scholarly journals The importance of public spaces to social integration for young migrant workers in Hanoi

Author(s):  
Le Lan Huong

In Hanoi, there are currently tens of thousands of migrants working in peri-urban industrial zones and small-scale private manufacturing workshops in the inner city and construction sites. Many of them live in precarious houses, where the quality of life is rather poor, and they travel with little integration. For this reason, this project has been carried out and investigated how public spaces are used by the migrant workers, hereby finding out the difficulties they may have encountered while trying to integrate into the local community and suggesting some solutions to their integration by means of public space design. The main research methods include the qualitative survey with half-structured interviews conducted in three wards: Truong Dinh, Thuy Phuong and Sai Dong. The research outcomes reveal the most frequently-visited places among young migrant workers. It is noticeable that they do not go there very often. The main reason for this fact is that they do not have enough time or money. In addition, there is a lack of good-quality public space near their homes and their understanding of the importance of public space remains incomplete. This study also suggests that how those public buildings could be created for those workers to attend public activities. Then social connections will be cemented.Keywords: migrant workers; social integration; public spaces.

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-197
Author(s):  
Kristina Careva ◽  
Rene Lisac

Complexity of the 20th century society, along with strong professions' specialization, led to separation between all participants in the developing processes, especially in public spaces design. Lack of cohesion and consensus along with poor communication between professions, citizens, government and business sector, resulted in new participative and interdisciplinary trends emerging in the 21st century to bring sectors back together. Students' education must follow these trends, as their orientation in shaping the desirable futures. Elective course ‘Participatory design of space’ (POP) is planned as a faculty-based fieldwork workshop that gives students the opportunity to become acquainted with participatory methods in space design. In this way, the user's opinion is included in the cognitive fund when drafting the conceptual solution of a small-scale task in the public space or in any area of interaction. Students learn to identify and critically evaluate participatory content, to generate the conceptual level of planning — intent, to discuss it with users, to translate it directly and recognizably into a viable solution, to present it successfully, and to participate in the realization.


Author(s):  
Gordon C.C. Douglas

Chapter 6 looks at the world of official urban planning and placemaking, providing different perspectives on its relationship to DIY urbanism. Through the voices of professional planners, the chapter explores their conflicted opinions on DIY approaches: criticizing their informality and emphasizing the importance of regulations and accountability for everything from basic functionality to social equity, yet sympathetic to do-it-yourselfers’ frustrations and often excited to adopt their tactics, harness their energy, and exploit their cultural value. The chapter then describes how some DIY projects have found pathways to formal adoption and inspired popular “tactical urbanism” and “creative placemaking” approaches to public space design. Many such interventions can result in innovative public spaces with social, environmental, and economic benefits. But the reproduction of an aesthetic experience selectively inspired by a hip grassroots trend and combined with “creative class” values can mark the resulting spaces themselves as elite and exclusionary.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Francesca Dal Cin ◽  
Fransje Hooimeijer ◽  
Maria Matos Silva

Future sea-level rises on the urban waterfront of coastal and riverbanks cities will not be uniform. The impact of floods is exacerbated by population density in nearshore urban areas, and combined with land conversion and urbanization, the vulnerability of coastal towns and public spaces in particular is significantly increased. The empirical analysis of a selected number of waterfront projects, namely the winners of the Mies Van Der Rohe Prize, highlighted the different morphological characteristics of public spaces, in relation to the approximation to the water body: near the shoreline, in and on water. The critical reading of selected architectures related to water is open to multiple insights, allowing to shift the design attention from the building to the public space on the waterfronts. The survey makes it possible to delineate contemporary features and lay the framework for urban development in coastal or riverside areas.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-69
Author(s):  
Heather Harrington

Abstract How people move and appear in public spaces is a reflection of the cultural, religious and socio-political forces in a society. This article, built on an earlier work titled ’Site-Specific Dance: Women in the Middle East’ (2016), addresses the ways in which dance in a public space can support the principles of freedom of expression and gender equality in Tunisia. I explore the character of public space before, during, and after the Arab Spring uprisings. Adopting an ethnographic and phenomenological approach, I focus on the efforts of two Tunisian dancers – Bahri Ben Yahmed (a dancer, choreographer and filmmaker based in Tunis, who has trained in ballet, modern dance and hip hop) and Ahmed Guerfel (a dancer based in Gabès, who has trained in hip hop) – to examine movement in a public space to address political issues facing the society. An analysis of data obtained from Yahmed and Guerfel, including structured interviews, videos, photos, articles and e-mail correspondence, supports the argument that dance performed in public spaces is more effective in shaping the politics of the society than dance performed on the proscenium stage. Definitions and properties of everyday choreography, site and the proscenium stage are analysed, along with examples of site-specific political protest choreography in Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia. I engage with the theories of social scientist Erving Goffman, which propose that a public space can serve as a stage, where people both embody politics and can embody a protest against those politics.


2019 ◽  
pp. 5-36
Author(s):  
Joumana Stephan ◽  
Nada Chbat

Perceived as a complex system, public space could be examined through the means of complexity thinking. Complexity thinking not only offers a new urban terminology delivering interesting insights on the city and its public space, it also offers new tools that could deepen our understanding of their major issues. In this paper, the complex case of Horsh Beirut is diagnosed with one of these tools: Systemic Triangulation. As a trans disciplinary tool for relational diagnosis, Systemic Triangulation acknowledges the inscription of urban problems in structural, functional and dynamic continuums, establishing the relationships between them, and projecting interactions between the system and its environment. This paper searches for the implication of this method, based on non-linear representations of urban reality, in public space design and management. And explores to what extent the systemic approach could give us fresh answers on classic urban problems such as dysfunctional green public spaces and spatial segregation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Aurelija Daugelaite ◽  
Indre Gražulevičiūte-Vileniške ◽  
Mantas Landauskas

The concept of urban acupuncture, which has been gaining ground in recent decades, is based on the activation and revitalization of urban environments using small architectural or landscape architectural interventions in precise carefully selected locations of urban fabric. However, the rapid and unexpected design solutions of urban acupuncture, based on ecological design, nature dynamics, street art, material re-use, can cause different social and psychological reactions of urban population and these reactions may vary depending on cultural contexts. Consequently, in order to implement successful urban acupuncture projects in Lithuanian cities, it is very important to find out public opinion and priorities in the fields of public space management, aesthetics, and public art. The aim of the research was to analyze the opinion of Kaunas city residents regarding these issues. For this purpose, a sociological questionnaire survey was used. The questionnaire containing 20 questions was designed, with the aim to find out the trends of use of public spaces in the city, the attitudes of residents towards street art and other small-scale initiatives in public spaces implemented in the recent years, possibilities of creating landscape architecture based on ecological ideas in urban environment, the attitude of inhabitants towards community spaces and community space design in the city, etc. 100 residents of Kaunas participated in this online administered survey. The survey has demonstrated general positive attitude towards contemporary design trends of public spaces and public art; however, the surveyed population expressed preferences towards fully equipped public spaces offering possibilities for a wide range of activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vukmirovic ◽  
Gavrilovic ◽  
Stojanovic

Being the vital element of successful cities, public spaces play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals and in coping with climate change. The new urban agenda considers public spaces indispensable for sustaining the productivity of cities, social cohesion and inclusion, civic identity, and quality of life. Accordingly, there is no doubt about the importance of public spaces, while their quality is generated through the symbiosis of various elements. On the basis of normative theories of urban design, several public space design frameworks have been established in order to define what makes a good public place. Such a framework for public space quality evaluation is developed and tested at the Chair for Planning and Design in Landscape Architecture at the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Forestry. The framework covers six criteria which illuminate key aspects of public spaces: safety and security, accessibility, legibility, comfort, inspiration and sensitivity and liveability. In this research, special attention is paid to the criteria of comfort analysed on two scale levels in Belgrade, Serbia. In the past, Belgrade was affected by extreme weather events that caused serious and sometimes disastrous consequences. The most pronounced challenges among them are heat waves in summer that, due to the shortage of vegetation combined with the proliferation of tarmac and concrete surfaces and reduced air ventilation, particularly threaten the densely populated central municipalities of Stari Grad, Savski Venac and Vracar. The first scale level covers the analysis of the public space network and the degree of establishment of green infrastructure in Lower Dorcol quartier, which is located in the Municipality of Stari Grad, using quantitative and qualitative indicators and GIS (Geographic Information System) digital tools. The aim of this study is to observe the actual state of the public space network and to define a future scenario of its development in line with climate change challenges. Jevrejska Street, as an element of the above-mentioned public space network, is the subject of the next phase of the research. The study on this scale level will cover qualitative and quantitative analysis of public space elements such as paving, urban equipment, greenery, lighting, water facilities, etc. Next to that, by using the ENVI Met platform, the actual and proposed improvement of the street will be explored. The final part of this research will include a discussion about the research methodology used in order to improve the public space design process and to point out the need for the careful consideration of comfort as an important aspect of good public space.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-205
Author(s):  
Hee Sun (Sunny) Choi

This paper explores what it means for a public space to embody the city within rapid urban change in contemporary urban development and how a space can accomplish this by embracing the culture of the city, its people and its places, using the particular case of Putuo, Shanghai in China. The paper employs mapping and empirical surveys to learn how the local community use the act of communal dance in everyday public spaces of this neighborhood, and seeks not to find generalizable rules for how humans comprehend a city, but instead to better understand how local inhabitants and their chosen activities can influence their built environment. The findings from this emphasize the importance to identify how public spaces can help to define cities with China’s emerging global presence, whilst addressing the ways in which local needs and perspectives can be preserved.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Najiha Jaffar ◽  
Nor Zalina Harun ◽  
Alias Abdullah

Public spaces are vital elements of settlement fabrics that animate communities together in one place. Nevertheless, most public places are used for recreational purposes only without building on communal activities, especially in religious aspects. Therefore, to achieve robust social sustainability, this study aims to identify the key indicators for ensuring social sustainability of traditional settlements’ public spaces. This study explores the typologies of public spaces found in traditional settlements that fill the needs of the local community. A mixed methodology was used to map and observe the public spaces and the communal activities held in two traditional Malay settlements in Kuala Terengganu. The bulk of the data were randomly collected from 400 residents by using a questionnaire survey to identify the most relevant factors that influence social sustainability. The results show that mosques have been listed as the highest preference of public space in the two sampled settlements. The study outlines three key qualities that lead the community to choose the mosque as the most important public space: 1) convenient access, 2) comfortable and clean, and 3) social aspects. This paper concludes on how these findings contribute to the improvement of quality of life, social interaction and social cohesion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela de Souza Tenorio ◽  

Public spaces that attract and retain diverse people are crucial to foster urbanity and tolerance, and build stronger and livelier communities, especially in big cities. The simple coexistence of similarities and differences in public spaces can, to say the least, validate our own essence and offer us a possibility of growth. Sharing the same space with other people – even without interacting with them – favors social learning. Theory suggests that thought, feeling and behavior can be altered by observation. The search for public spaces that make urbanity viable is desirable in any society (especially in more unequal societies, as one can find in developing countries). However, inspired by ideas built on the critique of great urban agglomerations after the Industrial Revolution, cities around the world have undergone transformations that did exactly the opposite. As a series of lifeless places began to emerge, several researchers tried to figure out why this was happening. These researchers found that just wanting to create a lively place was not enough. It was necessary to scrutinize the behavior of people in public spaces in order to understand the relationship between their configuration and use. The knowledge they have built has been largely responsible for the increasing concern with public spaces and their relation to public life since the 1960s. Cities around the world are realizing that empty places could be full of people, and that not only a place full of people is something positive, but an empty place is not. They are learning to see underused public spaces as social, cultural, environmental, and financial waste. However, even with so much information available, it is still possible to find, in any contemporary city, public spaces that fail to support public life. Frequently, little or nothing is done to make them safer or more attractive, diverse and pleasant. It is even more worrying to realize that such places continue to be created. This is the focus of this paper. It brings together available knowledge and experiences in the area of public space design. It also complements, structures and translates such experiences and knowledge into a Public Space Post-Occupancy Evaluation Method, which stresses the importance of observing people and their activities. As a result, one can better understand, observe, assess and, thus, manipulate the main attributes of a public space that may influence its capacity to attract and retain diverse people on a daily basis. The method is offered as a tool to support those who deal with public spaces at different levels – from academic studies to municipal management. It has been used in Brasilia, Brazil, for the past 7 years, with positive results in governmental decision-making processes. A case study is briefly presented to illustrate its use.


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