scholarly journals The Contemporary Common: Reinvigorating the Public Realm through Enhancing Topophilic Relationships

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Carey

Urban neighbourhoods are experiencing an increase in density, placing greater importance on a vibrant and invigorated public realm. By focusing on enhancing place-based relationships, the quality of public spaces can be rejuvenated, improving social relations while creating an enhanced sense of community. The contemporary common is a multi-faceted public space that functions as a unifying platform for social inclusion, collective culture, and civic inculcation. This is accomplished through the use of topophilic design, a place-based design methodology that focuses on the creation of interventions that facilitate the definition of place. These ideas are tested through the establishment of a community hub within St. James town. The common has the potential to revitalize the public realm, attempting to enable culturally-rich spaces. Creating this identity for Toronto's public parks can improve civic formation, ultimately establishing neighbourhoods resilient to the current carceral archipelago of Toronto's urban green spaces.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Carey

Urban neighbourhoods are experiencing an increase in density, placing greater importance on a vibrant and invigorated public realm. By focusing on enhancing place-based relationships, the quality of public spaces can be rejuvenated, improving social relations while creating an enhanced sense of community. The contemporary common is a multi-faceted public space that functions as a unifying platform for social inclusion, collective culture, and civic inculcation. This is accomplished through the use of topophilic design, a place-based design methodology that focuses on the creation of interventions that facilitate the definition of place. These ideas are tested through the establishment of a community hub within St. James town. The common has the potential to revitalize the public realm, attempting to enable culturally-rich spaces. Creating this identity for Toronto's public parks can improve civic formation, ultimately establishing neighbourhoods resilient to the current carceral archipelago of Toronto's urban green spaces.


2015 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Tobias Woldendorp

The article focuses on the sense of security as a very important element affecting the quality of life and its improvement. Attention was drawn to crime and security in public space, which, is used by old people. The aim of the study is to use the CPTED methodology – Dutch solutions in the field of crime prevention such as architectural, urban and green design. The main criteria used in the method is visibility, accessibility, attractiveness and territoriality. Observations and analysis on the use of this method were conducted by the author on the high-rise (real estate) in Łódź-Widzew.


2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 57-73
Author(s):  
Tigran Haas

Buildings alone do not matter, it is only the ensemble of streets, squares, and buildings and the way they fit together that comprises the true principles of good urbanism and place making. One of the main rules of good urban design is the quality of the public space. This paper analyzes the importance of creating & maintaining a true public square in contemporary urban condition, as one of the built environments' pillars for sustaining social and cultural identity. Criticism has been posed towards the (neo) romanticizing the importance of European squares (as some critics would call it “Postcard Squares”) in everyday life and contemporary town planning. Movements such as New Urbanism, which promote good urban design have not put squares that high on their urban design agendas. Also the usage of the historic European city's public realm model - the square - as the important ingredient for all urban places has not been forthcoming. To investigate this phenomena, and facilitate the discourse, The Square of the St. Blaise Church (Luza Square) and the Gunduliceva Poljana Square in the Old City of Dubrovnik, are analyzed and reflected upon through various data collection, theory reflections and urban design evaluation methods, such as Garham's Sense of Place Typology-Taxonomy. If cities have livable and vibrant social spaces, do residents tend to have a stronger sense of community and sense of place? If such places are lacking, does the opposite happen?. This paper seeks out to answer these questions. Finally the paper also looks at how the phenomenon of creating good social spaces through creating ‘third places’ is achieved and confirmed in the squares of Dubrovnik.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1226-1241
Author(s):  
Lynda Cheshire ◽  
Peter Walters ◽  
Charlotte ten Have

The three realms of home, neighbourhood and public space comprise distinct socio-spatial entities, each with distinct sets of social relations and rules governing social interaction. The home, or private realm, is characterised by intimacy and familiarity; the parochial sphere is where people interact as neighbours or acquaintances; and the public realm is where strangers are encountered as a matter of course. While the contours of these realms are constantly shifting, the boundaries between the private sphere and outside world are preserved, such that strangers and neighbours enter the home only as temporary guests or as harmful ‘invaders’. In this article the authors examine how disaster can disrupt the boundaries between the private, parochial and public realms, allowing strangers to freely enter the home. Using interviews conducted after the Brisbane 2011 floods, the article shows that while the neighbourhood became a liminal space in which total strangers were accepted, the convergence of strangers in the private sphere of home generated anxiety among occupants despite the altruistic intent of those strangers. The article concludes that, paradoxically, the resilience of the private realm, even in a vastly degraded state, contributes to the distress felt by victims of disaster when strangers come to help restore it. The authors use this conclusion to contribute theoretically to the phenomenology of home in a critical case such as a disaster.


Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Shuhei Hosokawa

Drawing on Karin Bijsterveld’s triple definition of noise as ownership, political responsibility, and causal responsibility, this article traces how modern Japan problematized noise, and how noise represented both the aspirational discourse of Western civilization and the experiential nuisance accompanying rapid changes in living conditions in 1920s Japan. Primarily based on newspaper archives, the analysis will approach the problematic of noise as it was manifested in different ways in the public and private realms. In the public realm, the mid-1920s marked a turning point due to the reconstruction work after the Great Kantô Earthquake (1923) and the spread of the use of radios, phonographs, and loudspeakers. Within a few years, public opinion against noise had been formed by a coalition of journalists, police, the judiciary, engineers, academics, and municipal officials. This section will also address the legal regulation of noise and its failure; because public opinion was “owned” by middle-class (sub)urbanites, factory noises in downtown areas were hardly included in noise abatement discourse. Around 1930, the sounds of radios became a social problem, but the police and the courts hesitated to intervene in a “private” conflict, partly because they valued radio as a tool for encouraging nationalist mobilization and transmitting announcements from above. In sum, this article investigates the diverse contexts in which noise was perceived and interpreted as such, as noise became an integral part of modern life in early 20th-century Japan.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


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):  
Elīna Gailīte

The article “Problems of defining folk dance in Latvia today” examines the aspects that affect the current situation in Latvia, where folk dances are understood as both folk dances that have not been modified by choreographers, dances passed down through generations that can be danced every day, and stage folk dances, which are a type of art performed by folk dance ensembles, created by choreographers and dances adapted to the stage performance. The research aim is to identify and describe the problems that currently exist in the Latvian cultural space, where the definition of folk dances creates tension in the public space and ambiguous opinions among dancers. Nowadays, it is possible to identify such concepts as, for example, folk dance, ethnographic dance, authentic dance, traditional dance, folklore dance, folk dance, folk dance adaptation, field dance, folk ballet, etc. Consistent use of concepts is rarely seen in the documents and research of cultural policymakers and the historical and contemporary works of choreographers and researchers. Often they are only described in general terms. A survey conducted in 2019 shows that dancers consider stage folk dances to be folk dances, and often this separation of dances is not important for them. Another problem is the designation of folk dance ensembles where stage folk dance dancers are dancing. The term misleads; it suggests that folk dances are danced there. However, this designation is linked to its historical time of origin. It is not insignificant that the stage folk dance is more popular, more visible, and massively represented at the Song and Dance Festival. Thus, a part of the society associates it with our folk dances.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Anisah Budiwati

This research explores the concept of understanding of mosque managers in the public space about the importance of facing the direction of Qibla. Samples Mosque located in the public space of the Hospital Jogja International Hospital, Adisutjipto Airport and Mall Plaza Ambarrukmo be proof of the tendency of pattern of understanding of managers of religious orders to face the direction of Qiblah correctly. By using qualitative analysis method and data collection method in the form of observation, interview and documentation, it is found that first, that understanding of mosque managers in public space at three places reflects the quality of life of Islami ie measuring to the expert so that the direction of qibla . Secondly, the accuracy of the direction of the mosque building in the public space in Sleman Yogyakarta is included in the category of accurate with the maximum reason for the 6 minute arc disturbance, where the direction of the largest deviation on the mosques is 0o 1 '20.8 "or equivalent to 3,074 km which means still leads the city of Mecca.Keywords: Accuracy, Understanding and Mosque in Public Space Penelitian ini menggali konsep pemahaman para pengelola Masjid di ruang publik tentang pentingnya menghadap arah kiblat. Sampel Masjid yang berada di ruang publik yakni Rumah Sakit Jogja International Hospital, Bandara Adisutjipto dan Mall Plaza Ambarrukmo menjadi bukti kecenderungan pola pemahaman pengelola terhadap perintah agama untuk menghadap ke arah kiblat dengan tepat. Dengan menggunakan metode analisis kualitatif dan metode pengumpulan data berupa observasi, wawancara dan dokumentasi diperoleh hasil penelitian, pertama bahwa pemahaman para pengelola masjid di ruang publik pada tiga tempat tersebut mencerminkan kualitas hidup Islami yakni melakukan pengukuran kepada pihak ahli sehingga arah kiblat sesuai dengan keilmuan astronomi. Kedua, akurasi atau ketelitian arah kiblat bangunan Masjid di ruang publik di Sleman Yogyakarta termasuk dalam kategori akurat dengan alasan maksimal penyimpangan 6 menit busur, di mana arah penyimpangan paling besar pada masjid-masjid tersebut adalah 0o 1’ 20,8” atau setara 3,074 km yang berarti masih mengarah kota Mekah.Kata kunci: Akurasi, Pemahaman dan Masjid di Ruang Publik


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