Urban Quarters Research Articles

Ecological analysis of social risk factors for Rotavirus infections in Berlin, Germany, 2007–2009

BackgroundSocioeconomic factors are increasingly recognised as related to health inequalities in Germany and are also identified as important contributing factors for an increased risk of acquiring infections. The aim of the present study was to describe in an ecological analysis the impact of different social factors on the risk of acquiring infectious diseases in an urban setting. The specific outcome of interest was the distribution of Rotavirus infections, which are a leading cause of acute gastroenteritis among infants and also a burden in the elderly in Germany. The results may help to generate more specific hypothesis for infectious disease transmission.MethodsWe analysed the spatial distribution of hospitalized patients with Rotavirus infections in Berlin, Germany. The association between the small area incidence and different socio-demographic and economic variables was investigated in order to identify spatial relations and risk factors. Our spatial analysis included 447 neighbourhood areas of similar population size in the city of Berlin. We included all laboratory-confirmed cases of patients hospitalized due to Rotavirus infections and notified between 01/01/2007 and 31/12/2009. We excluded travel-associated and nosocomial infections. A spatial Bayesian Poisson regression model was used for the statistical analysis of incidences at neighbourhood level in relation to socio-demographic variables.ResultsAltogether, 2,370 patients fulfilled the case definition. The disease mapping indicates a number of urban quarters to be highly affected by the disease. In the multivariable spatial regression model, two risk factors were identified for infants (<4 year olds): Rotavirus incidence increased by 4.95% for each additional percent of unemployed inhabitants in the neighbourhood (95% credibility interval (CI): 3.10%-6.74%) and by 0.53% for each additional percent of children attending day care in the neighbourhood (95% CI: 0.00%-1.06%). We found no evidence for an association with the proportion of foreign residents, population density, the residential quality of accommodations and resident changes in the neighbourhood.ConclusionsNeighbourhoods with a high unemployment rate and high day care attendance rate appear to be particularly affected by Rotavirus in the population of Berlin. Public health promotion programs should be developed for the affected areas. Due to the ecological study-design, risk pathways on an individual patient level remain to be elucidated.

Understanding Everyday Homes of Urban Communities: The Case of Local Streets (Hawari) of Old Cairo

This paper aims at investigating architectural and urban heritage from the socio-cultural point of view, which stands on the human asset of traditional sites such as the hawari of old Cairo. It analyzes the social practice of everyday life in one of the oldest Cairene hawari, Haret al-Darb al-Asfar. The focus is on architectural and spatial organization of outdoor and indoor spaces that coordinate the spatial practices of local community. A daily monitoring of people’s activities and interviews was conducted in an investigation of how local people perceive their built environment between the house’s interior and the outdoor shared space. It emerges that people construct their own field of private spheres according to complex patterns of daily activities that are not in line with the classical segregation between private and public in Islamic cities. This paper reports that the harah is basically a construct of social spheres that are organized spatially by the flexible development of individual buildings over time and in response to changes in individuals’ needs and capabilities. In order to achieve sustainability in old urban quarters, the paper concludes, the focus should be directed towards the local organization of activities and a comprehensive upgrading of deteriorating buildings to match the changing needs of current population.

REVITALIZING HISTORIC CAIRO: THREE DECADES OF POLICY FAILURE

Historic Cairo holds an impressive record of built heritage, which no other city holds this amount of rich architecture and urban quarters. This gathered worldwide expertise attention plus financial support for safeguarding and developing these populated settlements. This historic district experienced several projects of development through international and local efforts. However, for more than three decades; Historic Cairo was challenged with physical and socio-economic deterioration. Since, the strategic drivers for any developing project are the objectives and policies then it is crucial to stretch our scope of studies toward the formulation and implementation of policies. The aim of this paper is to examine the formulation and implementation of polices within the process of revitalizing Historic Cairo, in order to reveal the major challenges and defects. This study will be addressed through a quantitative, qualitative and narrative analysis of the role and feedback of users, developers, implementers, and professional expertise in the field of revitalizing Historic Cairo. The research will focus on two major and influential case studies - the Gamalia and Darb Al Ahmar quarters - in relation to the social, economic, and physical dimensions of revitalization. The study exposes the improper orientation of polices and directives toward the built heritage, discard of local inhabitants’ needs and rights, and the effect of corruptive administration upon the historic quarters.

The Study of Architectural Theory of Promote Neighborhood Interaction

China's construction sector with foreign research results, the promotion of pro-urban settlements, and launched a multi neighborhood exploration. A lot of researches studied how to increase the neighbors’ intercourses in town residential quarters. For a long time, some representative theories were regarded as the criterions directing or evaluating the design of public space for residents’ intercourses in domestic urban residential quarters. Post occupancy evaluation was a significant part of the perfect design process. In this paper, surrounding the town neighbors’ intercourses, a lot of serious and systemic investigations were done in Kunming, and in addition some evaluations and self questionings were done on these theories.

Impacts of street design parameters on human-biometeorological variables

Abstract in Undetermined This study deals with a current problem of urban human-biometeorology on the micro-scale, which becomes more important due to the future increase of severe summer heat in Central Europe. The impact of street design parameters on the thermal comfort of citizens is analysed in an experimental way for typical summer conditions in Central Europe. The investigation is focused on the behaviour of mean radiant temperature Tmrt and physiologically equivalent temperature PET as the most important human-biometeorological variables for thermal comfort during these atmospheric conditions. To get quantitative results on how they depend on small-scale characteristics of urban street canyons, an investigation design is applied which is based on measurements of relevant meteorological variables - like air temperature Ta - by specific humanbiometeorological measuring systems. They were conducted in selected street canyons within different urban quarters of Freiburg, the warmest city in Germany, from 2007-2009. Tmrt and PET were calculated from the measured meteorological variables by well-tested approaches. The geometry of urban street canyons is characterised by (i) the sky view factor SVF determined from fish-eye photos, (ii) the ratio of building height H to street width W, (iii) the orientation to the sun, and (iv) the fraction of ctc (coverage by the street tree canopy). To eliminate the influence of slightly different weather conditions even on typical summer days, the results are not presented in form of absolute values for the human-biometeorological variables, but in form of ratios for the measured radiative flux densities and in form of differences for the measured and calculated temperatures. As the results for Tmrt and PET should primarily quantify universal patterns of the impact of street design parameters on human thermal comfort, they are only presented as mean values for the period 10-16 CET. The main results obtained from different analyses are: (i) SVF for the southern half of the upper hemisphere (SVF90-270) is more suitable to characterise the sites with respect to the thermal perception of citizens than SVF for the whole upper hemisphere (SVF1-360), (ii) in contrast to wide E-W oriented street canyons, narrow E-W oriented street canyons have larger spatial differences in Ta, Tmrt and PET, (iii) with respect to the orientation, these differences are larger in E-W than in N-S oriented street canyons, and (iv) an increase of ctc by 10 % leads to a decrease of Ta by only 0.2 °C, but to a reduction of Tmrt by 3.6 °C and of PET by 1.4 °C. (Less)

Neue Heimat: Unternehmenspolitik und Unternehmensentwicklung im gewerkschaftlichen Wohnungs- und Stadtebau 1950-1982

The history of Neue Heimat (NH) has something gigantic about it: during the 1950s and 1960s it was Germany's largest housing company; no one built and rented out more flats. NH, owned by the trade unions, was thus part of the process of modernization during postwar reconstruction, a subject recently much discussed by contemporary historians. But the company was much more than just a producer of low-priced living space: with its architecture and notion of social housing it contributed to the shaping of entire urban quarters and lifestyles. One small example may illustrate this: in 1959, at a time when East German refugees were still supposed to be accommodated in NH facilities, Heinrich Plett, managing director of NH Hamburg, remarked that, on the one hand, these people required a high amount of care and welfare by both local and federal authorities. But on the other hand, the antisocial part among them should be treated equally to the antisocial locals, which meant that they were to be kept in simple, cramped accommodation until they should come to their senses and start to lead an orderly life. As a matter of fact, trade union housing policy was never purely market economy-oriented, but also had a social and political and, one might say, disciplinary role from the start.

The raptors (Falconiformes) of Kharkov city: features of ecology and interspecific relations

Twelve species of raptors from the families of Accipitridae and Falconidae were registered in the Kharkov city and its suburb; among them 8 species were registered during breeding season. Peregrine falcon, Goshawk, Sparrowhawk and Merlin spend the winter in the city regularly. Most common breeding raptors in the city are Common Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and Goshawk. These species prefer urban quarters for the hunting even near agriculture landscapes. The raptors find rich forage reserve within the limits of the city, mainly synanthropic birds and rodents. It has been ascertained that activity time of birds is a niche difference. Decrease of interference competition and antagonism between different species and age/sex groups of raptors is the result of the difference in the tactics and the time of hunting as well as the selectivity of prey.

Landscaping in reducing traffic noise problem in cities: Ankara case

Cities have been getting overloaded due to the intense immigrations to urban areas and the population growth as a result of them, requiring new equipments and services, as the present infrastructure is insufficient. Besides, a host of problems arise in transportation and traffic infrastructure along with the corruption emerging in urban quarters as a result of socio-economical and technological changes. In big cities, ring roads aimed to increase the speed and capacity of transportation and highways reducing the transportation time between cities have been creating negative impacts as well as leading to facilities in terms of service functions, causing visual and audial pollution in urban areas. In this article, definitions regarding noise and its sources have been made and the precautions to be taken against noise have been mentioned earlier with the adverse effects of noise. Landscape design approaches and suggestions concerning the kinds to be used, which are peculiar to Ankara, have been developed, discussing the role and the function of plant material in reducing the noise of the traffic. Key words: Ankara, landscaping, landscape design, plant material, noise.

A Model for Measuring the Sustainability Level of Historic Urban Quarters

The main aim of this paper is to propose a model for measuring the sustainability level of historic urban quarters and to indicate an appropriate strategy for their revitalization. Based on this aim, this study first presents the theoretical review on the concept of “revitalization”, and its relationship with sustainability; next, it introduces the characteristics, role, selection process and scaling method of sustainability indicators, which are essential for measuring the level of sustainability. The paper then, as the main contribution of this paper, proposes the model for measuring the level of sustainability in historic urban quarters and determines some proposals to achieve revitalized and sustainable historic urban quarters. Depending on the proposed model, there is a direct relationship between type and the level of obsolescence (revitalization) and the level of sustainability in the physical, economic and social structures of a particular area. Therefore, when the level of sustainability is high in any one of these three structures, it means that the level of obsolescence is low in the same structures of an historic urban quarter. The result of this paper leads us to say that, the level of sustainability is a new (additional) input in the strategic planning process of revitalization and sustainable urban revitalization of historic urban quarters. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief summary on the general arguments of the paper.

BİYOETİK BİR MİRAS GELENEKSEL YERLEŞİM BİÇİMLERİNDE BİYOETİK DEĞERLER

This article deals with the relationship between bioethics and the protection of the cultural and natural heritage. Bioethics, which deals with values related to all living organisms and their universe, has strong associations with environmental ethics; it can also be considered as the ‘common heritage of mankind’. Within this scope, the article examines some examples of ancient societies in the world, followed by an appraisal of aspects of traditional settlement in Anatolia, such as settlement fabric, neighborhood structure, construction material and techniques, to identify their positive attributes in terms of functionality, health, social relations, adaptation to natural conditions and interaction with other living beings. It is possible to make use of these qualities to improve the bioethical nature of our contemporary living patterns. Since the early twentieth century, there have been various attempts of such adaptations in Turkey, ranging from the conservation of historic urban quarters, and the sustenance of the traditional neighborhood unit, to contemporary design that references traditional architectural elements. However, these efforts are still in great need of being embraced at a broader societal level.

Distribution patterns of the creative class in Hamburg: 'openness to diversity' as a driving force for socio-spatial differentiation?

In urban and regional research, planning practice, and urban policy, the spatial distribution of creativity and openness to diversity is increasingly receiving attention. However, to date, there have been few empirical findings concerning the local distribution of these dimensions of socio-spatial differentiation hardly. Using the example of Hamburg, Germany, we try to measure the socio-spatial distribution of these dimensions by secondary data analysis and analyze the patterns of segregation. The socio-spatial development in Hamburg's neighbourhoods in the recent years is analyzed in order to address the issue of whether urban quarters that are very open to diversity in lifestyles show tendencies of revaluation. Our findings show that the socio-cultural symbols of the creative class do play an important role for the socio-spatial structure of the city today, but that a high rate of openness to diversity does not entail improvements in socio-spatial development.

A Roman Cult in the Italian Countryside?

The Roman religious festival of the Compitalia (‘cross-roads festival’) was celebrated in both city and countryside. It is generally assumed that it originated as a rural cult which was later incorporated in the city, where it became the principal festival of the vici or urban quarters. In this paper it will be argued that the spread of the Compitalia might have been in the opposite direction; in this view the Compitalia, a Roman urban festival with administrative aspects, was spread outside Rome alongside Roman influence. It is not known where the Compitalia were celebrated in the countryside. It will be suggested that ancient ‘Italic’ sanctuaries have been re-used for celebrating the Roman rite of the Compitalia, apparently by now functioning within a Roman administrative and religious system.

Numerical simulation of the thermal environment of urban street canyon and a design strategy

The thermal environment of urban street canyons is closely related to design factors. By establishing a dynamic model of street canyons numerical simulations of temperature fields for typical street canyons are conducted. Through numerical analysis the influence of the most common variables related to environment in China’s urban residential quarters is compared and contrasted. Environmental factors include the height-width ratio of the street canyon, ground paving materials, canyon directions, and facades of buildings on canyon sides. Simulation results reveal how these factors influence the street canyon thermal environment. Results also give the recommended optimal height-width ratios for urban street canyons and question and revise some design ideas prevalent in China today.

Human thermal comfort in summer within an urban street canyon in Central Europe

Regional climate models predict an intensification of extreme heat waves in Central Europe. Against this background, the significance of human-biometeorologically orientated urban planning strategies is increasing by which the impairment of thermal comfort for people in cities in the future can be minimised. Such strategies require quantitative information on factors determining human thermal comfort within different urban quarters. With respect to these problems, the joint research project KLIMES funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research was initiated. Its methodical approaches and objectives are presented in this article. One part of KLIMES are experimental investigations on human thermal comfort within different urban street canyons, whose variable arrangement generally characterises urban quarters. The investigations are conducted in Freiburg (SW Germany). The experimental design and the concept to analyse the measured data related to the objectives of KLIMES are exemplarily explained based on investigations in the Rieselfeld quarter on a typical summer day in 2007. The internationally well-known physiologically equivalent temperature PET is used as thermal index to quantify the perception of the thermal conditions by a collective of people within cities. During typical summer weather in Central Europe, PET is strongly influenced by the radiation heat, which is parameterised by the mean radiant temperature T mrt. Therefore, the short- and long-wave radiation flux densities from the three-dimensional surroundings of a standardised standing person representing mean properties of a collective of people in cities are analysed in detail. For the specific conditions at the stationary site Rieselfeld (NW-SE oriented urban street canyon, H/W = 0.49, SVF = 0.51, SW oriented sidewalk), the contribution of the total long-wave radiation flux density absorbed by a standing person to T mrt increased during the day from about 70% in the morning to about 90% in the evening before sunset.

Kommunikative Sozialstile und Codeswitching im Raï. Transkulturelle Passagen

The approach of »communicative social styles« in urban sociolinguistics has turned out to be fruitful in analyzing the language choice of multilingual subjects, in order to identify their attitudes towards languages and the groups of speakers and cultures with which/whom they are in contact, including the relations between migrants’ homelands and the host country in urban or suburban quarters. One major interest is the investigation of code switching phenomena in both everyday communication and aesthetic cultural productions, such as HipHop. These phenomena show strategies related to the affirmation of interstitial identities.

CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF TILE GLAZE AS POTENTIAL SOURCE OF SOIL CONTAMINATION

The paper deals with the chemical composition of coloured glaze of 16 tiles from restored furnace of Biržai castle. It demonstrates that glaze is enriched with different elements compared to soil and therefore can be one of the multiple contamination sources of soil, especially in the old urban quarters. High variability of element contents in glaze is predetermined by its colour. However, Bi, Sb, Ag, Pb, Sn, Cu are elements-indicators of coloured glaze chemical composition. 1 g of coloured glaze added to 1 kg of soil causes at least medium level of local contamination.

Changing American home life: trends in domestic leisure and storage among middle-class families

This study of middle-class American families draws on ethnography and urban economic history, focusing on patterns of leisure time and household consumption and clutter. We trace how residential life evolved historically from cramped urban quarters into contemporary middle-class residences and examine how busy working families use house spaces. Our ethnographic sample consists of 24 Los Angeles families in which both parents work full time, have young children, and own their homes. Formal datasets include systematically timed family uses of home spaces, a large digital archive of photographs, and family-narrated video home tours. This analysis highlights a salient home-storage crisis, a marked shift in the uses of yards and garages, and the dissolution of outdoor leisure for busy working parents.

沿道囲み型住宅の面的展開による都市空間形成 : 住宅地開発事業における設計指針の策定と運用

A proper type of building is essential to create a good urban form. Perimeter-shape blocks have been accepted in Western cities. Despite the general quality as urban architecture, they have never been common in Japanese cities partly because they face other than south and stand adjacent streets. The weakness can be overcome and turned to be valuable quality by cooperative design of buildings, streets and blocks. The case is on Makuhari Baytown, a newly developed 8900-unit residential district in Chiba coastal area, which completed urban quarters of housing blocks with street wall and courtyard. This paper discusses the practice of block architecture based on the Design Guidelines.

Revitalizing historic urban quarters: A model for determining the most relevant strategic approach

ABSTRACT For a couple of decades now revitalization of historic urban quarters has become popular throughout the world especially in many European cities. In some cases the positive transformation of these valuable places has not been achieved. However, there have been some success stories. The aim of this paper is to question the background of these differences and try to reach a proposal of a model for the determination of the most appropriate strategic approach for their revitalization. The method, which is employed in this paper, rests upon a thorough literature survey, which has conveyed an understanding of the revitalization rationale. The validity of the proposed model has been examined on many different examples of revitalization projects in European cities.

Übernahmegerüchte. Klassifikationskämpfe zwischen türkischen Aufsteigern und ihren deutschen Nachbarn

In Germany, Turkish entrepreneurs and self-assured representatives of the migrant population enter the local stages of negotiation about social inequality. The upwardly mobile people of Turkish origin are challenging conceptions of natural privilege widely shared by their autochthonous Neighbours who consider the upper ranks of society as being reserved to them. The analysis of two urban quarters shows significant patterns of classification that arise out of this social constellation: By means of negative classifications, the autochthonous population devaluates successful descendants of Turkish immigrants who appear to be capable of reversing the social stigmatization. A new symbolic order of social inequality is emerging from the ensuing conflicts of classification. The article examines the impact of these interethnic struggles on social integration.