The Production of Service Space

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Allen ◽  
Michael Pryke
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Abstract Space ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Contract Work ◽  
The People ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

In this paper we attempt to demonstrate the use and limitations of Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space as an approach to questions of social space. The City of London provides the service space, as it were, through which Henri Lefebvre's ideas are examined and illustrated. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first section we set out the main ideas of Lefebvre on questions of social space, in particular the notions of representations of space, representational spaces and spatial practices, and how they have been taken up in the work of Harvey, Shields, and Soja. In the second section we use the example of the abstract space of finance to show how a particular dominant coding of space has been achieved through the routine spatial practices and global networks of those who work in the City's financial markets. In particular, the modes of power and the different sets of relationships through which a dominant financial space is secured are highlighted. In the third section we draw attention to the people who disappear within the financial spaces of the City, those who clean, cater within, and secure the abstract space of finance on a subcontract basis. Focusing upon the spatial practices of this contract work force, we show the manner in which they use the dominant space and their ability to subvert or contradict the dominant coding of finance. In short, the two work forces occupy the same place, yet live their everyday lives within different spaces.

scholarly journals Looking Back on the Space of a Boom: (Re)developing Spatial Matrices in the City of London

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Pryke
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
The Social ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
The Way

This paper is focused on the (re)development of the global financial space of the City of London during the mid-1980s. Although the financing of this process is the chief concern, the influence of the social space through which this funding was taking place is not ignored. Therefore, an interpretation is provided of, first, the ways in which a range of economic agents within a ‘structure of building provision’ interact with given sets of spatial practices to capitalise an established social space. And, second, the way in which these agents then realign to develop around newly emerging sociospatial relations is examined. The underlying influence of changes in the wider economic ‘setting’ of these agents is highlighted, with particular reference to how their economic calculations are mapped onto social space and the overall consequences of these processes.

scholarly journals “Go where the Love Is”: Failed Emotional Negotiations of Space and Identity in Tessa McWatt's This Body

2013 ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Elena Igartuburu García
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
Love Relationship ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Way ◽  
Normative Ideals

Identity, space and emotions, although traditionally all traditionally naturalized and delinked from the construction of one another, might also be read as formed by intertwined processes that are guided and shaped by hegemonic powers. Nonetheless, as they delineating difference within and among themselves, the consideration of these three fields and the way they work together in these shaping opens up new ways to approach the split between normative categories of identity, assigned location and adequate feelings, and their subjective perception. Tessa McWatt’s novel This Body presents the reader with two Guyanese characters, Victoria and her nephew Derek, that undergo, at many different levels, this split between subjectivity and a socially and culturally given subject position. Challenging normative ideals, Victoria struggles with her categorization as Other; an endeavour marked by her trajectories and experiences as she negotiates and redeploys a physical as well as a social space of her own in the city of London. Still, her love relationship with a British man would make her drift towards assimilation inasmuch as this affair relocates Victoria within dominant gender, ethnic and class hierarchies.

scholarly journals The city as social sculpture

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Jale Erzen
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Street Sweeping ◽  
Urban Structures ◽  
The People ◽  
Joseph Beuys ◽  
The Future ◽  
The City

The arguments in this paper try to show that the city is basically a social space and that before its fixed physical matter in the form of architecture and urban structures, it is the people that construct the essential character and presence of a city. The idea of social sculpture is taken as a vivid metaphor that refers back to the work and ideas of Joseph Beuys. Beuys claimed that events and actions of the people in a city were social sculptures and he illustrated this in his famous street-sweeping performance with his students. The city belongs to the people and cities are responsibilities of their inhabitants. In arguing for this, the paper refers also to the GEZİ events in Istanbul. These arguments lead to the conclusion that more vital and meaningful art of the future will have to relate to the urban context more than anything else.

The streets for the people: London's street markets 1850–1939

Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
VICTORIA KELLEY
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
County Council ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
Primitive Form ◽  
Significant Growth ◽  
The People ◽  
Organic Growth ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTThis article analyses London's street markets in the years between 1850 and 1939. It shows how this was a period of significant growth for street markets, with both steeply increasing numbers of markets and a steady increase in the number of stalls overall. These markets were informal and unauthorized for much of the period under discussion; the administrative/local government context was complex, and competing authorities (the City of London, London County Council, metropolitan boroughs and national government) hesitated in regulating the organic growth of street market trading, while also recognizing the contribution it made to bringing cheap food and commodities to the population of London. It will be argued that the street market, far from being merely the survival of a primitive form of retail, flourished in response to modernity in London. It should be analysed alongside other developing forms of retail, and considered for its contribution to the culture and material culture of the city.

Form-Trans-Inform: the ‘poetic’ resistance in architecture

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Stratford ◽  
Doina Petrescu ◽  
Constantin Petcou
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
The People ◽  
The City

In Nicolae Ceausescu's ‘Systematisation’ programme, implemented across Romania throughout the 1980s, power was played out in acts of building. The city of Bucharest provided a visible symbol of the centralisation of authority, manifest in the construction of the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism and the House of the People. Beginning from this historical context, this paper revisits the work of one group of student architects in Romania, Form-Trans-Inform, who used spatial practices to question orthodoxies in architecture around them as protests against repressions under the monolithic Ceausescu regime.

The People of the Abyss

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara S. Hodson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
Middle Class Family ◽  
Jacob Riis ◽  
The Face ◽  
Henry Mayhew ◽  
East End ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The People of the Abyss is Jack London’s study of the poor in the city of London, England, in 1902. This essay places the book in the context of earlier poverty studies by Joseph Tuckerman, Henry Mayhew, William Booth, Charles Loring Brace, Jacob Riis, Robert Blatchford, George Hawes, and others. The essay then considers four tensions within London’s book: between London’s roles as both observer and participant, between his affinity for the lower classes of his own origin and his new status as a successful writer and middle-class family man, between his feelings of both revulsion and sympathy for the poor, and between the docile and subservient poor and those who are spirited or rebellious in the face of charity. The interplay of these tensions enables London to portray vividly and examine fully the lives of the poor who inhabit the East End of the city of London.

Economic Value of Pavement for the Elderly: Case Study of Bangkok, Thailand

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 927-937
Author(s):  
Somskaow Bejranonda ◽  
◽  
Aekkapat Laksanacom ◽  
Waranan Tantiwat ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Contingent Valuation Method ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Pavement Management ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Public Facility ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Valuation Method ◽  
The People ◽  
The City

Based on the concept of a livable and global age-friendly city, pavements are a public facility that the city should provide to the people. Appropriate pavements will be beneficial for the people, particularly for good quality of life for the elderly to move around in the city. This study explored the behaviour of the elderly in the use of pavements and the problems confronted. The study also evaluated the value of the pavement walking area as it reflected the benefits of pavements to the elderly by applying the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). During March-May 2017, data were collected using interviews with 601 elderly living in Bangkok. The study indicated that the main problem for senior citizens regarding their use of pavements was from being disturbed by motorbikes riding on the pavements. The average value of pavement for the elderly was about THB 160 (USD 5.30) per person per year. Thus, the benefits of pavements to the elderly in Bangkok was approximately THB 158 million (USD 5.2 million) per year. Thus, policy makers should make proper budget allocations for elderly-friendly pavement management and seriously address the problems confronting the elderly in using pavements, to maximize the usefulness of pavements not only for the elderly but also for the public and to support a sustainable urban development.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document