scholarly journals Silent cities, silenced histories: subaltern experiences of everyday urban violence during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s3 ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Jaideep Gupte ◽  
Syeda Jenifa Zahan
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban India ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Ontological Shift ◽  
The City

The public health containment measures in response to COVID-19 have precipitated a significant epistemic and ontological shift in �bottom-up� and �action-oriented� approaches in development studies research. �Lockdown� necessitates physical and social distancing between research subject and researcher, raising legitimate concerns around the extent to which �distanced� action-research can be inclusive and address citizens� lack of agency. Top-down regimes to control urban spaces through lockdown in India have not stemmed the experience of violence in public spaces: some have dramatically intensified, while others have changed in unexpected ways. Drawing on our experiences of researching the silent histories of violence and memorialisation of past violence in urban India over the past three decades, we argue that the experience of subaltern groups during the pandemic is not an aberration from their sustained experiences of everyday violence predating the pandemic. Exceptionalising the experiences of violence during the pandemic silences past histories and disenfranchises long struggles for rights in the city. At the same time, we argue that research practices employed to interpret the experience of urban violence during lockdown in India need to engage the changing nature of infrastructural regimes, as they seek to control urban spaces, and as subaltern groups continue to mobilise and advocate, in new ways.

Life in small urban spaces of “Sanskari Nagari – Vadodara”

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Abhilash Kolluri ◽  
Garbhit Naik ◽  
Shubham Kaushal
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Western India ◽  
Street Life ◽  
Life Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
City Dynamics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper envisages the situation of social life in the city of, “Vadodara – Sanskari Nagari” during and post-pandemic. In the globalization hub of Western-India, the city Vadodara stands true to its name – “Sanskari Nagari”, which still celebrates its rich heritage and culture to its fullest. The social life of people in Vadodara is not only a part of their culture but also part of their routine, which can be perceived from the world’s largest “Garba-gathering”; to every day’s post office hour “Chai-meetup”; to relishing their free time playing “Ludo” by the sides of bridges across the city. With the presence of COVID-19, city people are hesitant about social gatherings and meeting people. Ultimately, life is resuming but at a slow pace and there is an urge to “reimagine” the public spaces and public behaviour so that city doesn’t lose its charm. Referring to the city assessment of William H. Whyte, the mentor of Street Life Project for Public Spaces, Pedestrian behaviour, and City Dynamics, through his book – “Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces,1980” forms the prelude for the research. This paper draws attention to similar spaces for the city of Vadodara as referred to in the book. We see what we do not expect to see, and get acquainted to see crowded spaces. Hence, this paper analyses the selected “Urban-blocks” and “Neighbourhood-spaces” of different typology and their diverse activities. Conclusion focus on the rational segregation and “re-defining” of Urban Spaces based on their safe carrying capacity.

scholarly journals DECOM JOB: NOTES ON THE DECOMMUNIZATION OF CITY SPACES

2017 ◽  
pp. 152-165
Author(s):  
Svitlana Shlipchenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Complete Ignorance ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
Monuments And Memorials ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Following Maidan-2014 and subsequent political changes, the processes of de-communization in Ukraine have considerably accelerated and received the new impetus. The Parliament adopted a number of laws and legal acts concerning toponyms, monuments, and memorials, communist symbols, etc. thatwere to be removed from public spaces. The new legislation applied equally to open public spaces of the cities and villages (streets, squares, piazzas, public parks) and to the spaces of public use (municipal and government buildings, museums, underground stations, universities, schools, etc.). Leaving certainlacunas (e.g. using communist symbols in mass consumerist culture) and not specifying the ways and means the laws were to be implemented, the parliamentary acts gave way to numerous conflicts and misunderstandings, when the incessant confrontations with a painful past shape political attitudes.Furthermore, these processes call for re-conceptualizing the ways the past is set into the work of memory and represented in the city spaces. In the same breath, it resulted in mostly spontaneous, even hectic application of the provisions, and remains the contentious issue for the public, experts andlocal authorities alike. On the one hand, we see démontage, removal or dismantling/demolition of the objects that the experts tend to see as a part of the cultural or historical heritage, but which so far are not listed or assigned as such. While on the other hand, it works towards complete ignorance from the part of local authorities if not setting the conflicts between local communities. The paperwill look at certain cases and practices of ‘de-communization’ in Ukrainian cities and analyze its pro-s and contra-s.

scholarly journals Geografia, violência, segurança e saúde - reflexões sobre a contribuição das unidades de polícia pacificadora (UPP) do rio janeiro à saúde da população

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 2935-2946
Author(s):  
Romero de Albuquerque Maranhão ◽  
Raphael dos Ramos Maranhão
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Spatial Inequalities ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
Violencia Urbana ◽  
The City

Questões relacionadas com a violência urbana afetam diretamente as condições de saúde da população, produzindo distúrbios mentais como o medo e a loucura, desigualdades sócio-espaciais, inutilização dos espaços públicos de lazer e em determinadas situações a morte. O objetivo deste trabalho, a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica, é refletir sobre a ação da Secretaria de Segurança Pública em criar as Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP), espacialmente distribuídas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, e sua possível conexão com a atenuação da violência urbana, bem como na saúde da população. Conclui-se que as Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora, ainda em estágio de implantação e adequação, geram um sentimento de segurança, conforto e bem-estar para a população, haja vista a redução no número de crimes e delitos entre os anos de 2009 e 2010.     Issues related to urban violence directly affect the health conditions of the population, producing mental disorders such as fear and madness, socio-spatial inequalities, disabling public spaces for leisure and, in certain situations, death. The objective of this work, based on a literature review, is to reflect on the action of the Public Security Secretariat in creating the Pacifying Police Units (UPP), spatially distributed in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and its possible connection with the attenuation of urban violence, as well as in the health of the population. It is concluded that the Pacifying Police Units, still at the stage of implementation and adaptation, generate a feeling of security, comfort and well-being for the population, given the reduction in the number of crimes and offenses between 2009 and 2010.

scholarly journals The capibaribe park project, Recife: using the river to reinvent the city

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-353
Author(s):  
Fabiano Rocha Diniz ◽  
Luiz Vieira Filho ◽  
Roberto Montezuma
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
The Past ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Coherent Image ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Recife is an amphibious city whose urban development does not value its rivers. In the past, the city’s main watercourse, the river Capibaribe, was understood to play a key role in structuring urban spaces and providing connectivity. Since then, this understanding has dwindled, and the resulting situation is a cause of great concern. Recife City has turned its back on the banks of its rivers and neglected both their capacity to smooth and shape urban space, and their potential to create a coherent image of the city. Recife is one of those cities in the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, ranking 16th in the list of world hotspots. In order to confront these challenges and rethink the role of the river that runs in the heart of Recife, researchers, architects, engineers, and sociologists from Research and Innovation for Cities — Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (INCITI-UFPE) were invited by the Recife City Hall to draw up plans for a park stretching along the river’s banks. Capibaribe Park Project attempts to answer one key question: How can we use the river to transform the city? The park project is based on a structural approach to landscape and is guided by the precepts of sustainability and regeneration of public spaces, in line with the emerging paradigm that combines a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach with water-sensitive design and social participation. The present article presents an overview of the main characteristics and development of this project, its theoretical and methodological underpinnings, its contribution to society, and the results achieved so far. It shows how, in addition to the planned park, the project also envisages the installation of a much more extensive system of parks, as a first stage towards the creation of park-city by the 500th anniversary of the foundation of Recife, in 2037.

scholarly journals Activating Data through Eco-Didactic Design in the Public Realm: Enabling Sustainable Development in Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Based Design ◽  
The City

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.

scholarly journals Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gascia Ouzounian
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Sonic Art ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The City ◽  
Radical Transformation

This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic, religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast. These include site-specific sound installations in urban and public spaces, soundwalks, sculptures, locative and online works, and experimental sonic performances that draw upon traditional Irish song and music.

Reconceptualizing the Public Spaces of New Urban Areas in Hanoi: The End or the New of Public-Making?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Public ◽  
Doi Moi ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Neighborhood Level

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.

scholarly journals »Reclaiming« the City: A Collective Endeavor

Dimensions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Sergiy Ilchenko
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Urban Renaissance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Being Moved

Abstract This contribution elaborates upon the appropriation of urban space in spatiotemporal and procedural interventions in the example of the city of Kharkiv, as well as the impact of urban space on the process of how various groups rediscover and use various parts of the city. Being moved during collective actions - in the sense of feeling urged to move along - goes beyond routine practices by influencing the city and its perception. It seems that these general processions, celebrations, and festive activities of the residents are their contributions to the process of »urban renaissance« - the rebirth of interest in the urban way of life. Since public spaces reflect the historical inheritance of local communities, joint transformative actions such as, »appropriation «, »production«, and »governance« of urban spaces are considered. This article advocates for the practice of domestication of urban space by the local community, as well as the need for the existence of »urban lagoons« - free (unregulated) areas of the city used as resources for urban development and interaction of citizens.

scholarly journals Exploring Successful Small Urban Spaces’ Criteria with Emphasis on Cultural Context

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-482
Author(s):  
Parvin Partovi ◽  
Kebria Sedaghat Rostami ◽  
Amir Shakibamanesh
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The City

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.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gendered Spatializations: A Study of Cityscapes in Manu Joseph’s Novels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Parvathi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
City Image ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Burton Pike (1981) terms the cityscapes represented in literature as word-cities whose depiction captures the spatial significance evoked by the city-image and simultaneously, articulates the social psychology of its inhabitants (pp. 243). This intertwining of the social and the spatial animates the concept of spatiality, which informs the positionality of urban subjects, (be it the verticality of the city or the horizonality of the landscape) and determines their standpoint (Keith and Pile, 1993). The spatial politics underlying cityscapes, thus, determine the modes of social production of sexed corporeality. In turn, the body as a cultural product modifies and reinscribes the urban landscape according to its changing demographic needs. The dialectic relationship between the city and the bodies embedded in them orient familial, social, and sexual relations and inform the discursive practices underlying the division of urban spaces into public and private domains. The geographical and social positioning of the bodies within the paradigm of the public/private binary regulates the process of individuation of the bodies into subjects. The distinction between the public and the private is deeply rooted in spatial practices that isolate a private sphere of domestic, embodied activity from the putatively disembodied political, public sphere. Historically, women have been treated as private and embodied and the politics of the demarcated spaces are employed to control and limit women’s mobility. This gendered politics underlying the situating practices apropos public and private spaces inform the representations of space in literary texts. Manu Joseph’s novels, Serious Men (2010) and The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012), are situated in the word-cities of Mumbai and Chennai respectively whose urban spaces are structured by such spatial practices underlying the politics of location. The paper attempts to problematize the nature of gendered spatializations informing the location of characters in Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People.

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