scholarly journals Practical urban: The urbanity and its relationship with the contemporary city.

Author(s):  
Rodrigo Balestra ◽  
Amilton Arruda ◽  
Pablo Bezerra ◽  
Isabela Moroni

As the Industrial Revolution took place and steam driven machines emerged in the 18th century, the Industrial Age began and cities became the core of industrial and populational growth. That phenomena occurred as the job opportunities and quality of life increasingly developed away from the countryside, with the arrival of electricity and inventions such as the light bulb, thanks to important people like Sir Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. The city, therefore, can be looked in two different ways: the urban space, occupied with tangible elements, and the social environment, filled with urban practices and cohabitation. An essential matter in many disciplines, the city is a recurrent topic for researchers who seek to understand this phenomenon of human activities. The history behind the rise of the cities show tell us about the creation of urban spaces and its manifestations, functions, transformations and the complexity inherent to the various typologies in cities all over the world. The city is a scenario full of overlapping messages that characterize the accessibility and urban communication. This is defined by Nojima (1999) as the result of the interaction between social representations and the scenario where they occur. It is through the interpretation of these messages that are manifested in the urban design accessible from cities (streets, buildings, gardens, squares, furnitures), that the individual defines the elements that identify their city. This paper discovery the concepts of city and their accessibility relationships with urban practices - design of urban activity - that directly influence the implementation of urban furniture and, above all, the importance given to them by the population, with regard to its true functions (adequacy, accessibility, ergonomics, identity and others) of their uses and appropriations. It is important for the study also understand the urban furniture relation with the project of cities - is to complement the public space or the way how interferes the urban landscape. It is need to understand how society is shown in front of herself and the world itself that surrounds and what are the affective devices that make city living when connected - through the use - therefore, this is the powerfull forces of individuals and community , space practices created by the tactics of the population to allow theirs ambiance, wellness, safety and comfort, sensations often perceived by the set of elements that constitute the urban furniture of cities.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3291

Geography ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
María García-Hernández ◽  
Manuel de la Calle-Vaquero

The concept of urban heritage has two meanings. First, urban heritage can refer to the list of heritage elements located in urban areas: archaeological vestiges, historical buildings, vernacular architecture, historical gardens, social practices, rituals, and festive events, among others. Second, urban heritage can refer to the city as heritage, a special type of cultural property that is mainly associated with neighborhoods, urban centers, and historic cities. This article focuses on the second meaning. The focus is placed on the heritage values of the urban space, which are overall values resulting from the integration of different components. The use of the term urban heritage has become popular during the last decades. However, it is closely linked to conservation and restoration proposals of historic centers in European cities since the mid-20th century. From Europe, urban conservation extends to other parts of the world, driven by organizations such as UNESCO that establishes a special category of cultural properties named “groups of buildings” in the World Heritage Convention in 1972, generally associated with towns. Since the beginning of the 21st century, UNESCO is promoting an extended approach to urban heritage that goes beyond the built environment and integrates social, economic, and functional dimensions. The Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape of 2011 provides a more global vision and gives special prominence to the communities that inhabit historic towns or historic centers. This approach also implies a disciplinary opening, with an increasing number of inputs coming from social sciences. In this sense, this article basically includes some recent works on urban heritage that allow to establish the present state of the issue. Historical trajectory of the concept is described until reaching the current approximations in terms of the historical urban landscape. A set of contributions that deal with its components are presented, from the location conditions to the social representations and their meanings. References to the main vectors that threaten the preservation of their values and also to the mechanisms to make heritage a vector of sustainable development are included. Special attention is paid to the management of heritage sectors of the city. This urban management must balance the safeguard as heritage properties and the maintenance of adequate levels of quality of life for the communities that live there. Due to the important tourist dimension of these spaces, reflecting on the positive and negative effects of an increasing influx of visitors is very important nowadays. Finally global preservation strategies, in case of the World Heritage List, are contrasted with specific situations of very different geographical areas (Europe, Latin America, China, Middle East, etc.).


Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1912-1926
Author(s):  
Konstantina Nikolopoulou

Heraklion is gradually transforming into the newest tourist destination in Crete, which is one of the most popular island destinations in Greece. The regional statutory and local tourist bodies aim to develop Heraklion as a destination per se, overcoming the “gateway to the rest of the island” identity that the city currently holds. At the same time, grass-roots initiatives are active in the city context, defending public space and urban cultural heritage, in idiosyncratic, bottom-up ways. This paper investigates the role undertaken by three such initiatives, currently active in Heraklion, to better comprehend their possible impact on the urban landscape and cultural heritage, within this gradually developing tourist landscape. The structure, aims and vision of the initiatives were documented through semi-structured interviews. Their actions, despite being diverse, are compared to the wider activity of similar initiatives in Greece, especially against neoliberal politics, culminating in defending public space, activating bottom-up musealisation mechanisms and participating in urban design in their own ways.


Author(s):  
Rosario Sommella ◽  
Libera D'Alessandro

The contribution starts from the historical importance of the commercial function in Naples in structuring the urban space, a function to which it is possible largely to trace the long-lasting relationship between consumption and demand for places, as well as many changes in the urban image. Retail organized the city not only on the main streets but also at the scale of non-minoritarian and widespread micro-spaces in the various neighborhoods, in a Naples that, especially in the twentieth century, was transformed according to macro logic very different from today’s. Today the element that seems to most order the structure of places and the urban landscape is consumption, mixed with living and related activities, walking and cultural functions: elements mediated by local authorities, which in turn must deal with new phenomena. The question arises in territorial terms, as retail and consumption (and their protagonists) claim places and public space. The case study will be that of the metropolitan territory in an extended sense and will be analyzed through four scales chosen as the most exemplary of the change: the upgraded/touristified city-centre; the historical centre in its marginal parts; the metropolitan interstices; the small and medium-sized centers at the metropolitan scale. Demands of products and places that become the expression of a new demand for cities bring out the potential, contradictions and conflicts of a Mediterranean city in transition.


Author(s):  
A. Lukash ◽  
A. Panfilov

Architecture is an integral part human life. It influences the psyche and health of people, causing certain associations. Architectural objects are often captured through the lens of cameras. Selfie culture has become a powerful tool for promoting new meanings and designing modern public spaces. The need for selfie backgrounds is increasing. This encourages artists and architects to create interesting solutions for urban space. There are examples of urban street art in many cities around the world and in Russia. In Tyumen, there are memorable objects for visitors and its residents, which in turn are urban landmarks and are responsible for the strategic and economic development of the city. They are recognizable, stand out against the background of a monotonous environment and help to navigate the urban landscape. As a result of conducted research, the nformation is obtained on the most popular places for photos in the city of Tyumen. Territories can be divided into the following categories: environment, object and background. An architectural structure that meets all the criteria and is a key symbol of the city is selected from the objects considered. The selfie architecture of Tyumen is an integral part of the culture of today. However, at the moment in Tyumen there are no popular truly utilitarian spaces intended only for photos as it happens in other cities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.


Author(s):  
S. E. Sidorova ◽  

The article concentrates on the colonial and postcolonial history, architecture and topography of the southeastern areas of London, where on both banks of the River Thames in the 18th–20th centuries there were located the docks, which became an architectural and engineering response to the rapidly developing trade of England with territories in the Western and Eastern hemispheres of the world. Constructions for various purposes — pools for loading, unloading and repairing ships, piers, shipyards, office and warehouse premises, sites equipped with forges, carpenter’s workshops, shops, canteens, hotels — have radically changed the bank line of the Thames and appearance of the British capital, which has acquired the status of the center of a huge empire. Docks, which by the beginning of the 20th century, occupied an area of 21 hectares, were the seamy side of an imperial-colonial enterprise, a space of hard and routine work that had a specific architectural representation. It was a necessary part of the city intended for the exchange of goods, where the usual ideas about the beauty gave way to considerations of safety, functionality and economy. Not distinguished by architectural grace, chaotically built up, dirty, smoky and fetid, the area was one of the most significant symbols of England during the industrial revolution and colonial rule. The visual image of this greatness was strikingly different from the architectural samples of previous eras, forcing contemporaries to get used to the new industrial aesthetics. Having disappeared in the second half of the 20th century from the city map, they continue to retain a special place in the mental landscape of the city and the historical memory of the townspeople, which is reflected in the chain of museums located in this area that tell the history of English navigation, England’s participation in geographical discoveries, the stages of conquering the world, creating an empire and ways to acquire the wealth of the nation.


Food Security ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kiaka ◽  
Shiela Chikulo ◽  
Sacha Slootheer ◽  
Paul Hebinck

AbstractThis collaborative and comparative paper deals with the impact of Covid-19 on the use and governance of public space and street trade in particular in two major African cities. The importance of street trading for urban food security and urban-based livelihoods is beyond dispute. Trading on the streets does, however, not occur in neutral or abstract spaces, but rather in lived-in and contested spaces, governed by what is referred to as ‘street geographies’, evoking outbreaks of violence and repression. Vendors are subjected to the politics of municipalities and the state to modernize the socio-spatial ordering of the city and the urban food economy through restructuring, regulating, and restricting street vending. Street vendors are harassed, streets are swept clean, and hygiene standards imposed. We argue here that the everyday struggle for the street has intensified since and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobility and the use of urban space either being restricted by the city-state or being defended and opened up by street traders, is common to the situation in Harare and Kisumu. Covid-19, we pose, redefines, and creates ‘new’ street geographies. These geographies pivot on agency and creativity employed by street trade actors while navigating the lockdown measures imposed by state actors. Traders navigate the space or room for manoeuvre they create for themselves, but this space unfolds only temporarily, opens for a few only and closes for most of the street traders who become more uncertain and vulnerable than ever before, irrespective of whether they are licensed, paying rents for vending stalls to the city, or ‘illegally’ vending on the street.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.


Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-482
Author(s):  
Parvin Partovi ◽  
Kebria Sedaghat Rostami ◽  
Amir Shakibamanesh

In the crowded cities of the present age, public spaces can provide a quiet area away from the hustle and bustle of the city that citizens can interact with by incorporating utility features and meeting human needs and Relax there. Small urban spaces are among the most important and effective urban spaces to achieve this goal. Because these spaces due to their small size and lower costs (compared to larger spaces) for construction can be created in large numbers and distributed throughout the city. In this way, citizens will be able to reach a public urban space on foot in a short time. If these spaces are well designed, they can encourage people to stay in and interact with each other. It is not difficult to identify and experience high-quality successful places, but identifying the reasons for their success is difficult and even more difficult, understanding if similar spaces in other places can be considered successful. This question is important because public space with deep social content is considered a cultural product. Public space is the product of the historical and socio-cultural forces of society. Therefore, one of the most important issues that should be considered in the study of public spaces and the reasons for their success is the cultural context. In Iranian cities that have been influenced by the values and principles of Islam,recognizing Islamic principles and their role in shaping public spaces can lead us to desirable results. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual model of successful small urban spaces with an emphasis on cultural issues, especially in Iranian-Islamic cities. In this regard, the effective criteria for the success of urban spaces in general and small urban spaces in particular in the two categories of Western countries and Iranian Islamic cities were examined and then, taking into account the criteria derived from cultural theorists, the conceptual model of research with 38 subcriteria is provided.


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