scholarly journals How People Reclaimed Public Spaces in Beirut during the 2019 Lebanese Uprising

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Wael Sinno

Over the past years, popular uprisings across the Middle East continue to grow. Throughout these movements, public spaces have played a crucial role in allowing citizens to express their demands. Public spaces have brought people together, providing the space for citizens to assert their rights to freedom of speech and demanding basic rights. Since 17 October 2019, Lebanon has been experiencing a similar civic movement. Expressions and manifestations of this movement have used underutilized public spaces across the country. For instance, in Beirut, the retrieve of public spaces has taken place on three levels: - Multi-purpose public spaces: where the protestors are reshaping the wide formal streets of Beirut Central District to active and lively urban spaces. - Open public spaces: such as Samir Kassir garden, which was once a meditative space, is now a vibrant social place. - Public urban facilities: such as the abandoned Egg [1] and the deteriorated Grand Theatre are being brought to life by becoming respectively a community centre and an observatory. To date, the act of placemaking and the reclamation of public spaces has been observed throughout the 2019 Lebanese Uprising. It has reconfigured public spaces into ones of unity, thereby reuniting citizens of all ages, religions, gender and walks of life. Some see the uprising as a genuine end to the 1975 Civil War – a war that gave birth to religious, political, and social boundaries – by organically bringing together the country as one, demonstrating under one flag, the Lebanese flag. [1] The Egg, an unfinished cinema built in the 1960s, is a landmark urban facility that was closed to the public for a long time. The Egg is located in the heart of the city near the former Civil War green zone line. Designed by Architect Joseph Philippe Karam, work on this unfinished structure started in the 1960s, interrupted by the Lebanese Civil War during which the building was abandoned and suffered major structural damage.

Night Raiders ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Eloise Moss

First described in 1907, ‘cat’ burglars’ reputation as extraordinarily athletic thieves and rooftop-dwellers was cemented during the 1920s, when the feline burglars appeared to ransack the West End mansions of the wealthy with frightening regularity—according to the press. Disregarding the regulated concourse of the street to reach their victims via window, wall, and roof, cat burglars forever altered received wisdom on how London as an environment could be manipulated and experienced, and how it needed to be policed. The fact that all this took place at night as well gave added lustre to these thieves’ well-publicized exploits. An entirely new sub-category of crime thus emerged as space, time, and identity became intertwined around burglary. Concurrently, the material residue of cat burglars’ rooftop escapades—broken tiles and drainpipes, soil-marks on walls, etc.—encouraged new modes of policing and regulation based on the developing practice of forensic science. This chapter considers the geographical signifiers associated with burglars’ activities across the ‘public’ spaces of the city. It argues that accounts of burglars’ unusual mobility when travelling to victims’ houses evoked fears surrounding the erosion of London’s social boundaries, through suburbanization bringing working, middle, and upper classes into closer proximity than ever before, and via disruptive new modes of travel such as the car and Underground railway. In so doing, it shows that contemporary understandings of how London as an environment could be manipulated and experienced were fundamentally revised in relation to burglary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.


Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.


Elore ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Outi Fingerroos
Keyword(s):  

Toivo Kuula was a famous Finnish composer who died in Vyborg in 1918. He worked in Vyborg in 1916–1918 and was known as an intense Finnish man born in the city of Vaasa. At the end of April 1918 the Finnish Civil War of 1918 had just ended. The Whites had won the war at the expense of the Reds and the victors held a celebration in Vyborg. Toivo Kuula participated in a celebration organised by the light infantrymen from Vaasa. It was an evening of heavy drinking. Toivo Kuula was murdered by one of the infantrymen. Hence, it was hushed up and remained a mystery until the 1960s. In the article I concentrate on the how the image of this evening is presented in reminiscences. Who has silenced the murder? What is the meaning of this silence? What kind of mystery and myth has been fashioned around the murder of Toivo Kuula?


Author(s):  
Yuliya Kuzovenkova ◽  

The last two decades have been a time of serious transformation of youth subcultures. Researchers speak about the formation of the postmodernism paradigm of subculture and the virtualisation of sociocultural phenomena. The subcultural subject and the power that formed it continue to exist in the new realities, but are undergoing a transformation. Changes having occured to the public sphere were especially significant for a subcultural entity since it is the public sphere where a subcultural entity can present itself to authorities, thereby maintaining its social subsistence. Our research was aimed at studying how the transformation of the public sphere has affected the entity’s subculture. For the study, the authors employed the method of a qualitative half-structurated interview and draw on the disciplinary authority concept suggested by M. Foucault. The analysis was based on materials of interviewing some representatives of the graffiti subculture in the city of Samara (twenty-two people) from 2016 to 2018. The author has established that the subcultural subject is processual and dependent on the practices in use; a change in practices leads to a change in the subject. Changes of practices in the graffiti subculture were a result of the virtualisation of culture. The author has identified the changes that have taken place in the subcultural subject under the influence of the transformation of the public sphere (the ‘short time’ of instantaneous fame prevails over the ‘long time’ of the symbolic capital of the nickname, new space-time coordinates within which the entity exists, the ‘digital body’ of the subcultural entity becomes ever more informative rather than that which was created via sketches placed in urban space). Unlike the public sphere, the private sphere under the influence of a subculture ideology remains unchanged.


2013 ◽  
Vol 409-410 ◽  
pp. 883-886
Author(s):  
Bo Xuan Zhao ◽  
Cong Ling Meng

City, is consisting of a series continuous or intermittent public space images, and every image for each of our people living in the city is varied: may be as awesome as forbidden city Meridian Gate, like Piazza San Marco as a cordial and pleasant space and might also be like Manhattan district of New York, which makes people excited and enthusiastic. To see why, people have different feelings because the public urban space ultimately belongs to democratic public space, people live and have emotions in it. In such domain, people can not only be liberated, free to enjoy the pleasures of urban public space, but also enjoy urban life which is brought by the city's charm through highlighting the vitality of the city with humanism atmosphere. To a conclusion, no matter how ordinary the city is, a good image of urban space can also bring people pleasure.


Author(s):  
Mairita Folkmane ◽  
Ilva Skulte

Daugavpils historically was the place where different ethnic groups are living together, interacting on the public spaces. The mixture of cultures is represented in the city landscape - home to every inhabitant, still having differents accents, figures and symbolical meanings. The following paper is based on the semiotic analysis of the pictures made by the pupils of different (ethnic) schools of Daugavpils, in order to understand what and how cildren "see" their city - what are the signs they use to construct the message about their city together and what do they mean - how different is a pictorial message. To do the analysis collection of the children drawings was made for an exhibition in the hall of the city munipality of Daugavpils - a material for our research. The findings show that besides of expected reference to different cultural traditions and some aestetical preferences, no difference exists between the way children represent their city. Diversity of cultural footprints in the landscape of the city and the pride for their city is present in the works of children coming from different ethnic, linguistic and cultural environments.


Turyzm ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Bartnik ◽  
Aleksandra Suwart

This paper presents the characteristics of the fountains of Łódź, their location in the public spaces of the city and changes in various time periods. Special attention is drawn to the function of fountains in contemporary cities and their social perception. Moreover, in the last part, the presumed reasons for their present distribution and typological variety are given.


2021 ◽  
pp. 99-99
Author(s):  
Elena Grigoryeva

Nowadays, one can hardly deny the importance of the system of public spaces. Its role as an integral element of urban infrastructure is actively studied, yet not fully comprehended. This section presents a collection of publications devoted to the history of the question using the example of public spaces in Krasnoyarsk. The therapeutic role of urban gardens is an example of the innovative approach of the Crimean scientists to the problem of the city infrastructure.Philosophy of separate objects is discussed in the articles of our regular authors. The fountain and the city well, of course, are both part of the public spaces and part of the engineering infrastructure that (for free!) ensures life of the city and citizens. The city is indeed rooted in wells.


2012 ◽  
pp. 128-155
Author(s):  
Tiago Estevam Gonçalves ◽  
Tatiane Rodrigues Carneiro

Iniciar uma reflexão acerca da cidade atual nos remete à necessidade de construirmos uma análise sobre os shopping centers como espaços que tem atraído um fluxo considerável da população, ocasionando mudanças na relação dos citadinos com os espaços públicos.  Nesta perspectiva, temos como objetivo analisar o  North Shopping, localizado na cidade de Fortaleza, como um espaço de uso popular onde as camadas de menor poder aquisitivo podem adentrar e usufruir de seus atributos. Imbuídos de tal finalidade nosso aporte teórico fundamentou-se em Pintaudi (1992), Dantas (1995), Silva (1996) Lefebvre (1999), Carlos (2001), Gomes (2002) e Serpa (2007). Conclui-se que na cidade de Fortaleza, o North Shopping é um verdadeiro simulacro da realidade, substituindo as experiências cotidianas dos espaços públicos, configurando-se, assim, a supervalorização do espaço privado que se traveste de público tendo repercussões na nova urbanidade fortalezense.  Public Space and Shopping Mall in the Contemporary City: New Meanings of North Shopping in Fortaleza/CE  Abstract Start a discussion about the current city us the need to build an analysis on malls as spaces that have attracted a considerable  flow of people, causing changes in the relationships of the townspeople with the public spaces. In this perpective, we have to anlyze the North Shopping, located in Fortaleza, as a space where the popular use of lower purchasing power can enter and enjoy its atributes. Imbued with this purpose our theoretival approach was bases on Pintaudi (1992), Dantas (1995), Silva (1996) Lefebvre (1999), Carlos (2001), Gomes (2002) e Serpa (2007).  It’s concluded that in the city of Fortaleza, the North Shopping is a true simulation of reality, replacing the daily experiences of public spaces, becoming  thusovervaluation of private space of public who dresss as having impact on new fortaleza’s urbanity. Espacio Público y Centro Comercial en Ciudad Contemporánea: Nuevos Sentidos del North Shopoing en la Fortaleza/CE ResumenIniciar uma reflexión acerca de la actual ciudad nos recuerda la necesidad de construir um análisis acerca de los centros comerciales como espacios que han atraído um flujo considerable de personas, provocando câmbios en la relación de los habitantes de la ciudad com los espacios públicos. Em esta perspectiva, tenemos que analisar el North Shopping, que se encuentra en Fortaleza, como um espacio de uso popular donde lãs camadas de menor poder adquisitivo pueden entrar y disfrutar de sus atributos. Imbuido de esa finalidad nuestro aporte teórico se fundamento em: Pintaudi (1992), Dantas (1995), Silva (1996) Lefebvre (1999), Carlos (2001), Gomes (2002) y Serpa (2004). Se puede concluir que en la ciudad de Fortaleza el North Shopping es uma  verdadera simulación de la realidad, sustituición de las experiencias diárias de los espacios públicos, convertiéndose, asó, la sobrevaluación del espacio privado que se passa por el público tenendo impactos en la nueva urbanidad de Fortaleza.10.7147/GEO10.1573


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document