scholarly journals Building a timeline, developing a narrative: visualising fringe belt formation alongside street network development

Author(s):  
Ilaria Geddes ◽  
Nadia Charalambous

This project was developed as an attempt to assess the relationship between different morphogenetic processes, in particular, those of fringe belt formation as described by M.R.G. Conzen (1960) and Whitehand (2001), and of centrality and compactness as described by Hillier (1999; 2002). Different approaches’ focus on different elements of the city has made it difficult to establish exactly how these processes interact or whether they are simply different facets of development reflecting wider socio-economic factors. To address this issue, a visual, chronological timeline of Limassol’s development was constructed along with a narrative of the socio-economic context of its development.  The complexity of cities, however, makes static visualisations across time difficult to read and assess alongside textual narratives. We therefore took the step of developing an animation of land use and configurational analyses of Limassol, in order bring to life the diachronic analysis of the city and shed light on its generative mechanisms. The video presented here shows that the relationship between the processes mentioned above is much stronger and more complex than previously thought. The related paper explores in more detail the links between fringe belt formation as a cyclical process of peripheral development and centrality as a recurring process of minimisation of gains in distance. The project’s outcomes clearly show that composite methods of visualisations are an analytical opportunity still little exploited within urban morphology. References Conzen, M.R.G., 1960. Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town-Plan Analysis, London: Institute of British Geographers. Hillier, B., 2002. A Theory of the City as Object: or how spatial laws mediate the social construction of urban space. Urban Des Int, 7(3–4), pp.153–179. Hillier, B., 1999. Centrality as a process: accounting for attraction inequalities in deformed grids. Urban Des Int, 4(3–4), pp.107–127. Whitehand, J.W.R., 2001. British urban morphology: the Conzenian tradition. Urban Morphology, 5(2), pp.103–109.

GeoTextos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryelle Macedo da Silva ◽  
Henrique Cunha Junior

A consciência espacial deve ser o principal objetivo do ensino de Geografia, seja no ambiente acadêmico ou escolar, como meio de apreensão e transformação da realidade. Para tanto, o estudo do lugar é imprescindível, enquanto espaço de vivência cotidiana, onde podemos vislumbrar com mais veemência a materialidade e as relações sociais. Nesse contexto, os percursos urbanos constituem uma metodologia apropriada para compreender a relação entre consciência, espaço e lugar, à medida que permitem o caminhar pela cidade, vislumbrando a forma-essência dos objetos geográficos. No caso desse trabalho, tivemos como aporte a relação entre consciência, espaço, lugar e espacialidade negra, considerando o patrimônio arquitetônico forjado através de técnicas de construção africanas e da mão de obra africana e afrodescendente, na cidade do Crato-CE. Tendo como concepção a pesquisa afrodescendente, as africanidades e a afrodescendência, associada à metodologia dos percursos urbanos, pesquisamos o patrimônio afrocratense a partir da arquitetura. Sintetizamos os resultados em três exemplares arquitetônicos, a saber, a antiga Casa Câmara e Cadeia, a Feira livre e tradicional e o Seminário São José. Desse modo, os percursos urbanos, condicionados sob a base conceitual apropriada, promoveram a consciência espacial sobre o patrimônio afrocratense, sendo relevante instrumento de estudo do espaço urbano. Abstract URBAN PATHWAYS AS A WAY TO SEARCH AFROCRATENSE HERITAGE Spatial awareness should be the main objective of teaching geography, whether in the academic or school environment, as a means of apprehending and transforming reality. Therefore, the study of the place is essential, as a space of daily living, where we can glimpse more strongly the social materiality. In this context, urban paths constitute an appropriate methodology for understanding the spatial consciousness-place relationship, as they allow the city to walk, glimpsing the essence-form of geographic objects. In the case of this work, we had as a contribution the relationship spatial awareness-place-black space, considering the architectural heritage forged through African construction techniques and African and African descent workforce in the city of Crato-Ce. Based on the African descent research (CUNHA JUNIOR, 2013), Africanities and African descent (CUNHA JUNIOR, 2001), associated with the methodology of urban pathways, we researched the Afrocratean heritage from architecture. We synthesized the results into three architectural examples, namely the old House Chamber and Jail, the free and traditional Fair and the São José Seminary. Thus, the urban paths, conditioned on the appropriate conceptual basis, promoted spatial awareness of the Afrocrat heritage, being relevant instrument of study of the urban space.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


Author(s):  
Carlos Machado

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.


Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Georgios-Rafail Kouklis ◽  
Athena Yiannakou

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of urban morphology to the formation of microclimatic conditions prevailing within urban outdoor spaces. We studied the compact form of a city and examined, at a detailed, street plan level, elements related to air temperature, urban ventilation, and the individual’s thermal comfort. All elements examined are directly affected by both the urban form and the availability of open and green spaces. The field study took place in a typical compact urban fabric of an old city center, the city center of Thessaloniki, where we investigated the relationship between urban morphology and microclimate. Urban morphology was gauged by examining the detailed street plan, along with the local building patterns. We used a simulation method based on the ENVI-met© software. The findings of the field study highlight the fact that the street layout, the urban canyon, and the open and green spaces in a compact urban form contribute decisively both to the creation of the microclimatic conditions and to the influence of the bioclimatic parameters.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Caragh Wells

This article suggests that over recent decades Catalan literary criticism has paid too little attention to the aesthetic attributes of Catalan literature and emphasised the social, political and cultural at the expense of discussions of narrative poetics. Through an analysis of Montserrat Roig’s metaphorical use of the city in her first novel Ramona, adéu, I put forward the view that the aesthetic features of Catalan literature need to be re-claimed. This article provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic importance of Roig’s representation of the city in her first novel and argues that she uses Barcelona as a critical tool through which to explore questions of both female emancipation and aesthetic freedom. Following a detailed discussion of Roig’s descriptions of how her female characters interact with particular urban spaces, I examine how Roig makes subtle shifts in her semantic register during these narrative accounts when her prose moves into the realm of the poetic. I conclude that this technique enables us to read her accounts of urban space as metaphors for aesthetic freedom and are inextricably linked to her wider concerns on the importance of liberating Catalan literature from the discourse of political nationalism.


Author(s):  
Юрий Владимирович Преображенский

Рассмотрен вопрос о сущности социокультурного пространства и его пересечении с экономическим пространством города. Показано, что наиболее эффективная организация пространственного взаимодействия данных пространств во многом является географической задачей. Предлагается метод изучения социальных практик населения для локализации точек и линий взаимодействия социокультурной и экономической сфер. Рассмотрены практики, в ходе которых создаются социокультурные ценности, положительно влияющие на экономическое пространство города. Обсуждается проблема влияния пешеходных пространств (наиболее насыщенных практиками) на формирование имиджа города. The question of the essence of the socio-cultural space and its intersection with the economic space of the city is considered. It is shown that the most effective organization of the spatial interaction of these spaces is in many ways a geographic task. A method is proposed for studying the social practices of the population to localize points and lines of interaction between the socio-cultural and economic spheres. The practice is considered in the course of which socio-cultural values are created that have a positive effect on the economic space of the city. The problem of the influence of pedestrian spaces (the most saturated with practices) on the formation of the city's image is discussed.


Author(s):  
Jacob Kreutzfeldt

Street cries, though rarely heard in Northern European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban spaces. Paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call ‘the refrain’, the ritualised and stylised practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material, documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen in the years 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as a musical and a spatial phenomenon, respectably. Such studies – from their individual perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are developed and heard specifically in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Carla de Lira Bottura

This article introduces partial discussions from a doctoral research in progress that has as object of study the tendency to paci cation and concealment of con icts veri ed in the production process of contemporary urban space - particularly in the most recent Brazil- ian cities - as well as its strategies and mechanisms of control. As a eld of study, it is proposed the city of Palmas, capital of Tocantins, last planned capital of the twentieth century, founded on May 20, 1989, a year that symbolizes the opening of the Western world to the neoliberal economic policy. Based on the observation of the absence of signi cant movements of resistance to the urban space production process at Palmas and interpreting it as a re ection of pacifying tendency of consensus and appeasement / masking of con icts as a feature of neoliberal city, we propose the hypothesis of physical and territorial con guration of the city as a laboratory of the neoliberal model of urban management, in which socio-spa- tial dynamics gradually developed in other contemporary cities through processes historically constructed, get explicit and take place, immediately or in a very short time. Through a historical ap- proach to the context of its creation and occupation, we propose an urban space production reading based on the recognition of char- acteristics relating to its conditions of New Town and neoliberal city as well as the incipient action of the social movements dedicated to the struggles for housing as social agents in this process. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 42-54
Author(s):  
Anna Cudny

Influence of social capital of inhabitants on shaping common spaces in a housing environment The last two decades of the century have brought unusually many changes in the built environment. These include not only changes directly related to the emergence of a new urban fabric, but also changes in social attitudes towards common spaces located in residential areas. The built environment has never been evaluated so strongly. This assessment translates not only into the everyday outdoor activities of residents (necessary, optional and social activities), but also to economic projects (purchase, sale and rental of real estate). At the same time, the city ceases to be, as it has been so far, mainly subjected to criticism, and the residents are gradually changing their demanding attitude concerning the development of space to participate in the process of its creation. Society wants to have a real impact on urban space, especially on the space closest to them. Thus, the right to the city is no longer a privilege or a duty, but it becomes a need. Trying to meet this need results in a phenomenon which we can increasingly observe in Poland, and which we have been witnessing abroad for many years: activities in public space are changing into activities for public space. They include the transformation of common spaces related to the place of residence—improving their aesthetic quality, functional changes, modernization of development elements. Observing numerous examples of public participation in shaping public spaces, it was noticed that the initiation, course and effects of activities largely depend on the social capital of the group undertaking said activity. Accordingly, there is a need for research on the mutual relation between the level of social capital and the issue of shaping and managing public space with the participation of local communities, which will be the main topic of the paper. To investigate the above-mentioned issue, qualitative research methods were used in relation to the relationship: site visit, non-participant observation and focus interviews. This contributed to a comparative study of three selected Warsaw case studies. They were analysed in terms of meeting the qualitative criteria selected for the study. These criteria have been indicated on the basis of the Social Capital Development Strategy 2020, which is one of the parts of the Medium-Term National Development Strategy. The result of the analyses is an indication of derived factors from within the group of space users and external factors that have a positive and negative impact on initiating, carrying out and maintaining the effects of changes in common spaces developed with the participation of local communities in Polish conditions. The conclusions can be used to improve future participation processes related to urban space - both by non-professionals participating in them, as well as experts - architects and town planners.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document