Urban Fieldwork Research Articles

Interiorism as a Means to Go Forward in Designing for the Adaptable City

In the context of the city, we must—especially today—study the types of spaces cities present as public, free and open. With a notion of interiorism, the goals are to explain how urban spaces act as interiors, and why it is important to expose the qualities and characters that compose and define them. The pedagogy mixed with theory and reseach presented in this essay is intended for practitioners and students to gaine new awareness. We worked through a series of local and global urban interior field work research scenarios, a multi-disciplinary reading list of urbanists, sociologists, designers, practitioners, journalists and other critics’ writings that culminated with Sketch Problem/Charrette exercise focusing on a global urban locale. These designs express an forward thinking positive attitude concerning the pandemic and the global spaces that are to be re-adapted.

Urban porosity: a chronicle of spatial inclusion in Matonge, Brussels

ABSTRACT This article explores the concept of porosity as a metaphorical device to investigate the interplay between urban space and urban inclusion. It develops a diachronic case study of Brussels’ so-called “Congolese” or “African” neighbourhood of Matonge, drawing from urban analysis and fieldwork observations. Different historical and current modalities of city-making (including formal plans, urban projects and more “spontaneous” forms of urbanization) are examined in their respective impact on social exclusion and inclusion. This way, the aim is to reflect on the peculiar role of the built environment vis-à-vis socio-cultural diversity and inclusion. It will be argued that the notion of urban porosity allows to shed light on the intricate interplay between the formation of urban form and its subsequent capacity to “include” diverse forms of urban life. The case study of Brussels’ neighbourhood of Matonge thus advances porosity as a qualifier of space in view of urban inclusion.

Trabajo de campo urbano: Una estrategia didáctica de la Geografía para la enseñanza proyectual del paisaje en el ámbito universitario

El objetivo del artículo es analizar el Trabajo de Campo Urbano (TCU) como estrategia didáctica de la asignatura Geografía de la Licenciatura en Planificación y Diseño del Paisaje, carrera de grado de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. En lo metodológico, se examinan el TCU dentro de la trayectoria del Trabajo Final Integrador del curso y testimonios de estudiantes colectados mediante encuestas. Como conclusión, la experiencia permite al alumnado potenciar el conocimiento del paisaje urbano y comprender la relevancia de articular las prácticas y percepciones comunitarias a su abordaje proyectual.

The shape of theatre in the city: A theoretical and methodological approach for analyzing artistic activity in urban space

ABSTRACT This article explores the spatial and social relationship between theatre and the city through the case study of Acre, a mixed peripheral city in Israel. Despite the numerous studies dealing with artistic activity in the city, we still lack a clear, systematic method for understanding art’s role in urban space. This study attempts to overcome this lacuna by suggesting an analytical method for understanding the socio-spatial relations between theatre and the urban space in which it is practiced. The method is based on a juxtaposition of the city’s physical and social structure with the artistic activity of five theatre institutions, and uses super-positioning to combine two research methods: urban research and ethnographic fieldwork. By mapping the artistic activity, it gives shape to an abstract social phenomenon, therefore enabling its spatial analysis. The findings were analyzed according to four spatial categories: enclosure, centrality, axiality, and permeability. In the case study we explored, the artistic activity shape was limited by the city’s physical and social structure and had little effect on its immediate urban surroundings. We nonetheless emphasize the applicability of this methodology to other cities and other fields of art that could produce different shapes and lead to different outcomes.

Mapping old Lagos: digital histories and maps about the past

ABSTRACTAs digital projects continue to grow in popularity, traditional concerns around evidence and argumentation linger. Some of these concerns are very old, such as the consequences of using European sources to write the history of West Africa. In response to this, some scholars have turned to digital platforms to expand the range, analysis, and design of their historical research. New Maps of Old Lagos, for instance, is a web-based collection of cartographic narratives focusing on the history of Lagos. It demonstrates how, with ArcGIS and other mapping tools, European colonial maps can be used in combination with indigenous knowledge as sources to reconstruct local urban spatial patterns in old Lagos. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Yoruba-speaking peoples settled and built towns and cities on West Africa’s Bight of Benin. However, very little evidence of the history of cities like Lagos exists outside of oral traditions passed down through generations, and beneath the uneven settlement of the British colonial city that was built on top of and around it. New Maps deploys archival evidence and urban fieldwork to begin the process of plotting the old city by finding its boundaries, its physical features, and plotting meaningful sites and scenes around Lagos Island. These vignettes are hosted online at newmapsoldlagos.com

The Smart City Conundrum for Social Justice: Youth Perspectives on Digital Technologies and Urban Transformations

This article employs a social justice framing to examine youth perspectives of the smart city. We examine how youth understand the impact of digital technologies on urban transformations and whether their technology skills and digital literacy give them a sense of ownership over the future of their city. Research was conducted within the context of a six-week summer educational program involving seventy-nine youth of color from public high schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The program mixed digital skill building with urban fieldwork to prototype solutions to long-standing urban problems: the sort of problems that smart city policies also seek to change. Our research points to a conundrum for youth. Although they embraced technological innovations, they indicated that digital technologies failed to serve the public or address pressing concerns they identified as problematic within the city: crime, drugs, and homelessness. Instead, in their view, digital technologies delivered the most benefit to private spaces in the home and workplace. Furthermore, the youth did not envision that emergent technologies would improve their neighborhoods or communities but only their employment prospects. This research suggests that the emergent smart city is reproducing actual as well as perceived urban inequities: Wealthy residential neighborhoods and spaces of the new economy become “smart,” but much of the city remains left behind. These patterns create a paradox for youth who invest in digital skills while remaining on the margins of technology-driven, smart urban change. Key Words: digital divide, Philadelphia, smart city, social justice, youth.

Najwa Latif—'Sahabat'

This article describes the emotional power that 'Sahabat', by the Malaysian singer Najwa Latif, came to have for me during fieldwork with the children of refugees and migrants in the city of Kota Kinabalu. The sweet, youthful and optimistic energy of this song helped me to immerse myself in daily fieldwork trips, easing my transition from English-speaking parent to Malay-speaking fieldworker. The song also allowed me to relax and ignore the frustrations of traffic-bound urban fieldwork, as well as to soothe my frustrations with a society that excluded children who had known no other home.

Cargo Culte: La estética del Culto de cargo en el contexto urbano posindustrial de la Ciudad de México

La Ciudad de México ha visto en los últimos veinte años diversas formas de habitar sus espacios públicos, convertidos también en espacios de conflicto por las condiciones geo-políticas imperantes, estos no-sitios han sido poblados por manifestaciones estéticas, todas coincidentes en una gramática visual de la apropiación, el emplazamiento y la acumulación de objetos en desuso, chatarra y demás excedentes de un sistema económico alguna vez promesa de modernidad que nunca llegó. Este proyecto construyó un puente entre estas manifestaciones estéticas urbanas con el fenómeno aparecido durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial en las islas de Oceanía Remota: los cargo cults, mito que incubó los movimientos de independencia en este archipiélago. La investigación abordó éste puente desde el dibujo en la noción de dispositivo: entidad transversal, heurística y autónoma que a partir de una estrategia situacionista generó una taxonomía conformada por 22 láminas de medio tono a la usanza de la ilustración científica, la cual recopiló utilizando la deriva como trabajo de campo diversos ensamblajes callejeros en la ciudad, siendo todos construidos por bricoleurs: creadores anónimos-colectivos. La investigación especula que estos ensamblajes poseen una carga simbólica emancipatoria. Esta tesis contribuye al estudio del dibujo como un dispositivo, que opera como palanca para articular ideas, aprehender el mundo y colaborar en nuevos saberes universales, decoloniales y emancipatorios como posibilidades de afirmación colectiva.

Can art breach boundaries? Segregation and hierarchy at a fringe theatre festival in the Israeli mixed city of Acre

This study explores the relationship between art and urban boundaries using the case study of a fringe theatre festival in the Israeli mixed-city of Acre. While mixed cities today are understood as agglomerations of enclaves, maintained and reinforced by boundaries, urban designers and artists have used art as a culture-led regeneration strategy through which these boundaries may be breached. This study undermines the shared assumption of both fields: that art has the power to breach boundaries, by juxtaposing a city’s artistic activity with its segregation patterns and boundaries. Using super-positioning, the findings of two research methods have been integrated: urban research and ethnographic field work. The article shows that although the artistic activity in question is rooted in an avant-garde radical desire to subvert socioeconomic structures, it actually produces new versions and interpretations of the same segregations and boundaries in both space and society.

Enhancing student employability through urban ecology fieldwork

Students undertook a one-hour urban ecology activity based on the University of Leeds campus. The aims of the session were (1) to help students to link ecological theory to practice and (2) to encourage students to begin to think about and develop an online professional identity. Students were encouraged to tweet throughout the session and were surveyed four weeks after the session to determine if the aims had been met. A majority of students enjoyed the session and saw the links between the theory and practice of ecology. Most students also identified that an online professional identity is important and something that they should be developing. The session highlights that employability and professional development skills can be introduced to students within a subject-specific context early in their degree programme and still highlight the importance of generic transferable skills related to employability.

“Living in a Holy City Is Work”: God’s Work as the Work of Urban Place

This article tackles a gap in our understanding of holy cities by proposing an approach that accommodates both the centrality of these cities in a religious sense and their socioeconomic peripherality from state-capitalist system perspective. Through the combined use of urban survey and ethnographic fieldwork in the case of the holy city of Safed, this article understands “center” and “periphery” not as dichotomous notions but as relational concepts that are mutually constitutive by Avodat Hamakom, a Hebrew-language concept with a double meaning that turns on the two different meanings of the word Makom—that of “place” and one of the many names for God in the Jewish tradition. So the performance of “God’s work” is the work of urban place. Avodat Hamakom strengthens the city as a religious center and simultaneously limits the ability of individuals to enter the labor market, so it brings the city to be a peripheral city in the socioeconomic sense. Adopting a critical way of thinking, this article aims to enrich our understanding of the notion of “work” and its dialectical impact on the construction of urban space.

Mother, grandmother, migrant: Elder translocality and the renegotiation of household roles in Cambodia

This paper explores the participation of elder members of Cambodian households in translocal livelihoods. Based on linked, rural–urban fieldwork rooted in a Phnom Penh garment worker enclave, it highlights three aspects of elder translocality in Cambodia. First, it shows that the logistics of older people’s migrations are not predicated directly on physical mobility or lifecycle, as often assumed in the literature, but that these are merely two amongst a variety of factors that instigate nested, longer and shorter term cycles. Secondly, it explores how older members of migrant households engage agentively in ‘supportive’ migrant roles such as childcare, as opposed to passively complying with the needs of their families. Finally, the paper demonstrates how elder members of translocal households – recognising their changing economic and ecological environment – utilise the performance of these duties as a means of retaining status in a marketising context.

Events and placemaking: the case of the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on the Festival Internacional Cervantino, which represents one of the major cultural events in Latin America. Based on theoretical propositions regarding tourism as an experience, perception of visitors was studied focussing on emotional factors. Urban perception was also addressed, especially where public service failure affected the experience and therefore, the placemaking.Design/methodology/approachA mixed methodology was applied. First, the event experience scale (EES) methodology for visitors’ perception was performed in order to collect data directly from tourists. The relationship between the festival and the visit to heritage resources and attractions was especially highlighted and analysed. Urban field work focussed on expressing the location of the most visited areas during festival days. Public services were also assessed where perception was affected negatively. Interviews were applied to public administration officials and public policy-related documents were collected in order to understand the expectation of visitors, previous to the experience itself. Local perception was also contrasted with the rest of the data.FindingsAttracted by information about the historic and colonial nature of the city, tourists gather massively in Guanajuato during the festival. This event in particular yields in some aspects to a transient placemaking, mainly related to inner perception and the event as such is highly appreciated. It was also found that the foreign figure of Cervantes was incorporated into the intangible heritage discourse of the city and linked to the event itself. However, some urban spaces and services need improvement to consolidate a positive experience of visitors who complain about specific factors such as traffic, accessibility, waste disposal and environmental noise.Social implicationsThe fact that the event has caused some problems in a number of urban aspects suggests that new policies might be proposed in order to fill these gaps, especially by the corresponding government agencies. Another issue relates to the concentration of the economic profits and its lack of distribution, which right now does not contribute to social sustainability, yet the event demands high actions and costs to the city and local people.Originality/valueThe research has been useful to give another point of view to existing surveys and conclusions of the impact of the festival. The application of EES has yielded some improvements that could be made in further applications of the same methodology. Application of EES to assess the impact of events in urban spaces and services can be applied to many other cities that host festivals in their city centres.

Unravelling the geographical palimpsest through fieldwork: discovering a sense of place

ABSTRACTFieldwork enables students to gain a greater understanding of the people and places that they encounter. Urban areas are popular destinations for fieldwork because they present a landscape that is in a continual state of change. Yet, as this article indicates, the past is ever present in the urban landscape as each place can be regarded as a palimpsest, where layers of history, geography, culture and politics co-exist. Through active participation in fieldwork, students have the potential to unravel this palimpsest and discover a deeper sense of that place. The example used here reflects upon urban fieldwork in Barcelona as experienced by a group of undergraduate students who, as they carried out and reflected upon their field work, benefited from gaining a sense of place informed by a range of geographical processes and meanings. The article concludes with a series of suggestions for those embarking on fieldwork and wishing to unravel the geographical palimpsest.

Book review: Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork

Book review: Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork

A Qualitative Approach through The Multi-Sensory Experience of Place in Urban Fieldwork

A Qualitative Approach through The Multi-Sensory Experience of Place in Urban Fieldwork

Navigating the city: gender and positionality in cultural geography research

How is qualitative research in geography performed? What are some considerations relevant to qualitative research in the field? Answering these questions requires reflections on the role of positionality and gender in cultural geography research. This paper explores the various ways that insider/outsider status and gender impact urban fieldwork. In doing so, it demonstrates that the issues confronting researchers are universal regardless of field site or national, personal, or professional position. By outlining challenges and successes from fieldwork in very different contexts and settings—the work of a graduate student in London, England and that of a faculty member in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—this paper shows how a qualitative research methodology is directly impacted by the positions of the researchers and explores universal challenges related to positionality. In particular, we focus on interviews as a method that is central to answering research questions and especially impacted by the personal situations of the researchers.

Estudio histórico-arqueológico de la muralla sureste de Arcos de la Frontera (Cádiz)

Due to the project developed by the technicians of the Municipality of Arcos de la Frontera in order to restore the visible remains of the Medieval wall preserved in the southeastern area of this town, the authors of this paper conducted the archaeological excavation, drawing survey and study of this enclosure. As a result of these analysis have been identified eight constructive periods, grouped into three cycles. With the aim of obtaining a better understanding of this monument, these activities have been completed with the use of written sources, the urban fieldwork, the study of micro-toponymy, the analogy with other architectural elements and, to a lesser extent, with the information provided by the archaeological materials. The results of these analyses make possible to propose a reasonable hypothesis regarding the foundation of the wall and the relationship between its three southeastern gates. The conclusions mean an approach to the urban development of this area of Arcos de la Frontera from al-Andalus times until the late Modern Age.

Encouraging reflexivity in urban geography fieldwork: study abroad experiences in Singapore and Malaysia

Fieldwork in urban geography courses can encourage reflexivity among students regarding the cities they encounter. This article outlines how student reflexivity was encouraged within a new international field research course in Singapore and Malaysia. Drawing on examples from students' field exercises written during an intensive and occasionally emotional field experience and from interviews held after the students' return, I argue that student research journals and reflective field exercises are especially useful in international field courses. Combining modes of writing provides a venue for negotiating and contextualizing unexpected and uncomfortable encounters in the field, and encourages self-reflection for both students and instructors.

Urban fieldwork in geographical education in Levanger, Norway

Despite a long tradition of fieldwork and outdoor education in Norwegian schools, teachers and pupils are not familiar with conducting systematic field studies of modern urban environments. The authors of the present article are convinced that urban fieldwork ought to be included in the teaching syllabus in Norwegian schools, and for several years they have worked on developing urban fieldwork as a part of the study programme in teacher education at Nord-Trøndelag University College (Høgskolen in Nord-Trøndelag or HiNT). The fieldwork element has gradually been expanded, and in recent years pupils from neighbouring primary schools have participated in the programme. The use of ICT has increasingly become an important part of the work in the field as well as in the follow-up phase. Special emphasis has been put on the use of digital stories. The experiences of this work are presented and discussed in the article. In the final section of the article the authors discuss further development of urban fieldwork, paying particular attention to the use of new digital technology and enquiry approaches.