scholarly journals Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Reading Room: a Segregated Space for Women in a Portuguese Public Library under a Fascist State

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Sequeiros ◽  
Sónia Passos
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Reading Room ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Woman Reader ◽  
The City

The public event of the inauguration of a Feminine Reading Room in the Municipal PublicLibrary of Porto, held on the 24th November 1945, sets the motto for the construction ofa historically and sociologically based analysis of the modes of usage of public and semi-public space – namely libraries – used by women and their meanings in those days.Within the framework of a qualitative approach, sources such as literature, photographyand personal interviews are added to documentary data from institutional archives. Afictional narrative, built from historical data, is inserted to sustain our analysis, whereAdozinda is the character embodying a woman reader who crosses the city to visit therecently inaugurated Feminine Reading Room. Two female figures punctuate this narrative,Virgínia de Castro e Almeida, the person after whom this room was named, and Tília DulceMachado Martins, the main legator of the collection it holds. Using this fictional narrative,we aimed at reconstructing a holistic context for the facts as they might have happenedthrough a pleasurable reading of a plausible text. These women’s diverse histories arealso inserted in that context.Fiction is a resource used to inscribe data on the social, economic, and political situationin the city and in the country at that time, with an emphasis on women and their uses ofpublic space.As to the theoretical framing of public and semi-public use of the space, the theory ofgendered spaces, as opposed to separate spheres, is evoked and confirmed to accountfor the presence of women in public space, according to gender and social class roles, apresence which is however socially invisibilised.We conclude that the Room’s space, initially segregated for moral reasons, was latertransformed through an appropriation which went from separatism to integration, as aresponse to ethical claims gaining ground in society. This separatism was, therefore, anintermediate step towards a more equalitarian use of space.

scholarly journals Poetic Examination of Spatial Experience: Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Katarina Rukavina
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Spatial Experience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Art Intervention ◽  
The City

The paper analyses the concept of space in contemporary art on the example of Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko from 2008. Referring to Malevich’s suprematism, in December 2008 Leko initiated a project of art intervention in Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb, where she intended to cover in black all commercials, advertisements, signs and names of various companies. This poetic intervention, as the artist calls it, was intended to prompt people to relativise material goods in the pre-Christmas period. However, despite the authorisation obtained from the city authorities, the companies concerned refused to remove their respective advertisements, be it for only for 24 hours, so this project has never been realised. The project, however, does exist in the virtual space, which is also public, and continues to act in the form of documentation. The non-feasibility of the intervention, or rather its invisibility on Jelačić Square, makes visible or directly indicates the ordering of the powers and the constellation of values in the social sphere, thus raising new questions. Indeed, in this way it actually enters the public space, sensitising and expanding it at the same time.

scholarly journals Parameters for Public Space Architecture. Informal Commerce Dynamics, as an Opportunity to Stimulate Urban Scenarios. Case Study Cali-Colombia

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Gustavo Arteaga ◽  
Edier Segura ◽  
Diego Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
City Center ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Space Architecture ◽  
The City

In the last decades, the occupation of the pedestrian routes and in general of the public space in the city center of Cali Colombia, have been evidencing diverse phenomena, which to a great extent respond to the accelerated growth of the urban population, where the migrations that have occurred in the interior of the country (fruit of the social conflicts of the last decades), have particularly marked the realities. In Cali, on 10th and 15th streets, near the Government Building, the Palace of Justice and the Municipal Administrative Center - CAM, the public space in general terms has been stressed in a particular way, which has generated conflicts in the surfaces designed for the pedestrians, since they are occupied by vendors in the midst of the informality routines, forcing the pedestrian to use the automobile tracks being a notorious and interesting phenomenon, when observing the factors that produce it and using them as parameters in the design of architectural spaces that contribute to improvement.

Mental Health, Public Space, and the City: Questions of Individual and Collective Access

1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hester Parr
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

In recent revisionings of disablement and geography, conceptions of the body, of devinney, and of the social construction of difference have been interrogated. The author argues that it is important not to neglect a critical geography of mental health in this broader rewriting of disability and ableism. Empirical examples are drawn from research in Nottingham, UK. These examples show how people with mental health problems access the public realm through individual (and often disruptive) use of urban spaces, possibly as strategies of resistance to imposed medical identities. In the second half of the paper the author documents a more collective political process occurring through ‘user movements’ which have facilitated patient power and patient influence in the places of therapy spread across the city.

scholarly journals Poetic Examination of Spatial Experience: Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Katarina Rukavina
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Spatial Experience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Art Intervention ◽  
The City

The paper analyses the concept of space in contemporary art on the example of Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko from 2008. Referring to Malevich’s suprematism, in December 2008 Leko initiated a project of art intervention in Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb, where she intended to cover in black all commercials, advertisements, signs and names of various companies. This poetic intervention, as the artist calls it, was intended to prompt people to relativise material goods in the pre-Christmas period. However, despite the authorisation obtained from the city authorities, the companies concerned refused to remove their respective advertisements, be it for only for 24 hours, so this project has never been realised. The project, however, does exist in the virtual space, which is also public, and continues to act in the form of documentation. The non-feasibility of the intervention, or rather its invisibility on Jelačić Square, makes visible or directly indicates the ordering of the powers and the constellation of values in the social sphere, thus raising new questions. Indeed, in this way it actually enters the public space, sensitising and expanding it at the same time.

scholarly journals The Greatest Good Place: The role of the public library in the development of successful cities, and the relationship between public library contributions and planning policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Kluke
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Public ◽  
Library System ◽  
Planning Policy ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This paper explores the changing role of the public library, and determines its impacts on communities and cities. It also examines the relationship between libraries and planning policies, and the extend to which they inform the success of public libraries. The analysis centres on the design of modern public libraries, and the community and economic contributions they provide. Through analyses of the Vancouver Public Library, the Seattle Public Library, and the Toronto Public Library, it is evident that public libraries provide significant contributions within the communities they serve. Well-designed library buildings provide an important public space, and provide people with access to information and technology needed to participate in the knowledge economy, in turn producing significant economic gains for the city. This research finds that planning policy alone is unable to ensure the success of a city`s public library system. Support from the public and municipal leaders, combined with strong policy directives, is needed for a city`s public library system to succeed.

scholarly journals Social Behavior of the City Government and Citizens of the Metropolis during a Pandemic (for Example St Petersburg)

Discourse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
S. M. Eliseev ◽  
V. A. Glukhikh
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
City Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City ◽  
Available Resources

Introduction. The coronavirus has become a serious test for national and regional power and management systems. Many systems have demonstrated their effectiveness and flexibility, competence and coherence. But there were also cases when erroneous decisions were made at the regional and even national levels. The purpose of this article is to determine the main trends in changes in the social behavior of the city government and citizens of St Petersburg in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.Methodology and sources. The article is based on classical and modern theories of urban sociology, sociology of the formation and functioning of public spaces and public life in a modern city, data from urban statistics on COVID incidence and empirical observations.Results and discussion. From the very beginning, the city government of Saint Petersburg became the center of coordination and mobilization of all city resources to overcome the pandemic. However, it is not always possible to manage the available resources correctly and effectively. One of the reasons for the inefficient use of available resources was that the government did not define a strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic from the very beginning. Decisions were made situationally, sometimes inconsistently. It is worth noting that, despite the restrictions imposed, the social behavior patterns of a significant part of citizens have not changed significantly, but have only been transformed into hybrid social practices.Conclusion. The study described the existing normative and hybrid models of social behavior of the government and citizens in the public space of the city in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, identified the most affected types of social relations (local-local) and local spaces (trade, entertainment, etc.) in which new social norms are most often violated.

Public Libraries, Real Space and Social Change: Some Old and Some New Coincidences

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Haywood
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Real Space ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Importance

Public libraries grew out of a 19th century liberal tradition that favoured the enlightenment of the people. This is now threatened by changes in political and social priorities and the subordination of an ‘idealist’ society, which gives priority to a world of values, to a ‘sensate’ society, which locates its values in what can be experienced by the senses. As a result of this, of the wiring of society and of increasing pressures on time, the social importance and moral status of the public library have suffered, and human connectivity has suffered with it: people retreat to their homes and ‘drop out and log on’. Technology has both liberated us and brought new forms of enslavement. Public libraries, as perhaps the last great public space, could yet become agents for transforming a private and selfish technology into a public and benevolent one.

scholarly journals Film Intervention in Public Space. A Phylogenetic Spatial Change

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Taher Abdel-Ghani
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
The Public ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
And Function ◽  
The City

Cinema has taken up the role of a social agent that introduced a variety of images and events to the public during critical times. This paper proposes the idea of using films as a tool to reclaim public space where a sense of belonging and dialogue restore to a meaningful place. During the January 2011 protests in Egypt, Tahrir Cinema, an independent revolutionary project composed of filmmakers and other artists, offered a space in Downtown Cairo and screened archival footage of the ongoing events to the protestors igniting civic debate and discussions. The traditional public space has undergone what Karl Kropf refers to as the phylogenetic change, i.e. form and function that is agreed upon by society and represents a common conception of certain spatial elements. Hence, the framework that this research will follow is a two-layer discourse, the existence of cinema in public spaces, and the existence of public spaces in cinema. Eventually, the paper seeks to enhance the social relationship between society, spaces, and cinematic narration – a vital tool to raise awareness about the right to the city.

scholarly journals Social differentiation in the area of Prague subcentres

Geografie ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-291
Author(s):  
Jan Polívka
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
City Centre ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
City Centres

On the example of three Prague subcentres Budějovická, Pankrác and Smíchov this paper analyses the structure of socially stratified environment of secondary city centres in Prague. The development is discussed within the context of requirements upon the public space in the stage of tertiarization and post-socialist transformation of the urban society. The influx of investments into the local environment of city centres is changing the space patterns and causes changes in the social structure of users. As result, the area of centres is split into functional entities with different social constituency. An active role of public administration is important for preservation of city-centre functionality for most inhabitants of the city.

scholarly journals The Greatest Good Place: The role of the public library in the development of successful cities, and the relationship between public library contributions and planning policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Kluke
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Public ◽  
Library System ◽  
Planning Policy ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This paper explores the changing role of the public library, and determines its impacts on communities and cities. It also examines the relationship between libraries and planning policies, and the extend to which they inform the success of public libraries. The analysis centres on the design of modern public libraries, and the community and economic contributions they provide. Through analyses of the Vancouver Public Library, the Seattle Public Library, and the Toronto Public Library, it is evident that public libraries provide significant contributions within the communities they serve. Well-designed library buildings provide an important public space, and provide people with access to information and technology needed to participate in the knowledge economy, in turn producing significant economic gains for the city. This research finds that planning policy alone is unable to ensure the success of a city`s public library system. Support from the public and municipal leaders, combined with strong policy directives, is needed for a city`s public library system to succeed.

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