scholarly journals Island and Field

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cameron Wilson

<p>We build transport infrastructure to move about the city efficiently. However, in New Zealand, it is often one-dimensional and disconnected from the urban fabric. This is the case in Hataitai, where State Highway 1 imposes a boundary between the nearby village and the Town Belt that could be bridged when new work on the Mt Victoria Tunnel takes place.  What could be the nature of a pedestrian bridge that connects these disparate urban territories?  I explored this question with two distinct methods. The first used ‘fast and loose’ hand drawing and physical modelling to explore a ubiquitous mesh structure, replacing the ground plane of the site. This Field accommodated a variety of programmed elements and crossings. The second experiment replaced the mesh with an autonomous loop between the park, village and tunnel. This Island required more precise digital modelling tools and a more measured design process.  The two methods offer vastly different approaches to urban design. The ubiquitous mesh replaces the existing ground by extending it. The Loop structure is an autonomous figure over the existing and messy ground of the urban junction below.  The research demonstrates the tensions between these two approaches to urban intervention and how they can offer alluring moments in the everyday life of the city.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cameron Wilson

<p>We build transport infrastructure to move about the city efficiently. However, in New Zealand, it is often one-dimensional and disconnected from the urban fabric. This is the case in Hataitai, where State Highway 1 imposes a boundary between the nearby village and the Town Belt that could be bridged when new work on the Mt Victoria Tunnel takes place.  What could be the nature of a pedestrian bridge that connects these disparate urban territories?  I explored this question with two distinct methods. The first used ‘fast and loose’ hand drawing and physical modelling to explore a ubiquitous mesh structure, replacing the ground plane of the site. This Field accommodated a variety of programmed elements and crossings. The second experiment replaced the mesh with an autonomous loop between the park, village and tunnel. This Island required more precise digital modelling tools and a more measured design process.  The two methods offer vastly different approaches to urban design. The ubiquitous mesh replaces the existing ground by extending it. The Loop structure is an autonomous figure over the existing and messy ground of the urban junction below.  The research demonstrates the tensions between these two approaches to urban intervention and how they can offer alluring moments in the everyday life of the city.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (March 2018) ◽  
Author(s):  
S.A Okanlawon ◽  
O.O Odunjo ◽  
S.A Olaniyan

This study examined Residents’ evaluation of turning transport infrastructure (road) to spaces for holding social ceremonies in the indigenous residential zone of Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. Upon stratifying the city into the three identifiable zones, the core, otherwise known as the indigenous residential zone was isolated for study. Of the twenty (20) political wards in the two local government areas of the town, fifteen (15) wards that were located in the indigenous zone constituted the study area. Respondents were selected along one out of every three (33.3%) of the Trunk — C (local) roads being the one mostly used for the purpose in the study area. The respondents were the residents, commercial motorists, commercial motorcyclists, and celebrants. Six hundred and forty-two (642) copies of questionnaire were administered and harvested on the spot. The Mean Analysis generated from the respondents’ rating of twelve perceived hazards listed in the questionnaire were then used to determine respondents’ most highly rated perceived consequences of the practice. These were noisy environment, Blockage of drainage by waste, and Endangering the life of the sick on the way to hospital; the most highly rated reasons why the practice came into being; and level of acceptability of the practice which was found to be very unacceptable in the study area. Policy makers should therefore focus their attention on strict enforcement of the law prohibiting the practice in order to ensure more cordial relationship among the citizenry, seeing citizens’ unacceptability of the practice in the study area.


Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Jana Nozdrovická ◽  
Ivo Dostál ◽  
František Petrovič ◽  
Imrich Jakab ◽  
Marek Havlíček ◽  
...  

The paper evaluates landscape development, land-use changes, and transport infrastructure variations in the city of Martin and the town of Vrútky, Slovakia, over the past 70 years. It focuses on analyses of the landscape structures characterizing the study area in several time periods (1949, 1970, 1993, 2003); the past conditions are then compared with the relevant current structure (2018). Special attention is paid to the evolution of the landscape elements forming the transport infrastructure. The development and progressive changes in traffic intensities are presented in view of the resulting impact on the formation of the landscape structure. The research data confirm the importance of transport as a force determining landscape changes, and they indicate that while railroad accessibility embodied a crucial factor up to the 1970s, the more recent decades were characterized by a gradual shift to road transport.


2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-111
Author(s):  
Florian Mazel

Dominique Iogna-Prat’s latest book, Cité de Dieu, cité des hommes. L’Église et l’architecture de la société, 1200–1500, follows on both intellectually and chronologically from La Maison Dieu. Une histoire monumentale de l’Église au Moyen Âge (v. 800–v. 1200). It presents an essay on the emergence of the town as a symbolic and political figure of society (the “city of man”) between 1200 and 1700, and on the effects of this development on the Church, which had held this function before 1200. This feeds into an ambitious reflection on the origins of modernity, seeking to move beyond the impasse of political philosophy—too quick to ignore the medieval centuries and the Scholastic moment—and to relativize the effacement of the institutional Church from the Renaissance on. In so doing, it rejects the binary opposition between the Church and the state, proposes a new periodization of the “transition to modernity,” and underlines the importance of spatial issues (mainly in terms of representation). This last element inscribes the book in the current of French historiography that for more than a decade has sought to reintroduce the question of space at the heart of social and political history. Iogna-Prat’s stimulating demonstration nevertheless raises some questions, notably relating to the effects of the Protestant Reformation, the increasing power of states, and the process of “secularization.” Above all, it raises the issue of how a logic of the polarization of space was articulated with one of territorialization in the practices of government and the structuring of society—two logics that were promoted by the ecclesial institution even before states themselves.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Chang ◽  
Mi Diao

This study analyses the changes in intra-city housing values in response to improved inter-city connection brought by high-speed rail (HSR), using the opening of the Hangzhou–Fuzhou–Shenzhen Passenger Dedicated Line (HFSL) in Shenzhen, China, as an example. The opening of the HFSL and its integration into the local metro network at Shenzhen North Station provide exogenous intra-city variations in access to the surrounding economic mass. With a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the HFSL showed a negative local effect as housing values declined by 11.5%–13.3% in the proximity of Shenzhen North Station relative to areas further from the station after the opening, possibly due to the negative externalities of the HFSL. The HFSL effect can spread along the metro network and lead to, on average, a 7% appreciation of housing values around metro stations (network effect). The direction and strength of the network effect vary by metro travel time between Shenzhen North Station and metro stations. Housing values decreased by 7.7% around metro stations within 5–15 minutes of metro travel time but increased by 63.6%, 16.6% and 29.2% around metro stations within 15–25, 25–35 and 35–45 minutes of metro travel time to Shenzhen North Station, respectively. The HFSL effect on housing values diminishes when the rail travel time is above 45 minutes. We interpret these findings as evidence of the redistribution effect in the city related to HSR connection.


1919 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 110-115
Author(s):  
D. S. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
The City ◽  

In the discussion of Greek dramatic origins, a curious passage of Apuleius has never, so far as I know, been mentioned.In the second book of the Metamorphoses the hero Lucius describes a feast given at Hypata in Thessaly by his rich relative Byrrhena. After the feast Byrrhena informs him that an annual festival, coeval with the city, will be celebrated next day—a joyous ceremony, unique in the world, in honour of the god Laughter. She wishes that he could invent some humorous freak for the occasion. Lucius promises to do his best. Being very drunk, he then bids Byrrhena good-night, and departs with his slave for the house of Milo, his miserly old host. A gust blows out their torch, and they get home with difficulty, arm in arm. There they find three large and lusty persone violently battering the door. Lucius has been warned by his mistress, Milo's slave Fotis, against certain young Mohawks of the town—‘uesana factio nobilissimorum iuuenum’—who think nothing of murdering rich strangers. He at once draws his sword, and one by one stabs all three. Fotis, roused by the noise, lets him in and he quickly falls asleep.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
O.U. BULATOVA ◽  

The transition of a city to the «Smart city» level is a socio-technical process: first, the transi-tion includes technical and technological changes, and second, since the city is a social system, this process considered from the point of view of users who influence the development of certain types of services and devices for their provision. This article examines the process of digitalization of the city and transport infrastructure in particular. To fulfill the goal set for the transport infrastructure - complete, timely and high-quality transport services for the population, it is necessary to solve a whole range of tasks that are associated with the further development of market relations and improving the efficiency of the transport complex.


1982 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 841-861
Author(s):  
Hojjat Adeli

abstract On 28 July 1981 at 17:22 UTC, the Kerman province of southern Iran was shaken by the largest and the most destructive earthquake in its history. Its surface-wave magnitude was about 7.2. The epicenter of the earthquake was located about 45 km southeast of the city of Kerman, the capital of the Kerman province. The shock killed nearly 3,000 people, left more than 31,000 homeless, and destroyed virtually all buildings in the epicentral region within a radius of 30 km. The hardest hit place was the town of Sirch where about 2,000 people died out of a population of 3,500. Surface fractures were observed in several areas, and the earthquake was apparently associated with a fresh surface normal faulting. The maximum vertical displacement was about 1 m. The maximum width of the fracture was 0.5 m. Also, extensive landsliding and numerous rockfalls were observed within the area of maximum damage. Most houses in the epicentral area are of adobe construction, made of sundried clay brick walls, and heavy domed roofs or vaults with clay or mud mortar. Most casualties were due to the collapse of these adobe buildings. However, the performance of unreinforced or reinforced brick buildings, historical monuments, steel buildings, and other types of structures during the earthquake is also discussed in this paper.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Henrique Moreas Pereira ◽  
David Banister ◽  
Tim Schwanen ◽  
Nate Wessel

The evaluation of the social impacts of transport policies is attracting growing attention in recent years. Yet, this literature is still predominately focused on developed countries. The goal of this research is to investigate how investments in public transport networks can reshape social and geographical inequalities in access to opportunities in a developing country, using the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a case study. Recent mega-events, including the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, have triggered substantial investment in the city’s transport system. More recently, though, bus services in Rio have been rationalized and reduced as a response to a fiscal crisis and a drop in passenger demand, giving a unique opportunity to look at the distributional effects this cycle of investment and disinvestment have had on peoples’ access to educational and employment opportunities. Based on a before-and-after comparison of Rio’s public transport network, this study uses a spatial regression model and cluster analysis to estimate how accessibility gains vary across different income groups and areas of the city between April 2014 and March 2017. The results show that recent cuts in service levels have offset the potential benefits of newly added public transport infrastructure in Rio. Average access by public transport to jobs and public high-schools decreased approximately 4% and 6% in the period, respectively. Nonetheless, wealthier areas had on average small but statistically significant higher gains in access to schools and job opportunities than poorer areas. These findings suggest that, contrary to the official discourses of transport legacy, recent transport policies in Rio have exacerbated rather than reduced socio-spatial inequalities in access to opportunities. These results also suggest that future research should consider how the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) can influence the equity assessment of transport projects.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document