Retrieving a Redemptive Past: Protecting Heritage and Heimat in East German Cities

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Jason James
Keyword(s):  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
East German ◽  
German Cities ◽  
The City

In the years following unification, East German cityscapes have been subject to fierce contention because historic preservation and urban renewal have served as a local allegory of national redemption. Using conflicts over preservation and renewal in the city of Eisenach as a case study, I argue that historic cityscapes have served as the focus of many East Germans' efforts to grapple with the problem of Germanness because they address the past as a material cultural legacy to be retrieved and protected, rather than as a past to be worked through. In Eisenach's conflicts, heritage and Heimat serve as talismans of redemption not just because they symbolize an unspoiled German past, but also because they represent structures of difference that evoke a victimized Germanness—they are above all precious, vulnerable possessions threatened with disruption, pollution, or destruction by agents placed outside the moral boundaries of the hometown by its bourgeois custodians.

Research on the fuzzy evaluation of the livability of old urban communities using an analytic hierarchy process – a case study of Nanjing city in China

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiao Wang ◽  
Ruiting Shi ◽  
Ting Wang
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Indicator System ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Evaluation Indicator ◽  
Evaluation Indicator System ◽  
Community Livability ◽  
The City

Purpose Due to the different actual construction conditions in different cities, the requirements for community livability may also differ due to different geographical locations and urban construction priorities. The research system in this paper can be applied to study similar old communities in old urban areas. The indicator system would need to be adjusted in different places, based on specific construction situations and higher planning requirements. This process would provide valuable insights for effective construction projects that support the livability of the old communities. Design/methodology/approach Based on sustainable and people-oriented development principles, this study considered the development of old urban communities during today’s rapid urban renewal and development. Using previous literature and related research experience, this study established an evaluation indicator system to assess the livability of old urban communities. Based on the local resident experience and satisfaction, the study investigated current weaknesses in the construction of livable old urban communities and developed corresponding recommendations for reform based on these. The goal was to provide guidance and recommendations for renewing old communities in during urban development and further promote the sustainable development of the city. Findings Based on the people-oriented principle and focusing on old urban communities as the research object, this study constructed an evaluation indicator system to evaluate the livability of urban old communities. The goal was to identify the weaknesses in the construction of old urban communities, with a focus on livability. Using the Bei’anmen community in Nanjing as a case study, the AHP method and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method were applied to evaluate the overall target level and specific indicators, with the goal of assessing the level of livability in the Bei’anmen community.[AQ2] The results show that the livability of the Bei’anmen community is “very poor,” with significant room for improvements in community livability. This study also proposed corresponding measures for improving problems related to livability in the old urban community. Establishing the indicator system may help evaluate the livability of similar old communities in Nanjing and the same types of old communities in other cities. Understanding the overall livability of communities under construction can help identify weaknesses in other own construction approaches and may inform appropriate steps to improve the sustainable construction of the community in the wave of continuous urban renewal. This may realize the further development of livability in the community. Originality/value The community is an integral part of the city and strengthening the community’s civilization can support a harmonious and stable social environment. In constructing livable communities, improving the community civilization can promote social progress and civilization, promote social harmony and support the harmonious and sustainable development of communities. To strengthen the construction of a livable community, it is important to apply a residential perspective and provide a good platform for managing community participation and interaction. This may include organizing community-level cultural activities and strengthening communication between residents to increase the residents’ affection for the community. This would enhance the residents’ sense of belonging, forming a harmonious and stable atmosphere of community life, mutual help and mutual tolerance.

Urban renewal and citizenship: the quality of life in British cities, 1890-1990

Urban History ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Meller
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Social Responses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper juxtaposes two key themes: the concept of citizenship and ideas on urban renewal over the past century. The aim is to explore the interaction of cultural changes and the physical environment of cities. The concept of citizenship represents a cultural response to social change which itself has changed dramatically over the past century. Urban renewal has taken many forms. Yet behind all the growing technical expertise in dealing with the physical environment, there are specific social responses to the city which legitimize action. By looking at citizenship and urban renewal together, it is possible to establish a perspective on how the urban environment has been manipulated over the past century, often in ways which have barely interfaced with the social demands of many sections of the community.

Site-specific television as urban renewal: Or, how Portland became Portlandia

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morgan Parmett
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Television Production ◽  
Local Alternative ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
The City

This article addresses the rise of what I call ‘site-specific television’, where the dispersion of television production outside traditional centers results in shooting locations that also serve as the crux of the televisual narrative. I argue that site-specific television constitutes ‘TV renewal’, in which on-location shooting practices are constitutive of urban regeneration efforts that draw on local, alternative, and creative cultures of production to help promote, rebrand, and revitalize marginalized city spaces with, often, gentrifying implications. Taking up Portlandia as a case study of site-specific television, I argue its on-location production practices depend on decentralized and embedded practices of production that align with recent economic and cultural changes in the television industry and in the city.

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 Land-Use Dynamics in Transport-Impacted Urban Fabric: A Case Study of Martin–Vrútky, Slovakia

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Jana Nozdrovická ◽  
Ivo Dostál ◽  
František Petrovič ◽  
Imrich Jakab ◽  
Marek Havlíček ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Landscape Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town ◽  
Past Conditions

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.

Von der Großstadtfeindschaft zum Nazikiez? Warum ein urbaner Populismus von rechts eine reelle Gefahr ist

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 609-628
Author(s):  
Peter Bescherer
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
City Life ◽  
Urban Security ◽  
East German ◽  
The Right ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

Zusammenfassung Die reaktionären Bewegungen der Vergangenheit verteufelten das vermeintlich sündhafte, wurzellose und degenerierte Leben in der Großstadt und glorifizierten die Genügsamkeit und Fruchtbarkeit des ‚Bauernstandes‘. Zwar waren städtische Räume immer auch der Ort rechter Hegemoniebestrebungen, die von der Monumentalarchitektur der Nazis bis hin zu den ‚national befreiten Zonen‘ der NPD reichten. Die Stadt war aber in der Regel nicht ihr Thema. Mit der Krise der liberalen Demokratie droht sich das Politikfeld Stadt für die Rechte zu öffnen. Der Aufsatz illustriert anhand der Wohnungsfrage und der Sicherheitspolitik, wie Stadtentwicklung eine populistische Lücke hinterlässt, in die rechte Parteien und Bewegungen hineindrängen (können). Anhand eines Falls aus der empirischen Forschung wird darüber hinaus diskutiert, wie sich politische Nachfrage und rechtspopulistisches Angebot zueinander verhalten. Abstract: From Anti-Urbanism to Urban Populism? The Upcoming Danger of an Urban-Based Radical Right Reactionary movements of the past demonized city life for nurturing dissolute, rootless and degenerated habits. On the contrary, they praised the frugality and fertility of rural people. The city has always been a site of hegemonic politics by the radical right, ranging from National-Socialist architecture to no-go areas established by neo-Nazis in East German towns after the reunification. It has, however, usually not been a matter of rightist politics. The crisis of liberal democracy, that came about the last years, runs the risk of providing the radical right with access to urban development. By analyzing issues on the housing market and in urban security politics the paper points out a ‘populist gap’ in urban development that could be filled by the right. Furthermore, an empirical case study reveals tensions between the demand site and supply side of urban populism.

scholarly journals Assessing Resilience of Urban Critical Infrastructure Networks: A Case Study of Ahvaz, Iran

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadi Alizadeh ◽  
Ayyoob Sharifi
Keyword(s):  
Service Provision ◽  
Design Pattern ◽  
Critical Infrastructure ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Infrastructure Networks ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Parts

Cities around the world increasingly recognize the need to build on their resilience to deal with the converging forces of urbanization and climate change. Given the significance of critical infrastructure for maintaining quality of life in cities, improving their resilience is of high importance to planners and policy makers. The main purpose of this study is to spatially analyze the resilience of water, electricity, and gas critical infrastructure networks in Ahvaz, a major Iranian city that has been hit by various disastrous events over the past few years. Towards this goal, we first conducted a two-round Delphi survey to identify criteria that can be used for determining resilience of critical infrastructure networks across different parts of the city. The selected criteria that were used for spatial analysis are related to the physical texture, the design pattern, and the scale of service provision of the critical infrastructure networks. Results showed that, overall, critical infrastructure networks in Ahvaz do not perform well against the measurement criteria. This is specially the case in Regions 1, 2, 4, and 6, which are characterized by issues such as old and centralized infrastructure networks and high levels of population density. The study highlights the need to make improvements in terms of the robustness, redundancy, and flexibility of the critical infrastructure networks in the city.

The Socialist Bratwurst: East German Urbanism and Its Reemergence in the Present

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422095314
Author(s):  
Samantha Fox
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Renewal Program ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
East German ◽  
Housing Complex ◽  
Urban Renewal Program ◽  
Socialist Utopia ◽  
The City

This article examines defining features of East German urban planning—primarily the housing complex and the city/settlement binary—and their relationship to Eisenhüttenstadt, a city founded in 1950 as Stalinstadt, an East German socialist utopia. Today Eisenhüttenstadt is home to a novel form of urban renewal in which architects and planners look to the socialist past for inspiration as they imagine a new urban future. I examine the history of socialist urbanism as it was implemented in Eisenhüttenstadt, as well as how residents and urban planners came to understand socialist urbanism in the years immediately following German reunification. I then examine an urban renewal program, started in 2014, that explicitly draws on the socialist past. In doing so, I aim to consider the socialist city not as an architectural form but as a set of practices, spatial imaginations, and ethical commitments that can be reanimated even in a capitalist sociopolitical context.

scholarly journals THE IDEOLOGICAL MEANINGS OF HERITAGE: THE CONFLICTING SYMBOLS IN YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Johannes Parlindungan Siregar
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Heritage Conservation ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Meaning Production ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The City

The heritage of Yogyakarta is always situated in a dynamic urban environment. Heritage conservation has been challenged by a lack of understanding on the ideological process in the creation of meanings. This paper investigates the creation process of urban space that is currently appreciated as heritage. The paper uses the city of Yogyakarta as the case study because its uniqueness as a mix of traditional and colonial cities. The study uses the concept of meaning production to understand the association between the construction of urban space and ideological meanings. This concept corresponds to the creation of urban objects and the recognition of meanings in the society. This study uses data sourced from a literature study. As the result, the process of meaning production has demonstrated social and political forces in the construction of traditional and colonial buildings. Situation in the past demonstrates urban space as a tool of political hegemony of traditional court and colonialist. A different social milieu in the present day changes the conflicting ideologies into history. Therefore, the urban structure expresses political strategies of relevant authorities in proclaiming hegemony and regulating society. This study provides a basis for investigating the influence of ideologies on the meaning of heritage that corresponds to cultural significant.

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