scholarly journals Beyond the Sit-In: Public Space Production and Appropriation in Sudan’s December Revolution, 2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5194
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Z. Bahreldin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Public ◽  
Space Transformation ◽  
Space Production ◽  
Space Activities

This article reflects on Khartoum’s sit-in space in front of the Army headquarter in Khartoum during Sudan’s Nile Spring. The article explores the public discourses, activities, and space transformation during the sit-in, which lasted fifty-eight days. Through studying the sit-in, we aim to discuss how the Nile Spring has, or has not, transformed the conception of what a public space is by examining the functions and activities of the sit-in space as a territory of political exercise. The methodology underlying this research includes direct and participant observation, a follow-up of the sit-in space activities on various media sources, a literature review, and interviews. The conclusions drawn by this article show how the sit-in space has challenged the current relationship between public space and the political ideology by providing a new example of what a public space is. The sit-in space succeeded in revolutionizing the understanding of how public spaces should be imagined, designed, appropriated, and managed. This inquiry has disclosed the necessity to rethink current planning and urban design processes that restrict democratic activities in public spaces.

scholarly journals Contextual interpretation of COVID-19 pandemic among public space users in Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria: An ethnographic review

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259631
Author(s):  
Mofeyisara Oluwatoyin Omobowale ◽  
Eniola Adetola Bamgboye ◽  
Akinfemi Akinyode ◽  
Olugbenga Samuel Falase ◽  
Taiwo Olabode Ladipo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
The Government ◽  
Wrath Of God ◽  
Depth Interviews

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all dimensions of lives and has become a social problem as it continues to spread widely through the continuous interactions of people in public spaces where they earn a living. Curbing the spread of COVID-19 requires restrictions in these public spaces, however, the compliance to these measures depends largely on the understanding and interpretations of COVID 19 by users of these public spaces. This study examined the contextual interpretations of public space users about COVID-19 prevention in Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo State. The study was a rapid ethnographic survey in selected public spaces (markets and commercial motor parks) in Ibadan metropolis. Data were collected through participant observation, key informant interviews (3 females; 3 males) and in-depth interviews (30) with, traders, head porters, clients/buyers and commercial vehicle drivers in these public spaces. Interviews conducted were transcribed, sorted into themes using Atlas-ti 7.5.7 and subjected to interpretive-content analysis. Findings revealed that some respondents felt COVID-19 was brought into Nigeria by rich frequent global voyagers, others felt it was through “uncultured” sexual life or wrath of God. Some also doubted the existence of the disease and many of the respondents perceived COVID-19 as a disease reported by the government or a political propaganda to siphon funds. The users of the public spaces in Ibadan Metropolis have variegated perception about the existence and severity of this rapidly spreading virus and this has grave implications for COVID-19 control in the State. Thus, regular interaction with public space users are essential for control efforts.

scholarly journals Urban cooling strategies as interaction opportunities in the public space: a methodological proposal

2021 ◽  
Vol 2042 (1) ◽  
pp. 012128
Author(s):  
X. Stavropulos-Laffaille ◽  
I. Requena-Ruiz ◽  
C. Drozd ◽  
T. Leduc ◽  
M. Servières ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Urban Climatology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Transect Approach ◽  
Data Analysis Methods

Abstract In the context of global warming, cities promote temporary or permanent public space designs based on the integration of various cooling techniques, hereafter called spatio-climatic devices, to locally cool down the atmosphere and preserve urban liveability. Such public spaces create interaction opportunities for citizens to seek thermal pleasure outdoors. To inform about the citizens’ thermal experience of these spaces, this paper explores fieldwork and data analysis methods at the crossroads of urban climatology, environmental psychology and urban design. Four spatio-climatic configurations are investigated in the ‘Extraordinary Garden’ in Nantes (France) through mobile microclimate measurements and ethnographic observations. By applying an ‘urban transect’ approach, preliminary selected microclimate, behavioural and activity observation data is displayed together with spatial information. This allows to highlight thermal situations induced by urban design and to link them to specific citizen-environment interactions. As a result, this approach contributes to a better characterization of urban cool spots as a strategy for more resilient public spaces.

scholarly journals Research on Public Space Renewal Strategy of Small and Medium-sized Towns Based on Spatial Syntax--Taking Liulin Liaoyuan Square as an Example

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 03029
Author(s):  
Zhou Yingzheng ◽  
Xu Qiang
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatial Grammar ◽  
Spatial Quality ◽  
Grammar Analysis

With the accelerating urbanization, the living standards of people in small towns are constantly improving. There are more or less problems in the public spaces that were used in the past, whether planned or spontaneously formed. Today, under government-led conditions, we have the ability to improve the spatial quality and life satisfaction of these public spaces. This paper takes Liulin Liaoyuan Square as an example, mainly for the transformation and renewal of such small and medium-sized public spaces. It compares the current situation with the simulation implementation plan, uses the spatial syntax including direct (non-participant) observation and spatial grammar analysis techniques to update the strategy and provide practical advice on practical problems.

scholarly journals Técnicas móviles en etnografía urbana: actividades económicas itinerantes en el espacio público de Barcelona / Using Mobile Techniques in Urban Ethnography. Itinerant Economic Activities in the Public Space in Barcelona

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luz Dary Ríos Castañeda ◽  
Jesús Rojas Arredondo
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Urban Ethnography ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychosocial Processes

ABSTRACTIn public spaces of cities there are urban phenomena and psychosocial processes involving a multiplicity of practices in everyday life. In this paper we show an urban ethnography that uses moving techniques, such as: walking with, mobile interview, and mobile participant observation in a field work for to access to itinerant economic activities. We emphasize the appropriateness of using these techniques in studies of public space with moving practices because we can explore in situ: environmental perception, spatial practices, social architecture and sociability.RESUMENEn los espacios públicos de las ciudades hay fenómenos urbanos y procesos psicosociales que implican una multiplicidad de prácticas de la vida cotidiana. En este trabajo mostramos una etnografía urbana, que utiliza las técnicas móviles de: “caminar con”, la entrevista móvil y la observación participante móvil en un trabajo de campo para el acceso a las actividades económicas itinerantes. Hacemos hincapié en la conveniencia de utilizar estas técnicas en los estudios sobre el espacio público con las prácticas en movimiento, ya que podemos explorar in situ: la percepción del medio ambiente, las prácticas espaciales, la arquitectura social y la sociabilidad.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

scholarly journals Activating Data through Eco-Didactic Design in the Public Realm: Enabling Sustainable Development in Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Based Design ◽  
The City

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.

Reconceptualizing the Public Spaces of New Urban Areas in Hanoi: The End or the New of Public-Making?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Public ◽  
Doi Moi ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.

scholarly journals Using Virtual Soundwalk Approach for Assessing Sound Art Soundscape Interventions in Public Spaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 2102
Author(s):  
Tin Oberman ◽  
Kristian Jambrošić ◽  
Marko Horvat ◽  
Bojana Bojanić Obad Šćitaroci
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
The Public ◽  
First Order ◽  
Sound Source Identification ◽  
Acoustic Environments ◽  
Positive Effect

This paper discusses the soundscape assessment approaches to soundscape interventions with musical features introduced to public spaces as permanent sound art, with a focus on the ISO 12913 series, Method A for data collection applied in a laboratory study. Three soundscape interventions in three cities are investigated. The virtual soundwalk is used to combine the benefits of the on-site and laboratory settings. Two measurement points per location were recorded—one at a position where the intervention was clearly perceptible, the other further away to serve as a baseline condition. The participants (N = 44) were exposed to acoustic environments (N = 6) recorded using the first-order Ambisonics microphone on-site and then reproduced via the second-order Ambisonics system in laboratory. A series of rank-based Kruskal–Wallis tests were performed on the results of the subjective responses. Results revealed a statistically significant positive effect on soundscape at two locations, and limitations related to sound source identification due to cultural factors and geometrical configuration of the public space at one location.

scholarly journals Simulation, Control and Desire. Urban Commons and Semi-Public Space Resilience in the Age of Augmented Transductive Territorial Production

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfredo Manfredini
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
External Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Urban Commons

Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and resilient cities in the post-digital turn age, this paper addresses the socio-spatial implications of the recent transformation of relationality networks. To understand the drivers of spatial claims emerged in conditions of digitally augmented spectacle and simulation, it focuses on changes occurring in key nodes of central urban public and semi-public spaces of rapidly developing cities. Firstly, it proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of problems related to socio-spatial fragmentation, polarisation and segregation of urban commons subject to external control. Secondly, it discusses opportunities and criticalities emerging from a representational paradox depending on the ambivalence in the play of desire found in digitally augmented semi-public spaces. The discussion is structured to shed light on specific socio-spatial relational practices that counteract the dissipation of the “common worlds” caused by sustained processes of urban gentrification and homogenisation. The theoretical framework is developed from a comparative critical urbanism approach inspired by the right to the city and the right to difference, and elaborates on the discourse on sustainable development that informs the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda. The analysis focuses on how digitally augmented geographies reintroduce practices of participation and commoning that reassemble fragmented relational infrastructures and recombine translocal social, cultural and material elements. Empirical studies on the production of advanced simulative and transductive spatialities in places of enhanced consumption found in Auckland, New Zealand, ground the discussion. These provide evidence of the extent to which the agency of the augmented territorialisation forces reconstitutes inclusive and participatory systems of relationality. The concluding notes, speculating on the emancipatory potential found in these social laboratories, are a call for a radical redefinition of the approach to the problem of the urban commons. Such a change would improve the capacity of urbanism disciplines to adequately engage with the digital turn and efficaciously contribute to a maximally different spatial production that enhances and strengthens democracy and pluralism in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Post-pandemic scenarios and design strategies for public spaces transformation

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Galluzo ◽  
Ambra Borin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Urban Transformations

Almost two years later of a pandemic condition, one thing is sure: the pandemic will change permanently the world and its systems. Nowadays, the reflection on public space is crucial within a more sustainable and inclusive development at urban scale, amplified also by the ongoing experience of the pandemic that still presents. Public space is a real opportunity to test new urban and social models, thus becoming a principal catalyst for positive changes in the entire urban context. It is therefore necessary to re-establish a relationship between the public space and its inhabitants, providing a system of proximity by highlighting the human and non-human dimensions and consequently connecting services, relationships, and opportunities. Acting in public space is the first step in the development of innovative urban transformations, generated by collaborative phenomena working in the collective interest. The use of participatory practices within the design processes favors the reconnection between people and territory, generating a shared sense of belonging that leads to taking care of one's own places. The reversibility of the intervention and its adaptability are key characteristics that allow experimenting with new ways of experiencing public spaces and responding to unforeseen experiences, thus accommodating the inevitable changes in society. This scientific contribution aims to set forward distinctive points of view on the planning strategies implemented in the pandemic and post-pandemic period to achieve intelligent transformations on a small and large urban scale with an impact from short to long-term; hence shaping the future cities.

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