Monumental City Research Articles

Symbolism and meaning in city monuments: a semiotic study

Symbolism and meaning in city monuments: a semiotic study

Culture as a Resilient and Sustainable Strategy in Small Cities

This article studies the recent evolution of five cases of small cities in the interior of Spain that several decades ago invested in culture as a strategy to maintain their populations and increase the quality of life of their inhabitants. These are case studies of differentiated characteristics in which the analysis of their evolution offers important keys for developing cultural policies in any small city in the world. The examples of Allariz, Almagro, Astorga, Puigcerdá and Trujillo allow for the corroboration of how betting on culture as a resilient and sustainable strategy generates positive results for their populations. Allariz, in the province of Ourense, is showing a cultural identity development that emerged as a movement to reject the pollution of the Arnoia River. In Almagro, in the La Mancha province of Ciudad Real, the recovery in 1955 of the only Corral de Comedias preserved since the 17th century allowed for the inauguration in 1979 of the first Almagro Classical Theatre Festival, and from then on, a whole series of restorations and new constructions related to theater and the performing arts, which turned a small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants into the national theater capital. Astorga is a small two-thousand-year-old city in the province of León, which is trying to recover as a living history museum to face the current reality of demographic and economic crises. Puigcerdá, in the province of Girona, the historic capital of Cerdanya, is another small town in which cultural management and production is much larger than it would be corresponding to its demographic size. Lastly, Trujillo, in the Extremadura province of Cáceres, a city of pre-Roman origin known in the 16th century as the birthplace of conquistadors in America such as Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, is another small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants that is committed to creating and maintaining a rich cultural agenda with an important weight for the history and relationship between America and Spain and the recovery of the civil and religious heritage of this small monumental city. These are five enclaves, in summary, that have for years followed a clear strategy of betting on identity and culture to improve the well-being of their inhabitants and the local development of their economy, and which, as this research demonstrates, have made it possible to avoid the biggest problems of the impoverishment and abandonment of other nearby towns with similar characteristics.

Design of Virtual Reality Based Game for Dual Enhancement of City Monuments and Brand Image

The increasing accessibility of Virtual reality (VR) technology presents an opportunity for enhancing human immersion in several domains (Industrial, Social, Media, Cultural heritage, etc.). Moreover, it has huge impact to leverage its interaction and engagement; to un-dominate person on live, work, and diversion. The development of innovative VR-driven method is a sign of evolvement witnessed by the interaction design industry. In this respect, the work presents a complete framework for the design of virtual reality-based game; offering features, mechanisms, and 3D models that facilitate the development of interactive scenes, which reveal of the city’s historic monuments reality. The main research question focuses on empirically establishing the impact of virtual reality on video game design, including its influence on in-game cultural placement and its potential to enhance the retention of legacy game experiences within players’ memories. The results show that the game experience is felt original, enjoyable, and appealing for the user’s target group. Also, participants appreciate the use of VR technologies to explore cultural scenes and product; and to enhance empathy within a virtual experience. Furthermore, our research extends recent studies, proposing a VR-based design methodology, as well as, an assessing process. It guides the creation of visual representation of monuments, artifacts, and culture. Moreover, it improves user’s point of view and knowledge of the place they visit, within playing the WallysCar Crash Team Racing (WCTR) game. Our project intended to achieve a twofold purpose related to the Tunisian context: discovering the popular “Sfax City” with historical and patrimonial monumental heritage, while promoting the local industry creation.

The Reconstruction of Izmir with the Republic and the Representation of the Republic in Izmir City Monuments

Bağımsızlık mücadelesinin varış noktası olarak Cumhuriyet, Türk halkı için 1923 tarihinde bir umut olarak doğmuştur. Cumhuriyet’in ilanı ile yeşeren bu umut tüm yurtta büyük bir coşku ve heyecanla karşılanmıştır. Kurtuluş Savaşı kahramanı, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kurucusu Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’ ün en büyük eserim dediği Cumhuriyet kendisinden sonra aynı heyecan ve coşkuyla bugün hala yaşatılmaktadır. Cumhuriyet’ in ilan edildiği dönemde yurdun içinde bulunduğu zorlu koşullar Anadolu halkının fedakârlığı ve özverisi ile aşılmış, kentlerin yeniden inşası süreci ve savaştan çıkmış olmanın getirdiği sıkıntılar ise yönetimsel kararlılık, milli ekonomi politikaları ile çözüm bulmuştur. Kurtuluş Savaşı’nın gazi kentlerinden biri olan İzmir işgalden bağımsızlığa kavuştuğu günlerde büyük bir yangın ile sınanmış ve yangının sebep olduğu zarar kentin büyük çaplı bir imar sürecini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Ancak bu durum kent halkına Cumhuriyet coşkusundan hiçbir şey kaybettirmemiştir. Kentin dört bir yanında karşılaşılan Cumhuriyet temsili anıtlar bunun en güzel ispatıdır. Bu çalışmada İzmir’in Cumhuriyet ile birlikte yeniden inşa edilme süreci ve şehrin işlek bölgelerinde yer alan anıtların Cumhuriyet temsili konu edilmiş, şehrin yeniden imarı sürecinde değişen mimari üslup ve anıtlara ilişkin değerlendirmeler fotoğraflarla sunulmuştur.

Managing Emergencies for the Safeguarding of Cities of Art in Corrado Ricci's Correspondence: Ravenna, ‘Open City’ without Air Defences (1916–1918)

This paper examines the dramatic events which involved Ravenna and its historical pinewood from 1916, during the First World War. In that terrible year, the centre of the monumental city was for the first time targeted by Austrian bombs, which also threw civilian life into disorder. The emergency also affected Ravenna's ancient pinewood – a unique piece of natural heritage, rich with history – whose survival was threatened because of the decisions and military priorities of the Italian Supreme Command. These events must be seen in the completely new context of the operation to safeguard the Italian artistic and monumental heritage conducted by the state, with the support of the army.

Heritage Education as a Basis for Sustainable Development. The Case of Trujillo, Monfragüe National Park and Villuercas-Ibores-Jara Geopark (Extremadura, Spain)

Tourist activity offers numerous possibilities for socioeconomic growth while promoting the dissemination, recognition, and appreciation of heritage. Nevertheless, tourism based on a mercantilist approach, oriented mainly towards the maximization of economic benefits and the massive attraction of visitors, can pose a threat to the conservation and integrity of heritage assets. In this panorama of vulnerability, heritage education stands as a primary strategy to resolve the tensions between heritage and tourism. Based on this premise, research aimed at stimulating tourism activity committed to education and sustainability is presented. Said study is framed in three counties of the region of Extremadura, selected for being great centers of tourist attraction: the Monfragüe National Park, the Villuercas-Ibores-Jara Geopark, and the monumental city of Trujillo. The results reveal that introducing educational principles is decisive in improving the value and competitiveness of tourist destinations and contributing to regional development. Despite this, the approaches of heritage education are not yet sufficiently integrated into tourism plans, which distances the territories from sustainability.

Investigating morphological changes of a capital city: The case of Ankara

Capital cities have a major role in carrying the symbolic meanings of their countries. Planning decisions and historical periods affect their urban forms and development processes. This research examines the morphological evaluation of Ankara—the capital city of Turkey—and provides an approach to understanding its unique physical structure. Ankara has witnessed strategically important planning periods through its history that are reflected in its urban form. The historical periods affecting the developing process of the capital city are analyzed through a mathematical method called "Space Syntax" which contributes to the field of urban morphology with a quantitative perspective. The analytical framework investigates the changing process of Ankara's unique urban axis and morphological structure. Its different historical periods show that the capital city is constantly changing. Ankara's monumental city axis, which shows its traces since the formation of the city, still exists today. However, this unique axis, which connects the historical core areas of the capital city, has lost its potential today. Due to economic and political demands, the main axis, namely Atatürk Boulevard, has been replaced by a newly formed western artery. Understanding Ankara's forming and changing process will enhance its subsequent development plans. By evaluating a unique capital city from Turkey with a morphological perspective, this research will contribute an approach to future studies.

Watch Them Closely

The method employed in this intervention is an active performance in writing, using the voice of a docent, who guides a small party of the curious, and possibly bewildered, on a walking tour of Auckland’s inner-city monuments. The subject of what gets commissioned, created, and installed under the general heading of a public monument can be placed within the context of the recent and continuing range of disputes and confrontations about monuments—Rhodes in England and South Africa, Civil War statues in the United States, Cook in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article attempts a mediation (not to be misread as a ‘meditation’) of the messages a selection of Auckland’s city monuments send out on a daily basis, subliminal as some of them are. The intention is to carry out a ‘close reading’ of Auckland’s monuments and, hopefully, to alter the wave-length of the light in which the city is bathed.

The symbolism of urban space: socio-cognitive approach (based on the material of Yakutsk)

This article is dedicated to the currently relevant direction in the humanities – the study of city monuments as the tools of commemoration that contribute to the formation of historical and cultural memory in the society. The author classifies the monuments and art objects of Yakutsk by designation, as well as presents the survey results of the citizens on perception of the city’s symbolic space of the city. An overview and analysis of the monuments of Yakutsk demonstrated that they reflect history of the city and the republic, as well as contribute to the formation of sustainable representation of the citizens on the historical events. The most remarkable component in the formation of collective memory and historical identity remains the Memorials of Military Glory. This article reviews an example of the memorial complex “Victory Square” as the major memorial site in the city. It is substantiated by the fact that due to the government’s policy of emphasizing and reconsideration of the role of the Soviet people in victory in the Great Patriotic War, the monument retains its functionality and reminds on the tough years of war experienced by the people. The acquired results indicate that the residents are familiar with the history of their city and support the strengthening of commemorative functions assigned to the monuments. The research is carried out within the framework of project No. 20-011-31324 under the Russian Foundation for Basic Research “The Symbolic Space of Northern Cities of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in the context of Sociopolitical Processes”.

Taking the Land to Make the City: A Bicoastal History of North America by Mary P. Ryan

Reviewed by: Taking the Land to Make the City: A Bicoastal History of North America by Mary P. Ryan Steven L. Driever Taking the Land to Make the City: A Bicoastal History of North America. Mary P. Ryan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. Pp. 438, photographs, maps, footnotes, index. $40.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4773-1783-9. $40.00, eBook, ISBN 978-1-4773-1785-3. Mary P. Ryan expounds on the history of Baltimore and San Francisco through a chronological comparison beginning with the first human occupancy of their sites and surrounding areas and continuing through the 1860s. Ryan has succeeded in breaking new ground in the history of North America by focusing on local sovereignty as the key actor in local, regional, and national affairs. For many centuries before European colonization, fertile ecological zones in and around the Chesapeake and San Francisco Bays supported dense settlements of Native Americans. Ryan thus begins by describing [End Page 129] the natural forces that formed the estuaries and how the Ohlone people east of San Francisco Bay and the Algonquian-speaking tribes beside the Chesapeake exploited their bountiful environments. The Ohlone sustained hundreds of small, autonomous tribelets through hunting and gathering. The Algonquian tribes practiced horticulture and created a complex society, having a hierarchy of settlements that experienced intertribal conflict over territory. Neither people, however, built cities like the great Amerindian cities of Peru or Mexico or intensely exploited the sites of modern Baltimore and San Francisco. The taking of Native lands begins with the English arriving on the East Coast. Ryan makes clear that it was not official colonial policy but rather the arrival of Englishmen intent on enclosing land into farms and plantations that initially disrupted Indian territory. Soon, however, the taking was officially sanctioned on the grounds that the indigenous peoples were not "Christian People" and had not established permanent settlements and farms. Ryan attributes the seed for colonial Baltimore to Presbyterian Pennsylvania merchants who wanted to construct a port at the mouth of the Patapsco River to facilitate trade with the Caribbean and across the Atlantic. A town would be necessary to house the port's workforce, and, starting in 1745, Baltimore would grow along streets with adjacent land being divided into tidy lots that could be bought and sold repeatedly. Large landowners prospered while small leaseholders lived in small row houses, and most residents were propertyless. Receiving little help from Maryland's state legislature, Baltimore formed its own institutions to meet its most pressing needs. According to Ryan, the Spaniards, noted for their urban planning, merely cleared the land of Ohlone settlements and established a mission and presidio on the San Francisco Peninsula. The mission failed due to measles epidemics, venereal disease, and brutal punishments of recalcitrant Indians. The presidio was abandoned on Mexico's independence in 1821. The environment was permanently altered by invading plant and animal species introduced as the Mexican settlers began to convert the land to support the production of hides and tallow for export from ranchos. The second part of Ryan's book zooms down to the scale of streets and houses. We learn that Baltimore Town officially became the City of Baltimore in 1796 and witnessed local elites gradually transforming "mob town" into "monumental city," a civic-spirited community that [End Page 130] attracted enough immigrants to make Baltimore the third largest US city by the 1830s. Ryan argues that it was the process of street making that taught the Baltimoreans how to collaborate, leading to other city improvements such as building elaborate monuments, providing street lighting, extending wharves into the bay, and so on. Ryan avers that the benefits of active citizenship, unfortunately, were not extended to African Americans despite almost all of them in Baltimore being free. In Alta California local authority overrode Mexico's central authority. The secularization of the mission lands benefited leading Californios, while the displaced Indians became a servile labor force on their ranchos. The site of present-day San Francisco began development in the 1830s as an "anchorage" in the small Port of Yerba Buena on the northeastern corner of the peninsula and as the pueblo of Dolores to the south...

ЧЕРТЫ ТРАГИЧЕСКОГО ГУМАНИЗМА В МОНУМЕНТАЛЬНОМ ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ 1940-Х ГГ.

The theme of immortality as eternal life, which took an important place in the art of the period of the Great Patriotic War / World War II, was most fully expressed in the projects of memorial architecture. The competitions for projects of city centers, monuments and memorials, which were already widely held in those years, became a noticeable phenomenon of artistic life, and the graphic works themselves show that the very content of the concepts of memory and remembrance during the war years underwent significant changes. The attitude to memory becomes an essential dimension of the concept of memoriality; with the saturation of memory by symbols, a new interaction of the perceiving, experiencing and interpreting consciousness appears. That is how the mythologeme of Return is realized and the cultural tissues damaged by the revolution are regenerated. The study of the archetypal concepts of Life, Death, and Immortality in architecture, the visual arts in connection with similar phenomena in journalism and wartime poetry, allows one to understand how the return to lost values is reflected in artistic imagery, affects the cultural climate of the era, endows it with the features of tragic humanism

Memorial narratives and symbolic images as a resource for the development of Northern urban space

The article is devoted to the identification of symbolic markers and perception of the cognitive model of the space of the northern cities of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The definition of “northern cities” is constructed based on the results of a study to identify various aspects of identity (national, territorial, ethnocultural) and is used by the authors when defining all cities of Yakutia. The main tools for constructing and regulating the cognitive map of a city are city monuments associated with historical memory and acting as components of state policy and a nation-building tool. The main research methods were historical and cognitive analysis and the method of questionnaire survey. The novelty of the article is a cross-cultural study of the perception of urban monuments as symbolic markers of urban space. The authors observe a difference in the perception of the symbolism of urban space between generational groups. It is concluded that each city, depending on its geographical and economic location, local characteristics, and national identity, has its own specific set of symbolic markers in the cognitive map of the city. The findings will contribute to the systematic study of the value attitudes of residents of modern Russian cities. Multilevel models of symbolic images associated with both national and territorial identities are being built.

Patrimonio cultural como factor de desarrollo territorial resiliente en áreas rurales. El caso de Mértola (Portugal)

Cultural heritage is currently considered to be a basic cornerstone of urban -territorial development within areas in possession of a valuable historical legacy. Thus, the recent blossoming of cultural tourism has favoured the proliferation of research on how this process contributes to the social, economic and cultural well -being of the inhabitants of said cultural heritage sites, mainly centring on major monumental cities though, more recently, on medium -sized historical cities. This work aims at assessing the effect of valorisation of cultural heritage in a rural area far from the major tourist attractions in Portugal and covering an area consisting of many different sites, in the area of Mertola). Through combined case analysis, with territorial cartography and data management, this work examines how the enhancement and diffusion of certain heritage elements professionally developed toward sustainable cultural tourism may activate resilient processes in remote heritage destinations.

The Bouleuterion and its environs in Early Imperial Aphrodisias

Research on the remains of the monumental city center of Aphrodisias has been ongoing for over a century. After an Italian mission began here in 1937,1 work was intensified from 1961 under the direction of K. T. Erim of New York University and has continued since 1990 under R. R. R. Smith.2 While many of the projects have yielded results for the High Imperial, late-antique and Byzantine periods, our knowledge of the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial monuments outside the temple area remains scant. The layout of urban spaces such as the Agora or the “South Pool Complex” is owed to the Early Imperial period and mostly saw only minor changes.3 But while the general urban plan persisted, the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial buildings were often replaced or remodelled as the urban space was transformed. This is particularly true for the area north of the Agora and south of the Temple of Aphrodite (fig. 1). This paper intends to re-assess our evidence for the function of this space in the Early Imperial period.

The Ways of Providing Modernization of Historic Preservation Activity in Kyiv

The main objective of the study is to provide a scientific understanding of the problem situation in the sphere of the immovable cultural heritage of Kyiv protection during the last decade and to find ways of its solving. The methodology is based on the use of general scientific and special methods, in particular, the historical method in a systematic approach, when the object of study is considered in development, as well as a comparative method, analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction. The scientific novelty of the research is that for the first time the existing situation in the sphere of protection of the immovable cultural heritage in the capital of Ukraine in the first decades of the ХХІ century, its causes and consequences were analyzed. On this basis, possible ways of ensuring the modernization of historic preservation activities in Kyiv are outlined. The findings and conclusions of the study. The modernization of historic preservation activities in Kyiv requires the renovation of the legislative framework and improvement of administration in this area. It demands the provision of the specialists with the necessary qualifications and the need for the operational development and approval of the necessary scientific, design and urban planning documentation for the city, as well as the provision for repair and maintenance works, restoration works on specific city monuments.

Inhabited Pasts: Monuments, Authority, and People in Delhi, 1912–1970s

This article considers the relationship between the official, legislated claims of heritage conservation in India and the wide range of episodic and transitory inhabitations that have animated and transformed the monumental remains of the city, or rather cities, of Delhi. Delhi presents a spectrum of monumental structures that appear variously to either exist in splendid isolation from the rush of everyday urban life or to peek out amidst a palimpsest of unplanned, urban fabric. The repeated attempts of the state archaeological authorities to disambiguate heritage from the quotidian life of the city was frustrated by bureaucratic lapses, casual social occupations, and deliberate challenges. The monuments offered structural and spatial canvases for lives within the city, providing shelter, solitude, and the possibility of privacy, as well as devotional and commercial opportunity. The dominant comportment of the city's monuments during the twentieth century was a hybrid monumentality, in which the jealous, legislated custody of the state became anxious, ossified, and ineffectual. An acknowledgement and acceptance of the hybridity of Delhi's monuments offers an opportunity to reorient understandings of urban heritage.

First-time versus repeat visitors’ behavior patterns: a GPS analysis

Past research conducted on visitors' behavior has highlighted the differences between first-time and repeat visitors in urban and natural settings. To determine whether these differences also exist in a monumental city, we have studied visitor behavior in the historic city of Girona (Spain). Data from 1288 GPS tracking were recorded. Of these, 928 were first-time visitors, and the remaining 360 corresponded to repeat visitors. Findings show that there is very little difference in how first-time and repeat visitors act, compared to visitor behavior in other types of tourist destinations. Nevertheless, the results do demonstrate differences between low frequency visitors (between 1 and 4 visits) and high frequency visitors (more than 4 visits). These results suggest that sightseeing creates very homogeneous behavior pattern between first-time and repeat visitors, and highlight the need to differentiate repeat visitors according to the number of visits done in the monumental city.

Urban planning and tourism in European cities

ABSTRACTThis special issue bridges the existing gap in the tourism and urban literature regarding planning and tourism in European cities and investigates the interrelationship between urban planning and tourism and its evolvement and transition over time. It includes nine articles that focus on different cases of urban planning and tourism in European cities. All the cities presented in this special issue function as capital cities, therefore they were designed and planned to represent the nation to itself and to the world for incoming tourists. As a result, all those cities are endowed with monumental city planning and architecture, they have abundance of cultural institutions and monuments thus raising questions about the choice and type of the representation of heritage arise. In addition of being capitals, those cities are also places where ordinary people live and with the growing intensity and volume of tourism, questions of social and economic carrying capacity arises; some of the articles reflect on those growing concerns. The cities chosen to this special issue are: Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague, Budapest, Skopje (and several additional cities in Macedonia). Those cities represent a balanced geographic distribution of cities in the European continent from East to West and North to South.

Visibility and perception analysis of city monuments: The case of Bratislava city centre (Slovakia)

Abstract City monuments attract tourists, especially at places with efficient viewpoints. The conditions of visibility of eight historical monuments in the city of Bratislava were evaluated using GIS on a 3D landscape, employing the criteria of distance, impressiveness, size and the number of visible monuments. The visual quality of 15 selected viewpoints was verified by surveying more than 300 respondents about their views of the monuments from similar locations. These approaches allow us to assess the conformity of visual quality analysis conducted in objective and subjective ways. The most attractive viewpoints ranked by observers were remote from the historic town and provided views of several monuments, as well as a comprehensive panoramic view of the centre of Bratislava. The approaches to assessing visual quality analysis presented in this study represent a comprehensive way of defining and verifying which places are the best for effective sightseeing of a city’s monuments.

Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein

Reviewed by: Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein Susan Ellison Daniel M. Goldstein, Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 352 pp. Massive street markets such as Cochabamba, Bolivia's Cancha1 sit at the crossroads of significant socio-economic transformations that have occurred in cities throughout the "Majority World"2 in recent decades. Tightly packed with fixed stalls and congested with itinerant vendors, these marketplaces stand as avatars for larger debates about the relationship between informality and illegality, physical and economic insecurity, and urban planning and modernization projects. In the Andes, anthropologists and historians have long been fascinated by the lives of indigenous market women who endure, subvert, and even thrive amidst colonial administration schemes, degrading racial ideologies, rapid urbanization, and neoliberalism's demand for a "flexible," entrepreneurial labor force (see for example Babb 1998; Harris, Larson, and Tandeter 1995; Seligmann 2004; Weismantel 2001). More recently, Andean anthropologists have turned their attention to the indigenous Aymara intermediaries who travel to Chilean ports and Chinese factories, forging trade and kinship networks that facilitate the often quasi-legal importation of electronics, used clothing, and autos chutos (contraband vehicles). As Daniel M. Goldstein reveals in his absorbing book, Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City, there is no monolithic category of "urban poor," nor "informal trader." Instead, markets like the Cancha reflect the enormous wealth and status inequalities accruing in Bolivia's so-called "informal" sector, and the analytic limits of categories such as informality and illegality for understanding these lived realities. In 37 punchy chapters—none more than nine pages long, and some as short as five—Goldstein tackles three major themes: 1) the intersecting Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 2, p. 537–542, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2017 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of The George Washington University. All rights reserved. [End Page 537] relationship between informality and insecurity, and in particular, the role of neoliberal governance in producing both; 2) research collaborations and engaged anthropology; and finally, 3) academic writing and its audiences. At the heart of the book are two men who represent two different groups of merchants working in the Cancha. The first is Don Rafo, a trade union leader (dirigente) directing an association of market vendors who enjoy quasi-legal status and moderate incomes by virtue of their enrollment into the municipality's licensing system and their fixed market stalls (even if their licensed stalls sell contraband and untaxed items). The second, Don Silvio, leads a nascent union of hyper-marginalized itinerant vendors (ambulantes) whose daily struggle to sell everything from orange juice to toilet paper on Cochabamba's streets is interrupted by the relentless harassment from police (comisarios) who confiscate their merchandise, and the angry owners of fixed stalls (puestos fijos) who see them as direct competition. Goldstein and his research assistant, Nacho, are also key figures in the book, and embody Goldstein's aspirations to enact his ethical and political commitments to a transformative anthropology via close collaboration and accessible writing—as well as the challenges facing such projects. Owners of the Sidewalk expands on Goldstein's long-term interest in neoliberal, "self-help" security: the lynching of suspected thieves amid widespread fear of criminal violence in Cochabamba's marginalized neighborhoods, and the utter contempt many poor Bolivians feel toward the police and related state bureaucracies. Goldstein links pervasive fears over physical insecurity to the experiences of Bolivians working in the unregulated, untaxed, and unregistered "informal" economy—that is, the vast majority of Bolivians, who do not enjoy reliable incomes or benefits. In the process, he confronts the binaries that structure both academic and policy debates surrounding in/formality and il/legality, and disaggregates the category of the urban poor. Goldstein builds on recent anthropological work that rejects such binaries in favor of ethnographic attention to how these categories are mutually constitutive and interpenetrating, a fluidity that characterizes the hawkers of pirated DVDs as much as it does the state agencies that build city monuments on untitled land. By emphasizing the relationship between in/formality, insecurity, and neoliberal governance...