scholarly journals Toponymy, Pioneership, and the Politics of Ethnic Hierarchies in the Spatial Organization of British Colonial Nairobi

Urban Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Wanjiru-Mwita ◽  
Frédéric Giraut
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Political ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
British Asians ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
The City

Toponyms, along with other urban symbols, were used as a tool of control over space in many African countries during the colonial period. This strategy was epitomized by the British, who applied it in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya from the late 1800s. This paper shows that toponymy in colonial Nairobi was an imposition of British political references, urban nomenclature, as well as the replication of a British spatial idyll on the urban landscape of Nairobi. In early colonial Nairobi, the population was mainly composed of three main groups: British, Asians, and Africans. Although the Africans formed the bulk of the population, they were the least represented, socially, economically and politically. Ironically, he British, who were the least in population held the political and economic power, and they applied it vigorously in shaping the identity of the city. The Asians were neither as powerful as the British, nor were they considered to be at the low level of the native Africans. This was the deliberate hierarchical structure that was instituted by the colonial government, where the level of urban citizenship depended on ethnic affiliation. Consequently, this structure was reflected in the toponymy and spatial organization of the newly founded city with little consideration to its pre-colonial status. Streets, buildings and other spaces such as parks were predominantly named after the British monarchy, colonial administrators, settler farmers, and businessmen, as well as prominent Asian personalities. In this paper, historical references such as maps, letter correspondences, monographs, and newspaper archives have been used as evidence to prove that toponyms in colonial Nairobi were the spatial signifiers that reflected the political, ideological and ethnic hierarchies and inequalities of the time.

Food, Fear, and Dreams

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-166
Author(s):  
Robert Lemon
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Political ◽  
Taste Preferences ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Spatial Strategy ◽  
Legitimate Business ◽  
The Social ◽  
Immigration And Customs Enforcement ◽  
The City

Chapter 7 takes a detailed look at how taco truck owners continually have to develop new ways of adapting spatially to the political and social dimensions of Columbus’s landscape. For most taco truck owners in the city, deportation is a legitimate business concern. Many taco truck owners fear confronting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while vending along city streets. Thus, taco truck owners use their mobility as a spatial strategy for survival in an uncertain and unsettling urban landscape. As taco truck owners navigate the social terrains of Columbus, they must modify their menus to their newfound community’s taste preferences. This is to say that food is spatial, and so the chapter makes an argument for the ways in which food evolves across space.

Urban Landscape and Architecture

2009 ◽  
pp. 237-247
Author(s):  
Robin Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Common Identity ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The City

That the idea of the polis came to stand as a reference point for Hellenic cultural ideals is not, as one might have thought, purely the result of later memory, or memorialization of the political structures that obtained during a rich and productive era in Greek cultural history. This happened, of course; but it built on a conscious attempt by its inhabitants to promote the polis as a centre for cultural identity. This article looks at how the city developed and how it was developed physically to reflect an ideal, ‘common’ identity, both cultural and political.

scholarly journals Óræð inngrip og pólitísk orðræða í borginni

Ritið ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-103
Author(s):  
Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The City

In this article I discuss how various collective art projects involving artists and curators using the city as an exhibition site have transformed artistic discourse in Iceland. Chantal Mouffe´s conception of public space as a battleground and art practices as agnostic interventions into this space raise questions about the branding and commodification of art and cultural institutions. Mouffe believes that despite the unrestrained commercial control of the urban landscape, artists still have the possibility of intervening in the political and economic status quo. Employing Mouffe´s analyses as a guiding principle, the study confirms that the permanent value of art in public spaces need not be limited to individual artists’ form, style or content, but may be capable of mobilizing political, critical and artistic discussions within the urban community.

scholarly journals Justice as a criterion for assessing the ‘quality’ of urban space (and the happiness of its residents)

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 704-714
Author(s):  
I. V Trotsuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Of Residence ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

The article is a review-reflection on the book by D. Harvey Social Justice and the City (Moscow: New Literary Review; 2018). Despite the fact that social justice is in the title of the book as its focus, the researcher of justice would be disappointed, because justice is rather a cross-cutting idea of the political-economic analysis of the spatial organization of the city; however, the results of this analysis would inevitably make the reader think in terms of justice-injustice. Such a presentation of justice together with the eclectic text can become advantages of the book for researchers of social well-being: if the place of residence is a criterion of life satisfaction, the quality of the place of residence (including fair urban planning and the type of social differentiation of the urban space) significantly influences social well-being, which the author shows very convincingly in both liberal and socialist (in his terms) discourses, but clearly prefers the Marxist methodology supplemented by some other conceptual approaches.

The Aesthetic versus the Political

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weijie Song
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Material Basis ◽  
Industrial Civilization ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The City

This chapter addresses how Lin Huiyin, a female poet and architect, carries out modernist, impressionist, and urbanist mappings of Beijing’s everyday objects, imperial relics, and socialist sites from the post-Warlord Era to the high Cold War years. In her literary writings of the 1930s and her failed project of urban planning of the socialist capital in the 1950s (against Maoist and Stalinist propaganda), Lin deliberately juxtaposes the pastoral and the counterpastoral, the threatening and disturbing images of modern industrial civilization and the lyrical and aesthetic items in everyday life. Imperial palaces and other grand buildings still dominate the urban landscape of Beijing. However, in Lin’s poetics and politics of daily objects, the sensuous, superfluous, and aestheticized things constitute the cultural texture and material basis of the city, which outlive historical transformations and political turbulence and protect Beijing from the “gust and dust” of modern times.

The Urban Conquest of Water in Guayaquil, 1880–1945: Cocoa and the Urban Water Dream

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Swyngedouw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Water System ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

The problems outlined in the previous chapter evolve from particular historical political ecological processes. As the urbanization process is predicated upon the mastering and engineering of nature’s water, the ecological conquest of water is an integral part of the expansion and growth of the city. At the same time, the capital required to build and expand the urban landscape is itself, at least in the case of Guayaquil, generated through the political ecological transformation of the city’s hinterland. In this and the following chapters, we shall explore the historical dynamics of the urbanization process through the lens of this double ecological conquest. The city’s growth created the need for water systems, which stretched further and further from the city in order to tap additional water resources. Foreign capital had to be generated to finance the imported technology of these projects. This necessitated a sound export-based economy, initially driven by cocoa (until the early twentieth century), bananas (from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s), and oil (from 1973 onwards). The urban process was consequently embedded in a double ecological conquest: ever greater flows of water became urbanized, while the city’s hinterland was socially and ecologically transformed. The latter conquest, in turn, plugged the Ecuadorean economy into the international division of labour. Guayaquil was the arena and medium through which those circuits of transformed nature and money were organized. The contemporary social struggle around water is evidently the result of the deeply exclusive and marginalizing ways in which political, economic, and ecological power have been worked out. The current water system and water politics exemplify the wider socio-economic and political processes that characterized Guayaquil’s urbanization process. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Guayaquil was just a large port village on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, surviving in the shadow of the political and former colonial centre of Quito and the economically dominant Sierra (Andean highland) hacienderos. In 1780, Quito had a population of 28,500 compared to 6,600 in Guayaquil, and by the mid-nineteenth century these figures had risen to 36,000 and 25,000 respectively.

City Growth under Conflict Conditions: The View from Nyala, Darfur

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Bartlett ◽  
Jennifer Alix–Garcia ◽  
David S. Saah
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
City Growth ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Growth And Change ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The City

The developing world today is challenging conventional accounts of city growth and change. In Africa, for example, conflict and mass displacement are reconfiguring the urban landscape in ways that are hard to ignore. This paper analyzes how conflict and the arrival of a large humanitarian aid infrastructure influence the dynamics of city growth and bring about a distinct spatial structure, niche gentrification, and informal economy in Nyala, Darfur. Using data from a three–year field study, we show how the size and socio–spatial organization of the city changed, the directions in which the city grew, and the factors that drove these changes. We look at interaction patterns between residents of Nyala itself and those now residing in internally displaced person (IDP) camps on the edge of the city. We show that considerations of both insecurity and risk are vitally important to understanding the processes of conflict urbanization. Conflict generates a distinctive social structure as internal displaced people, international aid workers, and long–time urban residents all move within the city.

scholarly journals From Ashur to Nineveh: The Assyrian town-planning programme

Iraq ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 177-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirko Novák
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Bipolar Structure ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Dry Farming ◽  
The City

During the last century of Assyria's existence the urban landscape was characterised by a bipolar structure. The old capital Ashur was still the religious, ceremonial and cultural centre, while Nineveh was the seat of royal power (Maul 1997). Both cities were not only the oldest urban entities of the Assyrian heartland, flourishing at least from the third or even fourth millennium BC onwards; they both also represented two different regions within Assyria with very specific geomorphologic environments and distinctive socio-ecological conditions. While the Ashur region is situated at the southernmost edge of the dry farming belt, the Nineveh area is one of the most fertile regions in northern Mesopotamia (Fig. 1).The political fates of the two cities were unconnected for a long time. Ashur became an important trading centre and an independent kingdom at the beginning of the second millennium, whereas for a long time Nineveh stood in the shadow of more powerful neighbours. But in the seventh century it was Nineveh that became the capital of Assyria and the outstanding urban structure of the whole Near East. The refounding and enlargement of the city by Sennacherib was by far the most ambitious town-building programme ever realised in Assyria. Furthermore, it marked the end of a long process of moving the political centre of the country from the Ashur region northwards to the Nineveh region, which coincided with the rise of Assyria from a small kingdom to a world empire. During this development there were several (other) temporary capitals, all of them new foundations like Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta, Kalhu and Dūr-Šarrukēn.

Göçmen edebiyatında din ve kimlik yansımaları -Fakir Baykurt’un Yarım Ekmek Romanında Din ve Gelenek-

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-145
Author(s):  
İsmail Güllü
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Shock ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Societal Structure ◽  
Immigrant Religion ◽  
Turks In Germany ◽  
The City

Yarım aşırı aşan bir geçmişe sahip Almanya’ya göç olgusu beraberinde önemli bir edebi birikimi (Migrantenliteratur) de getirmiştir. Farklı adlandırmalar ile anılan bu edebi birikim, kendi içinde de farklı renkleri de barındıran bir özelliğe sahiptir. Edebi yazını besleyen en önemli kaynaklardan biri toplumdur. Yazarın içinde yaşadığı toplumsal yapı ve problemler üstü kapalı veya açık bir şekilde onun yazılarına yansımaktadır. Bu bağlamda araştırma, 50’li yaşlarında Almanya’ya giden ve ömrünün sonuna kadar orada yaşayan, birçok edebi ve düşünsel çalışması ile Türk edebiyatında önemli bir isim olan Fakir Baykurt’un “Koca Ren” ve Yüksek Fırınlar” adlı romanları ile birlikte Duisburg Üçlemesi’nin son kitabı olan “Yarım Ekmek” romanında ele aldığı konu ve roman kahramanları üzerinden din ve gelenek olgusu sosyolojik bir yaklaşımla ele alınmaktadır. Toplumcu-gerçekçi çizgide yer alan yazarın, uzun yıllar yaşadığı Türkiye’deki siyasi ve ideolojik geçmişi bu romanda kullandığı dil ve kurguladığı kahramanlarda kendini göstermektedir. Romanda Almanya’nın Duisburg şehrinde yaşayan Türklerin yeni kültürel ortamda yaşadıkları çatışma, kültürel şok, arada kalmışlık, iki kültürlülük temaları ön plandadır. Yazar romanda sadece Almanya’daki Türkleri ele almamakta, aynı zamanda Türkiye ile hatta başka ülkeler ile de ilişkilendirmeler yaparak bireysel ve toplumsal konuları ele almaktadır. Araştırmada, romanda yer alan dini ve geleneksel unsurlar sosyolojik olarak analiz edilmiştir. Genel anlamda bir göç romanı olma özelliği yanında Yarım Ekmek romanında dini, siyasi ve ideolojik birçok yorum ve tartışma söz konusudur. Romandaki bu veriler, inanç, ritüel, siyaset ve toplumsal boyutlarda kategorize edilerek ele alınmıştır.  ENGLISH ABSTRACTReligion and identity reflections in literature of immigrant: Religion and Tradition in Fakir Baykurt’s novel Yarım EkmekThe immigration fact which has nearly half century in Germany have brought a significant literal accumulation (Migrantenliteratur) in its wake. This literal accumulation, which is named as several denominations, has a feature including different colours in itself. One of the most important source snourishing literature is society. Societal structure and problems that the writer lives inside, directly or indirectly reflect on his/her compositions. In this context, the matter of religion and tradition by way of the issue and fictious characters in the novel of Fakir Baykurt who went to Germany in her 50’s and lived in there till his death and who is a considerable name in Turkish literature with his several literal and intellectual workings; “Yarım Ekmek” which is the third novel of Duisburg Trilogy with “Koca Ren” and “Yüksek Fırınlar” are discussed sociologically in the study. The political and ideological past of the socialist realist lined writer in Turkey where he spent his life for a long time, manifest itself on the speech and fictious characters of novel. In the novel, themes of new Turks’ conflict, cultural shock, being in the middle, bi culturalism in their new cultural nature in Duisburg which is the city they live in. The writer not only deals with Turks in Germany but also personal and social subjects via comparing them to Turkey and even other countries. In the study, religious and traditional elements analyzed sociologically. Besides the speciality of being a migration novel in general, there are a lot of religious, political and ideological interpretations and discussions in the novel. These datum in the novel are examinated in the context of belief, ritual, politics and social categorisation. 

Emplacing Berlin: Digital Itineraries and Short-term Study Abroad in the City

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Apgar
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Short Term Study ◽  
The City

As destination of choice for many short-term study abroad programs, Berlin offers students of German language, culture and history a number of sites richly layered with significance. The complexities of these sites and the competing narratives that surround them are difficult for students to grasp in a condensed period of time. Using approaches from the spatial humanities, this article offers a case study for enhancing student learning through the creation of digital maps and itineraries in a campus-based course for subsequent use during a three-week program in Berlin. In particular, the concept of deep mapping is discussed as a means of augmenting understanding of the city and its history from a narrative across time to a narrative across the physical space of the city. As itineraries, these course-based projects were replicated on site. In moving from the digital environment to the urban landscape, this article concludes by noting meanings uncovered and narratives formed as we moved through the physical space of the city.

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