The Problem of Densification of Large-Panel Housing Estates upon the Example of Cracow

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of intense, uncontrolled densification of large-panel housing estates in Poland. Despite the fact that such housing estates as a legacy of the Modernist concept of segregation of functions are often burdened with problems, they still have considerable potential, which results predominantly from their urban advantages, such as functional and spatial logic, large amounts of open public space, and abundance of greenery. Unfortunately, this potential is being destroyed by introducing new buildings, ignoring the existing urban layout of the housing estate along with its original compositional assumptions. This type of densification results from—without limitations—the pressure exerted by developers in the free-market economy, and it often leads to problems such as the devastation of urban layouts of these housing estates, breaking the continuity of public spaces, appropriation of green areas, strengthening of monofunctionality, etc. This problem is becoming noticeable in the scientific debate, although it is still difficult to obtain reliable data illustrating the densifications of such housing estates. The goal of this paper is to present the scales and character of such densifications of the large-panel housing estates, which pose a threat of devastation of their urban layouts often considered as urban heritage. The paper proposes a method of a quantitative analysis of the housing estates with reference to the increase in the built-up area and a qualitative analysis of the character of development with reference to its distribution. This method comprises a sequence of subsequent steps with relevant criteria. In the results, it demonstrates the scale of the problem, which in many cases is already big and still growing. The resultant threat of devastation of the urban layout and its consequences are presented upon selected examples of housing estates in Cracow, Poland. This paper is a voice in a discussion devoted to the current status, but most of all to the future of large-panel housing estates, particularly in terms of their protection as valuable achievements of urban planning of the second half of the 20th century, and to stopping unfavorable tendencies of urban destruction.

The Repurposed City of Johannesburg

This chapter explores the landscape of Johannesburg, taken as a city that shapes the agency of its inhabitants, and it show hows, conversely, the residents of Johannesburg have remade spaces in their city to suit their needs. Johannesburg is a repurposed city: it was built to support a series of spatial and political orders that are now defunct, and its material structure must now be reused by different residents inhabiting a different order. The materiality of the city was shaped by apartheid, which sharply controlled how its residents used and occupied space. The residents of postapartheid Johannesburg find ways of creatively tinkering with the city, whose landscape still reflects that past era. This chapter looks at how apartheid continues to mark the landscape of the city, and how current residents are creatively repurposing this landscape. It begins with a spatial history of Johannesburg and an analysis of its current spatial logic. It then provides detailed explorations and readings of several repurposed spaces within the city, comparing their present and past uses and meanings, and situating them within the history and spatial logic of each city.

The Repurposed City of Berlin

This chapter explores the landscape of Berlin, taken as a city that shapes the agency of its inhabitants, and shows how, conversely, the residents of Berlin have remade spaces in their city to suit their needs. Berlin is a repurposed city: it was built to support a series of spatial and political orders that are now defunct, and its material structure must now be reused by different residents inhabiting a different order. In particular, the Cold War division of Berlin into east and west, divided by the Berlin Wall, fundamentally shaped the space of the city, and postunification residents must find ways to creatively repurpose this space. The chapter begins with the spatial history of Berlin and an analysis of its current spatial logic. It then provides detailed explorations and readings of a series of repurposed spaces within the city, comparing their present and past uses and meanings, and situating them within the history and spatial logic of each city.

Proving properties of autonomous car manoeuvres in urban traffic

As automated driving techniques are increasingly capturing the market, it is particularly important to consider vital functional properties of these systems. We present an overview of an approach that uses an abstract model to logically reason about properties of autonomous manoeuvres at intersections in urban traffic. The approach introduces automotive-controlling timed automata crossing controllers that use the traffic logic UMLSL (Urban Multi-lane Spatial Logic) to reason about traffic situations. Safety in the context of collision freedom is mathematically proven. Liveness (something good finally happens) and fairness (no queue-jumping) are examined and verified using a model-checking tool for timed automata, UPPAAL.

“All Those Things Desirable for a Map to Show”

Chapter 2 examines the geographic and spatial logic that undergirded colonization. By occupying the “civilizing” space of Liberia, degraded American blackness was transformed into exotic, and “civilized,” whiteness. One of the keys to this transformation was to project Liberia as a tiny United States in which Americo-Liberians served as masters of their own “civilized” space. Critical to the perception of “civilized” white settlers and degraded black Africans was the requirement that “heathen” Africans be separate and beyond the limits of “civilization,” so as to not taint the space with their barbarity, while simultaneously projecting control over the black bodies of the African inhabitants. Cartography and maps of Liberia proved useful tools in this complex dance of establishing separation and togetherness, distance and control, simultaneously.

Unspoken Grammar of Place: Anti-Blackness as a Spatial Imaginary in Education

This article builds from scholarship on anti-Blackness in education and spatial imaginaries in geography to theorize an anti-Black spatial imaginary as the prevailing spatial logic that has shaped the configuration and character of American social intuitions, including K-12 schools. As a spatial imaginary, anti-Blackness is circulated through discourses, images, and texts that tell a story of Blackness as a problem, non-human, and placeless. Anchored by the assumption that Black populations are spatially illegitimate, the anti-Black spatial imaginary marks Black bodies as undesirable and therefore extractable from spaces and places that have been envisioned for their exclusion. I consider schools as sites spatialized terror where the exhibitions of terror consist of forcing students to observe other Black bodies being forcibly removed from the classroom and school community; constant rejection of Black language, traditions, music preferences, and other cultural forms of expression; the obliteration of Black names and identities. I offer ways that school leaders can unsettle the anti-Black spatial imaginary to transform schools as sites of holistic healing and possibilities.