Reading the represented city and society: signs, theory, and the dynamic interpretativeness of Peircean semiotics

In the era of visual media, cities, and society are represented, experienced, and interpreted through images. The need for interdisciplinary visual approaches, therefore, is indisputable. By focusing on cinema, this paper aims to develop a conceptual, methodological framework through which theory helps a broad range of researchers in social sciences, humanities, and arts interpret the represented phenomenon. Based on Peirce’s model of signs, the framework provides the basis for a dynamic interpretation of the city and society. This paper shows that Peircean cinesemiotics takes advantage of theory in three ways: First, as the basis that provides scholars with clues necessary for identifying eligible “image-signs”; second, as the guiding framework that helps them reach a final interpretation; third, as ideas are being criticized from visual perspectives. As an example of its application, using Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” the final part of the paper applies Peircean cinesemiotics to an image-sign from Death Wish (2018) and interprets it as the representation of safety/crime in a neighborhood.

Two Interviews, Images of the Mobility Paths

This document compares two videos that date from the same year (1969) and provide a basis for discussion about two different paradigms of urban thinking present in the 1960’s: an interview with Jane Jacobs on the show "The way it is", on Canadian broadcaster CBC, in which she disputes the plans to build Spadina Expressway in Toronto, and a presentation by the then Mayor of São Paulo, Paulo Salim Maluf, on the plans to build Elevado Presidente Costa e Silva (currently named Elevado João Goulart, nicknamed Minhocão [the Big Worm]), an elevated expressway in São Paulo. By confronting the videos, the antagonism of the discourses regarding the role of road infrastructure, the value given to the urban environment, and the idea of quality of urban life becomes clear. The materials are also an illustration of two different outcomes: the halting of the Spadina Expressway works in Toronto and the completion of the Minhocão works in São Paulo.

Rigenerazione urbana nel segno delle diversità: la proposta di Jane Jacobs

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High Street

<p>High Street addresses the problem of disconnection between high-rise buildings and the life of the street. High-rises are often adopted as an efficient means of creating more usable space per square meter. However, their height also isolates them from the urban milieu below. This thesis investigates how to unite the two typologies by elevating the street through the high-rise. As more people are living in cities, the high-rise has become the most prevalent building type to accommodate this increasing urban density. It is important to continue to address how the built environment can enhance urban life architecturally. This proposition investigates externalising the circulation of a ten storey apartment building in central Wellington in a way that encourages the pedestrian to come above the ground plane and gives the resident a direct connection to the outdoors. In doing so elevating the street challenges the norms of circulation design in high-rise buildings. This thesis draws on the observations of Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennett to develop a circulation space that acts a social condenser (Koolhaas 73) for the resident and the pedestrian. A series of formal experiments and case study analyses were used to further the design solution through comparison and critique. The research process revealed the tension between the need for efficiency and humaneness in the design solution and analysis showed that circulation design in high-rise buildings is often underdeveloped as a social condenser. High Street creates a solution which three-dimensionalises the city from a pedestrian perspective and simultaneously improves the communal spaces of high-rise living. The elevated street redefines the connection between built environment and the public infrastructure of the city and a means by which the pedestrian can traverse it.</p>

High Street

<p>High Street addresses the problem of disconnection between high-rise buildings and the life of the street. High-rises are often adopted as an efficient means of creating more usable space per square meter. However, their height also isolates them from the urban milieu below. This thesis investigates how to unite the two typologies by elevating the street through the high-rise. As more people are living in cities, the high-rise has become the most prevalent building type to accommodate this increasing urban density. It is important to continue to address how the built environment can enhance urban life architecturally. This proposition investigates externalising the circulation of a ten storey apartment building in central Wellington in a way that encourages the pedestrian to come above the ground plane and gives the resident a direct connection to the outdoors. In doing so elevating the street challenges the norms of circulation design in high-rise buildings. This thesis draws on the observations of Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennett to develop a circulation space that acts a social condenser (Koolhaas 73) for the resident and the pedestrian. A series of formal experiments and case study analyses were used to further the design solution through comparison and critique. The research process revealed the tension between the need for efficiency and humaneness in the design solution and analysis showed that circulation design in high-rise buildings is often underdeveloped as a social condenser. High Street creates a solution which three-dimensionalises the city from a pedestrian perspective and simultaneously improves the communal spaces of high-rise living. The elevated street redefines the connection between built environment and the public infrastructure of the city and a means by which the pedestrian can traverse it.</p>

Revisiting Jane Jacobs: Quantifying urban diversity

This study attempts to formally quantify Jane Jacob’s notion of urban diversity and examine whether greater diversity actually contributes economic benefits to a neighborhood. Focusing on the number and types of stores at the street level, we use the Shannon–Weaver index to quantify commercial diversity. We then compare the obtained degrees of diversity with store sales volumes obtained through credit card transaction data aggregated in the neighborhood divided into a 200-m grid. The results of the analysis, performed on 50 Spanish cities, show that the greater the diversity in the grid, the higher the sales volumes of the stores, and this tendency is more evident in large than in small–medium cities. In addition, we found that the coexistence of different store types provides a positive environment for the emergence of hub stores. We specifically define a hub store in this paper as the store with the largest revenue within a grid, provided that the distribution of the sales revenue in a grid is statistically similar to the power law. We speculate that hub stores trigger exploration between different store types, and consequently, the sales volumes of highly diverse neighborhoods increase compared with those of less diverse neighborhoods. These results highlight the importance of urban diversity for economic prosperity, which can lead to an increased quality of life for city neighborhoods.

Vitalidad urbana y vida cotidiana: revisitando a Jane Jacobs desde el análisis espacial del comercio alimentario en Barcelona

El creciente interés por el estudio de la vida cotidiana en las ciudades ha llevado a recuperar las ideas de Jane Jacobs, una de las figuras más influyentes del pensamiento urbano. Uno de sus conceptos más célebres es el de vitalidad urbana, a partir del cual se identifican elementos del entorno construido que convierten los espacios urbanos en lugares donde confluyen la presencia de gente, el bullicio y la combinación de diversas actividades. El artículo relaciona la vitalidad urbana con los comercios alimentarios, uno de los elementos esenciales de la vida cotidiana, que permiten satisfacer la necesidad primaria de la alimentación. El análisis se desarrolla en Barcelona, donde se identifican dos pautas de consumo, que se relacionan con dos tipos de comercios: la que se asocia con la cotidianidad, representada por las tiendas de alimentación; y la de carácter recreativo, representada por los bares y restaurantes. A través de un análisis de autocorrelación espacial, mediante el indicador global y local de Moran, el objetivo es ver cómo se relacionan estas dos maneras de acceder a la comida con la vitalidad urbana. El resultado es una vitalidad que presenta matices: si bien se asocia a comercios de consumo cotidiano, en determinadas zonas de la ciudad, esta también convive, con dinámicas socioeconómicas que interfieren en la vida cotidiana.

Complementary Currencies for Humanitarian Aid

The humanitarian sector has gone through a major shift toward injection of cash into vulnerable communities as its core modality. On this trajectory toward direct currency injection, something new has happened: namely the empowerment of communities to create their own local currencies, a tool known as Complementary Currency systems. This study mobilizes the concepts of endogenous regional development, import substitution and local market linkages as elaborated by Albert Hirschman and Jane Jacobs, to analyze the impact of a group of Complementary Currencies instituted by Grassroots Economics Foundation and the Red Cross in Kenya. The paper discusses humanitarian Cash and Voucher Assistance programs and compares them to a Complementary Currency system using Grassroots Economics as a case study. Transaction histories recorded on a blockchain and network visualizations show the ability of these Complementary Currencies to create diverse production capacity, dense local supply chains, and data for measuring the impact of humanitarian currency transfers. Since Complementary Currency systems prioritize both cooperation and localization, the paper argues that Complementary Currencies should become one of the tools in the Cash and Voucher Assistance toolbox.