Researching and Enabling Youth Geographies in the Digital and Material City

Author(s):  
Giacomo Pettenati ◽  
Egidio Dansero ◽  
Alessia Calafiore

This contribution presents the methodologies and the results of an action-research project called Teencarto carried out by the University of Turin and the City of Turin. The project involved more than 600 teenagers from 16 high schools, in a massive process of community mapping aiming at producing a representation of their urban geography. Data collected has been analyzed to make evident the way teenagers use the city as well as how they imagine a better city. The mapping process is based on First Life, a map-based social network, which aims at reconnecting digital and real spaces, using cartographic representations and crowdsourcing. The teenagers' geographies emerging from this large-scale mapping activity reveal the crucial role of four types of “piazza” (Italian word for square) as meeting points: real squares, green squares, commercial hybrid squares, and nightlife squares.

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Antti Kasvio ◽  
Maarit Lahtonen

Global economic competition is currently placing modern welfare states under increasing pressure to change. New kinds of solutions must be sought in all spheres and at all levels of the state's functioning. But it is very difficult to mediate the macro- and micro-level approaches in a sensible manner and to utilize the innovatory potentials of social science in actual research practice. This article describes a current ongoing action research project within the City of Helsinki for the development of work in a number of the City's workplaces. The local developmental activities are closely connected to broader discussions about the development of the city's internationalization strategies and of the role of high-quality welfare services in their realization. The project assumes that it is possible to build a fruitful interaction between the development of new practices at local level and the broader strategic discussions that are going on in other echelons of the City's organization.


Author(s):  
Jeanne Clegg ◽  
Emma Sdegno

Our contribution concerns a phase in the history of the building that gives the University its name. When Ruskin came to Venice in 1845 he was horrified by the decayed state of the palaces on the Grand Canal, and by the drastic restorations in progress. In recording their features in measurements, drawings and daguerreotypes, Ca’ Foscari took priority, and his studies of its traceries constitute a unique witness. This work also helped generate new ideas on the role of shadow in architectural aesthetic, and on the characteristics of Gothic, which were to bear fruit in The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. In his late guide to the city, St Mark’s Rest, Ruskin addressed «the few travellers who still care for her monuments» and offered the Venetian Republic’s laws regulating commerce as a model for modern England. Whether or not he knew of the founding of a commercial studies institute at Ca’ Foscari in 1868, he would certainly have hoped that it would teach principles of fair and just trading, as well as of respectful tourism.


This chapter extends the book’s insights about nature, technology, and nation to the larger history of the modern period. While the modern nation loses its grip as a locus of identity and analysis, attempts to understand the operation, disruption, and collapse of continental and global infrastructures continue to mix the natural and the machinic in ways that define them both. Those vulnerabilities emphasize large-scale catastrophe; historiographically, they mask the crucial role of small-scale failures in the experience and culture of late modernity, including its definition of nature. Historical actors turned the uneven geographical distribution of small-scale failures into a marker of distinctive local natures and an element of regional and national identity. Attending to those failures helps not only situate cold-war technologies in the larger modern history of natural and machinic orders; it helps provincialize the superpowers by casting problematic “other” natures as central and primary.


Author(s):  
Robert Garner ◽  
Yewande Okuleye

This chapter serves three main functions. First, it identifies the ten core members of the Oxford Group, and documents their backgrounds and the circumstances of their arrival in the city of Oxford. The Oxford Group consisted of three married couples: Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, Peter and Renata Singer, and Richard and Mary Keshen. Next were the three singletons who shared a house in Oxford: John Harris, David Wood, and Michael Peters. Finally, and slightly more at the periphery—partly because of his age and partly because he was not an Oxford student (or married to one)—there was Richard Ryder. Second, it describes the formation of the Oxford Group and the key role played by the gatekeepers. Here, a dynamic role was played by the Godlovitches and by Brigid Brophy who did most to bring the group together Finally, the role of what Farrell describes as the “magnet place,” in our case Oxford—and the university in particular—is dissected. The importance of access to a major seat of learning that had a unparalled reputation in the field of philosophy and which was at the forefront of the development of a new field of applied ethics is documented.


Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Déirdre Kelly

It seems inherent in the nature of contemporary artist’s book production to continue to question the context for the genre in contemporary art practice, notwithstanding the medium’s potential for dissemination via mass production and an unquestionable advantage of portability for distribution. Artists, curators and editors operating in this sector look to create contexts for books in a variety of imaginative ways, through exhibition, commission, installations, performance and, of course as documentation. Broadening the discussion of the idea of the book within contemporary art practice, this paper examines the presence and role of book works within the context of the art biennale, in particular the Venice Art Biennale of which the 58th iteration (2019) is entitled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’ and curated by Ralph Rugoff, with an overview of the independent International cultural offerings and the function of the ‘Book Pavilion’. Venetian museums and institutions continue to present vibrant diverse works within the arena of large-scale exhibitions, recognising the position that the book occupies in the history of the city. This year, the appearance for the first time, of ‘Book Biennale’, opens up a new and interesting dialogue, taking the measure of how the book is being promoted and its particular function for visual communication within the arts in Venice and beyond.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gijsbert van den Brink

The view that theology represents the highest level of academic learning and the summit of human knowledge has a long history. In this article, starting from Aristotle, the genealogy of this view is excavated. Second, it is examined how and why theology lost this special status in modernity, as this appears in Immanuel Kant’s The Conflict of the Faculties (1798). Third, it is shown in which way and for what reasons theology continued to have a place of its own in the modern university since the founding of the University of Berlin (1810). In particular, the crucial role of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s proposal is highlighted. Fourth, it is suggested that, under certain conditions, theology can still be conceived as a proper university discipline in contemporary pluralistic societies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 01185
Author(s):  
Marina Krapivina ◽  
Vitaly Tomin ◽  
Natalia Eremina

Teaching English for specific purposes to non-linguistic students presents some challenges due to several factors. They are determined by the growing demands of the global economy towards the level of professional competence, diversification of the employers ‘demands to the employees and the need to account for the cultural peculiarities of regional economies. The authors present a study of organizing the process of English for specific purposes teaching considering linguacultural features. The authors assess the role of English in the modern world and the global economy. English continues to change the language behaviour of people around the globe and is currently the primary tool for large-scale bilingualism. The article analyses the main linguacultural features of different regional business communities’ representatives. The article outlines the primary courses design requirements: the communicative orientation and integrating the linguacultural features of professional communication. The authors substantiate the need to develop a methodological, theoretical and practical basis for the implementation of the linguacultural component of the course for the university students.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Ratajczyk ◽  
Iwona Wagner ◽  
Agnieszka Wolanska-Kaminska ◽  
Tomasz Jurczak ◽  
Maciej Zalewski

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the varied roles played by the University of Lódz (UL) in maintaining and restoring the natural capital of a city as a driver for sustainable city development. The higher education institution can be perceived as visionary, originator and executor of natural capital projects. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses three cases performed by the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, UL, in the city of Lódz. The activities are based on different scales ranging from city-wide to local, e.g. river and green infrastructure, and which vary in character from policy planning to implementation. Findings Natural capital projects influence city development on different levels: by the initiation of legal protection, by the implementation of rehabilitation concepts for rivers and by influencing the strategic documents for mid-term and long-term urban development. Originality/value The university has the potential for multidisciplinary engagement in the development of urban sustainability. In large-scale projects, academics play a more conceptual role, in capacity building and knowledge transfer, while in local-scale implementations, their role includes innovation, know-how and technology transfer. Moreover, it may act as a reinforcement hub, by safeguarding and strengthening the natural capital of the city.


Author(s):  
Abdul Rohim

Coronavirus disease is also known as Covid-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) and was discovered in the city of Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019. This virus spreads rapidly and has reached almost every country, including Indonesia, in just a few months. As a result, numerous countries have implemented regulations imposing lockdowns to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. To control the spread of this virus, Indonesia implemented a Large-Scale Social Restriction (PSBB) policy. The method employed in this study is to analyze data from various reading sources. By comparing journals or articles, references are obtained from online publications with diverse studies. This study utilized five journals as references, all of which demonstrated that community participation in preventing the spread of Covid-19 was in a good category. According to the journals reviewed, information regarding the handling of Covid-19 necessitated the participation of all parties to prevent its spread. From the five journals obtained, all of these journals indicate that the role of the community is required in preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus.


Author(s):  
N.A. Khlybova ◽  
I.V. Tomicheva ◽  
I.V. Girenko

The article examines the self-determined motivation of students studying at the V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University (Simferopol) in the context of pedagogical activity using the social network VKONTAKTE as a platform for educational interaction and distance knowledge formation. The paper uses the theory of self-determination of Deci and Ryan, which provides an appropriate basis for assessing self-determined motivation in a targeted audience in the context of distance learning based on ICT. The results show that students are motivated to use the pages of the social network VKONTAKTE for educational purposes, which allows them to gain new knowledge and satisfaction from improving their own level of education. Taking into account the motivational aspect of the use of the social network in the university pedagogy of online distance learning, it can be concluded that it has a significant potential for large-scale and effective integration of ICT in higher education.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document