scholarly journals A Framework to Improve Urban Revitalization Developed Through a Theoretical Analysis and Critique of Pruitt Igoe

Topophilia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 2-13
Author(s):  
Jack Cherniawsky

Urban revitalization is a complex task, greatly impacted by which stakeholders have the authority to identify and implement revitalization strategies. This article uses the Pruitt Igoe housing development to critique and explore alternatives to a modernist revitalization approach. Pruitt Igoe was built in 1954 on 57 acres of inner city land characterized by an overrepresentation of impoverishment and consisted of 33 identical 11-storey towers. Despite improving the quality of housing for residents of the area, Pruitt Igoe quickly deteriorated into an isolating and dangerous environment for residents. Ultimately, revitalization was not achieved and Pruitt Igoe was demolished just 18 years after construction. Analyzing the case of Pruitt Igoe through the theoretical frameworks of advocacy planning, planning as design, and several concepts from Michel Foucault reveals how inequalities and power differences led to some of the project’s negative outcomes. Using the considerations derived from these frameworks, the article demonstrates why renewed infrastructure alone is often insufficient to achieve effective urban revitalization. This article advocates that ongoing engagement with residents is critical to identify the complex social circumstances that underpin urban decline and create lasting, effective, and inclusive urban revitalization.

Author(s):  
Joseph Winters

This chapter engages humanism and its fundamental assumptions by working through critical theory, black feminism, and black studies. It contends that there is a tension at the heart of humanism—while the ideal human appears to be the most widespread and available category, it has been constructed over and against certain qualities, beings, and threats. To elaborate on this tension, this chapter revisits the work of authors like Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Marx acknowledges that the human is a site of conflict and antagonism even as his thought betrays a lingering commitment to progress and humanism. Foucault goes further than Marx by underscoring the fabricated quality of man and the ways in which racism functions to draw lines between those who must live and those who must die. In response to Marx and Foucault’s tendency to privilege Europe, this chapter engages black feminism and Afro-pessimism—Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Frank Wilderson—who show how the figure of the human within humanism is defined in opposition to blackness.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014572172199628
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Campbell ◽  
Alice Yan ◽  
Renee E. Walker ◽  
Lance Weinhardt ◽  
Yang Wang ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the association of individual, community, and health system factors on quality of life among inner-city African Americans with type 2 diabetes. Methods Primary data from a cross-sectional study with a community sample of 241 inner-city African Americans with type 2 diabetes were analyzed. Paper-based surveys were administered in which the SF-12 was used to capture the physical component (PCS) and mental component (MCS) of quality of life. Four regression approaches (sequential, stepwise with backward and forward selection, and all possible subsets regression) were used to examine the influence of individual, community, and health system factors on PCS and MCS after adjusting for relevant covariates using a conceptual framework. Results In fully adjusted models, having less than a high school education and having major depression were associated with lower quality-of-life scores for MCS across all 4 regression approaches. Being employed was positively associated with better quality-of-life scores for PCS across all 4 regression approaches. PCS was higher across all 4 regression approaches for those reporting a history of trauma. At the health systems level, usual source of care was associated with better PCS across 3 regression approaches. Conclusions These results highlight key factors that influence quality of life among inner-city African Americans with type 2 diabetes that could be targets for interventions in this population. However, additional research is needed to understand existing pathways that may be driving many of these relationships.


Author(s):  
Bruno Gonfiotti ◽  
Sandro Paci

The estimation of Fission Products (FPs) release from the containment system of a nuclear plant to the external environment during a Severe Accident (SA) is a quite complex task. In the last 30–40 years several efforts were made to understand and to investigate the different phenomena occurring in such a kind of accidents in the primary coolant system and in the containment. These researches moved along two tracks: understanding of involved phenomenologies through the execution of different experiments, and creation of numerical codes capable to simulate such phenomena. These codes are continuously developed to reflect the actual SA state-of-the-art, but it is necessary to continuously check that modifications and improvements are able to increase the quality of the obtained results. For this purpose, a continuous verification and validation work should be carried out. Therefore, the aim of the present work is to re-analyze the Phébus FPT-1 test employing the ASTEC (F) and MELCOR (USA) codes. The analysis focuses on the stand-alone containment aspects of the test, and three different modellisations of the containment vessel have been developed showing that at least 15/20 Control Volumes (CVs) are necessary for the spatial schematization to correctly predict thermal-hydraulics and the aerosol behavior. Furthermore, the paper summarizes the main thermal-hydraulic results, and presents different sensitivity analyses carried out on the aerosols and FPs behavior.


Author(s):  
S. Vadde ◽  
J. K. Allen ◽  
F. Mistree

Abstract Catalog design is a procedure in which a system is assembled by selecting standard components from catalogs of available components. Selection in design involves making a choice among a number of alternatives taking into account several attributes. The information available to a designer to do so during the early stages of project initiation may be uncertain. The uncertainty in information may be imprecise or stochastic. Under these circumstances, a designer has to balance limited resources against the quality of solution obtained or decisions made by accounting for uncertainty in information available. This complex task becomes formidable when dealing with coupled selection problems, that is problems that should be solved simultaneously. Coupled selection problems share a number of coupling attributes among them. In an earlier paper we have shown how selection problems, both coupled and uncoupled can be reformulated as a single compromise Decision Support Problem (DSP) using a deterministic model. In this paper, we show how the traditional compromise DSP can be extended to represent a nondeterministic case. We use fuzzy set theory to model imprecision and Bayesian statistics to model stochastic information. Formulations that can be solved with the same solution scheme are presented to handle both fuzzy and stochastic information in the standard framework of a compromise DSP. The approaches are illustrated by an example involving the coupled selection of a heat exchanger concept and a cooling fluid for a specific application. The emphasis in this paper is placed on explaining the methods.


Author(s):  
Charles Leyeka Lufumpa ◽  
Tito Yepes

Africa is undergoing a rapid urban transition and is set to be the fastest urbanizing region in the coming decades. This shift has profound implications for achieving the continental and global targets for inclusive growth and transformation. Theory and global experience show that urbanization and structural transformation are closely linked—but less so in Africa. Urbanization in many African countries has not been driven by improving agricultural productivity. Indeed, most countries are urbanizing rapidly amid declining or stagnant industrial output and low agricultural productivity. The infrastructure development agenda has to make cities more productive and liveable yet with great reliance on the provision of sizable resources. However, matching the investment agenda to the goals of urbanization is a complex task, encompassing regional, national, urban, and rural dimensions which together determine the quality of the urbanization process. Institutional reforms should be undertaken to positively drive urbanization in Africa.


2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
CYNTHIA A. GERHARDT ◽  
MARIA T. BRITTO ◽  
LISA MILLS ◽  
FRANK M. BIRO ◽  
SUSAN L. ROSENTHAL

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 772-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Lei ◽  
Guifu Zhang ◽  
Richard J. Doviak ◽  
Robert Palmer ◽  
Boon Leng Cheong ◽  
...  

Abstract The quality of polarimetric radar data degrades as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) decreases. This substantially limits the usage of collected polarimetric radar data to high SNR regions. To improve data quality at low SNRs, multilag correlation estimators are introduced. The performance of the multilag estimators for spectral moments and polarimetric parameters is examined through a theoretical analysis and by the use of simulated data. The biases and standard deviations of the estimates are calculated and compared with those estimates obtained using the conventional method.


2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Maramai ◽  
Beatriz Brizuela ◽  
Laura Graziani

<p>A unified catalogue containing 290 tsunamis generated in the European and Mediterranean seas since 6150 B.C. to current days is presented. It is the result of a systematic and detailed review of all the regional catalogues available in literature covering the study area, each of them having their own format and level of accuracy. The realization of a single catalogue covering a so wide area and involving several countries was a complex task that posed a series of challenges, being the standardization and the quality of the data the most demanding. A “reliability” value was used to rate equally the quality of the data for each event and this parameter was assigned based on the trustworthiness of the information related to the generating cause, the tsunami description accuracy and also on the availability of coeval bibliographical sources. Following these criteria we included in the catalogue events whose reliability ranges from 0 (“very improbable tsunami”) to 4 (“definite tsunami”). About 900 documentary sources, including historical documents, books, scientific reports, newspapers and previous catalogues, support the tsunami data and descriptions gathered in this catalogue. As a result, in the present paper a list of the 290 tsunamis with their main parameters is reported. The online version of the catalogue, available at http://roma2.rm.ingv.it/en/facilities/data_bases/52/catalogue_of_the_euro-mediterranean_tsunamis, provides additional information such as detailed descriptions, pictures, etc. and the complete list of bibliographical sources. Most of the included events have a high reliability value (3= “probable” and 4= “definite”) which makes the Euro-Mediterranean Tsunami Catalogue an essential tool for the implementation of tsunami hazard and risk assessment.</p>


TEME ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Оливера Ђокић ◽  
Маријана Зељић

This research is a pedagogical study of theoretical frameworks of development of students’ geometrical thinking in various forms, particularly students’ geometric reasoning in teaching geometry: 1) model of van Hieles’ levels of understanding of geometry, 2) theory of figural concepts of Fischbein and 3) paradigms of Houdement-Kuzniak development of geometrical thinking. The aim of our research was to analyze the three theoretical framework and explain the reasons for their choice and expose them in terms of finding opportunities to permeate and connect them into one complete theory. The study used a descriptive-analytical and analytical-critical method of theoretical analysis. The results show that from each of the three theoretical frameworks we can clearly notice and distinguish geometric objects, as the students do not see them. They see them blended and structured in a series of procedures, and for that very reason we can say that they are poorly linked. We also opened questions for further research of geometric object as an important element for content domain geometry within mathematics curriculum.


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