scholarly journals THE TRADITIONAL ARAB ISLAMIC CITY: THE STRUCTURE OF NEIGHBORHOOD QUARTERS

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Loai Dabbour

This paper is concerned with the structure of quarters in traditional Arab Islamic cities. Previous studies have stressed the idea of an urban structure that corresponds to social groupings, in that it is seen as a collection of neighborhood quarters. This spatial model has often provided the rationale for the design of new housing layouts. The purpose of this study is to examine this issue and to argue that the structure of these cities presents a global whole. To achieve this purpose a general and a specific question are addressed. The general question is about the physically sub-areas within the city, and the specific question is about the issue of social groupings and the kind of relation that space has to society. The proposition thus invokes the idea of a physical structure which appears to correspond to a social pattern. The city of Damascus is used as a model of analysis in which the urban structure is described and characterised. The argument is advanced that the traditional Arab Islamic city has a sub-area structure which is historically generated, but whose morphological combination is fine-tuned and adjusted so that the whole comes to dominate and unify the parts.

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Xiang Zheng ◽  
Min Chen ◽  
Yingbing Li ◽  
Yingxue Yan ◽  
...  

The urban structure is the spatial reflection of various economic and cultural factors acting on the urban territory. Different from the physical structure, urban structure is closely related to the population mobility. Taxi trajectories are widely distributed, completely spontaneous, closely related to travel needs, and massive in data volume. Mining it not only can help us better understand the flow pattern of a city, but also provides a new perspective for interpreting the urban structure. On the basis of massive taxi trajectory data in Chengdu, we introduce a network science approach to analysis, propose a new framework for interaction analysis, and model the intrinsic connections within cities. The spatial grid of fine particles and the trajectory connections between them are used to resolve the urban structure. The results show that: (1) Based on 200,000 taxi trajectories, we constructed a spatial network of traffic flow using the interaction analysis framework and extracted the cold hot spots among them. (2) We divide the 400 traffic flow network nodes into 6 communities. Community 2 has high centrality and density, and belongs to the core built-up area of the city. (3) A traffic direction field is proposed to describe the direction of the traffic flow network, and the direction of traffic flow roughly presents an inflow from northeast to southwest and an outflow from southeast to northwest of the study area. The interaction analysis framework proposed in this study can be applied to other cities or other research areas (e.g., population migration), and it could extract the directional nature of the network as well as the hierarchical structure of the city.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7533
Author(s):  
Jakub Bil ◽  
Bartłomiej Buława ◽  
Jakub Świerzawski

The article describes the risks for the mental health and wellbeing of urban-dwellers in relation to changes in the spatial structure of a city that could be caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A year of lockdown has changed the way of life in the city and negated its principal function as a place of various meetings and social interactions. The danger of long-term isolation and being cut-off from an urban lifestyle is not only a challenge facing individuals, but it also creates threats on various collective levels. Hindered interpersonal relations, stress, and the fear of another person lower the quality of life and may contribute to the development of mental diseases. Out of fear against coronavirus, part of the society has sought safety by moving out of the densely populated city centres. The dangerous results of these phenomena are shown by research based on the newest literature regarding the influence of COVID-19 and the lockdown on mental health, urban planning, and the long-term spatial effects of the pandemic such as the urban sprawl. The breakdown of the spatial structure, the loosening of the urban tissue, and urban sprawl are going to increase anthropopressure, inhibit access to mental health treatment, and will even further contribute to the isolation of part of the society. In addition, research has shown that urban structure loosening as a kind of distancing is not an effective method in the fight against the SARS-COV pandemic. Creating dense and effective cities through the appropriate management of development during and after the pandemic may be a key element that will facilitate the prevention of mental health deterioration and wellbeing. It is also the only possibility to achieve the selected Sustainable Development Goals, which as of today are under threat.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Constantin Nistor ◽  
Marina Vîrghileanu ◽  
Irina Cârlan ◽  
Bogdan-Andrei Mihai ◽  
Liviu Toma ◽  
...  

The paper investigates the urban landscape changes for the last 50 years in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Bucharest shows a complex structural transformation driven by the socialist urban policy, followed by an intensive real-estate market development. Our analysis is based on a diachronic set of high-resolution satellite imagery: declassified CORONA KH-4B from 1968, SPOT-1 from 1989, and multisensor stacked layers from Sentinel-1 SAR together with Sentinel-2MSI from 2018. Three different datasets of land cover/use are extracted for the reference years. Each dataset reveals its own urban structure pattern. The first one illustrates a radiography of the city in the second part of the 20th century, where rural patterns meet the modern ones, while the second one reveals the frame of a city in a full process of transformation with multiple constructions sites, based on the socialist model. The third one presents an image of a cosmopolitan city during an expansion process, with a high degree of landscape heterogeneity. All the datasets are included in a built-up change analysis in order to map and assess the spatial transformations of the city pattern over 5 decades. In order to quantify and map the changes, the Built-up Change Index (BCI) is introduced. The results highlight a particular situation linked to the policy development visions for each decade, with major changes of about 50% for different built-up classes. The GIS analysis illustrates two major landscape transformations: from the old semirural structures with houses surrounded by gardens from 1968, to a compact pattern with large districts of blocks of flats in 1989, and a contemporary city defined by an uncontrolled urban sprawl process in 2018.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (55) ◽  
pp. 980-1005
Author(s):  
Tiago Santos

Considerando a dinâmica e a estrutura urbana de Belém no início do século XXI como expressão da acumulação das intervenções urbanas e das práticas de planejamento e gestão do espaço da cidade, analisa-se a genealogia do planejamento urbano para compreender a produção de um espaço que tem como característica a negação da natureza e a produção da desigualdade entre classes sociais. Nesse aspecto, identificou-se três períodos específicos que produziram impactos significativos na produção do espaço urbano de Belém: o terceiro quarto do século XVIII (1755 – 1777) com as reformas promovidas no período Pombalino na Amazônia, momento de expressão de uma modernidade urbana e arquitetônica; o final do século XIX e a primeira década do século XX (1890 – 1910), momento de ascensão da economia regional a partir da intensificação de atividades extrativas que produziram reformas urbanísticas com tons higienistas e; por fim, o período entre 1940 e 1970, que marcou uma série de propostas de planejamento com viés técnico-burocrático na produção do espaço. Do ponto de vista da metodologia adotada, estabeleceu-se como percurso de pesquisa: i) levantamento bibliográfico de caráter teórico e empírico da temática; ii) levantamento documental acerca das práticas de planejamento e intervenção dos períodos destacados com base em legislação, planos e projetos de cada um dos períodos; iii) coleta de iconografia representativa da época as quais as políticas foram executadas. Apresenta-se como resultados a hipótese de que a narrativa de uma pretensa ausência de planejamento como fator explicativo dos problemas da cidade é um discurso que não tem base na realidade, posto que historicamente é exatamente o oposto que a pesquisa indica, as modalidades de planejamento efetivadas em Belém acentuam problemas como a segregação socioespacial.Palavras-Chave: História, Planejamento Urbano, Modernidade, Belém.AbstractConsidering the dynamics and urban structure of Belém at the beginning of the 21st Century as an expression of the accumulation of urban interventions and planning and management practices of the city, the historical genealogy of urban planning is analyzed as a way of understanding production of a space that has as characteristic the negation of the nature and the production of the inequality between social classes. In this aspect, three specific periods were identified that produced significant impacts on the production of the urban space of Belém: the third quarter of the seventeenth century (1755 - 1777) with the reforms promoted in the Pombaline period in the Amazon, a time of expression of an urban and architectural design; the end of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century (1890 - 1910), a time of great rise of the regional economy from the intensification of extractive activities that produced urban reforms with hygienic tones; and finally, the period between 1940 and 1970, which marked a series of planning proposals with a bureaucratic technical aproach in the production of space in Belém. This work established as following research methodology: i) survey bibliographical of theoretical and empirical character of the analyzed subject; ii) documentary survey of the planning and intervention practices of the highlighted periods based on municipal, state and federal legislation, as well as the master plans and development plans of the periods; iii) collection of iconography representative of the time to which the policies were executed in the urban space. The hypothesis is that the narrative of a supposed absence of planning as a factor of the city's problems is a discourse that has no basis in reality, since historically it is exactly the opposite that the research indicates, that is, the modalities in Belém accentuate problems such as socio-spatial segregation.Keywords: History, Urban Planning, Modernity, Belém.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grace Helen Salisbury Mills

<p>In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, a state of polycentric urbanity was thrust upon New Zealand’s second largest city. As the city-centre lay in disrepair, smaller centres started to materialise elsewhere, out of necessity. Transforming former urban peripheries and within existing suburbs into a collective, dispersed alternative to the city centre, these sub-centres prompted a range of morphological, socio-cultural and political transformations, and begged multiple questions: how to imbue these new sub-centres with gravity? How to render them a genuine alternative to the CBD? How do they operate within the wider city? How to cope with the physical and cultural transformations of this shifting urbanscape and prevent them occurring ad lib? Indeed, the success and functioning of the larger urban structure hinges upon a critical, informed response to these sub-centre urban contexts. Yet, with an unrelenting focus on the CBD rebuild - effectively a polycentric denial - little such attention has been granted.  Taking this urban condition as its premise and its provocation, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in the emergent sub-centre. It asks: what can architecture do in these urban contexts; how can architecture act upon the emergent sub-centre in a critical, catalytic fashion? Identifying this volatile condition as both an opportunity for architectural experimentation and a need for critical architectural engagement, this thesis seeks to explore the sub-centre (as an idea and actual urban context) as architecture’s project: its raison d’etre, impetus and aspiration.  These inquiries are tested through design-led research: an initial design question provoking further, broader discursive research (and indeed, seeking broader implications). The first section is a site-specific, design for Sumner, Christchurch. Titled ‘An Agora Anew’; this project - both in conception and outcome - is a speculative response to a specific sub-centre condition. The second section ‘The Sub-centre as Architecture’s Project’ explores the ideas provoked by the design project within a discursive framework. Firstly it identifies the sub-centre as a context in desperate need of architectural attention (why architecture?); secondly, it negotiates a possible agenda for architecture in this context through terms of engagement that are formal, critical and opportunistic (how architecture?): enabling it to take a position on and in the sub-centre. Lastly, a critical exegesis positions the design in regards to the broader discursive debate: critiquing it an architectural project predicated upon the idea of the sub-centre.  The implications of this design-led thesis are twofold: firstly, for architecture’s role in the sub-centre (especially to Christchurch); secondly for the possibilities of architecture’s productive engagement with the city (largely through architectural form), more generally. In a century where radical, new urban contexts (of which the sub-centre is just one) are commonplace, this type of thinking – what can architecture do in the city? - is imperative.</p>


Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Nikovic ◽  
Vladan Djokic ◽  
Igor Maric

This paper investigates the basic theoretical concepts of urban morphology related to the phenomena of a traditional city and its constitutive elements, including the city block. The traditional city is not considered an absolute model, but a subject of morphological analysis, by which its characteristics are detected, classified and described, becoming a base for new synthetic models in the context of contemporary designing and planning. The paper provides theoretical support to further studies dealing with the practical application of theoretical knowledge and concepts of urban morphology in designing and planning. It points out that the key characteristics of a traditional city identified by morphological analysis are contained within the architectural and urban entity of a city block, which can, therefore, be considered a generative element of its urban structure. Given that the scale of a city block allows for morphological analysis, as well as providing recommendations for future urban development, these research results can be applied to the contemporary context of designing and planning. The paper fits into contemporary studies that link the fields of urban morphology and urban design.


2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Melinda Benko

One of the innumerable ways to systemise contemporary European urban projects is to analyse the urban form originates from the master-plan concept. The duality of closed and open urban situations is an excellent conceptual tool for classification. This classification helps us to recognise, understand and represent the diversity of the city, as it is present on each level of a settlement and architecture. In the case of “Solid-oriented” projects construction and emplacement of buildings are the main goals. The principle of “Solid-oriented” projects are based on two very different, still existing traditions One is the classical European closed block structure, while the other one is the Modernist open urban system. Today we can identify two new approaches combining those two traditions in different ways. Urban transparency preserves streets, the effect of enclosure, and the dominance of buildings. At the same time density is coupled with spaciousness, blocks are fractured and the environment becomes more complex even within one block. The in-between method, based on the idea of structuralism, attempts to balance the importance of mass and space and creates permeable blocks in a new open urban structure. Besides creating urban volumes or buildings in the city, there is a new type of challenge in contemporary urban design. Since the 1990's attention has shifted to cityscape, i.e. to re-interpreting and reforming open spaces. The international literature calls this un-volumetric architecture. The duality of openness and closedness also appears here. While openness seems to dominate urban situations in contemporary cities, buildings are predominantly used in a closed manner.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen McBride ◽  
James Watson

This article analyses the documents released by the OECD at the end of May 2018 launching a revised Jobs Strategy. The analysis frames the new initiative in the context of the two previous Jobs Strategies of 1994 and 2006. We pose the general question of whether continuity or discontinuity is the prevailing theme, along with a specific question concerning the significance of new themes of job quality and inclusive growth, given the documents’ simultaneous endorsement of the older theme of flexibility-enhancing policies to ensure a labour market functioning without rigidities. Flexibility had been the central feature of previous Jobs Strategies, although there was also a nod in the direction of an alternative route to better employment performance in the 2006 revision. The 2018 documents assert that the new strategy represents a significant departure from the previous iterations. This article provides a critical evaluation of this claim.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alba Bernini ◽  
Amadou Lamine Toure ◽  
Renato Casagrandi

AbstractIn a metropolis, people movements design intricate patterns that change on very short temporal scales. Population mobility obviously is not random, but driven by the land uses of the city. Such an urban ecosystem can interestingly be explored by integrating the spatial analysis of land uses (through ecological indicators commonly used to characterize natural environments) with the temporal analysis of human mobility (reconstructed from anonymized mobile phone data). Considering the city of Milan (Italy) as a case study, here we aimed to identify the complex relations occurring between the land-use composition of its neighborhoods and the spatio-temporal patterns of occupation made by citizens. We generated two spatially explicit networks, one static and the other temporal, based on the analysis of land uses and mobile phone data, respectively. The comparison between the results of community detection performed on both networks revealed that neighborhoods that are similar in terms of land-use composition are not necessarily characterized by analogous temporal fluctuations of human activities. In particular, the historical concentric urban structure of Milan is still under play. Our big data driven approach to characterize urban diversity provides outcomes that could be important (i) to better understand how and when urban spaces are actually used, and (ii) to allow policy makers improving strategic development plans that account for the needs of metropolis-like permanently changing cities.


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