Art, space and the city: public art and urban futures

1998 ◽  
Vol 35 (09) ◽  
pp. 35-4902-35-4902
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
The City

Book Review: Art, space and the city: public art and urban futures

Ecumene ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-493
Author(s):  
Nuala C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
The City

scholarly journals Out of the loop? On the radical and the routine in urban big data

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110140
Author(s):  
Sarah Barns
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Out Of The Loop ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Urban Behaviour ◽  
The City

This commentary interrogates what it means for routine urban behaviours to now be replicating themselves computationally. The emergence of autonomous or artificial intelligence points to the powerful role of big data in the city, as increasingly powerful computational models are now capable of replicating and reproducing existing spatial patterns and activities. I discuss these emergent urban systems of learned or trained intelligence as being at once radical and routine. Just as the material and behavioural conditions that give rise to urban big data demand attention, so do the generative design principles of data-driven models of urban behaviour, as they are increasingly put to use in the production of replicable, autonomous urban futures.

Guerrilla art in the city: Urban and social revitalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrica Lovaglio ◽  
Manuel Scortichini
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Collaborative Action ◽  
Economic Revitalization ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
The City ◽  
The Ideal

Without a permit, a masterplan, or corporate or public funding, artists have evaded conventional norms to accomplish a feat: the urban and socio-economic revitalization of abandoned or depressed cities worldwide. In Rio’s favelas and America’s impoverished suburbs, artists are the political force that promotes local economies, defines collective identities, gives people a sense of belonging, while covering the land with beauty. To act at the city’s scale, artists teach their craft to the locals and use art to empower the community, and unveil needed urban policies, bringing economic development, expertise and collaborative action. As a result, public art becomes instrumental for infusing new life in marginalized neighbourhoods, and the city becomes the ideal canvas for free expression without bureaucracy. This article is a bird’s eye view of two public art interventions that have highlighted the political and pedagogical implications of a citizen-design approach to urban renewal. Ultimately, it is a call for artists to activate as impactful makers of urban transformations.

scholarly journals Representing ‘Place’: City Climate Commissions and the Institutionalisation of Experimental Governance in Edinburgh

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Creasy ◽  
Matthew Lane ◽  
Alice Owen ◽  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Dan Van der Horst
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Key Industries ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

Against the backdrop of increasingly fragmented and poly-centric urban climate governance, this article examines the establishment of city climate ‘commissions’ as an experimental means of addressing the challenge of climate change at the city-scale. In doing so it addresses the question: What constitutes diversity in voices and perspectives when trying to represent the city as a place for climate action? To answer this question, the article presents an analysis of the Edinburgh Climate Commission’s establishment, drawing on participatory ethnographic research carried out by a researcher embedded within the project team. The account of how this new mode of urban governance was both conceptualised and then put into practice offers a new institutional angle to the literature on urban ‘experimentation.’ Through our reflective analysis we argue that aspirations to ensure pre-defined ‘key’ industries (high carbon emitters) are accounted for in commissioner recruitment, and an over-emphasis on capturing discernible ‘impacts’ in the short term (by involving organisations already pro-active in sustainable development) hindered an opportunity to embrace new perspectives on urban futures and harness the innovative potential of cities to engage with the multifaceted nature of the climate challenge. Furthermore, new insight into the relationship between local authorities and other ‘place-based’ agents of change opens up important questions regarding how to balance the attainment of legitimacy within the political status quo, and the prospect of a new radical politics for urban transformation.

scholarly journals Possibilities to Apply the Urban Acupuncture Concept in Kaunas: Social Aspect

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Aurelija Daugelaite ◽  
Indre Gražulevičiūte-Vileniške ◽  
Mantas Landauskas
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Ecological Design ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The City

The concept of urban acupuncture, which has been gaining ground in recent decades, is based on the activation and revitalization of urban environments using small architectural or landscape architectural interventions in precise carefully selected locations of urban fabric. However, the rapid and unexpected design solutions of urban acupuncture, based on ecological design, nature dynamics, street art, material re-use, can cause different social and psychological reactions of urban population and these reactions may vary depending on cultural contexts. Consequently, in order to implement successful urban acupuncture projects in Lithuanian cities, it is very important to find out public opinion and priorities in the fields of public space management, aesthetics, and public art. The aim of the research was to analyze the opinion of Kaunas city residents regarding these issues. For this purpose, a sociological questionnaire survey was used. The questionnaire containing 20 questions was designed, with the aim to find out the trends of use of public spaces in the city, the attitudes of residents towards street art and other small-scale initiatives in public spaces implemented in the recent years, possibilities of creating landscape architecture based on ecological ideas in urban environment, the attitude of inhabitants towards community spaces and community space design in the city, etc. 100 residents of Kaunas participated in this online administered survey. The survey has demonstrated general positive attitude towards contemporary design trends of public spaces and public art; however, the surveyed population expressed preferences towards fully equipped public spaces offering possibilities for a wide range of activities.

Counting on Carrington Road: Street Numbers as Metonyms of the Urban

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Crosby ◽  
Kirsten Seale
Keyword(s):  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Creative City ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City

As urban renewal agendas are fortified in cities globally, ‘creativity’ – as contained within discourses of the creative industries, the Creative City and the creative economy – is circulated as the currency of secure post-industrial urban futures. Using the nexus between creativity and the urban as a starting point, the authors investigate how local enterprises visually communicate the urban in a neighbourhood that is characterized by the interface between manufacturing and creative industries. This research takes a fine-grained approach to the notion of creativity through an audit and qualitative analysis of the visual presentation, material attributes and semiotic meaning of street numbers. The authors do this by collecting data on and analysing how street numbers have been made, selected, used, replaced and layered in a contested industrial precinct in Australia’s largest city, Sydney. They contend that street numbers, as a ubiquitous technology within the city that is both operational and creative, are metonyms for what they understand to be urban. In arguing for vernacular readings of the city, they make use of a top-down, governmental mode of reading the city – the operational legibility of street numbering – as an intervention in current discourses of the urban and of creativity in the city.

Fantasies of urban futures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Greenhalgh
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
World War ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Post War ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
Urban Fantasy ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines the origins of the post-war Plans as a means to interrogate a number of historical stereotypes about Britain after the Second World War. In 1945 Hull and Manchester, in common with many other British towns and cities, produced comprehensive, detailed redevelopment plans. These Plans were a spectacular mix of maps, representations of modern architecture and ambitious cityscapes that sit, sometimes uneasily, alongside detailed tables, text and photographs. Initially examining continuities between the inter- and post-war plans, the chapter emphasises the importance of the Plans in local governments’ attempts to express long-held desires to control and shape the city. I argue that the Plans evidence an attempt to mould the future shape and idea of the modern city through imaginative use of urban fantasy. Images of modernism, I argue, were not presented as a realisable architectural aim, but as a way of mediating between the present and an indistinct, but fundamentally better future. I suggest flawed interpretations of the visual materials contained in the Plans are responsible for an over-emphasis on the influence of radical modernism in post-war Britain.

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