scholarly journals Leslieville: a neighbourhood in transition, a community divided understanding the changing politics a/space in a Toronto neighbourhood.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Napier
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
City Council ◽  
Retail Development ◽  
Land Dispute ◽  
Big Box ◽  
Farming Village ◽  
East End ◽  
Ontario Municipal Board

This paper aims to tell the story of Leslieville, a small neighbourhood in Toronto's east end, from its early settlement in the 1850s to the present. Looking back at the area's progression from farming village, to working-class industrial centre, to gentrifying creative hub, provides the historical context for a further consideration of the current challenges and conflicts that are impacting the community today. In 2008 a land dispute over a proposed big-box style retail development divided the community and instigated a yearlong battle at the Ontario Municipal Board between Toronto city council and private developers. In tracing the historical growth of Leslieville and analyzing the current development issues, this study examines how urban development and cultural policy have influenced the transformation of this unique Toronto neighbourhood. An application of the theoretical literature on gentrification and photographs are provided in order to supplement the analysis. By identifying Leslieville as a neighbourhood in transition and examining it as a case study in the process and impact of gentrification and neighbourhood change this research contributes to a further understanding of the nature of urban space and how it should be developed to serve the interests of Toronto's diverse population.

scholarly journals Leslieville: a neighbourhood in transition, a community divided understanding the changing politics a/space in a Toronto neighbourhood.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Napier
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
City Council ◽  
Retail Development ◽  
Land Dispute ◽  
Big Box ◽  
Farming Village ◽  
East End ◽  
Ontario Municipal Board

This paper aims to tell the story of Leslieville, a small neighbourhood in Toronto's east end, from its early settlement in the 1850s to the present. Looking back at the area's progression from farming village, to working-class industrial centre, to gentrifying creative hub, provides the historical context for a further consideration of the current challenges and conflicts that are impacting the community today. In 2008 a land dispute over a proposed big-box style retail development divided the community and instigated a yearlong battle at the Ontario Municipal Board between Toronto city council and private developers. In tracing the historical growth of Leslieville and analyzing the current development issues, this study examines how urban development and cultural policy have influenced the transformation of this unique Toronto neighbourhood. An application of the theoretical literature on gentrification and photographs are provided in order to supplement the analysis. By identifying Leslieville as a neighbourhood in transition and examining it as a case study in the process and impact of gentrification and neighbourhood change this research contributes to a further understanding of the nature of urban space and how it should be developed to serve the interests of Toronto's diverse population.

Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences. By Ann Satterthwaite. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. 1, 386.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-297
Author(s):  
Gary Cross
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
City Planner ◽  
Big Box ◽  
The Impact

Adding to the growing list of retrospective studies of shopping and consumption is this engaged survey of the impact of American retail trade on community culture and social interaction. Although the author (a city planner in Washington, DC) is broadly within the tradition of Jane Jacobs and other critics of the commercialization of urban space, hers is a contemporary, well-informed, and nuanced judgment of the impact of malls, remote retail, big box stores, and other expressions of contemporary shopping. Even though this book may not meet the expectations of the professional historian, it does attempts to put very present-minded concerns about the social impact of contemporary retailing trends into a historical context.

Curating the urban music festival: Festivalisation, the ‘shuffle’ logic, and digitally-shaped music consumption

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110086
Author(s):  
Paulo Nunes ◽  
Carolyn Birdsall
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Radio Station ◽  
City Branding ◽  
Music Festivals ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
Urban Music ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries

In recent years, music festivals have grown in significance within local cultural policy, city branding and tourism agendas. Taking the Mexefest festival in Lisbon as a case in point, this article asks how, in the digital streaming era, music festivals in urban environments are framed, curated and experienced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, our analysis examines how music festival programmers curate the urban festival experience, for both locals and tourists alike. First, we identify the emergence of urban music festivals in recent decades, and how modern festival programmes have adopted the cultural technique of the ‘shuffle mode’ as an influential principle. Second, we investigate the work of festival programmers through the lens of ‘cultural intermediaries’, and ask how their programming strategies, particularly through digital mobile media (such as music playlists), contribute to an aestheticised experience of the city during the festival. Third, we focus on how the Mexefest festival events are staged in tandem with brand activation by sponsors like mobile phone company Vodafone and their radio station Vodafone FM. In doing so, we highlight the participation of festival-goers through their embodied engagements with digital media, music listening and urban space, and evaluate the heuristic value of ‘shuffle curation’ as a tool for the understanding of music festivals as a distinctly global and networked form of leisure consumption in urban culture.

What do we value? The questions of Rachel Whiteread’s House

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elesa Huibregtse
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
East End ◽  
Post Industrial

On 25 October 1993, British artist Rachel Whiteread revealed her most ambitious sculptural work to date – House. The solidified space of this Victorian-era, terraced home physically existed for a mere 80 days; yet, during this time it became the subject of an intense media interest and heated public debate which reached the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament. While House has been discussed in depth within art historical scholarship for almost 30 years, trends in this academic body of work tend to focus on absence and memory in a highly contested public space, as well as thoughts on loss, death, architecture, the art market, politics and gentrification in London’s East End during the latter part of the twentieth century. What is lacking, however, is an examination of House within the larger context of visual culture and what it may, or may not, mean for contemporary viewers. Analysing the historical context of the work’s location through a Marxist lens, reveals the dehumanization which occurred within the East End’s class constructs throughout the nineteenth century, and its effect on housing policies well into the twentieth century. Reading the sculptural work itself, using the methodologies of semiotics, unveils mythologies regarding what is and is not expendable in our western spaces; particularly, the working class, houses and works of art in post-industrial capitalist societies. The ideologies embedded within these mythologies continue to appear in our mass media images to this day, leaving unanswered questions regarding what is truly valued in our societies. Thus, Whiteread’s unique work is an artistic intervention into an image-saturated environment, asking the viewers and readers of cultural texts to consider at what point in time we will seek to change how we treat that which has been arguably undervalued.

The sound space of the city as a reflection of ‘‘the spirit of the times’’ and the inner world of the film hero

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Elena A. Rusinova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
The City

The theme of the artistic image of the city in film has been repeatedly considered in film studies from both historical and cultural perspectives. However, two aspects of the study of the theme remain virtually unexplored because they are associated with a professional analysis of such a specific area of filmmaking as sound directing. The first aspect is the role of the city in films as both visual and audio space; the second aspect is the significance of urban sounds in the creation of the inner world of a film character. This essay explores the director's vision of urban space and the possibilities of sound directing in the formation of the inner world of a character and his/her various mental conditions - through the use of sound textures of the urban environment. The author analyses several films about Georgia's capital Tbilisi, produced in different time periods. The vivid "sound face" of Tbilisi allows one to follow changes in the aesthetic approaches to the use of the city's sounds for the formation of the image of film characters in the cultural and historical context of particular films. The essay concludes that the urban space, with its huge range of sound phenomena, contributes to the formation of a polyphonic phonogram which could bring a film's semantics to higher aesthetic and intellectual levelsl.

scholarly journals Framing the Urban: Struggles Over HOPE VI and New Urbanism in a Historic City

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Elliott ◽  
Kevin Fox Gotham ◽  
Melinda J. Milligan
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
New Urbanism ◽  
Hope Vi ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Federal Housing ◽  
Big Box ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
New Urbanist ◽  
Strategic Framing

Recent debate over the federal HOPE VI program has focused primarily on whether local applications have met administrative pledges to provide adequate affordable housing to displaced residents of newly demolished public‐housing developments. In this research we take a different direction, examining local processes of political mobilization and strategic framing around a specific type of HOPE VI redevelopment—one that includes construction of a big‐box superstore as part of proposed urban renewal. We argue that the HOPE VI program's formal alignment with New Urbanism created a political opportunity for competing actors to adopt and espouse selective new urbanist themes and imagery to construct and advance divergent visions of what urban space ought to be. Through these framing strategies and struggles, the developer, displaced residents, and opposition groups produced “the City” as a rhetorical object that each then used to advocate specific redevelopment proposals while de‐legitimating competing claims. In this way, the HOPE VI program constitutes more than a new federal housing policy; it offers a new vocabulary for framing and mobilizing collective action in contemporary urban centers.

Design Aesthetics of Transborder Infrastructure in the Pearl River Delta

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-152
Author(s):  
Max Hirsh
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Air Travel ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
The Pearl River Delta ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Pearl River

Design Aesthetics of Transborder Infrastructure in the Pearl River Delta investigates the development of a “transborder” ferry network that allows passengers in Mainland China to fly through Hong Kong International Airport without going through customs and immigration controls. Located deep inside Guangdong Province, these facilities cater to travelers whose movement across international frontiers is limited by their income or citizenship. Focusing on two of these terminals, Max Hirsh argues that the prevailing emphasis on iconic structures in the architectural history of air travel has overshadowed the emergence of distinctly un-iconic aviation facilities designed to plug less-privileged people and places into broader networks of international air travel. Hirsh locates this infrastructural innovation in the historical context of the region and interrogates its spatial logic and aesthetic composition in an effort to model a new understanding of urban space: one that illuminates an architecture of incipient global mobility that has been inconspicuously inserted into ordinary places and unspectacular structures throughout the Pearl River Delta.

scholarly journals The Circumstances of Art in the Public Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2(4)) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Michaela Rudyjová
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
Made In ◽  
Hybrid Forms

The public space and the art within it have taken different forms and functions in history, namely changing from being an agora, to present-day so-called hybrid forms. The resulting state of forms and functions of art in the public space depends on several determinants, including freedom and restrictions concerning the public space. While under totalitarian regimes priorities and restrictions prevail, after the fall of totalitarian regimes almost unlimited freedom comes into being. Consequently, questions arise regarding who makes decisions on the forms of art placed in the public space, and on what grounds such decisions are made. In our article, in taking the example of one city we are looking for the answers to questions whether and how it is possible to map the art in the public urban space, as well as who, and on what grounds, makes decisions regarding expressions of art in the public space. Methodologically, we have based our research on the identification and analysis of relevant documents of cultural policy related to a given place and on interviews with a chosen relevant expert who is involved in the public space.

scholarly journals Virtual Palimpsest and Pentimenti for an Architecture in Reality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Keegan Hannaway
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
City Council ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Scaled Model ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modernist Architecture ◽  
A Site

<p>Behind every site is an unseen history. Before us, countless people have lived their lives through an ever evolving environment. This research examines how a process of uncovering site specific architectural and cultural histories using virtual reality can facilitate for the development of a design intervention that builds upon former histories of the site.  This has been done through a process of digitally unveiling traces of historic architectures, using notions of palimpsest and pentimento.   Palimpsest and pentimento are terms from art and literary studies which are concerned with the physical traces of historic processes left on parchment and canvas, the reworking and adding to a new piece that reflects what was before. Palimpsest as an architectural theory is somewhat related to ideas of historicism in 1980s post-modernist architecture.  This research was undertaken initially through conventional historical research using archival plans and photographs of former buildings on the site. These were obtained from sources such as the Wellington City Council and National Library of New Zealand in order to accurately determine what has previously existed. This history was then visually represented in three-dimensional digital models and overlaid onto a model of the site.  By digitally rebuilding each built intervention, users can occupy each phase separately or simultaneously in a virtual reality environment. This full scaled model enables an accurate visualisation of how the historic architecture really existed. Ideas such as scale, phenomenology, depth, form, and detail can be represented in virtual reality in a way that allows a greater understanding than simple flat images and plans.  This process then leads to a way of developing an architecture based off what made the previous buildings successful. Once Again using virtual reality, this time as a design tool, to root the new building in to its historical context, creating a deeper architectural experience.  Developing this process of using the history of a site as a tool for generating a new architecture allows for a greater meaning of the site, and for a deeper meaning to the architecture.</p>

scholarly journals Post-Pandemic City: Historical Context for New Urban Design

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Veaceslav MIR
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
The City

Cities have been almost completely unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. Urban history has known many epidemics and pandemics, and there are clear historical parallels between the 13th and 19th century plague pandemics and cholera epidemics and the 21th century COVID-19 pandemic, from an administrative point of view. However, the cities’ public administration did not take into account the experience of the cities of the past to be prepared for the future problems. This requires developing flexible pandemic strategies and focusing on the decentralization of urban space through an even distribution of population in the urban environment. The COVID-19 pandemic will change the city, as previous pandemics and epidemics did. Urbanism v.3.0. will emerge, combining a green vector of development and digital technologies to ensure the autonomy and sustainability of buildings, districts and cities. At the same time, the role of culture will increase, which will become an effective tool for consolidating the soft power of the city in order to attract new people as the opposition of nowadays trend for living in the countryside.

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