Conception Of Urban Space Research Articles

Urban pervious concrete for thermal conditioning in open spaces: an adaptation to the climate change and the urban heat island effect.

UIA CartujaQanat project is part of a new vision of the urban environment, in which the way of thinking about cities and their spaces is changed, as well as in the interaction of its inhabitants with them. In this new concept of urban space, possible solutions to current and future needs, both social and climatic, must be found, since these environments have the responsibility to contribute to improving the lives of their inhabitants by minimizing the consumption of resources used in it. These solutions are the result of the knowledge gained from experience and tradition together with innovation and research.The project incorporates passive techniques and bioclimatic solutions adapted to the hot and dry climate of the city of Seville, which is where it is located, trying to create semi-confined open spaces that provide a comfortable environment. The solutions adopted introduced water as a heat transfer fluid that allows these spaces to be tempered. Apart from other solutions such as bioclimatic lattices, we worked on draining pavements that, thanks to their permeability, allow the flow of water and the evaporation of air through their surface.In this work the study of the use of pervious concrete flooring solutions and their advantages over the use of other materials is developed. Analysing its behaviour in its combination in hybrid pavements with vegetal soils or with fines such as silica sand, as well as other solutions that allow a constructive solution that reduces the temperature of the pavement using the evaporative effect, with minimal maintenance and cost.

¿Es recuperable la ciudad como espacio para la infancia? Aproximación teórica desde la perspectiva del urbanismo social, participativo y sostenible

The conception of urban space is decisive in the structuring of thought. It is important for children because it conditions the development of experiences that consolidate skills and abilities, favouring meaningful learning. However, the development of children has encountered obstacles in the contemporary period due to a progressive dehumanization of cities. In this study we have analyzed some initiatives that encourage children encounter with their cities (The City of Children by Francesco Tonucci; Child Friendly Cities by UNICEF), and also the role that social, participatory and sustainable urban planning is playing as converging current with these initiatives. The fundamental bases of these ways of understanding the city are analyzed through a review of institutional documents, projects and bibliographic sources. And some examples from Spain are studied in order to demonstrate how this urban trend can serve as a model of intervention in municipalities committed to child defence programs.

Towards a discourse and governmentality approach to spatial development – the case of inner city shopping centres

Using the example of the political-planning discourse on former plans to develop a large-scale shopping centre in the inner city of Mainz, the potential benefits of a discourse and governmentality approach to spatial research subjects is discussed. In particular, the discursive discursive mechanisms of inscribing an entrepreneurial and depoliticized conception of urban space into apparently neutral and objective techniques of spatial analysis are worked out. At the same time, this idea of urban space as a competitive entity determined by spatio-economic principles is challenged by competing conceptions of urban development focused on the conservation of place-specific structures of the built environment. Thus, the case study illustrates how discourse analysis can excavate the spatial knowledge structures guiding the management of contemporary urban development projects.

Метамодерн и его эстетический опыт: визуализация мировоззренческой парадигмы в архитектуре

The article investigates the philosophical and value bases metamodern and forms of their visualization in architecture. Social and technological changes at the beginning of the 21st century marked the entry into a new era. Its name is Metamodern. This term has been used since the late 2000s. Features of the new era are manifested in different areas of life. They found a visual manifestation in the field of urban design and architecture. A city at the same time is simultaneously a material object and a symbolic project. The space production and the symbols production becomes an interdependent process. These statements are important to this study. On this basis, we consider the architecture and the city environment as the metamodern paradigm visualization. The methodological basis of the study was the semiotic analysis of the visual object, which was applied in the framework of the space production theory by A. Lefebvre and P. Bourdieu. The object of our analysis is the Bomontiada project (Istanbul, Turkey). The purposes of the article are to make a semiotic analysis of the Bomonti architectural complex, and to demonstrate the transition from the postmodern paradigm to the metamodern. The subject of this article is an analysis of the reconstruction of the Bomonti complex in Istanbul. The architectural and design solution of the Bomonti complex was created as part of a new concept of urban space. This was presented as a large-scale process of transition to the metamodern worldview paradigm. The Bomonti project solves a whole range of tasks to preserve the historical heritage and create an attractive commercial property. The implementation of this project demonstrated a change in aesthetic preferences in the field of urban restructuring. This was seen as a transition to a new perception of the world. The Bomonti project reflected a new understanding of the human role in the multilayer cultural space of a modern city. The design of this architectural object is presented as visual rhetoric, creating the city anthropology for metamodern era. As a result, we come to the conclusion that modern architecture reflects the five metamodern paradigm principles, and loft design is becoming an instrument for creating a new semiotic field of metamodern. The value of harmony in its organization is indicated, because it contributes not only to a careful attitude to the elements of cultural heritage, but also creates the conditions for a hedonistic perception of the environment of everyday life of contemporaries.

The Law of the Urban Common(s)

Cities are quintessentially human and collective products. All urban space is the product of social cooperation. Therefore not just the “public” space but the metropolis as a whole must be considered as a commons. This assumption is not neutral from a legal point of view. It raises the question of whether private property of urban land is compatible with the conception of urban space as commons. The answer depends on how much we can push on the disintegration of property to expand the perspective of collective entitlements on urban resources against the commodification and new enclosures of urban space. Drawing on a legal realist approach to property, it is possible to dissolve the unitary conception of ownership into a bundle of rights. This article is a first attempt to enfranchise urban property as a legal form from its fate of being a mere boundary between the haves and the have-nots and revisit its role in the construction of social relations of production within the metropolis.

Mapping the Sound Environment of Andorra and Escaldes-Engordany by Means of a 3D City Model Platform

In the new paradigm of the smart cities world, public opinion is one of the most important issues in the new conception of urban space and its corresponding regulations. The data collection in terms of environmental noise cannot only be related to the value of the equivalent noise level L A e q of the places of interest. According to WHO reports, the different types of noise (traffic, anthropomorphic, industrial, and others) have different effects on citizens; the focus of this study is to use the identification of noise sources and their single impacts on background urban noise to develop a visualization tool that can represent all this information in real time. This work used a 3D model platform to visualize the acoustic measurements recorded at three strategic positions over the country by means of a sound map. This was a pilot project in terms of noise source identification. The visualization method presented in this work supports the understanding of the data collected and helps the space-time interpretation of the events. In the study of soundscape, it is essential not only to have the information of the events that have occurred, but also to have the relations established between them and their location. The platform visualizes the measured noise and differentiates four types of noise, the equivalent acoustic level measured and the salience of the event with respect to background noise by means of the calculation of SNR (Signal-to-Noise), providing better data both in terms of quantity and quality and allowing policy-makers to make better-informed decisions on how to minimize the impact of environmental noise on people.

Conceptualizing urban space (environment) for the delivery of sustainable urban development in Africa: evidence from Enugu City in Nigeria

In recent decades, the concept of urban space has undergone transition from its traditional physical concept to a social concept that reflects the human context. The transition, which reside in social sciences narrative, defines the human context of urban space from different behavioral perspectives. The analytical frame of this narrative shows that the fundamentally polysemic meaning of the terms space, place and territory are used interchangeably to designate urban space. The urban space is therefore construed as ‘public space’ or ‘urban place’ where community activities find expression. There exists potential concern in the search for sustainable urban development that this social narrative of urban space is most probably not disposed to exact leverage on land use policy for enhanced spatial integration. This paper argue that the social narrative, which sustain conceptual planning, is antithetical to spatial planning and land use integration. The absence of the spatial context of urban space is a fundamental gap in knowledge that subordinates land use integration. Scientists lean on the principle of totality to consider the conception of urban space as a natural system that is compliant with integration. Accordingly, this paper attempts to conceptualize urban space as a natural spatial system that encourages land use policy change in which individual right for instance is subordinated to spatial integration. The paper engages triangulation of mixed research methods to examine existing notions of urban space (environment).

Examining Principles of Sustainability in Streets of Sulaimani City Center towards Achieving Sustainable Urban City

The concept of urban space is associated with society’s needs and behaviors. Since street is the first element of urban form space which defines the old city, it has been used for as multi-functional spaces to include gathering, meeting, shopping, work and enjoyment. However, regarding rapid development and changing in people needs, the street lose some of their functional and urban characteristics. Hence, this affect the street on being sustainable urban space. Accordingly, this paper examines the principles of sustainable urban place with eight factors: connectivity, accessibility, diversity and mixed land-use, attractiveness, comfort, safety, social environment, and liveliness. This fulfilled by conducting people’s opinions on these sustainable factors. The aim of this research is to make Sulaymaniyah city center a sustainable urban city. The research selected (5) main streets in Sulaimani city center as a case study including Mawlawi Street, Kawa Street, Saboonkaran Street, Goran Street (Orezdi), and Piramerd Street. The study employed 240 questionnaire Surveys that analyzed quantitatively using SPSS software. Besides, 20 interviews with lectures and professional architects that analyzed qualitatively. In addition, the study uses direct observation and photography techniques. The study concludes that it is difficult to consider Sulaimani City Center a sustainable urban city because it does not meet the principles of sustainability efficiently.

Relevance of Walking and Informal Activities in Urban Space: A Case of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania

The design discourse mostly in developing world cities tends to commit walking as the concern for transportation purpose. This notion tends to dismiss walking as an extended conception of urban space and take it for granted which allow elements of informal walking fields to emerge. This orients walking in the lines of a mere ‘street sidewalk’ rather than an important element in enhancing urban space in terms of environmental quality, access and use of urban space and everyday life realities. The empirical study in Dar es Salaam show that the gap in walking provision seem to be filled by the informal actors in urban space struggling to create the informal walking spheres in which trading, vending, meeting and recreating take place. Such observations draw a lesson that such informal developed urban activities along the streets and the urban space have not been disassociated from walking. The paper recognizes the essence of such integration of walking with other activities in urban space. It is thus concluded that urban design discourse have to conceive walking, including its contextual elements, as integral component in the field of urban public space that connect with other urban functions rather than isolate it from them.

Urban morphology and the post-industrial city: commercial space in Manchester

<p>The contemporary post-industrial city has developed within a system where every square metre of its area might be assessed for its economic productivity and market value. Retail space, leisure space, even public open space, as well as housing and work environments are quantifiable and comparable in financial terms as the ultimate test of their value. This conception of urban space as units of capital has its origins in the industrial development of centres such as Manchester where, largely unencumbered by earlier urban patterns, the idea of the modern city could thrive. As a ‘shock city’ Manchester, during the peak of its industrial growth in the early nineteenth century was an object of fascination and repulsion to the visitors it attracted. Opinion and rhetoric dominated social, economic and political debate, but dispassionate spatial analysis was rare. In the view of contemporary authors the town had few significant public spaces, instead being largely comprised of the vast industrial structures that crowded around the roads and canals. The mills were assessed for legal and insurance purposes, however, at a time of rabid competition and the prevalence of industrial accidents. The surveys that have survived provide the first opportunities to assess these examples of new urban space. The image results of a settlement composed of a single type, the mill or warehouse. Ancillary structures, most especially the workers’ housing did not merit recording. In these products of spatial calculation the Manchester mill can be seen to set the pattern both for the productive spaces of industry and the spatial framework of the contemporary city, where the public space is one of consumption rather than community. The supervised and privatised public space of the contemporary city finds its genius loci in the industrial typology of its commercial origins.</p>

THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY: THE MANCHESTER MILL AS ‘SYMBOLIC FORM’

The contemporary post-industrial city has developed within a system where every square metre of its area might be assessed for its economic productivity and market value. Retail space, leisure space, even public open space, as well as housing and work environments are quantifiable and comparable in financial terms as the ultimate test of their value. This conception of urban space as units of capital has its origins in the industrial development of centres such as Manchester where, largely unencumbered by earlier urban patterns, the idea of the modern city could thrive. As a ‘shock city’ Manchester, during the peak of its industrial growth in the early nineteenth century was an object of fascination and repulsion to the visitors it attracted. Opinion and rhetoric dominated social economic and political debate but dispassionate spatial analysis was rare. In the view of contemporary authors the town had few significant public spaces, instead being largely comprised of the vast industrial structures that crowded around the roads and canals. The mills were assessed for legal and insurance purposes, however, at a time of rabid competition and the prevalence of industrial accidents. The surveys that have survived provide the first opportunities to assess these examples of new urban space. The image results of a settlement composed of a single type, the mill or warehouse. Ancillary structure, most especially the workers’ housing did not merit recording. In these products of spatial calculation the Manchester mill can be seen to set the pattern both for the productive spaces of industry and the spatial framework of the contemporary city, where the public space is one of consumption rather than community. The supervised and privatised public space of the contemporary city finds its genius loci in the industrial typology of its commercial origins.

‘Control Space?: Cinematic Representations of Surveillance Space between Discipline and Control’

Recent developments in surveillance practices and their related technologies suggest that the heretofore dominant Foucauldian paradigm of discipline, with its sites of confinement in which space is “segmented, immobile [and] frozen”, may no longer be an adequate theoretical framework in which to discuss space within surveillance studies (Foucault, 1995: 195). In his essay Postscript on Control Societies, Gilles Deleuze claims that these sites are in the midst of widespread breakdown, leading to a fundamental shift in the notion of space, characterised by the term ‘modulation’ (Deleuze, 1990: 178-179). In the control model, urban surveillance can be said to be characterised by an emphasis on the use of digital surveillance practices, leading to a view of urban space and the city, as well as its inhabitants, which largely resides within a computer mainframe. This raises the question: if the surveillance carried out within this conception of urban space can be described as concentrated, hidden, passive, functional, mobile, and varied, how can these changes be communicated cinematically since there is an obvious problem of representation; when much of the surveillance technology is computer and digital in form, how does cinema make visible the potentially invisible? In considering the question of how film engages with urban space between the paradigms of discipline and control, two cinematic views of the (informational) city will be discussed by considering three scenes from Erasing David (2009) and Minority Report (2002) in order to identify some of the cinematic strategies used in communicating contemporary surveillance practices increasingly characterised as invisible and immaterial.

Conceptions of Urban Space in Duan Chengshi's "Record of Monasteries and Stupas"

This article explores different ways in which Duan Chengshi (?–863) conceptualized the spaces of Chang'an's urban monasteries within his 853 "Record of Monasteries and Stupas" (Sita ji). To begin with, Duan thought of places as occupying set coordinates in Chang'an's urban grid which adjoin or overlook neighboring wards and residences and whose contents transformed over time. Duan also portrayed these locations as settings for tales of mysterious or unusual events and as sites of visual spectacle and public display where urban residents watched ritual performances and imperial processions or viewed displays of relics, religious objects, and art. Finally, Duan showed how monasteries could serve as retreats where visitors might escape the stresses of urban life and enjoy the company of friends and resident monks. The essay concludes by examining how in Duan's "Record" these places also served as sites of memory, as Duan used his account of them to correct earlier depictions, to celebrate the memory of deceased friends, and to offer a testament to the former magnificence of the Buddhist monasteries of Chang'an and the important roles they played in the geography, history, and social life of the city.

Conceptions of Urban Space in Duan Chengshi’s “Record of Monasteries and Stupas”

Conceptions of Urban Space in Duan Chengshi’s “Record of Monasteries and Stupas”

Fractured space: a geographical reflection on the digital divide

What does it mean to reflect upon space in connection to telecommunications? If we start with a conception of urban space as being fully integrated, including on an equal footing both information and communication technologies (ICT) and mobility techniques, as well as the founding notion of copresence that we find at the heart of all urban organization, we might then be able to examine the notion of the ‘digital divide’ in a new light. This clearly experimental approach is conducted by a research group called ‘Urbatic’, which is composed of geographers who, for the last three years, have been conducting theoretical research whose objective is to take into account two fields of social science: the theory of urbanity and the theory of telecommunication. Surveys conducted in this perspective focus on the analysis of the choices people make between the different means they can use to cope with distances (copresence, mobility and telecommunication) with a view to constructing their own space. The analysis of these choices leads us to propose a new theorized interpretation of the ‘digital divide’.

A Forgotten Case of “Scientific Excellence on the Periphery”: The Nationalist Cocaine Science of Alfredo Bignon, 1884–1887

In recent years, Latin American history has been awash in an exciting wave of scholarship on the history of science and medicine. Historians are exploring Latin American reactions to foreign medical, sanitary and scientific missions; the creation of national research institutions; the impact of epidemics on conceptions of urban space, politics and social control; the role of indigenous and folk cures in modern public health campaigns; and the relation of transnational eugenics movements to national anxieties about race, among other fertile topics. Pioneering medical historian Marcos Cueto dubs this focus “scientific excellence on the periphery”—the idea that surprising avenues of research and innovation occurred in societies generally deemed “underdeveloped,” especially in modern scientific activities and outlooks.

Controlling Space, Essentializing Identities: Jews in Contemporary Casablanca

Conceptions of urban space and the daily practices within it, typically demarcate city spaces as “go” and “no go,” as an integral part of the cultural construction of social enclaves. In contrast to studies that demonstrate how powerful social segments utilize cultural demarcations of space as mechanisms of exclusion, this essay shows how spatial demarcations serve, instead, to promote self‐preservation for a politically feeble and marginalized ethnic minority. The case of contemporary Casablancan Jews reveals the underlying logic of the self–enclosure of a politically weak ethnic group undergoing continuous demographic decline. [Ethnic identity, urban space, Jews, Casablanca]

Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space

The paper contains a critical review of urban theory and of some current work in urban studies on ‘women's issues’. It is argued that the nature of the changing interrelationships between production and reproduction, as part of a single inseparable process that varies across space and over time, should be the key focus for a feminist urban studies. Ways in which an understanding of these changing relationships can add to the analysis of housing policy in postwar Britain are outlined. The principal aim of the paper is advocacy, and the plea is for feminist theory and feminist analysis. It is beginning to be accepted that urban studies, by ignoring gender divisions, is neglecting an important structuring element of urban space and urban processes. Recognition of the significance of gender divisions, however, must not lead to an insistence on analysis focusing solely on women and women's behaviour. Thus the object of feminist research should not be women alone, but rather the structure of social relations that contributes to female oppression, this involving confrontation with the theoretical issues raised by an analysis of patriarchy (a term used here to refer to temporally and spatially specific relations between men and women, rather than to the oppression of all women in all forms of society). Despite the advances already made in integrating women's lives into urban studies, a large number of the studies about women and the urban environment are ultimately unsatisfactory. Their foci stop short at the description and analysis of women's behaviour only. However, this is not to denigrate the very real function they serve in bringing gender differences to the research forefront. After a review of the literature on gender differences in the organisation, use, and conception of urban space, a more specific focus for a feminist urban studies is outlined, with an example of how this might be applied to the historical analysis of postwar housing policy in Britain.