Attractiveness of Central Public Spaces in Small Polish Towns Based on a Spatial Order Analysis

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the attractiveness of centrally located public spaces (main squares) in select new small towns in Poland. The evaluation was conducted from the spatial order perspective. Spatial order is composed of five elements: architectural and urban planning, functional, aesthetic, social, and “green” orders. The new small towns included in this analysis are settlement units, which in 2020 were populated by up to 20,000 inhabitants and received municipal rights in the 21st century. We used the point bonitation method in our research based on the source material collected during a field study. A total of 286 inventory cards of buildings and nine cards of town squares were compiled. The analysis demonstrated that the main squares in the towns studied are characterised by low or average levels of attractiveness from the spatial order perspective. The architectural–urban planning order in the towns in question was related to the number of inhabitants as well as the period over which a given settlement unit had municipal rights. A larger number of inhabitants had a positive influence on the functional diversification of the central squares and their development, whereas a small number limited both the functional diversification and the number of small architectural elements found at the square. The social order in the given towns was not connected to the number of inhabitants. The elements of social order were assessed favourably, both in larger towns that revitalised their central squares and in smaller settlements. The aesthetic and green orders were strongly related to the revitalisation of public space.

High Order Spatial Weighting Matrix Using Google Trends

This research aimed to form a high-order spatial weighting matrix based on various simulations. The simulation was the determination of the center of the country based on the capital and google trend data. The keywords that have been used in the Google Trends data are "gold price" and "deposit". These keywords have been translated into 6 official languages of the United Nation including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Each language has been represented by 1 country. The determination of the country center that has been used based on the capital as well as keywords and time influenced the form of the high-order spatial weighting matrix. In simulations 1, 2, 4, and 5 the highest spatial order formed was 6. It was different with simulations 3, 6, and 7 the highest spatial order formed was 5. Keywords: language, simulation, gold price, deposit.

Introduction to Repurposed Cities

This brief chapter introduces the notion of a repurposed city. A repurposed city is one that was built to support one spatial order with specific economic, social, and political relations, but in which that spatial order has now collapsed, so that the city has to accommodate radically new uses, users, and purposes. In turn, residents have to find ways of using and adapting a material city built for something quite different. In repurposed cities, new dwellers must find ways of tinkering with urban spaces and reinvesting them with new meanings in order to use them in new ways. Their uses are constrained by the material forms of the past order, while conversely, they creatively remake those forms.

Home-Space and Politics of Gender in Housekeeping

Focusing on female characters of Foster family, Marilynne Robinson’s debut novel Housekeeping presents a tension between stability and mobility within the home-space, and in terms of a fixed, bounded gender identity ascribed by domesticity and social convention with a fluid, non-essential one. Drawing on critical theories of Judith Butler, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Tim Cresswell, etc., this paper attempts to analyze how the protagonist Sylvie successfully subverts normative politics of gender by redefining the spatial order of home-space and conducting spatial practices.

Otherness, Cloning, and Morality in John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

The British writer John Wyndham (1903–1969) explored societal effects of surprising or mystical events. A paradigmatic example is The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which portrays identical-looking children born without sexual intercourse. I propose a reading strategy that focuses on the fictional spatial order and analyses how the construction of the children’s otherness interferes with the village’s demarcation. Furthermore, I interpret the mysterious pregnancies as a reference to basic embryo research in the 1950s – cloning. Finally, I scrutinize Wyndham’s negotiation of utilitarianism throughout the novel and his critique of truly utilitarian decisions that are based on constructions of Otherness.