scholarly journals The Pandemic City: Urban Issues in the Time of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3295
Author(s):  
Lina Martínez ◽  
John Rennie Short
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Health Access ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Urban Economies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Issues ◽  
The Way

Pandemics have shaped the way cities are planned and configured. Throughout history, cities have evolved to solve problems of sanitation, hygiene, and health access while providing space and opportunities for the urban dwellers. COVID-19 will have significant implications in the way cities are planned. This recent crisis highlights a number of issues. This paper looks at the context for the pandemic and then reviews studies and debates in four areas: transformations in the configuration of public spaces, transportation, urban connectivities, and urban economies. This pandemic, like other similar episodes in the past, is forcing us to rethink the nature of urban space and may be an opportunity to plan for safer, more sustainable cities.

scholarly journals Appropriation and political expression in urban public spaces

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Luis Abrahão
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
Physical Spaces ◽  
The Relationship

There are many, diverse issues that determine the relationship between citizens and their public urban spaces and, consequently, the significance that these spaces acquire for society as a whole. In totalitarian regimes however, the use of streets and parks as places of protest and resistance against sequestered freedom is not permitted. However, in democratic regimes, the reflections and discourse of architects, urbanists, researchers and policy makers regarding the manner in which public urban space is (or should be) appropriated by the population, has revealed a systematic reinterpretation of these spaces. Indeed, ever since the last decades of the past century, it has become recurrent to associate these physical spaces with the space of political realization. The intention of the present article is to bring the meaning of this association into debate, above all due to the insurgencies from certain segments of our population, which have taken place over recent years, manifestly in the streets, parks and avenues of our cities.

Peculiar pleasure in the ruined Crystal Palace

After 1851 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Boaden
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Mccarthy Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Festival Of Britain ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Way

In 1951 the filmmaker and poet James Broughton moved to London from San Francisco. At that time he was beginning to garner a reputation for his short, whimsical, films, which often made use of outmoded costumes and decaying public spaces. One important reason he gave for moving was the idea that Britain had a more open-minded society for queer artists like himself to work within, in contrast to the McCarthy-era USA. With the help of a number of figures from the British film establishment he managed to make a half-hour-long film The Pleasure Garden in London. The film is for the most part set among the ruins of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham and the surrounding park. Broughton’s film is an allegory of Britain as he found it in the summer of 1951, asserting its own vision of a post-war national identity in the Festival of Britain. This chapter examines the way in which the Festival of Britain revived certain ideas of national identity from the past, yet neglected others – and the way in which these ideas were doubled and questioned in Broughton’s film.

Sprawl, Squatters and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues?

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Squatter Settlements ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Urban Issues ◽  
Shed Light

Ancient cities as documented by archaeologists and historians have considerable relevance for a broader understanding of modern cities and general processes of urbanization. This article reviews three themes that illustrate such relevance: sprawl, squatter settlements and urban sustainability. Archaeology's potential for illuminating these and other topics, however, remains largely unrealized because we have failed to develop the concepts and methods required to analyse such processes in the past. The following aspects are examined for each of the three themes: the modern situation, the potential insights that archaeology could contribute, and what archaeologists would need to do to produce those insights. The author then discusses some of the benefits that would accrue from increased communication between archaeologists and other scholars of urbanism.

scholarly journals Urban Connective Action: The Case of Events Hosted in Public Space

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-266
Author(s):  
David McGillivray ◽  
Severin Guillard ◽  
Emma Reid
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Public Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
New Public ◽  
Connective Action

In the past decade, significant transformations have influenced the governance of urban public spaces. There has also been a growth in new public spheres associated with digital media networks, informing and influencing the production and regulation of urban space. In this article, we explore the role of digital and social media as a form of connective action supporting public campaigns about the privatisation and erosion of public space in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. We draw on analysis of Twitter data, interviews and observations of offline events to illustrate how a broad coalition of actors utilise online and offline tactics to contest the takeover of public space, confirming that that the virtual and the physical are not parallel realms but continuously intersecting social realities. Finally, we reflect on the extent to which digital media-enabled connective action can influence the orientation of urban controversies debates and lead to material change in the way urban public space is managed and regulated.

scholarly journals Change and Continuity in the Urban Semiosphere of Post-Soviet Kharkiv

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-104
Author(s):  
Svitlana Malykhina
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Multimodal Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Vernacular

The paper studies change and continuity in the urban semiosphere of Kharkiv in the post-Maidan period, focusing on themes such as the interplay of languages, street art, toponyms, and the significance of political, ideological, commercial, and artistic discourses in the urban space. The urban vernacular of Kharkiv is examined via the concept of the palimpsest that helps to expose the process of acceptance or rejection of the past, and to assess how things are remembered and forgotten through the tropes of the old narrative that were scrapped and replaced with new ones. The analysis of the linguistic landscape in this study focuses on a broader, more inclusive set of components that are part of public spaces, such as street graffiti metaphors and reactions to the text on graffiti. Thus, а multimodal approach is essential to provide deeper meanings and interpretations of public spaces. To examine the complex linguistic landscape, I bring together a representative collection of public signage that mirrors the dynamics of different historical, linguistic, and ideological factors that shape the contemporary Ukrainian identity, along with the too obvious and simultaneous presence within it of markers of the collective identity from the Soviet period. The juxtaposition of overlapping narratives provides a means to discuss the city’s community-building efforts. My paper introduces a few familiar cases of how post-Soviet urban dwellers have shaped social spaces.

scholarly journals The capibaribe park project, Recife: using the river to reinvent the city

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-353
Author(s):  
Fabiano Rocha Diniz ◽  
Luiz Vieira Filho ◽  
Roberto Montezuma
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
The Past ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Coherent Image ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Recife is an amphibious city whose urban development does not value its rivers. In the past, the city’s main watercourse, the river Capibaribe, was understood to play a key role in structuring urban spaces and providing connectivity. Since then, this understanding has dwindled, and the resulting situation is a cause of great concern. Recife City has turned its back on the banks of its rivers and neglected both their capacity to smooth and shape urban space, and their potential to create a coherent image of the city. Recife is one of those cities in the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, ranking 16th in the list of world hotspots. In order to confront these challenges and rethink the role of the river that runs in the heart of Recife, researchers, architects, engineers, and sociologists from Research and Innovation for Cities — Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (INCITI-UFPE) were invited by the Recife City Hall to draw up plans for a park stretching along the river’s banks. Capibaribe Park Project attempts to answer one key question: How can we use the river to transform the city? The park project is based on a structural approach to landscape and is guided by the precepts of sustainability and regeneration of public spaces, in line with the emerging paradigm that combines a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector approach with water-sensitive design and social participation. The present article presents an overview of the main characteristics and development of this project, its theoretical and methodological underpinnings, its contribution to society, and the results achieved so far. It shows how, in addition to the planned park, the project also envisages the installation of a much more extensive system of parks, as a first stage towards the creation of park-city by the 500th anniversary of the foundation of Recife, in 2037.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

Profilometry. Using Corneo-scleral topography for scleral lens fitting

The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer
Keyword(s):  
Ocular Surface ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Contact Lenses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.

The Southern Slope of Monsalvat: How Spanish Wagnerism Became Catalan

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Clinton D. Young
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Slope ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Symphonic Culture ◽  
Similar Dynamic ◽  
The Way

This article examines the development of Wagnerism in late-nineteenth-century Spain, focusing on how it became an integral part of Catalan nationalism. The reception of Wagner's music and ideas in Spain was determined by the country's uneven economic development and the weakness of its musical and political institutions—the same weaknesses that were responsible for the rise of Catalan nationalism. Lack of a symphonic culture in Spain meant that audiences were not prepared to comprehend Wagner's complexity, but that same complexity made Wagner's ideas acceptable to Spanish reformers who saw in the composer an exemplar of the European ideas needed to fix Spanish problems. Thus, when Wagner's operas were first staged in Spain, the Teatro Real de Madrid stressed Wagner's continuity with operas of the past; however, critics and audiences engaged with the works as difficult forms of modern music. The rejection of Wagner in the Spanish capital cleared the way for his ideas to be adopted in Catalonia. A similar dynamic occurred as Spanish composers tried to meld Wagner into their attempts to build a nationalist school of opera composition. The failure of Tomás Bréton's Los amantes de Teruel and Garín cleared the way for Felip Pedrell's more successful theoretical fusion of Wagnerism and nationalism. While Pedrell's opera Els Pirineus was a failure, his explanation of how Wagner's ideals and nationalism could be fused in the treatise Por nuestra música cemented the link between Catalan culture and Wagnerism.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

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