Eco-Socialism and Green City Making in Postwar Vietnam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Schwenkel
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Green Technology ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Ecological Design ◽  
Urban Modernity ◽  
Technology Transfers ◽  
East German ◽  
Postwar Vietnam ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

This chapter examines shifts in the meaning and use of green space in socialist housing blocks in Vinh City, Vietnam, a ‘model’ socialist city rebuilt by East Germany (GDR) after its destruction by US aerial bombing. Unique to the eight-year project was the central role that ecological design played in urban reconstruction owing to financial and material constraints on the one hand, and ideological imperatives on the other. Green technology transfers served to radically transform the landscape with parks and cultivated green spaces that catered to the needs of workers and their families. These ‘eco-socialist’ practices, as I refer to them, constituted a fundamental effort on the part of GDR planners to rationally manage and order urban space that was deemed disorderly and too rural for the city. Yet utopian visions of urban modernity often came up short as they revealed more about East German lifestyles than about the pragmatic possibilities for recovery in postwar Vietnam. Ensuing struggles over the appropriate use of urban nature emerged at the center of the modernizing project and the creation of new socialist persons in Vietnam. 

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-288
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

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.

Diversity As A Unique Constellation of Superimposing Network Logics

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-14
Author(s):  
Alain Thierstein ◽  
Anne Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Industrial Sites ◽  
Individual Site ◽  
Scale Levels ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Underlying Processes

In the context of the European city, the regeneration of former industrial sites is a unique opportunity to actively steer urban development. These plots of land gain strategic importance in actively triggering development on the city scale. Ideally, these interventions radiate beyond the individual site and contribute to the strengthening of the location as a whole. International competition between locations is rising and prosperous development a precondition for wealth and wellbeing. This approach to the regeneration of inner city plots makes high demands on all those involved. Our framework suggests a stronger focus of the conceptualization and analysis of idiosyncratic resources, to enable innovative approaches in planning. On the one hand, we are discussing spatially restrained urban plots, which have the capacity and need to be reset. On the other hand, each plot is a knot in the web of relations on a multiplicity of scales. The material city is nested into a set of interrelated scale levels – the plot, the quarter, the city, the region, potentially even the polycentric megacity region. The immaterial relations however span a multicity of scale levels. The challenge is to combine these two perspectives for their mutual benefit. The underlying processes are constitutive to urban space diversity, as urban form shapes urban life and vice versa.

Mega-events and urban development: Olympics and legacies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Roche
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Urban Place ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The One ◽  
Mega Event

This chapter explores the ‘material embedding’ of mega-event spectacles in the legacies they leave in host cities which can be of both a negative and positive kind, and consist of the creation of new place and space legacies. These themes are illustrated with reference to the modern Olympics, and particularly in the contemporary period. The chapter’s main focus is on Olympic mega-events as urban ‘place-makers’. That is they often involve new constructions, on the one hand of sports and related event facilities complexes, and on the other hand of community-related developments in housing and places of employment. Since the turn of the millennium they are now effectively required by the IOC bidding system to leave such legacies. The chapter explore such legacies in some detail in the influential case of the Sydney 2000 Olympic project which, in some respects, was understood to represent a ‘model’ for subsequent Olympic cities. The case of the Sydney Olympics is seen to show how mega-events can simultaneously be urban ‘space-makers’ as well as ‘place-makers’. Since Sydney mega-events have often been notably associated with strategically important values and policies of both ‘greening’ and humanising modern urbanisation through the provision of open and green spaces in urban centres.

scholarly journals The Meat City: urban space and provision in industrial Copenhagen, 1880–1914

Urban History ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
MIKKEL THELLE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

ABSTRACT:This article investigates the emergence of the Copenhagen slaughterhouse, called the Meat City, during the late nineteenth century. This slaughterhouse was a product of a number of heterogeneous components: industrialization and new infrastructures were important, but hygiene and the significance of Danish bacon exports also played a key role. In the Meat City, this created a distinction between rising production and consumption on the one hand, and the isolation and closure of the slaughtering facility on the other. This friction mirrored an ambivalent attitude towards meat in the urban space: one where consumers demanded more meat than ever before, while animals were being removed from the public eye. These contradictions, it is argued, illustrate and underline the change of the city towards a ‘post-domestic’ culture. The article employs a variety of sources, but primarily the Copenhagen Municipal Archives for regulation of meat provision.

scholarly journals TIGHT OR FLEXIBLE? THE DEGREE OF DETAIL OF LOCAL LAW REGULATIONS AND ITS IMPACT ON A QUALITY OF URBAN SPACE – SELECTED CASES FROM POZNAN

space&FORM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2020 (46) ◽  
pp. 165-186
Author(s):  
Wojciech Skórzewski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Spatial Development ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
Local Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Local spatial development plans, are one of the most important urban landscaping tools. Their goal is, on the one hand, to protect urban space including, inter alia, prevention of creation of illconsidered developments, that are bad to the urban landscape, the environment or the local communities. For this purpose, there is a number of restrictions introduced into local spatial development plans. On the other hand, the role of local plans is also creating the space, so they should be conducive to projects with high-quality architecture, that are often unconventional and innovative, adding new value to the architectural landscape of the city, which could be blocked by too strict regulations. The trick is to create regulations in a way that can help reconcile that two goals.

scholarly journals Selling Spectacular Urban Life: Urban Space and Lifestyle in the Promotion Media of Apartment in Yogyakarta

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-48
Author(s):  
Ratna Noviani ◽  
Elok Santi Jesica
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Extended Time ◽  
Time Compression ◽  
Living Space ◽  
One Stop ◽  
The One ◽  
Urban Arts ◽  
The City

This article discusses how urban life is represented through the Barsa City, Uttara the Icon, and The Palace apartment advertisements and promotional videos. Applying Guy Debord's idea of spectacle to examine how urban life is transformed into visualization and commodification, also George Ritzer’s idea of re-enchantment of the disenchanted world and the new means of consumption. This article is aimed to analyze the position of apartments in the urban space of Yogyakarta that is discursively constructed through apartment promotional media. The conclusion of this research shows that apartments are functionalized to create the spectacle of the city. Urban space and life are aestheticized and spectacularized, in which apartments are displayed as part of dramatic and extravagant urban arts. Presented as one-stop-serving buildings, the apartments also promote the fusion of living space, urban style experience, and consumption which lead to the difficulty in distinguishing spatial boundaries. The advertisements and promotional videos of the apartment in Yogyakarta also promote temporal paradox. On the one hand, it promotes time compression and speed, meanwhile, on the other hand it promotes prolonged and extended time to foster consumption in the urban space.

scholarly journals El enigma de lo insignificante. Subjetividad y ciudad en "Jakob von Gunten"

2016 ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Juan Evaristo Valls Boix
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robert Walser ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

El propósito del presente estudio consiste en analizar las relaciones entre subjetividad y espacio urbano a través de la novela Jakob von Gunten de Robert Walser. La novela desarrolla una tensión entre, de un lado, un instituto de enseñanza y una forma de subjetividad entendida como interioridad privada y normativizada, y, de otro, la ciudad como espacio de lo múltiple y lo irrepresentable y una forma de subjetividad entendida como intimidad o secreto. La tensión entre ambas relaciones espacio-sujeto supone una versión peculiar de la dialéctica entre modernización y modernidad tal y como Benjamin o Kracauer la relatan, y permite pensar formas alternativas y superpuestas de concebir la subjetividad y el espacio a partir de distintas lecturas de un texto. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the relations between subjectivity and urban space through the novel Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser. The novel develops a tension between, on the one hand, an institute of teaching and a form of subjectivity understood as private and normative interiority, and, on the other, the city as a space of the multiple and the unrepresentable and a form of subjectivity understood as intimacy The secret. The tension between both space-subject relations supposes a peculiar version of the dialectic between modernization and modernity as Benjamin or Kracauer relate it, and allows to think alternative and superposed forms of conceiving the subjectivity and the space from different readings of a text.

PARKS ON NEW YORK ISLANDS – A NEW COMPONENT IN THE URBAN SPACE AND CITYSCAPE

space&FORM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Wiesława Gadomska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Parks ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Quality Design ◽  
Design Solutions ◽  
The City

This article raises the issue of setting up and developing urban parks on islands which are situated around New York’s borough of Manhattan. Among the principal consequences are an improved balance of developed green spaces in the city and the emergence of attractive public places with a variety of functions and high-quality design solutions. As for the urban landscape, interesting relations are created with respect to views of the unique silhouette of the city, and in particular of Manhattan.

An emerging art world: The de-subculturalization and artification process of graffiti and pixação in São Paulo

2021 ◽  
pp. 136787792110184
Author(s):  
Ricardo Campos ◽  
Gabriela Leal
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Graffiti art and street art have been increasingly described as an artistic movement, with a constant presence in the streets, but also in galleries and museums. In this article we use the term urban art to define this institutionalized category, originating from informal street expressions. In the specific context of the city of São Paulo (Brazil), most of the social actors that make up this art world have backgrounds linked to graffiti and pixação. These two urban subcultures are linked to informal forms of appropriation of the urban space through illicit inscriptions. In this article, we aim, on the one hand, to describe the features and singularities of urban art as an emerging art world and, on the other, to understand how careers are developed in this universe. The empirical data derives from a qualitative research (in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation) developed during the past three years.

scholarly journals Description Relationship between Urban Space and Quality of Urban Life. A Geographical Approach

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1337
Author(s):  
František Petrovič ◽  
František Murgaš
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Common Element ◽  
Concrete Form ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The examination of the relationship between the construct of urban space and the construct of the quality of urban life is based on the knowledge that their common element is real physical space, i.e., the place. If the examination of the relationship between the two constructs is to be meaningful, then both must be on the same comparative basis—that means quality. The paper consists of two parts—the first part, which is theoretical, takes the form of conceptualization of urban space and the quality of urban life, including the identification of elements which affect them. The result of conceptualizing urban space into a qualitative form is liveability. The result of conceptualizing the quality of urban life is a holistic quality of life in the city, containing two domains—subjective and objective. The second part of the paper is the application of both constructs in a concrete form, based on measuring the values of these indicators and also the analysis of the results. The measurement takes the form of liveability on the one hand and of satisfaction with the place and/or satisfaction with the quality of urban life on the other hand.

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