City’s Cultural Memory: Modern Practices of Symbolizing the Past

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-364
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Fedotova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the discourse of the city’s cultural memory. The relevance of studying this topic is determined not only by the fundamental aspect associated with the episodicity of existing studies of this phenomenon. From an applied point of view, the city’s cultural memory is a symbolic resource that can be used to create an appealing image, form a sustainable urban identity, and strengthen the citizen’s sense of belonging to the city. The accumulation and objectification of cultural memory take place in symbolic forms, which makes it important to study the practices of symbolizing the urban past, the essence of which is to generate the significance of the relevant or latent layers of cultural memory for the citizens.The article presents the results of the final stage of research related to the study of the process of constructing the cultural memory of the city. The purpose of the article is to analyze modern practices of symbolizing fragments of the urban past, which mean their significance for contemporaries. Basing on the culturological cross-section of the issue, the author integrates different research contexts. The methodological basis of the article is the communicative approach that focuses on the processes of meaning formation, and the constructivist method that considers memory as a multi-layered and dynamic construct. Analyzing the practices of symbolizing the urban past by the example of Russian cities, the author of the article demonstrates how the episodes of the city’s memory are updated in the modern world, how cultural meanings become memorable for citizens. The author uses the results of previous studies and identifies the following elements of the symbolization of the urban past: a) ways of encoding fragments of the past; b) communicative trajectories of memory symbolization; c) factors of producing meanings about the collective past of the city. The obtained results open up new frontiers in understanding the processes of formation of the collective ideas about the city, and prospects for empirical research, forecasting and constructing the cultural memory of Russian cities, giving them the opportunity to change their present and future.

scholarly journals PRACTICES OF URBAN COMMEMORATION: FEATURES OF THE CITY CULTURAL MEMORY FORMATION

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-143
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Fedotova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Formation ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Construct ◽  
The Media ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
The City

From the standpoint of the cultural approach, the cultural memory of the city is a complex space for storing, transmitting and updating the cultural meanings of the city (events, dates, legends, myths, famous personalities, places, etc.). The scientific interest in its research is explained by the fact that the cultural memory of the city is a symbolic resource capable of determining the urban reality, identifying the present and future of the city. The presence of current and potential layers gives the cultural memory of the city the property of mobility, which makes it necessary to artificial support the city cultural meanings and, on the contrary, opens up the possibility to update their repertoire in the urban space. This function is performed by the practice of urban commemoration as a means of forming the cultural memory of the city. Since the cultural memory of the city is a socio-cultural construct, there-fore, the role of urban commemoration increases, which, through the actualization of episodes of the past, determines what to remember and how to perceive cultural meanings. The identification and analysis of urban commemoration practices can be carried out on the basis of studying the specifics and conditions of broadcasting commemorative information, through an in-terdisciplinary synthesis of available fragmentary studies. Thus, a variety of urban commemoration practices should be presented using the following typology: a) visual and verbal practices; b) emotion-al and cognitive practices; c) institutional practices; d) performative practices; e) symbolic practices. Separately, it is necessary to highlight the practices of urban commemoration, which purposefully shape the cultural memory of the city and are directly related to the memorial culture of the city, which sets the contours of the social policy of memory. The general condition of commemorative practices is communication, which provides the process of structuring cultural memory itself. It is in the process of communication that symbolic marking of the cultural meanings of the city is carried out through the transformation of individual memories into collective ones, as well as through the cultivation of the city memory fragments (actual or latent). In the era of the information society, a special communica-tive role belongs to the media as a powerful generator of cultural meanings that accumulates com-memorative practices. Becoming a part of the media field, a fragment of cultural memory can acquire a certain value, become famous, get a peculiar assessment and interpretation. The presented typology of practices of urban commemoration and the revealed features of their representation in the urban environment are primary in nature and are an attempt to unite separate studies into a single continuum, thus creating the conditions for a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of the city cultural memory formation.

Portuguese Sardines - from the ritual to the brand

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Cecília Avelino Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
City Council ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
City Branding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Behavioral Expression ◽  
The City ◽  
City Identity

Place branding is a network of associations in the consumer’s mind, based on the visual, verbal, and behavioral expression of a place. Food can be an important tool to summarize it as it is part of the culture of a city and its symbolic capital. Food is imaginary, a ritual and a social construction. This paper aims to explore a ritual that has turned into one of the brands of Lisbon in the past few years. The fresh sardines barbecued out of doors, during Saint Anthony’s festival, has become a symbol that can be found on t-shirts, magnets and all kinds of souvenirs. Over the year, tourists can buy sardine shaped objects in very cheap stores to luxurious shops. There is even a whole boutique dedicated to the fish: “The Fantastic World of Portuguese Sardines” and an annual competition promoted by the city council to choose the five most emblematic designs of sardines. In order to analyze the Sardine phenomenon from a city branding point of view, the objective of this paper is to comprehend what associations are made by foreigners when they are outside of Lisbon. As a methodological procedure five design sardines, were used of last year to questioning to which city they relate them in interviews carried in Madrid, Lyon, Rome and London. Upon completion of the analysis, the results of the city branding strategy adopted by the city council to promote the sardines as the official symbol of Lisbon is seen as a Folkmarketing action. The effects are positive, but still quite local. On the other hand, significant participation of the Lisbon´s dwellers in the Sardine Contest was observed, which seems to be a good way to promote the city identity and pride in their best ambassador: the citizens.

scholarly journals What is the threshold in urban regeneration projects in the context of urban identity? The case of Turkey

Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
İmre Eren
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City ◽  
City Centres

Cities are trying to adapt to the rapidly changing global trends by regenerating themselves. Approaches and practices of this regeneration are different in several countries. In big Turkish cities, particularly in the past decade, urban regeneration practices, processes and consequences have sparked several debates. The ?new? gained or converted spaces in the city are also significant in terms of their impacts on urban identity. In this context, this study aims to identify the impacts of urban regeneration, which occurred in historical city centres, on urban identity in the case of Turkey. The study determines general framework of urban regeneration and then defines a conceptual framework of urban identity. It focuses on urban regeneration projects in the case of Turkey. Then, the topic is explored through two case studies which are selected from Turkey, Istanbul and Bursa. The findings of the study indicate that there are several problematic aspects of urban regeneration. The findings also show that urban identity was ignored in urban regeneration projects, which caused significant breaks in the context of physical, cultural, historical and semantic continuity.

scholarly journals Cultural Memory and Urban Space in Shaping Cultural Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Valentyna Bohatyrets ◽  
Liubov Melnychuk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
City Space ◽  
New Type ◽  
The City ◽  
Historic Cities

Nowadays, in the age of massive spatial transformations in the built environment, cities witness a new type of development, different in size, scale and momentum that has been thriving since late 20th century. Diverse transformation of historic cities under modernisation has led to concerns in terms of the space and time continuity disintegration and the preservation of historic cities. In a similar approach, we can state that city and city space do not only consist of present, they also consist of the past; they include the transformations, relations, values, struggles and tensions of the past. As it could be defined, space is the history itself. Currently, we would like to display how Chernivtsi cultural and architectural heritage is perceived and maintained in the course of its evolution. Noteworthy, Chernivtsi city is speculated a condensed human existence and vibes, with public urban space and its ascriptions are its historical archives and sacred memory. Throughout the history, CHERNIVTSI’s urban landscape has changed, while preserving its unique and distinctive spirit of diversity, multifacetedness and tolerance. The city squares of the Austrian, Romanian and Soviet epochs were crammed with statuary of royal elites and air of aristocracy, soviet leaders and a shade of patriotic obsession, symbolic animals and sacred piety – that eventually shaped its unique “Bukovynian supranational identity”. Keywords: Chernivtsi, cultural memory, memory studies, monuments, squares, identity.

Stages of Decline

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-378
Author(s):  
Ari Daniel Levine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
The Past ◽  
Southern Song ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Social Trauma ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The City

After the fall of the Northern Song [Formula: see text] (960–1127) capital of Kaifeng [Formula: see text] to Jurchen invaders in 1127, diasporic literati of the Southern Song dynasty [Formula: see text] (1127–1279) recreated and revisited its lost sites through textual commemoration, especially in memorabilia literature (biji [Formula: see text], lit. ‘brush notes’). As knowledge of the city passed from communicative memory into cultural memory, its decline and destruction became the focus of nostalgia and indignation for Yue Ke [Formula: see text] (1183–1234), the author of the Pillar Histories (Ting shi [Formula: see text]), a collection of counter-narratives of Northern Song history that expressed the shared experience of social trauma induced by dynastic collapse. Disconnected from their spatial context and even from historical fact, the city’s memory sites became stages for amoralistic declension narrative, in which the city’s destruction and occupation was assumed to have been instigated by the decadence of the imperial court of the passive Emperor Huizong [Formula: see text] (r. 1100–26) and his ‘nefarious ministers’. The most colourful elements of Yue’s ludic and fantastical narratives became the focus of his indignation, which encouraged his readers to denounce the traitors who had betrayed the empire by inviting the Jurchen invasion. In the Pillar Histories, Yue deployed textual imaginaries of nostalgia as forms of resistance by re-contesting the past events that led to dynastic collapse. By reconstructing the city in the cultural memory of his fellow diasporic literati, Yue was creating a vision of an ideal political, cultural and moral community that once existed at the dynasty’s inception, and might be reconstituted in the future, if and when Song subjects recaptured their lost homeland.

scholarly journals SPATIAL DETERMINISM AND TERRITORIAL PUBLIC ACTION IN FRANCE: CHALLENGES AND EVOLUTIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégory BUSQUET
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Narrative ◽  
The People ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Urban Project ◽  
The City

This article proposes a theoretical point of view in order to show the importance of the collective memory and the urban narrative in the strategic approach of the urban project. The capacity of a municipality to build a local narrative joining the past, the memory and the project, is examined in the second part of the article, in a case study of a collectivity confronted with the project of the Grand Paris and strong socio-spatial transformation since 1950. The conclusions of thirty deep interviews, conducted on the people involved in the city organization allow to differentiate legitimated and rejected places in the spaces of remembering, and the difficulties of this kind of municipalities to be pro active in the Grand Paris project.

scholarly journals VALUE OF ARTIFICAL EDUCATOIN FOR ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE AT THE MODERN STAGE

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
E. M. Bozhko ◽  
◽  
M. V. Spornik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Linear Perspective ◽  
Modern World ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Modern Artists ◽  
The City ◽  
Better Than

Analyzing relevant and informative sources for acquaintance with modern fine art, catalogs of various art exhibitions, article questions and problems associated with the creation of architectural and landscape compositions are considered from a practical point of view. A significant role in art belongs to the architectural landscape, as a genre variety. Promising types of cities - Veduta (A. Canaletto, V. Bellotto) have become separate types of architectural landscape. The genre of painting is the Veduta, which developed in the eighteenth century in Venice. This is an image of views of the city and its environs. Lead amaze with its accuracy. At that time, such images served as photographs. The requirements for the paintings corresponded to their purpose: the accuracy of the image of objects, down to the smallest detail. With the advent of photography, the requirements for graphic images have lost their relevance. The camera can accurately capture the object, transmit small details better than the artist. The changes that are taking place in modern realistic painting are connected precisely with the appearance of photography. Many modern impressionists, trying to impress the landscape they saw, write sketches with wide, wide strokes. For the sake of such a technique, they ignore many important elements of the landscape in order to maximize the expressiveness of their work. Modern artists working in the realistic direction of the architectural landscape pay attention to color reproduction, color of painting, while paying due attention to drawing, linear perspective and construction. Painting and photography at the present stage are fundamentally different from each other. Painting corresponds to its name - living writing, generalization, typification and stylization of forms, the viewer's impression of lightness, airiness and illumination. Modern realistic painting is modified relative to the painting of the VIII-XIX centuries. This process is due to the technical development of the modern world, the advent of digital photography, new materials for creativity. Picturesque language goes into the language of flowers. Professional art education plays a fundamental role in understanding the landscape as a genre of painting. Education allows you to combine composition, the picturesque effect, which is an innovation in realistic landscape painting, for the complete deep impression of the viewer.

scholarly journals Post-Pandemic City: Historical Context for New Urban Design

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Veaceslav MIR
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City

Cities have been almost completely unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Urban history has known many epidemics and pandemics, and there are clear historical parallels between the 13th and 19th century plague pandemics and cholera epidemics and the 21th century COVID-19 pandemic, from an administrative point of view. However, the cities’ public administration did not take into account the experience of the cities of the past to be prepared for the future problems. This requires developing flexible pandemic strategies and focusing on the decentralization of urban space through an even distribution of population in the urban environment. The COVID-19 pandemic will change the city, as previous pandemics and epidemics did. Urbanism v.3.0. will emerge, combining a green vector of development and digital technologies to ensure the autonomy and sustainability of buildings, districts and cities. At the same time, the role of culture will increase, which will become an effective tool for consolidating the soft power of the city in order to attract new people as the opposition of nowadays trend for living in the countryside.

Por el bien de la patria: la obra del magistrado José de Olmeda y León (1740-1805) y su percepción de España

2019 ◽  
pp. 279-301
Author(s):  
Núria Soriano Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Individual Contribution ◽  
Identity Recognition ◽  
Identidad Nacional ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Memory Representations

RESUMENEste artículo analiza la obra del jurista madrileño José de Olmeda y León (1740-1805). Sus aportaciones, analizadas por la historiografía desde el punto de vista del derecho, se interpretan como contribución a la construcción del imaginario nacional y la configuración de una memoria cultural de España. El magistrado —colegial mayor de Salamanca, oficial de la Audiencia de Sevilla desde 1778 y miembro de la Real Sociedad de Madrid desde 1779— dedicó su vida a la escritura de traducciones y tratados, siendo los «Elementos del derecho público» (1771) su publicación más célebre. Tras realizar un repaso por su trayectoria biográfica y situar su escritura en el debate sobre los «caracteres nacionales» y la defensa de España, mi objetivo es analizar cómo el autor percibe el pasado y fija su valor como reconocimiento identitario. Su aportación individual, vinculada otros textos —como el de José de Cadalso— permite comprender la complejidad de las diversas perspectivas que integran el movimiento apologético y crítico de España en la segunda mitad del siglo.PALABRAS CLAVEJosé de Olmeda y León, nación, pasado, memoria cultural, representaciones, identidad nacional. TITLEFor the good of the fatherland: The work of magistrate José Olmeda y León (1740-1805) and his perception of SpainABSTRACTThis article analyzes the work of the jurist José Olmeda y León (1740-1805). The magistrate —official of the Audience of Seville since 1778 and member of the Royal Society of Madrid since 1779— dedicated his life to the writing of translations and treaties, being «Elementos del derecho público» (1771) its publication most celebrated. His contributions, mainly analyzed by historiography from the point of view of law, are interpreted as a contribution to the construction of the national imaginary and the configuration of a shared cultural memory. After reviewing his biographical trajectory and contextualizing his writing, my objective is to analyze how the author perceives the past and fixes its value as an identity recognition. His individual contribution, linked to other texts, such as that of his colleague José de Cadalso, allows us to understand the complexity and breadth of the diverse perspectives that make up the apologetic movement of the second half of the 18th century.KEY WORDSJosé de Olmeda y León, nation, past, cultural memory, representations, national identity.

scholarly journals Milan and its lost river: when surviving images represent unique narrations of invisible relationships

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Andrea Oldani
Keyword(s):  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
World Cities ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

One of the most predictable implications of photography consists of the ability to fix some images returning them in a variable timeframe for the observation. In all the major world cities, it is common to incur in some book where recent photos are compared to old ones searching the same point of view in order to make the comparison more accurate and stimulate the critical ability of the observer. An exercise that sometimes stimulates a sort of regret for the past, pointing out a diffused excess of nostalgia for times gone by. Nevertheless, the reality and meaning of modern city images are not always so prosaic. What happens when photographs are evocative of a reality that is completely lost in the collective imaginary even though it still exists and functions, despite being forgotten and buried in the depths of the city? This is the case of very few pictures capable of telling the story of a city, Milan, and its only “real” river, the Olona, whose waters, humiliated and rejected, continue to flow in total amnesia. It is a different story when photography does not have the role of nourishing nostalgia, but the power to make visible and explain the variation of a presence and its progressive obliteration. Some pictures testify to the passage from the bucolic amenity of the river and its banks in a pre-urban context to a muscular urban infrastructure. A rigid channelized river, shown with confidence, is trying to keep its presence, until the moment of its inevitable decline and disappearance. It is in these images that the possibility of reconsidering the Olona as a part of the new project for the city lies.

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