Communal Places Research Articles

Older Adults and Gentrification: The Positive Role of Social Policy.

Supportive public policies are suggested as ways to lessen gentrification's impact for older adults. While explicit policies designed to help older adults with gentrification are rare, literature on age-friendly cities is a close proxy. We utilized three North American cases undergoing gentrification: New York City, NY, and Denver, CO, in the United States and Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada, to present existing neighbourhood-based policies as social determinants of health in housing, resource access, healthcare, transportation, and communal places. Age-friendly policy application gap examples and COVID-19's impact were included. Using a qualitative comparative case study method, we found policies were not specifically designed to address older adults' gentrification needs. With the call for age-friendly designations, the role of gentrification in neighbourhoods with older populations must be included. We call for gentrification-specific policies for older adults to provide greater safeguards especially when events such as COVID-19 compete for existing, over-stretched resources.

The importance of public familiarity for sense of belonging in Brisbane neighborhoods

ABSTRACT A large proportion of neighborhood social life occurs in communal places and takes the form of brief encounters with fellow residents who are personally unknown but visually recognizable and familiar. Public familiarity is effortless to maintain but is not socially benign. In this study, we draw on a survey of 1,000 Australian residents to assess the benefits of familiarity and examine the mediating role of public familiarity in the association between neighborhood use and sense of belonging and attachment. Our results demonstrate that public familiarity partially mediates the association between neighborhood use and sense of belonging. Public familiarity is associated with stronger feelings of comfort and a higher likelihood of helping others in an emergency. We suggest that designing neighborhood places to facilitate public familiarity, by installing features that encourage lingering, is a low-cost approach to enhancing community connection and belonging which may help to prevent loneliness.

From communal places to comfort zones: Familiar stranger encounters in everyday life as a form of belonging

Familiar strangers, individuals who are visually recognisable yet do not engage in verbal conversations, emerge in communal urban places on the way and in between regular daily activities in the home and workplace. Described as invisible social ties and light touch community, familiar strangers represent an understudied and untapped source of sociality that offer promise by way of an antidote to the global increase in reports of loneliness. In this study, we examine the extent to which familiar stranger encounters in communal everyday places might act as an important source of social identity, belonging and perceived attachment. We estimate regression models using data from a 2022 intercept survey of 278 residents in Brisbane, Australia conducted in situ at public parks, transit stations, retail environments, and thoroughfares to estimate the influence of familiar strangers and frequency of visitation on sense of belonging and place attachment. Our results show belonging emerges through familiar stranger encounters in everyday communal places outside of the residential neighbourhood and suggest that coupling urban design features that enhance visible proximity with scheduling that encourages repeated, synchronised visitation can contribute to bounded communities of belonging at everyday communal places.

On a Corresponsive Sport Science.

In our societally extractive age, sport science risks being swept up in the intensifying desire to commodify the experiences of those that scientists proclaim to study. Coupled with the techno-digital revolution, this stems from a vertical (onto)logic that frames the sporting landscape as a static space filled with discrete objects waiting for us to capture, analyse, re-present and sell on as knowledge. Not only does this commodification degrade primary experience in the false hope of epistemological objectivity, it reinforces the unidirectionality of extractivism by setting inquirer apart from, and above of, inquiry. Here, we advocate for a different, more sentient logic grounded in the relationality of gifting as understood in indigenous philosophies. This foregrounds an ecological orientation to scholarship that sets out neither to objectify or describe that which is of concern, but to correspond with its becoming. On this, there are three threads we cast forward. First, in a corresponsive sport science, inhabitants are not objects of analysis, but lines in-becoming, who in answering to others, form knots in a meshwork. These knots constitute communal places in which inhabitants have joined with the differentiating coming-into-being of others. Second, knowledge is not authoritatively (re)cognitive, but humbly ecological; not produced vertically through imposition, but grown longitudinally in responsively moving from place to place. Third, research does not follow a vertically extractive (onto)logic, but is a practice of participant observation. This perspective appreciates that we, sport scientists, are also lines in-becoming that form parts of the knots in which we seek to know. In coda, our thesis is not a call for more qualitative or applied research in the sport sciences. It is a call to response-ably open up to that which sparks our curiosity, answering to what is shared with care, sensitivity and sincerity.

An Uncharted Liminality

Every day, approximately 8,000 Facebook users die worldwide, leaving behind an online reflection of their lives on the platform. Their digital remains are transforming platforms like Facebook into memorial spaces for the deceased and communal places of mourning for the bereaved. By employing an extensive scoping review of current scholarly literature, this paper aims to examine the current discourse surrounding digital mourning and evaluate the influence of social media platforms on mourning practices within the Western context. These findings illustrate how social media platforms support the grief work of individuals and communities through the exploration of frameworks that conceptualize mourning and memoria in the digital age.

‘Like yelling bomb in an airport’: bed bugs and more-than-human geographies of migrant farm worker hostels

ABSTRACT This paper unravels the intimate and irritant more-than-human encounters in hostel accommodation used by migrant farm workers in regional Australia. These are communal places of inhabitancy that draw attention to the intersecting concerns of highly mobile populations, seasonal labour, migration politics, and the socio-material relationships that flourish within such spaces. I examine the presence of bed bugs and other nonhumans through interviews with farm workers, hostel operators and managers, and ethnographic observations, to highlight broader implications of such ‘communal’ forms of living. The communal nature of living alongside others is challenging, especially when the arrangement is for work and migration, rather than leisure, and due to a lack of affordable housing options. The paper uses a more-than-human lens to bring into dialogue the mobilities of these workers with notions of communal living, which are intrinsically tied to visa conditions and labour migration. In doing so, the paper contributes to broadening the understandings of how and where mobilities take shape, and the impacts that more-than-human agencies have on day-to-day life in communal living situations.

187. Characterizing Household Clustering of COVID-19 Cases in Fulton County, Georgia, June 2020–April 2021

BackgroundHouseholds are important for SARS-CoV-2 transmission due to close proximity in enclosed living spaces over long durations. Using contact tracing, the secondary attack rate in households is estimated at 18-20%, yet no studies have examined COVID-19 clustering within households, an important measure to inform testing and prevention. We sought to quantify and characterize household clustering of COVID-19 cases in Fulton County, Georgia. MethodsWe used state surveillance data to identify all PCR- or antigen-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Fulton County. Clustered cases were defined as cases with matching street address, including unit number. Communal places (e.g., nursing homes, correctional facilities) were excluded, as were apartments missing unit number. Household clusters were defined as ≥2 COVID-19 cases at the same residential address with positive sample collection dates within 14 days of one another. We described proportion of COVID-19 cases that were clustered, stratified by age, sex, and race/ethnicity over time.ResultsThere were 60,614 COVID-19 cases with available address reported in Fulton County during 6/1/20–4/30/21. Of these, 25,149 (41.6%) had an address that matched at least one other case; 20,793 (34.3%) were from 8,582 household clusters with positive sample collection dates within 14 days (Fig 1). Majority of clusters had 2 individuals (N=6119, 71%), though some had ≥6 individuals (N=79, 0.9%). Clustering increased through January 2021 (Fig 2). Children were more likely to be in household clusters (Fig 4) and 15% of clusters had a child as first diagnosed case with increases since January 2021 (Fig 3). Consistently higher clustering was observed among Hispanic persons, with rising clustering among Asian persons (Fig 5). Figure 1. Distribution of household-clustered COVID-19 cases in Fulton county between June, 2020 and April 2021 Figure 2. Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster, Fulton County, June 2020–April 2021. Error bars denote 95% confidence interval around the point estimate. Figure 3. Age of first diagnosis among households with at least 2 cases diagnosed within 14 daysConclusionOne-third of COVID-19 cases in Fulton County were part of a household cluster. The higher proportion of children in household clusters likely reflects higher probability of living in a home with an adult caregiver. Higher household clustering among Hispanic and Asian persons, regardless of age, may reflect larger households (supported by census data) or increased exposures outside the house. Timely testing for household members to prevent ongoing transmission remains essential. Figure 4. Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster, by age – Fulton County, June 2020–March 2021 Proportion of COVID-19 cases that were part of a household cluster in Fulton County stratified by race/ethnicity over timeDisclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures

Ayni and Neltilitztli: The reconstitutions of the destituted

“Market” in the past 500 years became synonymous with “capitalist market” (mercantile economy, industrial economy, technological and financial economy, market democracy). Before 1500 all organization of people living together (civilizations or cultures) had their own places to exchange within the communal and between nearby communities, all over the planet, not only in Europe. They did not go away. They are not pre-capitalist places of exchange. They are co-existing non-capitalist places of exchange. “Market” is the word used—since the 12 century—in Western vernacular languages to name the place of a meeting at a fixed time for exchanging livestock and provisions. By the 12th century medieval European “markets” where equivalent to all existing similar places of exchanges among co-existing civilizations. The constitution of the Western modern/colonial “market” in the 16th century (an experience the Adam Smith theorized in the second half of the eighteenth century), destituted all existing equivalent places of exchange. The task now is the decolonial reconstitution of communal places exchanges, reconstitution that is already under way, which implies gnoseological (knowing) and aesthesic (sensing, emotioning) praxis of living.

ANALYSIS OF DEVELOPED BATH WEAR DESIGNS ON AESTHETICS, FUNCTIONAL, AND CONSTRUCTIONAL PARAMETERS

Present paper is an outcome of the rigorous research work being conducted for development of Modest bath wear clothing designs for women during holy dip at open ghats/rivers at communal places. This is a part of the work highlighting the creative designs developed by the researcher and its evaluation on selected parameters by the expert panel members using five-point continuum scale. Results showsthat the developeddesigns of modest bath wearfor women were found highly satisfactory in terms of aesthetic, functional and constructional parameters.

ASSESSMENT OF BATHWEAR PATTERN OF WOMEN AND ITS ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS AT COMMUNAL PLACES

19Nov 2019 ASSESSMENT OF BATHWEAR PATTERN OF WOMEN AND ITS ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS AT COMMUNAL PLACES Shanu Parashar and Meenu Srivastava Dept. of Textiles & Apparel Designing College of Community and Applied Sciences, MPUAT, Udaipur

ASSESSMENT OF BATHWEAR PATTERN OF WOMEN AND ITS ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS AT COMMUNAL PLACES

ASSESSMENT OF BATHWEAR PATTERN OF WOMEN AND ITS ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS AT COMMUNAL PLACES

Helminth infections in light of an ongoing intervention in endemic areas of Guragae zone, Southern Ethiopia: an implication for neglected tropical diseases elimination in Ethiopia by 2020

IntroductionHelminth infections are among the major public health problems in developing countries. Considerable efforts have been made towards the control of morbidity caused by infection with helminths in Ethiopia. The national control program is designed to achieve the elimination of helminth infections as a major public health problem by 2020.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to determine the current status and infection intensity of helminths in the endemic area of Guragae zone, Southern Ethiopia.MethodsAn institutional based cross-sectional study was carried out between April and June 2017 in Gurage zone. School-aged children (SAC) were selected using a multistage sampling method and invited to participate in the study. Parasitological test examination was done using the Kato-Katz technique in Wolkite University parasitology laboratory. SPSS version 21 was used for data management and analysis.ResultsA total of 597 (98% compliance rate) participants were able to provide complete data. The study revealed that 21.6% (129/597) SAC were infected with one or more species of helminth. S. mansoni was the most prevalent helminth (12.9%) followed by hookworms (4.3%). The overall infection intensity expressed as geometric mean for A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura, hookworms, and S. mansoni were 301, 31,103, and 158 eggs per gram of stool, respectively. The multivariable logistic regression model estimated that being in the age group of 5–9 years (AOR = 1.43, 95% CI 0.4–0.9), washing raw food and vegetables using river water (AOR = 2.4, 95% CI 0.16–0.75), and a regular bathing habit in river (AOR = 2.14, 95% CI 0.3–0.9) were independent predictors of helminth infections.ConclusionDespite the fact that Ethiopia planned to eliminate helminth infection-related morbidity by 2020, this study showed that helminth infection is prevalent in the study area. Efforts should be made to improve hygienic practices of the schoolchildren in addition to school-based deworming. Moreover, the deworming program should also focus on reaching those SAC who do not attend school through communal social places to achieve the targeted goal in the study area in particular and nationwide in general.

An Ethnographic and Archaeological Approach to Ritual Practices of Resistance

Resistance practices could be considered one the most enduring types of social behavior in past societies. Through two case-studies, one ethnographic and the other archaeological, these practices are analyzed to assess how, in two very different social environments, resistance is a key feature for a better understanding of social dynamics. Both cases share three main aspects: (1) the resistance was materialized in the social construction of communal places that created a landscape endowed with memory linking societies to their ancestors, (2) transformations characterized by a growing social complexity accentuating resistance through recurrent and elaborate practices in ritual places, and (3) resistance cannot be seen as a static phenomenon.

Wales's Orthodox Synagogues: Constructing Jewish Communal Places and Spaces

Wales's Orthodox Synagogues: Constructing Jewish Communal Places and Spaces

Wales's Orthodox Synagogues: Constructing Jewish Communal Places and Spaces

This article examines the Welsh contribution to the history of Britain's Orthodox synagogues between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries. It draws on spatial theory to address the communal, constructive, and performative nature of Wales's synagogues and offers the first nationwide examination of the country's Jewish houses of worship. It also makes a plea for Welsh historians to consider the synagogue when discussing Wales's sacred places and spaces, as well as a call to scholars of Jewish studies, particularly those who employ England's metropolitan synagogues as metonyms for British synagogues, to appreciate the importance of both the shared and varied synagogal experiences of British Jewry. How the history of Wales's synagogues both resembled and differed from those found elsewhere in the British Isles is at the core of this article, as is the powerful role of geographical place and topography in shaping this experience. It also challenges established historical narratives of some of Wales's synagogues and examines their fluidity and transformational nature throughout the last two centuries.

Communal space design as student interaction in polnep campus

Communal space is a means to do for social interaction, from private to the public. The purpose of this study was conducted to explore the phenomenon of communal space setting of Pontianak State Polytechnic students from 8 departments of study both indoor and outdoor spaces. The research method used is a rationalistic study. The planned activities to be undertaken include the determination of communal places (indoor and outdoor), sample determination, data collection with surveys and interviews, presenting data and analysis and drawing conclusions as a basis for designing communal space for Polnep students. The research were analyzed of building and space character, analysis of space organization and circulation, space requirement analysis, material and color analysis, site analysis, and analysis of inner space elements and outer space elements. From the results of this study, it can be concluded that Polnep campus environment requires the addition of public space for students in conducting formal activities outside lectures. Some activity which to do some student such as activity to waiting lecturer, do some coursework, discussion, relaxation, extracurricular activities, and other informal activities still require adequate space infrastructure and are equipped with street furnitures such as garden lights, benches, outer space markers and shade vegetation.

Creational narratives for new housing communities: evidence synthesis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a rapid evidence synthesis commissioned by the Diocese of Winchester with a remit to provide an empirical basis for church contributions to large housing community developments. It sought to respond to three questions concerning new community developments. These related to risks and causes of failure; learning from past corporate and intermediate tier interventions at diocesan and equivalent levels by religious denominations; and the transferable learning available from developments described in community health and liveability literatures. Design/methodology/approach The review took a purposive approach to sampling evidence from within academic literature, policy and “think tank” outputs and theological texts. The search was instigated with the use of keywords (including New Settlements, Urban Redevelopment, Diocese, Faith and Community), principally within the SCOPUS, NIHR, PUBMED and Google Scholar databases. A pragmatic snowballing approach to relevant references was then employed. Findings Segregation and separation were identified as the main risk for new settlements. Connectivity is required between and across neighbours, ensuring communal access to services, transport and recreation. Communal places where people can come together for conversation and social interaction are identified as contributing significantly to healthy communities. Churches have a particular positive contribution to make here, through a focus on inclusion, hospitality and common values, rather than single faith-based, evangelical approaches. Practical implications The initial effect of the study has been to increase confidence in and awareness of the diocesan contribution. In the longer term the three areas of practice highlighted for enhanced faith-based contributions are those of public communications, community integration and civic leadership. An evidence-based approach appears to be especially significant in facilitating the latter. Originality/value The importance of “creational narratives” in defining and making explicit the values underpinning new housing communities is identified as a singular source of shared motivation for planning and faith agencies.

Immersed at the water's edge: modern British and Australian seaside pools as sites of ‘Good living’

This article re-examines the swimming pool as a potent building type embodying the salient characteristics of Modernity. Not only did the building of modern public swimming pools celebrate new materials, engineered solutions and technologies but they also reflected rapidly changing attitudes to the body, leisure and fitness in line with Modernist aspirations. Public pools thus created new communal places where relationships between social, natural and built environments could be explored and embraced.In understanding these social and design aspirations to create the Modern ‘good life’, a set of English and Australian waterside open-air swimming pools and lidos of the 1930s – Scarborough (1915–1934), Tinside (1935), the Eastern Beach Reserve Geelong (1939) and the North Sydney pool (1936) – are described and compared in their past and present state. These seaside pools offered places for people to seek refuge within a setting which remains at once natural but also controlled and shaped, while also promoting the psychological and physiological benefits of open-air activities.In re-appraising the fate of the public swimming pool today, the article concludes by highlighting two successful contemporary examples, the Badeschiff in Berlin (2009) and the Copenhagen Harbour Bath (2003). We argue that these new pools have grown out of precedents found in the early twentieth century but have reinvigorated the type by offering new interpretations of designing with nature, and providing facilities more relevant to current leisure and environmental trends. Their success lends support to the need for careful documentation and conservation of earlier surviving exemplars.

Comments Regarding ‘Assessment of the Accuracy of AortaScan for Detection of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA)’

The cost of purchasing ultrasound equipment represents a significant financial burden to abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening programmes. AAA screening programmes use conventional portable ultrasound scanners equipped with colour flow and spectral Doppler modalities. These modalities are not necessary for routine aneurysm screening, adding to the cost of the equipment. Additionally, they could be potentially misleading if used without appropriate training. The introduction of a simple automated handheld device would enable AAA screening to be performed by practice nurses and General Practitioners during a routine health check. This would save a considerable amount of money, making AAA screening cheaper and more cost effective. Patients who are suspected of having an AAA can then be offered a rapid confirmation scan using conventional ultrasound in their local imaging department or vascular unit. In this context, the study by Abbas et al. (comparing the AortaScan device against computed tomography scanning 1 ) is timely and relevant. The reported sensitivity of 81% is clearly not acceptable for it to be used within a national aneurysm screening programme at the present time. However, the results should not be viewed in a completely negative light, as the device was able to detect a significant number of aneurysms. Looking from a positive perspective, the authors provide a useful waypoint for the manufacturer to develop and refine their system until sensitivity is close to 100%. It is only through the publication of unbiased studies that we get a true evaluation of emerging and innovative technologies with the potential to deliver efficiency and savings. What then should be the key performance requirements of an automated device? It should be able to measure aortic diameter to an accuracy of <5 mm, it should be capable of coping with a large burden of thrombus without misidentifying it as aortic wall and it should have the ability to identify aneurysms in the presence of marked vessel tortuousity. The authors also highlight the inability of the device to accurately display the size of aortas measuring less than 3 cm in diameter. This should be a development priority as a screening programme using an automated device could select a diameter threshold below 3 cm for patients to have a conventional ultrasound scan for additional safety. From a technological perspective, the AortaScan represents an example of disruptive innovation where complicated and expensive products are converted into simpler, affordable and more accessible ones.2 With further development, it is possible that the device will become accurate enough to be used in routine practice. This type of disruptive innovation has the potential to replace other types of diagnostic equipment that currently requires specialist operators and for the new simplified technology to be taken out of hospitals and made available in public areas such as pharmacies, supermarkets and communal places. This has the additional advantage of engaging the public with issues of healthcare and health screening in more natural environments, ultimately improving the uptake and accessibility of screening.

Differential community effects on perception and use of urban greenspaces

The social profiles of residential communities exert differential effects on expectations and demands on urban greenspaces. We studied the diversity of public perception towards urban greenspaces in compact urban Hong Kong. Random household samples were selected from four dominant residential communities: old-core public housing (OP), old-core residential (OR), suburban residential (SR), and new-town public housing (NP). They denote gradations in income, housing quality, physical and social milieu, and development age. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire. Residents’ attitude, visiting pattern, greenspace preference, and assessment of neighborhood quality were investigated. SR presented distinctive results in comparison with others. The moderate differences between the remaining three communities were mainly linked to local traits in park environs. OP more emphasized the function of communal places for neighborly interactions associated with better social relationship of an older population. Parks in OR were the more frequently visited, even though its residents were sensitive to the negative impacts of urban greenspaces, which was related to urban blight in the environs. SR respondents highly appreciated greenspaces as pleasant settings for family activities and aesthetic enjoyment. NP residents were less frequent visitors despite generous park provision, due to the youthful population, weak social cohesion, and limited integration of new migrants. Community quality factors such as neighborhood relationship and urban density influenced the perception. Social qualities were more important than the physical aspects of parks in influencing visitorship. The findings suggest future research to deepen understanding of public perception towards urban greenspaces to inform park design.