City Space Research Articles

Practical use of drawing in research on the historical space of the city

Various research methods and techniques are popularised in the literature on the theory of research on the historical space of cities. However, less attention is paid to their tools. The aim of the article is to use drawing as a tool showing the historical space of the city, which is the subject of further research. There are many drawing motives and they depend on research needs. These may be objects, streets, squares and city panoramas. By analysing historical iconographic and cartographic sources, it is possible to create an image of an unpreserved object or place using a drawing, by reconstructing their form, and present them in a wider frame by adding the surroundings. In the case of streets, these may be drawings of frontages or their perspectives seen from two directions, while for squares, they may be in the form of internal and external views. Depending on how you look at it, you can draw from a human level or from above. The article presents a documentary drawing drawn with a pen as a drawing tool to be used in the graphic method of researching the historical space of cities. Especially places that have not survived to the present day. Drawing can be an alternative to digital visualisation, which requires computer equipment and specialised software

The Not-So-Mean Streets of Hangzhou, China: Reflecting with Nietzsche, Freud and Marx

The study of the city is one of the most challenging topics we explore as philosophers, but it is highly rewarding because the city is our most complex cultural artifact and draws in so many aspects of cultural studies. Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space (Shaw, 2017), does not disappoint in this respect of revealing how the city is the locus of so much of our neoliberal, and now neocolonial, culture of privilege in forms of classism, racism and genderism, and how the many “others” to these are relegated to the margins of city spaces so that the city becomes a de facto selection tool of sorting these into strata.

Connecting people with place-specific nature in cities reduces unintentional harm

There is an increasing disconnect between people and nature as we become more urbanised. Intensification in cities often results in a reduction of natural areas, more homogenised and manicured green spaces, and loss of biota. Compared to people in rural areas, urban dwellers are less likely visit natural areas and recognise and value biota. Reconnecting people with nature in the city not only benefits human mental and physical wellbeing but can also have positive effects on how people value biodiversity and act on conservation issues. However, in some contexts, the push to reconnect people with nature may have unintended negative outcomes on biodiversity, particularly if place-specific nature is not used in urban greening. In the current biodiversity crisis, using vegetation and green space design that is not reflective of the environmental context of a city can further disconnect residents, particularly Indigenous people, from their local environment and species, and further entrench extinction of experience and loss of environmental values. This disconnect can result in residents applying wildlife gardening practices, such as bird feeding, that are not specific to place, and benefit introduced species over indigenous species. Furthermore, cities are gateways for invasive species, and using species in greening projects that are not locally sourced has already left cities and their surrounding regions with a large weed legacy. Using place-specific nature and green space in cities can be less resource intensive, highly beneficial for biodiversity and give residents a unique sense of place. Rather than simply adding ‘more nature’ in cities, the messaging should be more complex, emphasising the need for urban greening to be context specific to avoid negative impacts on biodiversity and ecological and cultural services.

“You cannot really live (or die) here” – Ongoing struggles over Muslim cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1957–2020

The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and highlights a broader geo-temporal interpretation of the indigenous right-to-the-city. We analyse a succession of mobilizations against sales and demolitions of Muslim cemeteries across the city since the 1950s and investigate how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protest as an urban citizenship mobilization. We show that by utilizing creative spatial performances, applying to municipal governance and stressing their right to use and produce urban space, to participate, and to have their local heritage acknowledged and commemorated, they invoked and reinterpreted right-to-the-city ideas. Their struggle also expanded this agenda, as they did not focus on their living area, but rather advanced claims related to the full city space and its history, and to the customary view of their spaces as 'terra nullius'. In analysing their struggle, we thus contribute to the right-to-the-city literature and agenda, highlight the right for commemoration as part of right to live in the city as equal citizens, and address the promise this case presents for minority ethnic politics.

Study of the Effect of Seepage–Cyclic Load Coupling Disturbance on the Physical Field in Old Urban Underground Spaces

The safety and sustainability of urban underground spaces have become crucial considerations in development projects. Seepage and cyclic loads are the principal reasons for the instability and failure of old underground space structures. This study investigates the variations in physical fields of underground spaces in cities under the coupling disturbance of seepage and cyclic loads, focusing on underground civil air defense engineering in Beijing as a case study. Different seepage conditions and the effects of seepage–cyclic load coupling were simulated using the numerical calculation software Plaxis 3D V20. The results show that change in groundwater can affect the deformation of underground space, and the severity is related to the quantity and intersection state of tunnels, the location of rivers above, and the strength of materials. The coupling effect of seepage–cyclic load on urban underground space structures is more serious than that of a single percolation. Decrease in material strength and high traffic loads are the principal reasons for the failure of underground structures. A 30% decrease in material strength causes the displacement to increase almost 1.5 times, and maximum displacement under different traffic loads can vary by 3 times. This study holds significant implications for the design, maintenance, and engineering management of underground spaces, emphasizing the importance of sustainable practices in urban development and infrastructure.

Plant–hummingbird interaction networks in an urban area: a generalist species as the protagonist in mutualistic and agonistic interactions

ABSTRACT The maintenance of green areas within cities is essential for promoting urban biodiversity and species interactions. Here, we evaluated the interactions between hummingbirds and their visited plants over the course of a year in an urban park in Barreiras, western Bahia, Brazil. Each month, from October 2018 to September 2019, we recorded hummingbird species, the plants they visit, and their agonistic interactions. We recorded 748 legitimate visits by six hummingbirds to five plant species. Most plant species (60%) flowered continuously, and most visits were recorded in the rainy season when the network was also more specialized (H2' = 0.821). Chionomesa fimbriata was the only hummingbird recorded during all studied months. This species performed 70% of all visits recorded and was involved in most agonistic interactions (n = 68). The availability of resources affected the number of visits (p = 0.016). Tree species producing many flowers increased hummingbird diversity and concentrated most of the agonistic interactions. Plant species with continuous flowering represented a persistent supply of resources, favoring the residence of C. fimbriata within the study site. Despite the low diversity of resources, the richness of hummingbirds recorded attests to the importance of maintaining green spaces in cities to promote urban biodiversity.

Moving through Toronto's PATH: Assembling private urban governance.

This paper explores Toronto's urban PATH, a 30 km network of underground pedestrian tunnels and elevated walkways that connect shopping areas, residential towers, mass transit and downtown destinations. Both as a case and heuristic, this paper situates Toronto's PATH as an assemblage of private urban governance forms, exploring emergent and evolving constellations of power and responsibility for governing city space that defy easy distinctions of 'public' or 'private'. As an urban assemblage, the PATH comprises potential and actual entities and associations, and is an accumulation of encounters. Never a stable or static entity, the PATH and its governance, we argue, is provisional, revealing constantly evolving connections, alignments and political-economic potentialities. We contend the PATH serves as a palimpsest of mutating governing relations; a multiplicity of meanings, visions and encounters etched into the built environment. By focusing on public and private vestiges, wayfinding, and visibility, and private verticalising ventures, we highlight how practices, logics, processes, urban actors and their histories collide to form fragile, provisional urban alignments and visions.

Мое нефилософское поколение

The essayistic notes contain memories of student life in the late 90s - early 2000s, which allow us to give some idea of ​​the peculiarities of the formation of a philosopher in a university environment, his adaptation to life in a hostel and the city space.

Bridging the urban-digital divide: Crowdfunding as an online middleground space

The paper attempts to provide a critique of the premise of territoriality in creative cities. A validated hypothesis in the literature on economic geography is that the density and “territoriality” of members of the so-called "creative class" influence the volume of creative goods and services produced in cities. This hypothesis gave rise to several sub-related themes, such as the premise that cities are, par excellence, a place where middleground spaces emerge because of place-based activities located in close-knit communities imbued with creativity and innovation commons. In line with this argument, recent studies have yielded an analytic framework to explain the dissemination of creativity through the so-called “middleground” spaces in cities: places, spaces, projects, and events. This framework presupposes the dissemination of creativity from the physical place to a cognitively constructed space. We revise this argument by suggesting that post-digitalized forms of creation and dissemination of knowledge often blur the boundaries between place and space (which we characterize in this paper as domains of “the local” and “the digital”). By mediating creativity through digital platforms, agents are also capable of outreaching different localities and creating ties that are not subsumed to close-knit communities. As such, our framework incorporates a “digital middleground” space into this existing “middleground” framework, thereby extending the scope of creativity in cities to digitally dispersed forms of exchange. We theorize that contemporary forms of creativity unfold openly, virtually, and non-hierarchically yet are imbued by local concerns such as the ones channeled by crowdfunding communities, which we use as an example in our discussions. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of the increasingly digitalized “urban” spaces and the impossibility of pursuing a dichotomous digital-local divide. We expect that scholars will consider the possibility for creativity to manifest not only in territorial-based middlegrounds, but also in online communities where creativity unfolds dispersedly.

Optimizing Built Environment in Urban Negative Spaces Using Parametric Methods—Research on a High-Density City in China

In the early stage of architectural design, addressing the challenges posed by negative spaces in high-density urban environments is crucial for enhancing spatial efficiency and building sustainability. Multiple studies employed digital methods and tools to address these issues, such as parametric design, simulation, and genetic algorithms, to investigate architectural generation approaches for urban negative spaces. This article proposes an integrated design process that involves finding the location and form of negative spaces, generating solutions using slime mold and wasp algorithms, and optimizing and analyzing solutions using the Wallacei plugin in Grasshopper. This comprehensive approach underscores the potential of parametric design to yield a multitude of solutions while also acknowledging the convergence challenges encountered during simulations, particularly in optimizing for optimal sunlight exposure during the winter solstice and minimal solar radiation in the summer. Analyzing the optimization goals and parameter values of the 15th Pareto optimal solution in the 100th generation reveals: (1) a higher number of units leads to positive correlation growth in both objectives; (2) within a certain number of units, parametrically generated solutions facilitate the convergence of optimization goals, yielding optimal outcomes. Therefore, factors such as the range of unit quantities and proportions need consideration during early-stage parametric design and simulation. This study explores a design methodology for negative spaces in high-density urban cities, validating the feasibility of various mainstream generation methods and offering insights for future research.

Urban trawling bats depend on green and blue space in a subtropical city: implications for urban planning and climate change resilience

Urban trawling bats depend on green and blue space in a subtropical city: implications for urban planning and climate change resilience

Influencing factors of spatial vitality in underground space around railway stations: A case study in Shanghai

Developing urban underground space for transportation and commercial purposes has become a vital strategy for sustainable urban growth, especially in dense urban contexts. The vitality of underground space has received wide attention as a key indicator of its efficiency and performance. The spatial vitality of underground space is affected by many factors, including function, spatial configuration, transport environment, and pedestrian-oriented design features. This study takes the underground space of Shanghai Hongqiao Business District (Phase I), one of the most successful integrated railway station-city development projects, as a case to explore the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of spatial vitality and its influencing factors. Multilevel linear models were used to analyze the relationship between pedestrian flow and its influencing factors. Random forest models were used to investigate the relative importance of influencing factors on spatial vitality. This study verified that the distance to the transportation hub and spatial configurations calculated by space syntax are the two most essential factors for vitality. The number of retail stores and walkway width impact the vitality on weekends. The results shed light on our understanding of the urban vitality in the underground space and provide some tentative suggestions for the planning and design of underground space in high-density cities.

Quantitative Soil Quality Assessment by Using Visual Soil-Field Assessment Tools (VS-FAST)

Unplanned land use reflects the changes from agricultural to urbanization and decreasing of green spaces in cities and agricultural lands surrounding cities. The Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Dry Bare - Soil Index (DBSI) and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) indices were derived to evaluate the rate of the land use/cover changes due to uncontrolled urban sprawl for the years 2001 and 2020. Field indicators were also used to assess soil properties’ degradation by using Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) under the FAO Global Environment Facility (GEF) project. A set of 30 soil samples were randomly collected from two locations: unplanned built-up and vegetated sites in Babil Governorate, Iraq. The results showed that soil texture and salinity were the most varied indicators. The poorer areas (unplanned urban areas) were low and assessed as poor quality, while the vegetated site was assessed as moderate quality with high total score values. The findings from spectral indices show a significant rise in the built-up land use/cover category, expanding from 10.367 square kilometres in 2001 to 50.883 square kilometres in 2020. In contrast, the areas of bare-soils and vegetated decreased from 29.29 and 35.474 square kilometres in 2001 to 12.511 and 19.601 square kilometres in 2020, respectively. Various analytical techniques proved instrumental in distinguishing the different land use/cover categories in this research.

Spatial-temporal analysis of urban climate dynamics in major Hungarian cities

Increasing heatwaves are making cities and their populations more vulnerable, parallel to urban sprawl and the aging population in Hungary. The increasing number of hot days is predicted to worsen urban climate anomalies at the local scale, which, in parallel with changing land use patterns, may contribute to a significant increase in vulnerability to heatwaves. Local stakeholders and decision-makers need to understand the critical role of spatiotemporal land use—land cover (LULC) patterns and urban climate aspects to address relevant challenges for urban development. The current literature does not contain a synthesis analysis of major Hungarian cities that includes urban climate and sustainability findings hand by hand; therefore, this study aims to analyze LULC patterns, urban hotspots and surface urban heat island effects. In addition, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was determined as an important indicator for assessing the health and density of green spaces in major Hungarian cities from 2006 to 2018 using remote sensing data. Our results show that each city experienced significant urban sprawl, while above-average NDVI areas decreased over time. The average increase in the share of built-up areas was 1.3% from 2006 to 2018, while the calculated average decline in agricultural areas was 2%, so the expansion of residential areas and artificial areas is not the only driving force of this shrinking trend in agricultural areas. Furthermore, we found that urban hotspots are generally concentrated in industrial areas and represent new spaces of heat islands on the outskirts of cities. Székesfehérvár has the most intense industrial heat islands, with the largest proportion of urban hotspots (approximately 3.5% of the total area) concentrated in industrial zones. Our study contributes to uncovering inter-urban processes of land use patterns and urban climate issues in major Hungarian cities, moreover revealing sustainability-related issues from a lock-in perspective.

Love/Hate as lyrical sociology: Mapping the spaces of urban crime

This article considers the sociological function of television drama via the Irish television crime series Love/Hate, which aired over five seasons between 2010 and 2014 on RTÉ, Ireland’s public service broadcaster. Drawing on Andrew Abbot’s concept of ‘lyrical sociology’, it will examine how media discourse surrounding Love/Hate consistently foregrounded the connection between its fictional events and real-life crime scenarios. Media coverage of Love/Hate, as well as the content of the series itself, it will be argued, posed the problem of sympathy between audience and its violent protagonists in spatial terms, as a question of belonging or otherwise in a shared social space. In particular, the experiential quality of home as a space of belonging will be explored as a central organizing structure in the series, one which ambiguously connected the lived spaces of its domestic television audience to the highly gendered home and city spaces of Love/Hate’s story world.

Morphological Analysis of Urban Slums: A Case Study of Gaushala-Marrian, Faisalabad

Slums are the densely populated areas which are present in all the developed cities of the world. Pakistan is a third-world country and people from the rural areas prefer to live in the urban areas which are relatively better. This gave rise to urbanization and city space began to decrease. The development of slums in Pakistan initiated since the time of its establishment. Two of the earliest established slums are Goshala-Marrian in Faisalabad (the third largest city of Pakistan), Punjab. The built area of the city is greatly influenced by the establishment and growth of slums. This unplanned urbanization is required to be analyzed with respect to its physical elements, so that, the living quality of the inhabitants can be enhanced. The current living conditions were observed to plan for a better environment. Legalization of these areas is a mandate to be followed. The administration and the inhabitants need to put in joint efforts to upgrade the area.

National component in landscape design

Improving the quality of public spaces in cities is an essential aspect in their harmonious development. It is important to take into account the cultural, historical, national and local characteristics and preserve the unique features of a city since it is often a place of coexistence of different cultures and communities. The “national component” in urban environment design has been explored using landscape design objects as an example. A review of such cities as Enschede (the Netherlands), Kazan (Russia), and Ravenna (Italy) shows that the majority of cities around the world have a rich cultural heritage accumulated over centuries of historical development and represented in the approach to landscape design.

РЕКРЕАЦИОННЫЕ ПРОСТРАНСТВА ГОРОДА, ИХ ПРОБЛЕМЫ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ РАЗВИТИЯ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ Г. БЕЛГОРОДА)

The article is devoted to the problem of the state of public recreational spaces in modern cities, including Belgorod. The relevance of this problem is conditioned by the fact that such structures are not only an integral part of the cultural life of citizens, they constitute the ecological framework of any city, which makes life in it comfortable and gives an impetus to its active development. Thus, the reconstruction of park areas and their integration into park urban complexes will allow to use the territory more effectively, to adjust it to the ever-changing demands of society. The authors of the article considered the main features of the territories of different types of landscaping and different purposes of public urban leisure, analyzed the zones of several parks of Belgorod on the subject of landscaping and functional filling. Such an analysis of the urban planning situation will allow to better see the relationship of public recreational spaces in the city, to identify positive and negative qualities, to better understand the directions of their development. As a result of the study, an assessment of the current state of public recreational structures in the city is formulated, and proposals to improve their condition are put forward with some recommendations. Modernization of parks and other recreational spaces with saturation of them with new functional zones will be one of the factors of sustainable development of the city

The Ecological Design of Marine Urban Green Space Plant Landscaping Based on the Concept of Sustainability.

With global climate change and accelerating urbanization, marine cities face unique environmental challenges. Ecological landscape creation is a form of design planning guided by the disciplines of landscape ecology and ecological aesthetics in the process of urban planning and construction. It seeks a design that can maintain the virtuous cycle of the ecosystem and at the same time maintain the spatial equilibrium of the dynamic development of urban landscapes, so as to make them have good ecological functions and corridor functions. The aim of this study is to explore the ecological design methods of plant landscaping in marine urban green spaces under the concept of sustainability. We first reviewed the concept of sustainable development and its application to urban green space design, especially the special requirements in the marine urban environment. This research focuses on how to select plant species that are adapted to the marine climate and how to promote biodiversity, enhance ecosystem services, and improve the quality of life of urban residents through eco-design approaches. Through the analysis of a number of domestic and international cases of green spaces in marine cities, we found that effective eco-design is not only about choosing the right plant species but also includes the rational management of water resources, soil protection, and ecosystem restoration, among other aspects. This study also points out that public participation and interdisciplinary cooperation play a crucial role in the ecological design process. Finally, this paper carries out a specific analysis of the landscape model landscape evaluation system for the ecological design of plant landscaping in marine urban green spaces and experimentally verifies that, compared with other styles, the experience of the European-style landscape is good overall. However, the view openness rating of the European style landscape is only about 0.42, and the best plant landscaping is the mixed mode of alkali poncho and salt poncho. This study aims to provide a practical reference and guidance for urban planners, landscape architects, and environmentalists.

Analisis Pemenuhan Kebutuhan Ruang Terbuka Hijau Kota Medan

This research aims to analyze the area and percentage of green open space in Medan city, formulate the direction of recommendations and strategies to meet the needs of public green open space. This research is descriptive in nature using quantitative methods. The primary data of the research was obtained from 40 respondents consisting of the Medan City Environment Office, the Housing and Settlement Office of Cipta Karya and Spatial Planning and the Community. The results showed that green open space in Medan City has an area of 11642.90 Ha or 41.35% of the overall total in Medan City and there are 14 sub-districts that do not meet the established green open space requirements. The implication of this research contributes to the importance of urban planning practices. Strategies to increase the provision of green open space in Medan City can be achieved by applying a combination of intensification and extensification measures in the development of green open space.