The Digital Urban Experience of a Lost City Using Mixed Methods to Depict the Historical Street Life of Edo/Tokyo

This paper digitally reconstructs street life in Edo (present-day Tokyo), the largest lost city of the pre-modern world. The ephemeral character of the Edo makes the historic urban experience extremely difficult to capture. We argue that the hypothetical digital reconstructions should incorporate evidence on human agency and spatial properties for a holistic simulation of historic street life. We develop a 3D hypothetical reconstruction based on multi-layered historical evidence to unlock the lost character of the Edo streets. It reveals the streets of Edo, including the rhythms of everyday life and the impact of the material culture.

Restoring the Self in the Language of Beauty and Balance: Esther Belin’s Of Cartography

The article analyzes the collection of poetry, Of Cartography, by Navajo poet and visual artist Esther G. Belin. In the collection, the poet explores the concepts of home and the self, merging her urban experience with traditional Navajo teachings. Written in a mixture of English and Navajo, the collection abounds in experimental poems with structure directly referring to the Navajo view of the cosmic reality. Grounded both in the Navajo philosophy of Beauty and Balance and modern, urban experience, Belin’s story can be interpreted as a healing rite that aims at restoring hózhǫ́: an ideal Navajo way of life which centers on the spiritual, physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of an individual and his/her community.

Forgotten Interiors

<p>Historic buildings play an important role in helping shape and characterise a city’s’ urban fabric. They extend beyond purely the aesthetic by enhancing our urban experience through providing a notion of continuity, and, by forming an enduring connection to our past, present, and future. In many instances, extending a historic building’s life that has fallen into a state of dilapidation, and, saving the rich history in which resides within its walls requires a rehabilitative or adaptive approach. Undertaking this process however, can become challenging when there lies an absence of interior documentation for the site. A clear understanding of the current, forsaken state in which the building’s interior has sunken into cannot therefore be established. The aim of this research is to therefore explore how a rehabilitative approach can be applied to the dilapidated, heritage listed, former Tramway Hotel to rejuvenate its forgotten interiors. By breathing another life into the building’s old bones, it seeks to make it fit for modern purposes once again whilst tangentially retaining the rich history that is housed within its weathered walls. Through the cyclical, reflective, and iterative nature of action research, this research investigates a range of techniques in response to the site’s forgotten interiors. By initially exploring the issue from various avenues, through the cycles of identifying, planning, acting and then critically self-reflecting, the design iterations produced refined in scope to eventuate in the act of strategically inserting, and then shifting newly built elements within the existing structure of the former Tramway Hotel. What was essential throughout the research and was therefore translated into a criterion for the evaluation of each iteration, was the need to add another life to the building, to allow it to persist, to live on without disrupting its historic integrity and character. Through the implementation and direct visual contrast of the newly built elements from historic ones, the developed design response seeks to establish a clear dialogue between the two so that each complements and enhances the other.</p>

Forgotten Interiors

<p>Historic buildings play an important role in helping shape and characterise a city’s’ urban fabric. They extend beyond purely the aesthetic by enhancing our urban experience through providing a notion of continuity, and, by forming an enduring connection to our past, present, and future. In many instances, extending a historic building’s life that has fallen into a state of dilapidation, and, saving the rich history in which resides within its walls requires a rehabilitative or adaptive approach. Undertaking this process however, can become challenging when there lies an absence of interior documentation for the site. A clear understanding of the current, forsaken state in which the building’s interior has sunken into cannot therefore be established. The aim of this research is to therefore explore how a rehabilitative approach can be applied to the dilapidated, heritage listed, former Tramway Hotel to rejuvenate its forgotten interiors. By breathing another life into the building’s old bones, it seeks to make it fit for modern purposes once again whilst tangentially retaining the rich history that is housed within its weathered walls. Through the cyclical, reflective, and iterative nature of action research, this research investigates a range of techniques in response to the site’s forgotten interiors. By initially exploring the issue from various avenues, through the cycles of identifying, planning, acting and then critically self-reflecting, the design iterations produced refined in scope to eventuate in the act of strategically inserting, and then shifting newly built elements within the existing structure of the former Tramway Hotel. What was essential throughout the research and was therefore translated into a criterion for the evaluation of each iteration, was the need to add another life to the building, to allow it to persist, to live on without disrupting its historic integrity and character. Through the implementation and direct visual contrast of the newly built elements from historic ones, the developed design response seeks to establish a clear dialogue between the two so that each complements and enhances the other.</p>

Prose Poetry

This chapter treats the prose poem as the decadent genre par excellence by focusing on Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen, 1869). The prose poem is well suited to the expression of decadent culture because of its formal subversion of conventional poetry, especially as adapted by Baudelaire to articulate “the bump and lurch” of urban experience. J. K. Huysmans certified the decadent credentials of the genre when he described it in À rebours (Against Nature, 1884) as “the osmazome of literature, the essential oil of art,” a literary distillation that makes it “an aesthetic treat to none but the most discerning.” The article analyzes “Any Where Out of the World” and other prose poems in relation to certain poems in Le Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), observing no loss of metaphorical power in the more “prosaic” medium despite Baudelaire’s secular and subversive treatment of many of the same poetic material given more elevated, spiritual treatment in the earlier collection.

On the move in the (post)colonial metropolis: The Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic fiction

Literary texts convey the complexities of the urban experience in a tangible way. While there is a wide body of work on literary representations of Paris, the role of public transport as part of the (postcolonial) urban experience has not received much attention. This article sets out to analyse the meanings of the mobile public space comprising the Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic literary texts from the mid-20th century to the 2010s. The reading demonstrates how the texts represent the public space of the Metro as a symbol of modernity, a space of disappointment and alienation, an embodiment of social inequalities and as a site of convivial encounters and claims of agency. Through this analysis, the article highlights the role of literature in elucidating the intertwinement of mobility, public space and postcolonial urbanity.

Sustainability as a Function of an Area: Application of Multi-Criteria Evaluation in Assessing the Effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions

One of the essential factors influencing the overall urban experience is the presence of biologically active surfaces. Despite widespread awareness of the beneficial effects of such spaces, the natural tissue in cities is still being significantly limited by the priority given to functionality and the economy. The aim of this article is to assess the potential of using a hybrid infrastructure in the grey–green–blue system (GGB) on a public site. In order to assess the efficiency of the implemented solutions, a multi-criteria method was developed, thereby recognising this research aspect as necessary in the process of designing urban built-up spaces. The assessment compared indicators of biological activity in the area using the biotope area factor and green space factor scales. The rainwater retention potential was estimated using a quantitative method. The change in the site’s thermal conditions was analysed by conducting numerous experiments with the use of micrometeorogical computational fluid dynamics models ENVI-met. The demonstrated improvement in the proportion of the biologically active area, water retention, and thermal conditions, ranging from a few to a dozen percent compared to the initial state, confirms the legitimacy of using grey–green–blue infrastructure systems as a method of shaping a sustainable and climate-responsive urban design.

Seeing the street through Instagram. Digital platforms and the amplification of gentrification

As digital platforms are woven into urban life, they become an intrinsic part of the urban experience. Here we examine how representations on digital platforms reflect and shape urban change. Which groups produce and share these representations? What places do they picture? What are their aesthetic registers and norms? And what are the material consequences of these representations? Elaborating on the concept of ‘discursive investing’ introduced by Zukin et al., we address these questions in a case study of Javastraat, a shopping street in a gentrifying neighbourhood in Amsterdam East. On the basis of an analysis of Instagram posts, street observations and interviews, we show that gentrifiers use social media to express their identity status, often creating posts that serve as advertisements for hip and high-class establishments. Meanwhile, other establishments are largely absent from digital platforms, with the notable exception of a number of shops that changed their aesthetics to appeal to gentrifiers. We further show that these uneven representations have material consequences, changing the aesthetics and composition of the shopping street.