scholarly journals Revisiting the Mesopotamian City: a Drawing of its Inhabitants' Mental- Image

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-97
Author(s):  
Saba Sami Al Ali
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
City Image ◽  
Daily Experience ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
Current Article ◽  
The City ◽  
Fourth Millennium Bce ◽  
Urban Characteristics

Mesopotamian cities were formed sometime during the fourth millennium BCE, and many of them continued to be inhabited as much as 3000 years. While urban characteristics of these cities has been extensively studied, the current article is concerned with exploring the inhabitants' daily experience in the city; a subject that has not been sufficiently explored despite its importance in urban studies. The objective is to expand the understanding of the relation between the ancient city and its occupants. The paper adopts the concept of the City Image as introduced in the seminal work of Kevin Lunch "Image of The City" in investigating aspects of the Mesopotamian city that qualifies it to form a strong mental Image for her citizens, derived from the legibility of its elements and the structure they form. Using a descriptive analytical method in reviewing previous literature, the research first clarifies the shared characters of Mesopotamian cities, and addresses the stature of the city in Mesopotamians' culture. I then specify the five urban elements of the city image as categorised by Lynch; paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks, in addition to addressing manifestations of the citizens' urban life in the Mesopotamian city. Afterward, visualization of the citizen's daily experience through the urban fabric of the city is provided, to arrive at a conclusion of the Legibility of the mental image of the Mesopotamian city in the perception of its citizens.

scholarly journals Urban motives in the work of Gregory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City

The paper contains the analysis of the system of urban images and motifs in the writings by Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. It is commonly thought that the urbanism in the Ukrainian literature is synonymous with modernity, in contrast to the 19th century rusticism. However, the city in the previous epochs was already the surrounding for the development of the cultural industry. The analysis of the prose written by H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko using urban studies shows a significant artistic level of understanding urban life as a mental image and as a social practice. The researchers of H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko’s prose since the nineteenth century considered as the most important contribution his innovative for the Ukrainian literature idea to introduce a rural topic and depict the characters – natives from the village – not in the Burlesque register, as it was practiced before, but using means of a high poetic style. However, H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko described not only rural life, but also the everyday life of inhabitants of cities and towns, their social practices and the constants of the urban imaginary. It is worth speaking about the reception of the baroque images of urban space in the prose of H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, especially the city as the embodiment of New Jerusalem («Kozyr-divka»); the urban topography of the hell («Ot tobi y skarb»), the travesty of constant monives in the description of the city («Konotopska widma»). In addition, the ideas of H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko concerning the urban life were embodied in the writings of the next generation of romantic writers and realists – in particular, the opposition of the village as traditional space and the city as an assimilative one. The author examines several scenarios of self-realization of peasant characters in the city – from the successful realization of their plans to moral decline. H. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko points to different points of view, avoiding a strictly positive or negative attitude towards urban space.

scholarly journals Cities of Mordovia: identity in media discourse

2020 ◽  
pp. 328-343
Author(s):  
Iraida A. Pakshina ◽  
◽  
Elena S. Rus’kina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
City Image ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Internet Communities ◽  
The City

Nowadays, the city with its unique local and historical features is placed into the focus of the modern urban media. Media text verbalizes the results of a person’s subjective perception of the surrounding urban space and represents the identity of the city. The purpose of this article is to identify the representation of the «urban identity» concept in the media of the Republic of Mordovia — both in city and republican newspapers and social networks. The authors conducted content analysis of the articles published in city newspapers and the comments to the posts of local Internet communities regarding their ideas about the city. Analysis of the print media deduced that the municipal authorities realize the urgency of the urban identity formation under the competition for human, informational and economic resources. The editorial boards of newspapers do a lot to create a positive image of the city. Local urban Internet communities, which has recently appeared in the regional media space, have a powerful influence on public opinion. Their communication is built mainly around the private problems of everyday urban life and is accompanied by negative evaluation of those. It was established that active discussion of problems leads to active post-discussion, post-provocation, post-hype, post-photography, post – criticism of the authorities, post – dialogue with a representative of the authorities, post – question and post-game. There is an asymmetry in the representation of the city image created, on the one hand, by the print media, and, on the other hand, by the participants in the Internet communities. The study identified the markers that can be significant for the citizens. It also detected the dependence of the construction of the Mordovia’s cities identity and its representation and the communicative practices of the urban population.

Evaluating the City Image of Istanbul Historic Peninsula Through Academicians’ Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 08 (03) ◽  
pp. 2050016
Author(s):  
Hüseyin ÖGÇE ◽  
Zeki DEMİR
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Environmental Psychology ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Similarity Analysis ◽  
City Image ◽  
Eastern Side ◽  
Oriented Area ◽  
The City

Urban studies are crucial to comprehend an environment with physical, social and psychological structures. There is no doubt that environmental psychology studies are important to this topic. This is why this research aims at presenting the city image of Istanbul Historic Peninsula through academicians’ perspective. The study analyzes the relationships among safe, unsafe, likeable, unlikeable, preferable and unpreferable urban elements, and concludes a general city image of the research area. We conducted 32 surveys with other scholars and analyzed the surveys via MAXQDA 2018 Analytics Pro program. To obtain reliable results, the Kuckartz–Rädikers zeta similarity analysis was conducted and the similarity value was obtained as “0.86”. The results show that the landmarks and districts are dominant in verbal maps. As for hand-drawn maps, landmarks and urban nodes are more dominant than other elements. Moreover, there are similarities between unsafe and unlikeable elements, and between likeable and safe elements. In conclusion, the urban legibility and image are intensively dominant in the eastern side of the research area (Atatürk Boulevard-oriented area) because of negative psychological boundaries.

scholarly journals Engineering modernity: Water, electricity and the infrastructure landscapes of Bangalore, India

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (11) ◽  
pp. 2261-2279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanesa Castán Broto ◽  
HS Sudhira
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Water Network ◽  
Urban Inequality ◽  
Water Energy Nexus ◽  
Management Of Resources ◽  
The City

The concept of ‘nexus’ has gained popularity in urban studies to examine the interconnections between the management of resources and the provision of urban services. This article proposes a conceptualisation of the urban nexus as the contingent product of the operation of physical, ecological and social processes around urban technologies in a specific location. The article focuses on the configuration of the nexus within particular trajectories of urban development, and the wider consequences of these trajectories for urban life. The strategy of the article is to examine the water-energy nexus within a particular infrastructure landscape, that is, as it emerges from the historical co-evolution of social practices and the built environment. Such co-evolution can be described as an urban trajectory that reveals the consolidation of different aspects of the nexus at varying levels from the household to the extra-urban connections that shape the city. This perspective is applied to analyse processes of infrastructure development in the city of Bangalore, India, since the completion of the first works to establish a water network and the electrification of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis reveals a historically built and context-dependent nexus that reflects the interconnectedness of the mechanisms of infrastructure governance and urban inequality.

MAHJONG AND URBAN LIFE: INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, COLLECTIVE INTERESTS, AND CITY IMAGE IN POST-MAO CHINA

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Wang
Keyword(s):  
Municipal Government ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
City Image ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Levels

Through an examination of issues arising from mahjong playing, this article explores changes in daily life and popular culture at the turn of the twenty-first century and argues that these changes reflect political, economic, social, and cultural transformations, in which conflicts between individual rights and collective interests have become increasingly prominent. This study discusses issues relating to mahjong from stories at four different levels: individual, community, the city, and the nation, which, respectively, look at conflicts among neighbors, examine the role of the Residential Committee in the neighborhood, observe the responses of the municipal government and official media to the city's image, and reveal the dilemma when the socialist state confronts mahjong issues. From the specific issues arising from mahjong, we can see how the new culture of the market economy in today's China coexists with elements from a more traditional lifestyle.

scholarly journals City image based on mental maps — the case study of Szczecin (Poland)

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-119
Author(s):  
Barbara Osóch ◽  
Anna Czaplińska
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Synthetic Image ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
City Image ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
The City

Abstract Perception of space is an especially important part of research on urban fabric. The perception of a city is strongly correlated not only with a specific time and place but, first and foremost, with surveyed populations who, apart from having varying demographic features, frequently represent disparate community and cultural profiles. The objective of this study was to assess how the urban space of Szczecin (Poland) is perceived by its inhabitants and to ascertain the relations between various image elements. The example of Szczecin appears to be interesting, in as much as it is a peripheral city of a cross-border region with a historically and culturally diverse local community. The presented research used a method of analysing mental (image) maps based on the methodology proposed by Kevin Lynch (1960) and modified by the authors to incorporate in-depth interviews. Individual respondents’ views were used to create a synthetic image of the city.

Book reviews

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Evinc Dogan ◽  
Efe Sevin
Keyword(s):  
Food Culture ◽  
City Image ◽  
Culture Consumption ◽  
The City

Corvo, Paolo (2015). Food Culture, Consumption and Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (ISBN: 9781137398161)Dogan, Evinc (2016). Image of Istanbul: Impact of ECOC 2010 on the City Image, London: Transnational Press London (ISBN: 978-1-910781-22-7)

The impact of a mega-event on city branding: The European Capital of Culture 2010 and the image of Istanbul

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evinç Doğan ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
World City ◽  
City Branding ◽  
City Image ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Symbolic Production ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This study examines the ways in which the city image of Istanbul is re-created through the mega-events within the context of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2010. Istanbul “took the stage” as one of the three ECoC cities (Essen for the Ruhr in Germany and Pécs in Hungary), where the urban spaces were projected as the theatre décor while residents and visitors became the spectators of the events. Organisers and agents of the ECoC 2010 seemed to rebrand Istanbul as a “world city” rather than a “European capital”. With a series of transnational connotations, this can be considered as part of an attempt to turn Istanbul to a global city. In this study we examine posters used during the ECoC 2010 to see whether this was evident in the promoted images of Istanbul. The research employs a hermeneutic approach in which representations, signs and language are the means of symbolic meaning, which is analysed through qualitative methods for the visual data (Visual Analysis Methods), namely Semiotics and Discourse Analysis. The analysed research material comes from a sample of posters released during the ECoC 2010 to promote 549 events throughout the year. Using stratified random sampling we have drawn 28 posters (5% of the total) reflecting the thematic groups of events in the ECoC 2010. Particular attention is also paid to the reflexivity of the researchers and researchers’ embeddedness to the object of research. The symbolic production and visual representation are therefore investigated firstly through the authoritative and historically constituted discourses in the making of Istanbul image and secondly through the orders of cultural consumption and mediatisation of culture through spectacular events. Hence enforcing a transnationalisation of the image of the city where the image appears to be almost stateless transcending the national boundaries. Findings and methodology used in this study can be useful in understanding similar cases and further research into the processes of city and place branding and image relationships. 

Book Review

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-389
Author(s):  
Eduardo Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
City Image ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Olympic Games

Evinç Doğan (2016). Image of Istanbul, Impact of ECoC 2010 on The City Image. London: Transnational Press London. [222 pp, RRP: £18.75, ISBN: 978-1-910781-22-7]The idea of discovering or creating a form of uniqueness to differentiate a place from others is clearly attractive. In this regard, and in line with Ashworth (2009), three urban planning instruments are widely used throughout the world as a means of boosting a city’s image: (i) personality association - where places associate themselves with a named individual from history, literature, the arts, politics, entertainment, sport or even mythology; (ii) the visual qualities of buildings and urban design, which include flagship building, signature urban design and even signature districts and (iii) event hallmarking - where places organize events, usually cultural (e.g., European Capital of Culture, henceforth referred to as ECoC) or sporting (e.g., the Olympic Games), in order to obtain worldwide recognition. 

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