Exploration of Anthropomorphic Concepts of Rungus Craft Towards Public Sculpture on Street Furniture

Chapter 3 demonstrates that DIY urban designers are largely motivated by failings they perceive in urban policy and planning. Placing them in this context is essential for interpreting the phenomenon. While do-it-yourselfers respond to the problems they see in creative ways, their individualistic tactics of doing so introduce problems of their own. The chapter focuses on bus stops to consider the lack of sidewalk seating in many cities, the privatization of street furniture, and concerns with local service provision. In trying to correct problems they see, do-it-yourselfers always impart their own personal and cultural values, and some DIY alterations can be selfish and anti-social in impact. The chapter interrogates DIY urbanism in the context of the “neoliberalized” city, arguing that even as the practices aim to counter the ill effects of market-driven planning, they can also reinforce an individualistic, undemocratic logic in placemaking.

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Disturbance Analysis in the Classification of Objects Obtained from Urban LiDAR Point Clouds with Convolutional Neural Networks

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13112135 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (11) ◽

pp. 2135

Author(s):

Jesús Balado ◽

Pedro Arias ◽

Henrique Lorenzo ◽

Adrián Meijide-Rodríguez

Keyword(s):

Laser Scanning ◽

Ambient Noise ◽

Point Clouds ◽

Density Variation ◽

Density Reduction ◽

Manual Intervention ◽

Point Density ◽

Disturbance Analysis ◽

Street Furniture

Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) systems have proven their usefulness in the rapid and accurate acquisition of the urban environment. From the generated point clouds, street furniture can be extracted and classified without manual intervention. However, this process of acquisition and classification is not error-free, caused mainly by disturbances. This paper analyses the effect of three disturbances (point density variation, ambient noise, and occlusions) on the classification of urban objects in point clouds. From point clouds acquired in real case studies, synthetic disturbances are generated and added. The point density reduction is generated by downsampling in a voxel-wise distribution. The ambient noise is generated as random points within the bounding box of the object, and the occlusion is generated by eliminating points contained in a sphere. Samples with disturbances are classified by a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The results showed different behaviours for each disturbance: density reduction affected objects depending on the object shape and dimensions, ambient noise depending on the volume of the object, while occlusions depended on their size and location. Finally, the CNN was re-trained with a percentage of synthetic samples with disturbances. An improvement in the performance of 10–40% was reported except for occlusions with a radius larger than 1 m.

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Corrigendum to “Cast iron street furniture: A historical review” [Endeavour 44 (3) (2020) 100721]

Endeavour ◽

10.1016/j.endeavour.2020.100745 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 100745

Author(s):

C. Soffritti ◽

L. Calzolari ◽

M. Chicca ◽

R. Bassi Neri ◽

A. Neri ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cast Iron ◽

Historical Review ◽

Street Furniture

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Sidewalk Static Obstructions and Their Impact on Clear Width

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board ◽

10.1177/0361198121991833 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 036119812199183

Author(s):

Nicholas A. Coppola ◽

Wesley E. Marshall

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Americans With Disabilities Act ◽

Minimum Width ◽

Street Furniture ◽

Gis Methods ◽

Pedestrian Accessibility

Data on sidewalks have long been deficient. But advances in remote sensing are beginning to increase data prevalence and accuracy. These sidewalk datasets rarely, if ever, account for static obstructions in the sidewalk such as signs, street furniture, or trees. This paper seeks to determine how much of a difference accounting for static obstructions will make when measuring the clear width of sidewalks. We extracted the minimum width of sidewalk surfaces—both with and without accounting for static obstructions—for the entirety of Cambridge, MA, using new GIS methods described in this paper. We then compared these results against Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards for clear width as well as national and federal sidewalk guidelines. The results suggest a significant decrease in the average clear width of sidewalks when accounting for static obstructions. More specifically, the clear width of the average sidewalk drops from 4.5 ft (1.4 m) to 3.5 ft (1.1 m). The percentage of sidewalk segments meeting the 3-ft ADA standard drops from 78% to 51% when accounting for static obstructions. For the proposed 4-ft (1.2-m) ADA standard, it plunges from 59% of sidewalk segments meeting the width threshold to 31%. These results demonstrate that not accounting for static obstructions could lead to a gross overestimation of seemingly adequate sidewalks and an unrealistic assessment of sidewalk infrastructure and pedestrian accessibility.

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Between the Pagan Past and Christian Present in Byzantine Visual Culture

10.1017/9781108985628 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Paroma Chatterjee

Keyword(s):

Visual Culture ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

New Perspective ◽

Public Sculpture

Up to its pillage by the Crusaders in 1204, Constantinople teemed with magnificent statues of emperors, pagan gods, and mythical beasts. Yet the significance of this wealth of public sculpture has hardly been acknowledged beyond late antiquity. In this book, Paroma Chatterjee offers a new perspective on the topic, arguing that pagan statues were an integral part of Byzantine visual culture. Examining the evidence in patriographies, chronicles, novels, and epigrams, she demonstrates that the statues were admired for three specific qualities - longevity, mimesis, and prophecy; attributes that rendered them outside of imperial control and endowed them with an enduring charisma sometimes rivaling that of holy icons. Chatterjee's interpretations refine our conceptions of imperial imagery, the Hippodrome, the Macedonian Renaissance, a corpus of secular objects, and Orthodox icons. Her book offers novel insights into Iconoclasm and proposes a more truncated trajectory of the holy icon in medieval Orthodoxy than has been previously acknowledged.

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