scholarly journals A Multi-layered Analysis of Urban Topography: Galata District, Istanbul

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Yasemin Küblü
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Steven J. R. Ellis

This chapter examines the socio-economic motivations behind the shaping of retail landscapes in Roman cities. It is about who opened retail outlets, as well as why and where. After critiquing some of the normal methods for illustrating the locations of shops and bars, including the conventional distribution plan itself, as well as questioning the economic rationality of operating tabernae, this chapter argues for the value in complicating our otherwise basic understanding of why urban investments were made in the places we find them. Rather than accepting profit as the single motivation to urban investment, a range of social, economic, and political motivations are considered as an explanation for the ultimate shape of Roman retail landscapes. Thus beyond discussions of space and urban topography, the subject of this chapter is investment.


1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-207
Author(s):  
A. G. Barnett ◽  
H. L. MacMurray ◽  
P. L. Wallace ◽  
R. T. Lester

The “major/minor” approach is being adopted as standard urban drainage design practice in many countries. Further to the normal primary drainage design for minor storms, this approach now requires management of inundation during extreme storms of return period fifty years or more. Surface flows then have to be investigated over an urban topography which is highly irregular and initially dry, and the transition from these conditions to major storm flows is difficult to analyse. The proposed modelling solution is based on the full integral hydraulic equations incorporating possible shock fronts. Wetting and drying simulation, careful channel resolution at low flows, and implicit solution methods with flat response properties are also important. Key points are illustrated by case studies.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 505
Author(s):  
Brett David Potter

Parkour, along with “free-running”, is a relatively new but increasingly ubiquitous sport with possibilities for new configurations of ecology and spirituality in global urban contexts. Parkour differs significantly from traditional sports in its use of existing urban topography including walls, fences, and rooftops as an obstacle course/playground to be creatively navigated. Both parkour and “free-running”, in their haptic, intuitive exploration of the environment retrieve an enchanted notion of place with analogues in the religious language of pilgrimage. The parkour practitioner or traceur/traceuse exemplifies what Michael Atkinson terms “human reclamation”—a reclaiming of the body in space, and of the urban environment itself—which can be seen as a form of playful, creative spirituality based on “aligning the mind, body, and spirit within the environmental spaces at hand”. This study will subsequently examine parkour at the intersection of spirituality, phenomenology, and ecology in three ways: (1) As a returning of sport to a more “enchanted” ecological consciousness through poeisis and touch; (2) a recovery of the lost “play-element” in sport (Huizinga); and (3) a recovery of the human body attuned to our evolutionary past.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1369
Author(s):  
Ling Jiang ◽  
Yang Hu ◽  
Xilin Xia ◽  
Qiuhua Liang ◽  
Andrea Soltoggio ◽  
...  

The scarcity of high-resolution urban digital elevation model (DEM) datasets, particularly in certain developing countries, has posed a challenge for many water-related applications such as flood risk management. A solution to address this is to develop effective approaches to reconstruct high-resolution DEMs from their low-resolution equivalents that are more widely available. However, the current high-resolution DEM reconstruction approaches mainly focus on natural topography. Few attempts have been made for urban topography, which is typically an integration of complex artificial and natural features. This study proposed a novel multi-scale mapping approach based on convolutional neural network (CNN) to deal with the complex features of urban topography and to reconstruct high-resolution urban DEMs. The proposed multi-scale CNN model was firstly trained using urban DEMs that contained topographic features at different resolutions, and then used to reconstruct the urban DEM at a specified (high) resolution from a low-resolution equivalent. A two-level accuracy assessment approach was also designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed urban DEM reconstruction method, in terms of numerical accuracy and morphological accuracy. The proposed DEM reconstruction approach was applied to a 121 km2 urbanized area in London, United Kingdom. Compared with other commonly used methods, the current CNN-based approach produced superior results, providing a cost-effective innovative method to acquire high-resolution DEMs in other data-scarce regions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farshid Emami

This essay examines the urban topography, physical structure, and social context of coffeehouses in Safavid Iran (1501–1722), particularly in the capital city of Isfahan. Through a reconstruction of the architecture and urban configuration of coffeehouses, the essay shows how, as an utterly novel institution, the coffeehouse opened up a new sphere of public life, engendered new conceptions of urbanity, and altered the social meaning of urban spaces. The essay will specifically focus on the drinking houses that existed in the Maydan-i Naqsh-i Jahan and Khiyaban-i Chaharbagh, the grand urban spaces of seventeenth-century Isfahan. The remaining physical traces, together with textual and visual evidence, permit us to reconstruct Isfahan’s major coffeehouses. This analysis not only reveals a less-appreciated aspect of urbanity in the age of Shah ʿAbbas (r. 1587–1629) but also elucidates the ways in which the public spaces of Safavid Isfahan contained and shaped novel social practices particular to the early modern age.



Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document