Urban Ambiances Research Articles

Architectural and urban ambiences system in oasis space: Case of Tolga

Assessing an architectural or urban ambiance remains an uncertainty in the absence of a scale for its measurement and its design. The research, specifically conducted in an oasian space, aims to innovate a pragmatic tool of evaluation and application for the conception of the architectural and urban ambiance perceived on the limits of the places? senses and identity. The investigations, which took place on vernacular sites of great Oasian identity in Tolga, are a collection of subjects? drawings. The ambiance, as a system of a great complexity whose value exceeds the sum of its components, is treated through the verbalization of Kevin Lynch?s mind map and the entropy of Claude Shannon?s communication theory. The analysis checked the periodicity of the appearance, the meanings of the natural identity indicators and those of the built frame on the subjects? drawings. The syntax diagram, result of this research, forms a pragmatic vernacular reference tool for measuring and evaluating the architectural and urban ambiance in oasian space. It is a scale of natural environment, architecture and urban planning indicators, constituting an orientation table for the conception of the oasian city of today and tomorrow.

Perceived Walkability and Respective Urban Determinants: Insights from Bologna and Porto

Walking is undoubtedly a sustainable and healthy mode of transport. However, the decision to walk is influenced by many built environment and streetscape attributes. Specifically, the term walkability is used to describe the extent to which the urban environment is pedestrian-friendly, usually by quantifying multiple built environment attributes at the neighbourhood scale. The present study adopts a qualitative approach to evaluate perceived walkability. Based on a questionnaire (n = 1438) administered in the cities of Bologna and Porto, this paper analyses how respondents perceived and evaluated 19 built environment and streetscape attributes. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was carried out to examine the correlations between the various attributes and to identify the underlying walkability determinants. The analysis indicated that 13 attributes were highly correlated, resulting in four determinants: (i) urban ambiance, which includes land use and street design attributes, such as land use mix, enclosure, transparency, and architectural and landscape diversity; (ii) pedestrian infrastructure, which is related to sidewalk conditions; (iii) street connectivity and proximity to community facilities; and iv) access to other modes of transport. In turn, traffic safety and security were not correlated with perceived walkability in both cities. These findings suggest that specific urban design and pedestrian infrastructure attributes should be highly considered when formulating policies aiming to create more pedestrian-friendly cities, as well as in walkability studies and when developing walkability scores and indexes.

Living the Public Space, Exploring the Urban Ambiances of the Tramway of Constantine, Algeria

Living the Public Space, Exploring the Urban Ambiances of the Tramway of Constantine, Algeria

The Transformation of the ‘Flaneur’ Figure to Bourgeois in Julian Barnes’s Metroland: A Critical Analysis

Charles Baudelaire employs the notion of flaneur as an idle wanderer and a passionate observer of the city life in the context of nineteenth-century Paris. Walter Benjamin in the twentieth century revisits the same notion in a slightly different manner. For Benjamin, flaneur, on the one hand, can be overwhelmed by the phantasmagoria of the city life and can develop a ‘shock experience' and on the other hand, can respond to the stimuli of the urban ambiance and can exhibit instrumental means of thinking to cope with the altered environment. In this circumstance, the latter, as Benjamin argues, is also evocative of the prospect of the flaneur’s conversion into a commodity. Following the argument of Walter Benjamin, the present paper aims to analyze the mobility and transformation of the central character, Christopher, in Julian Barnes’s novel Metroland (1980). This paper also reinforces that the character’s transformation is influenced by the societal structures as propounded by the structural Marxists like Louis Althusser.

Walking experience: Exploring the trilateral interrelation of walkability, temporal perception, and urban ambiance

Walking experience through urban spaces is a frequent daily activity. Thus, planning and designing for walkability become crucial for building up quality of life. Our daily walks around the city are affected by fulfilling the needed psychological contentment that is in turn measured unconsciously by our temporal perception. This contentment is inherent in what we experience in accordance with urban ambiance that goes beyond the spatial attributes of spaces to include their social and sensorial dimensions. Thus, the question here is how walkability of urban routes is affected by urban ambiance and therefore perceived in terms of time. Therefore, this study aims to understate the trilateral interrelation of walkability, temporal perception, and urban ambiance in walkable routes for daily routine use. This work depends on an experimental study where participants are asked to walk along two selected routes. Data-gathering tools rely on documenting the lived experience of the target group via reporting their trips and answering a questionnaire. Pattern analysis demonstrates this trilateral interrelation to clarify the interplay. This study concludes specific qualities of walkable routes for routine use that reduce sense of time, which is highly crucial to be realized in such daily walk journeys.

A Structural Equation Model for Place-based City Love: An Application to Swedish Cities

Recent years have shown an increasing interest in local factors shaping the happiness or attachment of citizens in regard to their daily living environment, sometimes also coined city love or neighborhood love. This new strand of literature—often framed in the context of the “geography of happiness” or the “economics of happiness”—means an extension of quantitative socio-psychological or socio-economic research on determinants of people’s affection for their living environment, including local quality-of-life, sense of community, place-based social capital, attachment to “urban ambiance,” and so on. The present paper conceptualizes the nature and composition of urban characteristics of place attachment and appreciation ( city love) in terms of two constituent factors, viz. city soul (indicators on the perceived intangible attractiveness of the city and its neighborhoods) and city body (indicators reflecting the tangible attractiveness features of the city). This analytical approach will empirically be tested for four Swedish cities. Resident surveys were conducted among a total of 2,573 respondents; the multidimensional relationships between outcome variables and background factors were tested through a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM), which revealed significant effects of Aesthetics, Amenities, Accessibility, Safety and Health, and City Image on place attachment and appreciation (“city love”). A more detailed city level analysis revealed salient place-specific differences. In general, Aesthetics seemed to be the most universal driver for city love, while City Image was the most important factor to contribute to city soul.

Temporal Sections Conceptual Tool: Articulating Space and Time in Representing Urban Ambiances

This article aims to present a new methodological protocol and a representation tool that articulates both space and time in understanding urban ambiances: temporal sections. The elaboration of this conceptual tool is based on a theoretical background dealing with the palimpsest of urban ambiances. The urban palimpsest is a metaphor underlying the dynamic of the formation process of the territory resulting from a temporal, spatial and social stratification that manifests in the lived experience. Combining urban transect, a geographical tool, and stratigraphy, a geological one, temporal sections represent the sensory experience as a palimpsest that integrates the different pasts and projects on the future. This tool provides a very specific way of immersion and opens new realm in constructing a storytelling; it proposes a rereading and writing the ambiance in depth.

Exploring multi-local working: challenges and opportunities for contemporary cities

ABSTRACTAn increasing phenomenon in contemporary cities is to work in multiple places, such as home, offices, and coffee shops, while simultaneously using ICT devices and networks. However, little attention has been paid to the new socio-spatial demands facing city services. This phenomenon has been empirically studied through a comparative case study in the city centre of Helsinki, Finland, by conducting observations of one public library (Library 10) and one coffee shop (Café Köket), as well as semi-structured interviews with the multi-local workers and managers of the two places. This comparative case study shows that multi-local workers with different profiles (age, level of education, contract of employment) and varied socio-spatial working practices use the library and coffee shop for several working purposes, such as individual or collective informal offices, or as temporary workplaces of a larger city network with urban ambiance. Thus, discussion of this phenomenon has shifted to a re-conceptualizing of the third place as well as future visioning of the business model of coffee shops and service concepts of libraries. The results might be useful to managers, architects, planners and policy makers when developing the network of facilities within the cities as well as the multi-functionality of urban spaces.

STUDIES OF VOLUMETRIC RELATION BETWEEN VEGETATION AND BUILDINGS USING LIDAR DATA AND NDVI TO PROPOSE URBAN PARAMETERS

The availability of high-resolution cartographic data is a trigger for the discussion about the quality of urban ambiance, as a result of comparison between indexes of vegetation cover and built area, aiming at the inclusion of new urban parameters in cities' management and planning. This paper aims not only to provide visualization about location and characterization of the vegetation cover but also to the evaluation of its role according to citizens' perception of their value. Pampulha's region, in Belo Horizonte, was adopted as a case study for its high-quality vegetation cover, which has been threatened by the expressive growth of the built-up area. The area is known been projected by Oscar Niemeyer, using as a value the equilibrium between natural and built landscape, what was recently recognized as cultural heritage by UNESCO. Belo Horizonte municipality has the privilege of having LiDAR data of 2007 and 2015, the last one also with high resolution infrared orthophotos. The methodology consisted in mapping the vegetation patches' projections from orthophotos and in calculating their volumes using LiDAR's points, as well as in calculating the buildings' volume using their footprints and heights also from LiDAR data, and comparing their volumetric indexes per block. As indexes classifcation must have references on local culture, in order to defne the scale of "suitability", a research was done interviewing people from the place, using homogeneous areas as spatial units. As the research deals with quantitative approach (volumetric indexes) and qualitative approach (perception of people from the place), it was also important to use an evaluation according to a technical approach, based on comparison of applied indexes from other zones of Belo Horizonte, to present a wider perspective about standards of the relation between building landscape and vegetation. The result is a contribution to support discussions about urban ambiance, based on volumetric values of vegetation and buildings, to be considered in urban parameters in Master Plans.

THE ORIGINS OF OUR “HERE AND NOW”. MODERNISATION AND MUSEOLOGISATION OF THE WARSAW URBAN SPACE DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD

The article contains both description and analysis of the processes which had been creating the urban space of Warsaw during the Interwar period (1918–1939). On the one hand, they include what is regarded as examples and symbols of modernisation (avant-garde architecture, urban planning, as well as a “state-building” monumentalism), on the other – being developed at the same time, and described as today’s terminology allows – the processes of “musealisation” (reconstruction as a conservation method, restoration of a historic urban ambiance of the town). The article also points to the continuity of both the processes in question and the ideas that constitute them, always present at times of an intense search for collective identity and spatial forms in which it is manifested (e.g. at time of the post-war reconstruction in the years 1945–1956, as well as at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries).

Tectonic perspectives for urban ambiance? Towards a tectonic approach to urban design

Urban challenges derived from climate prospects and densification call for a renewed engagement with the question of the liveability of the built environment. Within this context, the economic and technical concept of our cities is an increasingly dominant aspect, whereas the fragile but vital question of ambiance that seemingly signifies our sense of liveability is often suppressed. This requires us, as architects and urban designers, to refine our descriptions of ambiance as an integral part of the technical construction principles applied in the built environment, hereby considering it a continuous space, as suggested in theories of landscape urbanism. By recalling the etymological meaning of tectonics as a contextual joining of aesthetics and technology at the architectural scale, the paper states that this can be understood as a tectonic challenge which crosses the architectural and urban domains. As a result, the potential is opened up to develop further the theory of landscape urbanism by juxtaposing it with tectonic architectural theory. The paper investigates this potential through a combined conceptual and analytical case, studying whether it is possible to define and describe urban ambiances across scale, in relation to the concept of the built environment, when applying an “urban tectonic” perspective.

Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa

ABSTRACTContemporary African societies are regularly depicted as inherently homophobic cultural spaces by Western media. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among self-consciously effeminate fioto men and their so-called ‘normal’ boyfriends in Kinshasa (DRC), this article troubles such monolithic images of ‘African homophobia’. My interlocutors’ deliberately provocative readings of music, video clips, urban painting and street performances bring to the fore surprisingly queer complicities within popular culture. Rather than dis-covering a ‘gay’ subculture hiding in the shadows of the city, this article reveals the possibilities for sexual eccentricity at the surface of urban life and demonstrates how, despite its often moralistic and sometimes violent messages, popular culture is itself always already queer. Moreover, pointing at the usually overlooked homoerotic affordances of urban ambiance as a social field for the accumulation of ‘transgressive capital’, my fioto interlocutors celebrate the proliferation of queer desires in spite of – and, perhaps, because of – everyday performances of homophobia.

Urban ambiances as common ground

The aim of this paper is to point out various arguments which question ambiance as a common ground of everyday urban experience. Such a project involves four major points. First, we have to move beyond the exclusive practical aspects of everyday life and bring the sensory to the forefront. Under such conditions, sensory cultures emerge where feeling and acting come together. Second, we must put common experience into perspective by initiating a dual dynamic s of s ocialising the sensory and sensitising social life. Ambiances involve a complex web comprised of an ‘existential’ dimension (empathy with the ambient world), a ‘contextual’ dimension (degree of presence in the situation), and an ‘interactional’ dimension (forms of sociability expressed in the tonality). Third, we have to initiate a political ecology of ambiances i n order to better understand how ambiances deal with fundamental design and planning issues. Far from being neutral, the notion of ambiance appears to be bound up with the socio-aesthetic strategies underpinning changes to the sensory urban environment of the future. Fourth, we have to question what in situ experience is all about. Three major research pointers enable to address this issue: the embodiment of situated experiences, the porous nature of sensory spaces, and the sensory efficiency of the build environment. Ambiances sensitize urban design as well as social lifeforms.

Sound, Space and Bodies: Building Relations in the Work of Invisible Flock and Atelier Bildraum

In this article, I discuss sounds potential to construct fictional spaces and build relations between bodies using two performance installations as case studies. The first is Invisible Flock’s 105+dB, a site-specific sound work which transports crowd recordings of a soccer match to alternative geographical locations. The second is Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum, an installation performance using live photography, architectural models and ambient sound. By writing through these two works, I question how sound builds relations between bodies and across space as well as questioning the role of site within sound installation works.

Inclusive Aspects of Urban Design: Sociability, Walkability and Overall Ambiance

Urban design is a multifaceted process that interfaces various aspects, extending from community physical activity and health improvement to social and environmental fields. An efficient urban design requires understanding of ideas, paradigms, and research from many dimensions of knowledge, i.e. anthropology, sociology, engineering, architecture, and urban planning. The debate in this paper is based on the fact that the sociability of a society is dependent on its urban design prototype. A systemic urban design increases the opportunity for walkability, sequentially enhancing the probability of real-time social interaction. Such an urban ambiance plays a significant role in human physical and mental well-being and their behaviors. The aspects of urban space, such as sociability, walkability and overall ambiance, are appraised according to the published literature. This paper aims at collecting the already proven specifics in one piece of writing to open up avenues for further research and establish the inclusive aspects of urban design. The literature from the final decade of the 20th century to contemporary works has been considered for this instance. The research concludes that interdisciplinary engagement and participation of the public in decision-making for urban design are necessary. It recommends further exploration of the relationship of sociability, walkability and urban ambiance, and their correlation with human well-being.

Creating ambiances, co‐constructing place: a poetic transect across the city

Debates in cultural geography around ideas of atmospheres have been considerably enriched in recent years by engagement with the literature on ambiances particularly associated with the Centre de recherche sur l'espace sonore et l'environnement urbain (CRESSON). Those working on both atmospheres and ambiances are concerned, among other things, with how places feel. In the ambiances literature, however, there is much greater emphasis on undertaking active interventions with the intention of re‐engineering the feeling of urban spaces. This paper reflects on a collaborative intervention undertaken by a cultural geographer and a professional poet. Methodologically we report on a novel extension to the idea of the urban transect as it has been deployed by scholars at CRESSON. Rather than simply recording the feeling of urban places for later analysis, we develop the use of an arts‐based intervention to actively manipulate urban ambiances in the field. We thus respond to Augoyard’s notion that artists alter ambiances through their creative practice, but we do so in a more democratic manner, asking non‐artists to engage with poetry as a means of remaking the immediate feeling of places. The analysis of this exercise presented here is comprised of both conventional academic and poetic writing. We conclude that the ambiances literature provides a powerful rationale for engaging in more activist collaborations between artists and scholars seeking to improve the feeling of places in partnership with residents.

Parcours sonores dans les ambiances urbaines virtuelles. Application des technologies du moteur de jeux dans l’étude du paysage sonore

The purpose of this research is to develop a tool able to enhance the visual representation of urban environments through the auditory stimuli and dynamic components. Since the sixties, various qualitative studies have been conducted in order to reveal the role of the sonic environment in defining the physical and psychological wellbeing of the city-dwellers. Nevertheless, in urban planning practices and current regulations the sonic environment is often considered in term of pollutant (noise pollution) that need to be treated by applying quantitative approaches such as noise control strategies. The cause of this contradiction can be attributed, among other factors, by the lack of tools able to qualitatively describe the urban ambiances. The innovative technologies tested in this research, such as online location-based services and game engine systems, were used to develop devices able to provide a temporal and multimodal representation of the city. These devices explore the transposition, in a virtual environment, of the soundwalk conceived as an efficient technique for analyzing the sensible forms of the urban environment. The test of these digital tools allowed us to highlight limits and potentialities of the technologies employed.

Filming Urban Ambiance: Videographic Apparatus in William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

Cet article interroge le rôle de la vidéo dans la compréhension de l’urbain et plus précisément, dans ses possibilités de représentation des ambiances urbaines. Dans le cadre d’une lecture des dispositifs vidéographiques mis en œuvre au cœur de certaines recherches urbaines, nous nous intéressons ici au travail de William H. Whyte et de son équipe, et plus spécifiquement à la recherche intitulée The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Cette recherche s’est développée à partir d’un travail de terrain centré sur un enregistrement vidéographique des espaces étudiés. Nous avons choisi d’observer les dispositifs vidéographiques mis en place et de porter attention aux différentes façons dont ceux-ci orientent notre compréhension d’un lieu. Plus qu’une simple illustration visuelle, ces extraits vidéo nous offrent des pistes de compréhension des usages, des temporalités et des ambiances d’un lieu à un moment donné.

Food Products Vending in Street Markets Held in Urban Habitat

This study explores the influence of street markets in urban geodemographic settings and analyzes vending patterns with ethnic values enhancing consumer satisfaction. Interrelationship among urban dwellers, marketplace ambiance, and conventional shopping wisdom of customers and interactive customer relations are also addressed in the study based on empirical survey. Research on street markets is very limited though some studies are available on street vendors with focus on spatial planning, political interventions, and legal rights. This study on street markets contributes significantly to the existing literature in reference to shopping behavior and perceptional values of urban consumers.

The Sensory Fabric of Urban Ambiances

ABSTRACTThe domain of urban ambiances has developed apace over the past twenty years. It was introduced in order to describe and design the sensory fabric of the urban world more effectively. An ambiance can be provisionally defined as a space-time qualified from a sensory perspective. It involves a socio-aesthetic approach that enables us to grasp everyday urban atmospheres. The aim of this article is to highlight the close links between ambiance and perception. We shall seek to demonstrate that one of the key imperatives for the notion of ambiance is a reappraisal of the situational, sensory, and practical character of perception. Three main arguments are developed: ambiance can be characterized as the quality of a situation, as a motor stimulation, and as a sensory background.