Historic Neighborhoods Research Articles

Housing Renovation Evaluation in Perspective Landscape Conservation Zone for Preservation of Historical Neighborhoods and Landscapes: A Case Study of Qishan Old Street in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

The preservation and remodeling of buildings have been contradictory issues all the time in Taiwan, and preservation oftentimes means a smaller floor-area ratio and less economic benefit. Thus, house owners are generally against building preservation policies. In order to eliminate the opposition of house owners whose buildings have higher floor-area ratios and cannot make use of them for preservation, we look into the possibilities of developing the houses of different historical significance in the“perspective landscape conservation zone” for a maximal volume of each building. We aim to enable each building to make full use of its floor-area ratio and, at the same time, to maintain the streetscape. Several types of remodeling for single or semi-detached structures are recommended by taking into consideration the needs of daily life in modern times as well as the appearances of the old street. Based on the abovementioned remodeling approach, the findings of the current study are as follows: (1) it helps to keep the minimal preservation of facades and arcades, (2) it appears to maintain the maximal preservation of facades, arcades, and atrium of the first layer of compounds, (3) the depth of the building sites must not be shorter than 16.5 m to make full use of the 240% floor-area ratio, (4) 62 out of the 95 simulated cases of the study are able to make full use of the floor-area ratio, and (5) the building sites with larger depth ratios (two layers of compounds with an atrium in between) are able to have physical preservation as well as the lifestyle and images of the sites. As the floor area is not used up, it is recommended to transfer the development rights to the remaining floor area or to another place for avoiding the loss of the original housing economic benefits. At last, a timely, flexible, and diverse option for volume controlling is set up so the street is preserved in time through appropriate approaches. Hopefully, the partial preservation and remodeling approach allows the preservation of the historical environment in practice without sacrificing the floor areas that the house owners would like to preserve in general.

Almost 9 Kilometres in Istanbul s Newfound Land(scape)

On Saturday, September 30, 2017 we left our placein Koşuyolu and took a rather stuffed minibus to the historical seaside neighborhood Üsküdar. The weather was around 19°C. The night before, we were warned ofshowers, but apart from an extremely overcast sky, there was no rain. [distance: 0 km; elevation: 49 m; time: 10:55]. To cross tothe Europeansideof town, we took the ferry and in 7 minutes set foot on Beşiktaş. Pondering what a French cartographerhad told me about İstanbul’s Asian-European sides being only a construct of political interests and not actual geographical borders, I wondered how else I could refer to these two partsof this city. We boarded bus number 25E to Sarıyer. Passing under the first and then the second suspension bridges felt like time travelling in the city’s urban development.

Mapping a historic neighbourhood through user-generated content: the case of Alfama, Lisbon (Portugal)

Abstract. Participant-based methods aimed at extracting neighbourhood definitions are labour and time intensive. On the other hand, user-generated content (UGC) can provide locations to assess the extent of neighbourhoods. We investigated the definitions of Alfama - a historic neighbourhood in Lisbon (Portugal) - using six sources of UGC and applied a modification of the DBSCAN algorithm developed in the literature. By generating shapes from each source, we were able to visually and quantitatively evaluate their agreement as well as their differences.We demonstrate how different profiles of user activity from each source yielded varied geographies of Alfama. Although discrete representations are not the optimal choice, practical applications such as urban planning usually demand sharp definitions. Lastly, our approach can be extended and improved by adding more sources of UGC data and by picking other case studies.

Effects of new construction and renovation on ethnic and social mixing in apartment buildings in Estonia

Residential segregation between social groups has grown in European cities, while the housing sector has boomed in major cities since 2009. These two forces raise questions about the role of new housing construction in the growth of segregation. This article explores the sorting of both socio-economic and ethnic groups into three housing types: older, newer and renovated apartment buildings. We employ data from Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, where new housing construction has been extensive during the past ten years. We link census data with building-level data for publicly subsidised and privately funded housing renovations, and we calculate segregation indices by housing type and construct a multinomial regression model. Results suggest that publicly subsidised housing renovation contributes to continued mixing of socio-economic (occupational) groups, while new housing construction and especially private renovation increase segregation between ethnic and occupational groups. Ethnic and occupational segregation interact most strongly in privately funded apartment building renovations primarily within central city historic neighbourhoods. Published open access under a CC BY licence. https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/

Remembering Rondo: Black counter-memory and collective practices of place-making in Saint Paul’s historic black neighborhood

This paper draws on oral histories of Black elders in the historic neighborhood of Rondo in Saint Paul and traces the practices of memorialization which the paper calls Black counter memory in the neighborhood. The paper highlights the various ways in which community members of Rondo remember the neighborhood as a Black collective place through practices of memorialization and acts of performance. Through visual documentation and oral histories the paper demonstrates the various spatial practices of resistance in Rondo through Black counter memory in larger context of the Twin Cities.

Scaling Graph Propagation Kernels for Predictive Learning.

Many real-world applications deal with data that have an underlying graph structure associated with it. To perform downstream analysis on such data, it is crucial to capture relational information of nodes over their expanded neighborhood efficiently. Herein, we focus on the problem of Collective Classification (CC) for assigning labels to unlabeled nodes. Most deep learning models for CC heavily rely on differentiable variants of Weisfeiler-Lehman (WL) kernels. However, due to current computing architectures' limitations, WL kernels and their differentiable variants are limited in their ability to capture useful relational information only over a small expanded neighborhood of a node. To address this concern, we propose the framework, I-HOP, that couples differentiable kernels with an iterative inference mechanism to scale to larger neighborhoods. I-HOP scales differentiable graph kernels to capture and summarize information from a larger neighborhood in each iteration by leveraging a historical neighborhood summary obtained in the previous iteration. This recursive nature of I-HOP provides an exponential reduction in time and space complexity over straightforward differentiable graph kernels. Additionally, we point out a limitation of WL kernels where the node's original information is decayed exponentially with an increase in neighborhood size and provide a solution to address it. Finally, extensive evaluation across 11 datasets showcases the improved results and robustness of our proposed iterative framework, I-HOP.

Structural–Temporal embedding of large-scale dynamic networks with parallel implementation

Due to the widespread network data in the real world, network analysis has attracted increasing attention in recent years. In complex systems such as social networks, entities and their mutual relations can be respectively represented by nodes and edges composing a network. Because occurrences of entities and relations in these systems are often dynamic over time, their networks are called temporal networks describing the process of dynamic connection of nodes in the networks.Dynamic network embedding aims to embed nodes in a temporal network into a low-dimensional semantic space, such that the network structures and evolution patterns can be preserved as much as possible in the latent space. Most existing methods capture structural similarities (relations) of strongly-connected nodes based on their historical neighborhood information, they ignore the structural similarities of weakly-connected nodes that may also represent relations and include no explicit temporal information in node embeddings for capturing periodic dependency of events. To address these issues, we propose a novel temporal network embedding model by extending the structure similarity to cover both strong connections and weak connections among nodes, and including the temporal information in node embeddings. To improve the training efficiency of our model, we present a parallel training strategy to quickly acquire node embeddings. Extensive experiments on several real-world temporal networks demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-arts in traditional tasks, including link prediction and node classification.

Returning to historic neighborhoods: exploring the role of architectural identity elements on the formation of physical identity

PurposeThe study aims to evaluate the relationship among architectural identity, physical identity and neighborhood attachment in a residential neighborhood in the core of Sanandaj, Iran.Design/methodology/approachThis quantitative study conducted a survey of 208 residents in a historic neighborhood. The study hypothesized the mediating role of physical identity on the relationship between architectural identity and neighborhood attachment. Structural equation modeling using analysis of a moment structures (AMOS) software was used to test the research hypotheses.FindingsResearch findings show the reliability and validity of the proposed model. The results indicate a significant relationship between architectural and physical identity and a significant direct relationship between physical identity and neighborhood attachment. However, no significant direct relationship is found between architectural identity and neighborhood attachment, and only a significant indirect effect is found through physical identity. Therefore, architectural identity elements contribute to increasing physical identity and subsequently attach to the neighborhood.Originality/valueGiven the necessity for revitalizing the neighborhoods in the historical core of the cities to prevent the migration from old neighborhoods and the destruction of the valuable fabrics, establishing emotional relationships between residents and the place and improving interactions among residents is required. The mental values of residents change over time. Although the identification and use of identity elements in residential buildings is a significant way to revitalize the historic residential fabrics, only a few studies have experimentally assessed the impact of architectural identity elements in the creation of physical identity on the residents’ attachment to the historic neighborhood.

Contributors

Contributors

Apples for Audubon and Eggplant for Oya

Harlem’s historic Sugar Hill neighborhood possesses several public parks and cemeteries used by African and Afro-Caribbean Diaspora communities for religious activities. In my research, I have identified and mapped sites of religious activities and conducted interviews with community members, revealing how practitioners of Santería, Vodou, and Yoruba traditions have adapted to their urban home via the use of public space. The religious traditions explored here require interaction with nature and the physical land. Therefore, I argue that public space serves as critical infrastructure for facilitating the practice of these religious traditions. I build on the views of Erika Svendsen, Lindsay Campbell, and Heather McMillen that practitioners who engage in this use of public space derive a psycho-social-spiritual benefit from those spaces, while simultaneously contributing to the diversity and democracy of these public spaces as Frederick Law Olmsted and others have theorized.

Live Cycle Delight: An Urban Fitness Boutique Fights to Stay Alive

Live Cycle Delight (LCD) and Live Cycle Delight Hot (LCD Hot) is a boutique fitness studio founded in 2017 in Detroit, Michigan, by owner, Amina Daniels. The studios are nestled in a quaint up and coming historic multicultural neighborhood just outside of Downtown Detroit. After winning two start-up contests in 2015, Amina’s business started turning a profit in year two. LCD had a loyal client following and Amina was hopeful that LCD would continue growing and expanding. In March 2020, all of that changed when LCD, like all other gyms in Michigan, had to close their doors. In addition to the pandemic, there was social unrest across many states in the country and Amina’s outward support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) did not sit well with some of her customers. Now 9 months later, Amina is wondering how to survive. Many customers have become accustomed to virtual and online fitness classes and some have invested in at-home gyms and fitness equipment. Amina has considered adding on-demand classes, offering more virtual offerings and developing partnerships with other gyms across the country. In the meantime, she has lost 80% of her customers and must figure out how to rebuild.

The intervention of architectural-urban residential heritage in Mar del Plata: an open problem

The handling of heritage, regarding the broad spectrum of real estate it comprises, involves multiple approaches to its safeguarding. In particular, the incorporation of new architecture in existing works, at any scale, represents a current challenge. This dilemma has an extensive background in the history of architecture and urbanism, alongside other associated areas within European and Latin American frameworks. However, in the second decade of the 21st century, the problems related to contemporary contributions in historical architectural and urban frameworks, show an ongoing difficulty to dialogue, giving and resist, or to parley between the surviving legacy and the additions that it will unfailingly receive through time. In this sense, what happened in the city of Mar del Plata regarding the interventions of its picturesque contexts, is of interest. Past and present dynamics, alongside a deficient process of heritage protection, have affected their typical landscapes generated in the first half of the 20th century. Therefore, this article reflects on the evolution of this residential legacy in two characteristic historical neighborhoods, from a mainly qualitative perspective, through the interpretation of primary and secondary sources. Thus, the goal is to analyze the connection between this heritage, its interventions since the beginning of the 21st century, and the local conservation regulations, to begin to understand the pending challenges, and as a result, to formulate possible responses.

Conservation of Beirut’s Urban Heritage Values Through the Historic Urban Landscape Approach

Cities are complex urban systems with dynamic transformations in their socio-economic and environmental dimensions. Several studies have shed light on the fragility of the urban heritage and the strategies of its conservation. The historic urban landscape (HUL) approach is a new framework adopted by UNESCO to deal with urban heritage. This article aims to apply the HUL approach to the rehabilitation and management of Beirut historic neighbourhoods impacted by the massive Beirut port explosion, focusing on Armenia Street in the Mar Mikhael neighbourhood as a case study. The application of the HUL framework allows for the re-evaluation of heritage not as an individual physical form but as an urban fabric interconnected to the city, inclusive of its cultural, social, architectural, and urban layers. The article investigates the application of the four tools identified within HUL recommendations—(1) regulatory systems, (2) community engagement, (3) planning, and (4) financial tools—by proposing implementation strategies in the assessment of urban heritage to mitigate major risks. The result reveals that cooperative efforts among private and public stakeholders can play a vital role in the development of Beirut heritage, acting as catalysts for urban heritage conservation. Strategies for establishing a new legislative framework that is focused on protecting Lebanese cultural heritage and ensuring sustainable adaptation planning are highlighted.

A framework to analyse conflicts between residents and tourists: The case of a historic neighbourhood in Lisbon, Portugal

The coexistence of residents and tourists in historic neighbourhoods, and the increased pressure of nightlife in the same areas, often leads to conflicts. An in-depth analysis of the sources of conflict is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to manage these urban areas. This paper specifically addresses conflicts between tourism and residential life in historic neighbourhoods. A case study was carried out in Bairro Alto, a typical neighbourhood in Lisbon’s historic centre, with a strong identity and historical value, and simultaneously one of Lisbon’s top nightlife districts. For the purpose of conflict analysis six variables were chosen — stakeholders, stakeholders’ interests, stakeholders’ power, conflict between residential and tourism uses, dimensions of the conflict and conflict mitigation. The initial framework was based on interviews carried out with four types of stakeholders: residents; tourists and visitors; business owners and public bodies and local associations. The Progress Triangle tool was used to analyse the data. When applied to conflict analysis in the historic neighbourhood of Bairro Alto, the Progress Triangle tool provided clear identification of three dimensions of conflict: substance, procedure and relationship. The analysis highlighted noise production during night hours in Bairro Alto as one of the main problems and showed that the existing measures to mitigate noise were not working.

A tourism-oriented conservation plan for a historic neighborhood based on urban design qualities: The case of Yazd in Iran

After the inscription of the Historic City of Yazd on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2017, the number of tourists visiting increased. The area is formed of several neighborhoods. This study aims to propose a conservation plan for the oldest, the Shah Abul-Ghasem Neighborhood, using the urban design qualities suggested by Golkar. The study based on a field survey in the neighborhood was carried out in such a way that items related to urban design qualities were photographed and categorized into environmental, functional and aesthetic-experimental components. Proposed measures and recommendations for the development of tourism in the area are presented based on the field survey results.

Empowering the community through participation and action in historic neighbourhood conservation planning

This paper presents an attempt to initiate community empowerment within the participatory neighbourhood upgrading context of the Şengül Hammam Neighbourhood (İstiklal). We adopted the Participatory Action Research methodology, which aims to generate knowledge meaningful for the community towards upgrading and revitalizing the neighbourhood. Respectively, a series of workshops, focus groups, and community activities were implemented in parallel processes with different neighbourhood groups. In order to change the situation in the neighbourhood, the inquiry began by mobilizing neighbourhood stakeholders and planning the future with primary school children. Later, this gained the active support of parents, women, the municipality, local leaders, and civil associations, and led them to take collective action over garbage collection, cleaning up the neighbourhood and building a playground-park. The mayor at the time of the research showed interest in İstiklal but did not or could not give any financial or political support to upgrade the physical setting as a whole. The lack of support from the municipality in that regard and the neighbourhood being left to its own destiny caused a gradual dilapidation and loss of historic and cultural values.

Aplicación de Sistemas de Información Geográfica para el análisis de los Valores del Paisaje en la Zona Metropolitana de Pachuca, Hidalgo, México

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been a very important digital tool for research on Landscape Values in the Metropolitan Area of Pachuca, Hidalgo Mexico, which is fundamental in the doctoral thesis work: The Metropolitan Landscape of Pachuca de Soto, Hidalgo, Mexico. Its revaluation and enhancement through the analysis of its Formal Landscape and Heritage Units. Presented in the postgraduate course in Design, Planning and Conservation of Landscapes and Gardens at the Autonomy Metropolitan University Azcapotzalco Unit. The cartography that served for the analysis of this research was elaborated in the QGIS program, version 3.10, taking into consideration the information published by the National System of Statistical and Geographical Information (INEGI) and by the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity (CONABIO), in addition to the geographical references found in the satellite images that can be consulted in Google Earth. The information derived from this research was also included: historiographic, bibliographic, documentary, cybernetic, historical photography, old cartography, interviews, surveys, contemporary photographs, visits, and tours of the historical neighbourhoods, to be able to comprehensively analyse the area of study.

El refugio cultural festival, graffiti and urban art in the historic centre of Puebla in Mexico

The city of Puebla was put on the UNESCO list of Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1987; its history dates back to the sixteenth century allowing for the preservation of various important buildings, such as churches with baroque and neoclassical facades, buildings from the period known as Novo Hispanics, when some of its historic neighbourhoods were founded, including the Barrio el Refugio, hereinafter referred to as BR, where indigenous people employed in the lime manufacture used to live. Since those times, however, the neighbourhood has become a place with bad reputation, “a den of thieves” (Leicht). The traditional, religious commemoration, the “Fiesta Patronal de la Virgen del Refugio,” is the most important celebration in the neighbourhood. In the Church of La Virgen del Refugio, built in the seventeenth century after an inhabitant painted a mural with the image of the virgin, the “mañanitas” are sung with the Mariachi. During the patronal feast, the “El Refugio Cultural Festival” is held with more than a hundred artists taking part and creating about a thousand murals according to the organiser’s estimation. This happens in the city where a project “Puebla Ciudad Mural” was started, as an initiative of the “Colectivo Tomate,” which sought to regenerate the neighbourhood through art, in alliance with the government and private companies. However, these policies are more tourist oriented rather than benefit the neighbourhood. For this reason, the graffiti movement “Festival Cultural el Refugio” is becoming a meeting point for urban artists from Mexico and Puebla, accustomed to taking up public or private space, as they demand space where they can live and express themselves. For ten years the festival has realised more than one thousand pieces of urban art, including Wild Style graffiti, bombs, stickers, stencil, and murals. All this is done under the patronage of the artists themselves, as three hundred of them come from all over the country to take part in every edition of the festival that does not receive any government support or other form of sponsorship.

Engaging stakeholders in contested urban heritage planning and management

Urban heritage anchors the identity and culture of cities and is a key element in the development of a sense of place. However, when cities experience socio-spatial transformation, urban heritage may be demolished, particularly in historic urban neighbourhoods. Owing to conflicting claims, representations, and discourse, urban heritage often becomes contested—a situation that is usually approached through the engagement of stakeholders in a collaborative planning process. The Dongguan Street precinct in Dalian, China, is an abandoned historical neighbourhood that was scheduled for redevelopment but is now being considered for a level of preservation. It represents an excellent example of contested urban heritage, which will be explored in this research. Through analysis of Dongguan Street stakeholders' perceptions, interests, roles, and interactions in the heritage planning process, the various issues and opportunities pertaining to stakeholder engagement were identified. Strategies are presented to mitigate stakeholder conflicts and support the collaborative planning of urban heritage. The results expand the understanding of stakeholder engagement in contested urban heritage planning and management.

Deadly serious: Humor and the politics of aesthetic transgression

This essay examines the political utility of humor using a framework developed in recent geopolitical scholarship read through Jacques Rancière's theorization of the politics of aesthetics and applied to everyday political life in contemporary Mexico City. Geopolitics here offers a unique lens through which to understand the spatiality of humor and its effects on the aesthetic and affective processes by which urban identities are constructed and contested. Building on roughly 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that humor's subversive potential allows for simultaneous or co-constitutive aesthetic effects, such as the simultaneous disruption of political norms and the genesis of a more inclusive spatial imaginary of urban citizenship. This argument extends previous work on humor by emphasizing the complex, mutable, and multifarious nature of humor effects in practice, perhaps most especially in subversive modes. I demonstrate the strategic political value of humor through the exploration of three ethnographically derived examples: an episode of a popular satirical video series, a newly christened popular saint said to protect residents of an historic neighborhood from gentrification, and a humorous tirade against the city's mayor at a local neighborhood meeting.