Life in small urban spaces of “Sanskari Nagari – Vadodara”

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Abhilash Kolluri ◽  
Garbhit Naik ◽  
Shubham Kaushal
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Western India ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Life Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
City Dynamics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper envisages the situation of social life in the city of, “Vadodara – Sanskari Nagari” during and post-pandemic. In the globalization hub of Western-India, the city Vadodara stands true to its name – “Sanskari Nagari”, which still celebrates its rich heritage and culture to its fullest. The social life of people in Vadodara is not only a part of their culture but also part of their routine, which can be perceived from the world’s largest “Garba-gathering”; to every day’s post office hour “Chai-meetup”; to relishing their free time playing “Ludo” by the sides of bridges across the city. With the presence of COVID-19, city people are hesitant about social gatherings and meeting people. Ultimately, life is resuming but at a slow pace and there is an urge to “reimagine” the public spaces and public behaviour so that city doesn’t lose its charm. Referring to the city assessment of William H. Whyte, the mentor of Street Life Project for Public Spaces, Pedestrian behaviour, and City Dynamics, through his book – “Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces,1980” forms the prelude for the research. This paper draws attention to similar spaces for the city of Vadodara as referred to in the book. We see what we do not expect to see, and get acquainted to see crowded spaces. Hence, this paper analyses the selected “Urban-blocks” and “Neighbourhood-spaces” of different typology and their diverse activities. Conclusion focus on the rational segregation and “re-defining” of Urban Spaces based on their safe carrying capacity.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gendered Spatializations: A Study of Cityscapes in Manu Joseph’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
City Image ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.

Coffeehouses, Urban Spaces, and the Formation of a Public Sphere in Safavid Isfahan

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farshid Emami
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Topography

This essay examines the urban topography, physical structure, and social context of coffeehouses in Safavid Iran (1501–1722), particularly in the capital city of Isfahan. Through a reconstruction of the architecture and urban configuration of coffeehouses, the essay shows how, as an utterly novel institution, the coffeehouse opened up a new sphere of public life, engendered new conceptions of urbanity, and altered the social meaning of urban spaces. The essay will specifically focus on the drinking houses that existed in the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan and Khiyaban-i Chaharbagh, the grand urban spaces of seventeenth-century Isfahan. The remaining physical traces, together with textual and visual evidence, permit us to reconstruct Isfahan’s major coffeehouses. This analysis not only reveals a less-appreciated aspect of urbanity in the age of Shah ʿAbbas (r. 1587–1629) but also elucidates the ways in which the public spaces of Safavid Isfahan contained and shaped novel social practices particular to the early modern age.


scholarly journals Pentecostal cultures in urban peripheries: a socio-anthropological analysis of Pentecostalism in arts, grammars, crime and morality

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Vital da Cunha
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City ◽  
Empirical Field

Abstract In past decades, Catholicism in Brazil has emerged as a privileged theme in the Social Sciences literature, coming to be recognised as a key element in the formation of a "national culture". For the less affluent residents of the city, Catholicism constituted what Sanchis (1997) called “traditional urban popular culture”. Despite the abstraction contained in the notion of a "popular culture", Sanchis’ perspective has had wide academic repercussion. With the growing presence of Pentecostal Evangelicals in the public sphere, and the percentage of people who claimed to be “Evangelical” in the IBGE censuses since 1990, part of the social science literature began to reflect on the possible establishment of a "Pentecostal culture" in Brazil. In this article, I analyse the formation of a Pentecostal culture in urban peripheries. To this end, I consider that the increase in the number of Pentecostal churches and their devotees in these localities provoked changes in different spheres of social life. This article is based on empirical field research carried out intermittently between the years of 1996 and 2015 in the Acari shantytown (Rio de Janeiro).

scholarly journals KOMPARASI PERUBAHAN ASPEK SOSIAL EKONOMI PADA PENGHUNI RUMAH SUSUN PASCA PENANGANAN SQUATTER DI KOTA SURAKARTA

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Khizam Deby Kurniawan ◽  
Ana Hardiana ◽  
Rufia Andisetyana Putri
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socioeconomic Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Medium Increase ◽  
The City

<p><em>City has main attraction for livable. The public has the view that a town has a comprehensive facilities , good accessibility , a broad field of work and so on. This matter causes population growth developments in the city, because people migrating to the city livelihood for the sake of more worthy. The increasing population is not balanced with the service especially in the field of housing the city settlement that will appear squatter. So that the squatter need to be handled, in general the handling of having two pattern handling squatter approach , that is a pattern on-site and off-site. On site pattern is a problem handling squatter location without move to another region but with providing a place of decent housing. While off site pattern is handling by moving the squatter to the regions and with the status of land was legal. In fact both handling is to improve social life and economic society. One of squatter handling in Surakarta is build a low cost apartment. The limited land in Surakarta is one of the reason to build a low cost apartment in the Surakarta City for handling squatter. Based on issues, this research knowing comparisons of socio-economic change in the low cost apartment post-handling squatter. The method is applicable in weighting analysis methods in identifying the social economy at low cost apartment in Surakarta. This result oh the research re the comparisons of socioeconomic aspects of changes on residents after handling squatter in Surakarta can be seen that in Begalon I low cost apartment experienced a medium increase, while in Begalon II low cost apartment and Semanggi low cost apartment increased low. So that the change in the economic and social aspect of Begalon I low cost apartment with on site pattern has the higher than Begalon II low cost apartment and Semanggi low cost apartment with off site pattern.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords: </em></strong><em>low cost apartment, socioeconomic aspects, squatter</em></p>

The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces: Internet Use, Social Networks, and the Public Realm

2010 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith N. Hampton ◽  
Oren Livio ◽  
Lauren Sessions Goulet
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Internet Use ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Public Space as Infrastructure of Care

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Kallianos ◽  
Pafsanias Karathanasis
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Central Places ◽  
Public Square ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Critical Site

Our contribution puts forward an examination of public spaces as infrastructures of care. The eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the “social distancing” measures imposed by several governments around the world, transformed the very use and conceptualization of urban public spaces. In Athens, Greece, public space, which had already been in different ways at the forefront of multifarious crises since 2010, reemerged, once again, as a critical site of sociopolitical antagonism. Public spaces, such as squares, became central places where people could come together to share knowledge and emotions, collectively alleviate anxieties, and thus (re)negotiate their positionality in the city. Such formations and enactments of social connection, affectivity, and antagonism, reflect the entanglement between everyday life and the political, and also draw attention to the association of public space with practices of care for collective well-being during precarious times. During the ever-increasing securitization and policing of urban spaces in Athens, in which everyday life has come to be ever more permeated by precarity and uncertainty, public spaces have been reenacted as safe and more inclusive environments where people can be and act together. Our contribution also employs a video to render more intelligible the affective interconnectedness of sounds, images, bodies, materialities, and practices in public space. By attending to the affective dynamics of a public square in central Athens, we examine the entanglements between the sociopolitical production of public space and forms of care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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 Public spaces as a factor of the quality of the urban environment (on the example of the city of Irkutsk)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Нина Полякова
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
City Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
The City

The article describes the relevance of the study of public spaces as an important element of the quality of the urban environment. Successfully functioning public spaces are called upon to solve a number of urban problems, including the social isolation of citizens caused by urbanization processes. The characteristic of public spaces of a particular city is based on an assessment of a set of attributes and related criteria developed by placemaking specialists. It is proved that this complex should reflect not only the general requirements for public spaces, but also the features of the city: the diversity of the socio-ethnic structure of the population, cultural and historical heritage, and the specificity of the existing urban environment. The characteristics of the four most visited public spaces of the provincial Siberian city of Irkutsk are fulfilled: the Kirov square; historical and memorial complex "Jerusalem Mountain "; Municipal Park "Yunost Island"; shopping and entertainment complex "130th quarter". The results showed that the public spaces of the city perform a number of functions with varying degrees of success: best recreational and entertaining, partially creative and the function of storing the “collective memory” of the city. At the same time, the city does not have public spaces that fully meet the objectives of the development of urban society; this applies to both historical and newly created. Their main drawback is the inconsistency with the modern challenge for Irkutsk, namely, the solution to the problem of social inclusion of new citizens. Some measures have been proposed for City management to purposefully strengthen the elements of public spaces that implement the function of involving residents, especially migrants, in the public life of the city.

scholarly journals Silent cities, silenced histories: subaltern experiences of everyday urban violence during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s3 ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Jaideep Gupte ◽  
Syeda Jenifa Zahan
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban India ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Ontological Shift ◽  
The City

The public health containment measures in response to COVID-19 have precipitated a significant epistemic and ontological shift in �bottom-up� and �action-oriented� approaches in development studies research. �Lockdown� necessitates physical and social distancing between research subject and researcher, raising legitimate concerns around the extent to which �distanced� action-research can be inclusive and address citizens� lack of agency. Top-down regimes to control urban spaces through lockdown in India have not stemmed the experience of violence in public spaces: some have dramatically intensified, while others have changed in unexpected ways. Drawing on our experiences of researching the silent histories of violence and memorialisation of past violence in urban India over the past three decades, we argue that the experience of subaltern groups during the pandemic is not an aberration from their sustained experiences of everyday violence predating the pandemic. Exceptionalising the experiences of violence during the pandemic silences past histories and disenfranchises long struggles for rights in the city. At the same time, we argue that research practices employed to interpret the experience of urban violence during lockdown in India need to engage the changing nature of infrastructural regimes, as they seek to control urban spaces, and as subaltern groups continue to mobilise and advocate, in new ways.

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