it possible to delve deeper into what this paper argues is his distinctive manner of implementing the notions of psychogeography. At the same time, it draws parallels from classical and contemporary psychogeography where appropriate and highlight his utilisation of it. The main aim of this paper is to reveal the ways in which Peter Ackroyd uses walking in the city to reflect its manipulative power over his characters which results in the transformation of their identities.

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah Hackett

Drawing upon a collection of oral history interviews, this paper offers an insight into entrepreneurial and residential patterns and behaviour amongst Turkish Muslims in the German city of Bremen. The academic literature has traditionally argued that Turkish migrants in Germany have been pushed into self-employment, low-quality housing and segregated neighbourhoods as a result of discrimination, and poor employment and housing opportunities. Yet the interviews reveal the extent to which Bremen’s Turkish Muslims’ performances and experiences have overwhelmingly been the consequences of personal choices and ambitions. For many of the city’s Turkish Muslim entrepreneurs, self-employment had been a long-term objective, and they have succeeded in establishing and running their businesses in the manner they choose with regards to location and clientele, for example. Similarly, interviewees stressed the way in which they were able to shape their housing experiences by opting which districts of the city to live in and by purchasing property. On the whole, they perceive their entrepreneurial and residential practices as both consequences and mediums of success, integration and a loyalty to the city of Bremen. The findings are contextualised within the wider debate regarding the long-term legacy of Germany’s post-war guest-worker system and its position as a “country of immigration”.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-214
Author(s):  
Eleanor Barnett

Through Venetian Inquisition trials relating to Protestantism, witchcraft, and Judaism, this article illuminates the centrality of food and eating practices to religious identity construction. The Holy Office used food to assert its model of post-Tridentine piety and the boundaries between Catholics and the non-Catholic populations in the city. These trial records concurrently act as access points to the experiences and beliefs—to the lived religion—of ordinary people living and working in Venice from 1560 to 1640. The article therefore offers new insight into the workings and impacts of the Counter-Reformation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6182
Author(s):  
Marijana Pantić ◽  
Saša Milijić

An agreement of cooperation and transmission of knowledge regarding the nomination for the European Green Capital Award (EGCA) was signed between the mayors of Belgrade and Ljubljana (EGCA 2016 winner) in September 2018. The candidacy of Belgrade was finally realized in October 2019. Great hope was placed in this endeavour because internationally recognized awards, such as the EGCA, represent enormous capital for both the city and the state. The EGCA requires serious preparation and significant fulfilment of preconditions. Many economically strong and environmentally responsible cities competed for the award, but did not win. On the other hand, the capital of Serbia does not appear to be an obvious winning candidate, especially as it is differentiated from the previous winners by being a non-EU city and by the fact that it is still undergoing an intense urban transformation, characteristic of transitional countries. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to present a review of the current state of Belgrade’s environmental qualities and its comparison with the EGCA criteria and with Grenoble as one of the winning competitors. The article gives a full overview of the EGCA requirements with certain details on required indicators, gives relevant insight into the procedure, which could be of use for any future candidacy, and discusses potential benefits for winners, losers and repeat candidacies.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110282
Author(s):  
Callum Ward

This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-VA) ended 70 years of Socialist Party rule and deregulated the city’s technocratic planning system. However, this unbridling of the free market has led to the creation of high-margin investment products rather than suitable housing for the middle classes, raising concerns about the city’s gentrification strategy. The consequent, politicisation of the city’s planning system led to controversy over clientelism which threatened to undermine the N-VA’s wider hegemonic project. In response, the city has sought to roll out a more formalised system of negotiated developer obligations, so embedding transactional, market-oriented informal governance networks at the centre of the planning system. This article highlights how the literature on land financialisation may incorporate conjunctural analysis, in the process situating recent trends towards the use of land value capture mechanisms within the contradictions and statecraft of contemporary neoliberal urbanism.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 322
Author(s):  
Simone Ferrari ◽  
Federica Zagarella ◽  
Paola Caputo ◽  
Giuliano Dall’O’

To boost energy efficiency in the building sector at urban and district scales, the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for data collection and energy spatial analysis is relevant. As highlighted in many studies on this topic reported in literature, the correlation among available databases is complex due to the different levels of information. As the first part of a wide research aimed at estimating the energy demand of urban buildings, we present in this article a focus on the details of the GIS-based procedure developed to assess the main energy-related features of existing building stocks. The procedure is based on the elaboration of data from the Italian Topographic Databases, under provision at the national level according to the INSPIRE European Directive and the national General Census of Population and Houses. It enables one to calculate and map the urban built volume characterized by mostly diffuse use categories in an urban context (residential and offices), to which different equipment and building usage patterns can be associated, and by construction periods, featuring different technological solutions. The method has been applied to the city of Milan (Italy). An insight into the outcomes from the overall method of the wider research is also reported.


2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 1063-1068 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joycenea Matsuda Mendes ◽  
Silvia Maria Almeida Machado ◽  
Maria Cristina Lourenço ◽  
Rosa Maria Carvalho Ferreira ◽  
Leila de Souza Fonseca ◽  
...  

This retrospective molecular study involving restriction fragment length polymorphism, using insertion sequence 6110 as a marker, was conducted in order to provide an initial insight into the genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated in the slums of the Complexo de Manguinhos, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Of the 67 strains evaluated, 23 (34.3%) were found to belong to clusters (total clusters, 10). Household and social chains of transmission were associated with clustering, in 20% and 60%, respectively. Living in the Conjunto Habitacional Programado 2 slum was associated with clustering. Although not significant, it is relevant that 26% of the clustered strains presented primary resistance. These findings, although possibly underestimating the prevalence due to the failure to analyze all strains, could help improve the local tuberculosis control program.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2643 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu Yang ◽  
Chengchuan An ◽  
Yao-Jan Wu ◽  
Jingxin Xia

Travel time reliability (TTR) is an important performance indicator for transportation systems. TTR can be generally categorized as either segment based or origin–destination (O-D) based. A primary difference between the two TTR estimations is that route information is implied in segment-based TTR estimations. Segment-based TTR estimations have been widely studied in previous research; however, O-D–based TTR estimations are used infrequently. This paper provides detailed insight into O-D–based TTR estimations and raises three new issues: ( a) How many routes do travelers usually take and what are the TTR values associated with these routes? ( b) Do statistical differences exist between route-specific and non-route-specific (NRS) TTR values? ( c) How can O-D–based TTR information be delivered? Two processes were proposed to address the issues. Three TTR measures—standard deviation, coefficient of variation, and buffer index—were calculated. The bootstrapping technique was used to measure the accuracy of the TTR measures. Approximate confidence intervals were used to investigate statistically the differences between route-specific and NRS TTR measures. A large quantity of taxicab GPS-based data provided data support for estimating O-D–based TTR measures. The results of O-D–based TTR measures showed that no statistically significant differences existed between route-specific and NRS TTR measures for most of the time periods examined. Statistically significant differences could still be found in some time periods. Travelers may take advantage of these differences to choose a more reliable route. Access to both numeric TTR values and route preference, instead of just to TTR information on segments of interest, can be beneficial to travelers in planning an entire trip.


Author(s):  
Haim Goren

This chapter explores the importance of replication for a crucial historical turning point, when new and progressive scientific measurements of physical locations were being developed. Revisiting a location is of necessary and critical importance when replicating research in the lab or the field, but identifying a precise location can be surprisingly problematic. Geography includes the study and identification of where objects are located and how they are arranged in space. Whether identifying spreads of emergent diseases or distribution of genetically distinct populations, we use maps and topographic contours. The maps used today are the result of over a millennium of repeated field work, analysis, and interpretation that provides additional insight into the process of replication. In this chapter, this process of geographic replication and its criteria of success are illustrated with two examples: the repeated mapping of the city of Jerusalem and the attempt to measure accurately the elevation of the Dead Sea relative to sea level. These examples also reveal multiple motives for repeated exploration and study.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayat Ali Yassin ◽  
Dr. Nangkula Utaberta

The main problem of the theory in the arena of islamic architecture is affected by some of its Western<br />thoughts, and stereotyping the islamic architecture according to Western thoughts; this leads to the breakdown<br />of the foundations in the islamic architecture. It is a myth that islamic architecture is subjected to the<br />influence from foreign architectures. This paper will highlight the dialectical concept of islamic architecture or<br />muslim buildings and the areas of recognition in islamic architecture. It will also widen the knowledge in the<br />characteristics of each point in time according to the stages of islamic architecture from the prophetic age<br />moving through the architecture outside the city of Medina, the Caliphs, the Umayyad, Abbasid, and<br />architectural models by spatial and time periods, taking Iraq as the example to explain how the Islam influents<br />on architecture and vice versa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Creasy ◽  
Matthew Lane ◽  
Alice Owen ◽  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Dan Van der Horst

Against the backdrop of increasingly fragmented and poly-centric urban climate governance, this article examines the establishment of city climate ‘commissions’ as an experimental means of addressing the challenge of climate change at the city-scale. In doing so it addresses the question: What constitutes diversity in voices and perspectives when trying to represent the city as a place for climate action? To answer this question, the article presents an analysis of the Edinburgh Climate Commission’s establishment, drawing on participatory ethnographic research carried out by a researcher embedded within the project team. The account of how this new mode of urban governance was both conceptualised and then put into practice offers a new institutional angle to the literature on urban ‘experimentation.’ Through our reflective analysis we argue that aspirations to ensure pre-defined ‘key’ industries (high carbon emitters) are accounted for in commissioner recruitment, and an over-emphasis on capturing discernible ‘impacts’ in the short term (by involving organisations already pro-active in sustainable development) hindered an opportunity to embrace new perspectives on urban futures and harness the innovative potential of cities to engage with the multifaceted nature of the climate challenge. Furthermore, new insight into the relationship between local authorities and other ‘place-based’ agents of change opens up important questions regarding how to balance the attainment of legitimacy within the political status quo, and the prospect of a new radical politics for urban transformation.


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