Das Designfeld ist im Umbruch. Sowohl die Theorie als auch die Praxis suchen 'neue' Betätigungsfelder und streben nach einem anderen Selbstverständnis. Man will politisches Design machen, will als Akteur gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen wahrgenommen werden, zuweilen wohl gar die neue Leitdisziplin des urbanen Wandels werden. Unter einem erweiterten Designbegriff stellt sich daher die Frage: Was heißt es, im Sinne eines öffentlichen Interesses zu gestalten? Und vielleicht noch mehr: Was heißt es, das öffentliche Interesse selbst zu gestalten? Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen dieser Frage nach und zeigen: Ein solcher Anspruch ist eine Anmaßung - ob es eine wohltuende Anmaßung ist, hängt in erster Linie von der kritischen Hinterfragung der Grundidee ab.Mit Beiträgen von unter anderem Gernot Böhme, Friedrich von Borries, Bazon Brock, Heike Delitz und Jesko Fezer.
"In an era of transatlantic migration, Germans were fascinated by the myth of the frontier. Yet, for many, they were most likely to encounter frontier landscapes of new settlement and the taming of nature not in far-flung landscapes abroad, but on the edges of Germany's many growing cities. Germany's Urban Frontiers is the first book to examine how nineteenth-century notions of progress, community, and nature shaped the changing spaces of German urban peripheries as the walls and boundaries that had so long defined central European cities disappeared. Through a series of local case studies including Leipzig, Oldenburg, and Berlin, Kristin Poling reveals how Germans on the edge of the city confronted not only questions of planning and control, but also their own histories and futures as a community"--
The historic Centre of Genoa, that has suffered a rapid decline in the 1970s and 1980s caused by a severe crisis of port activities, start to find again its cultural and artistic identity thanks to the restoration and the valorization of all forms of movable and immovable cultural heritage, monuments, historical sites and buildings.A series of international events will contribute to regained to the old city the lost political, economic and social importance: the Columbus Expo in 1992; the G8 Summit in 2001 and the Genoa European Capital of Culture in 2004.In these occasions the old harbor, closed to the citizens until the 1992, was renovated in part by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, becoming the area that today we call Expo.This project is only a first step in a path of requalification which must still be concluded: after the Affresco, the urban vision suggested by Renzo Piano to Genoa in 2004, in the 2016 the architect present a second proposal, the BluePrint. The important events that Genoa hosted from 1990 to now were a stepping stone for a series of cultural proposals not only by institutional bodies but also by private or association networks, that invest in artistic initiatives in order to revitalize the peripheral areas of the historic Centre. ; Il centro storico di Genova, che nel corso degli anni settanta e ottanta aveva subito un repentino declino influenzato dalla crisi delle attività portuali, inizia a ritrovare la sua identità culturale e artistica attraverso il recupero e la valorizzazione del suo patrimonio mobile e immobile. Il centro storico riacquisisce l'importanza politica, economica e sociale perduta grazie a una serie di eventi dal respiro mondiale di cui Genova è protagonista: le Colombiadi del 1992, il G8 del 2001, GeNova 2004 Capitale Europea della Cultura. In occasione di tali eventi il Porto Antico, fino agli anni '80 ancora precluso alla cittadinanza, viene in parte rinnovato da Renzo Piano, divenendo quello che oggi conosciamo come Expo. Tale progetto è solo una prima tappa di un percorso di riqualificazione che tuttora deve essere completato: dopo la visione urbanistica che l'Affresco di Piano aveva prospettato nel 2004, nel 2016 l'architetto genovese presenta una seconda proposta, il BluPrint. I grandi eventi che Genova ha ospitato dal 1990 a oggi sono stati, quindi, trampolino di lancio per una serie di proposte culturali non più solo a livello istituzionale ma anche da parte di realtà private o associazionistiche che investono in iniziative a carattere artistico al fine di rivitalizzare le zone periferiche che il centro ancora conserva.
Mobility, as one of the most significant factors in maintaining the quality of life in cities, faces problems such as traffic congestion and environmental pollution. The rapid population growth in urban areas has had an impact on increased traffic, which is why many cities have decided to implement or improve existing intelligent transport systems (ITS) that reduce traffic congestion with more comfortable and safer pedestrian traffic. Although the population in developed and densely populated cities is familiar with multimodal transportation, inadequate urban transport systems and large individual transport in place continue to pose a major threat. The application of appropriate ITS systems manages traffic and mobility management that are present to residents and facilitate access to all forms of transport. The aim of this paper is to explore urban mobility examples of good traffic management practice for the possibility of their application in cities with issues such as traffic jams and accidents, low pedestrian safety, parking problems, etc.
Barry Doyle, University of Huddersfield The pre-history of the NHS remains contentious. Initial social democratic interpretations emphasised the weak finances, poor coordination and barriers to specialist development inherent in the voluntary/municipal system. Barry Doyle's paper explores these topics through case studies of the interwar hospital systems of two of England's largest cities, Leeds and Sheffield. He argues that provision in the big cities was financially sound, increasingly specialised and highly integrated. Moreover, these services were operating at a regional level, and met the needs of large populations. Indeed, the limitations on the system lay more in the narrow remit of council provision than on apparent jealous rivalries between voluntary providers.
Urban poverty is a multi-dimensional problem which has been studied from different perspectives by various researchers. An important way of understanding the magnitude of urban poverty is by exploring the conditions of life in urban slums. More important is to understand the problems and needs of slum women who have the primary responsibility of their families. Any improvement in their status will directly benefit the families as a unit. This paper aims to highlight the perceptions, sufferings and felt needs of urban poor women, based essentially on case studies conducted in a slum of Delhi. A few suggestions for betterment in the quality of life of urban slum dwellers have also been given.
The present study evaluates the feasibility of an adsorbent prepared from Annona squamosa (custard apple) peel, in removing Congo red dye from its aqueous solution. Batch experiments were carried out to study the effect of various parameters like pH (2-8), adsorbent dose (0.005-0.5 g/100mL), contact time (5-120 min), initial dye concentration (25-200 mg/L) and temperature (298-308 K) to determine its effectiveness as an adsorbent. Maximum dye removal attained at pH 2, adsorbent dose 0.1 g/100mL in equilibrium time of 45 min at 308K. Adsorption kinetics using pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order models, and adsorption isotherm using Langmuir and Freundlich models were studied. The adsorption process was found to follow pseudo-second order kinetic model and more favourably described the Langmuir isotherm model. The Gibbs free energy was found to be negative, signifying the spontaneous nature of the adsorption process. Removal of Congo red dye from its aqueous solution by custard apple peel was found to be an endothermic process. The results of the present study suggest that custard apple can be effectively used as an adsorbent to remove Congo red dye from aqueous solution.
In The Other Bostonians, Stephan Thernstrom argues that there has been "a fairly constant migration factor operating throughout American society since the opening of the nineteenth century." Patterns of geographic mobility, according to Thernstrom (1973: 228, 220), "were products of forces that operated in much the same way throughout American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Finding considerable mobility everywhere—both in his own examination of Boston and in studies of other communities—he stressed the similarities among urban areas and postulated an "American pattern." But while the principal finding of his examination of geographic mobility— that there was a great deal of it—remains secure, work done in recent years has rendered less satisfactory the emphasis on inter-urban uniformity. Indianapolis, for example, constitutes a striking exception to Thernstrom's postulations; and when considered in conjunction with the results of other recent studies of urban population movement, the findings for Indiana's capital indicate a need to reevaluate the validity and utility of using the term "pattern" to describe geographic mobility in urban North America.
Carbon pricing is a recurrent theme in debates on climate policy. Discarded at the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, it remained part of deliberations for a climate agreement in subsequent years. As there is still much misunderstanding about the many reasons to implement a global carbon price, ideological resistance against it prospers. Here, we present the main arguments for carbon pricing, to stimulate a fair and well-informed discussion about it. These include considerations that have received little attention so far. We stress that a main reason to use carbon pricing is environmental effectiveness at a relatively low cost, which in turn contributes to enhance social and political acceptability of climate policy. This includes the property that corrected prices stimulate rapid environmental innovations. These arguments are underappreciated in the public debate, where pricing is frequently downplayed and the erroneous view that innovation policies are sufficient is widespread. Carbon pricing and technology policies are, though, largely complementary and thus are both needed for effective climate policy. We also comment on the complementarity of other instruments to carbon pricing. We further discuss distributional consequences of carbon pricing and present suggestions on how to address these. Other political economy issues that receive attention are lobbying, co-benefits, international policy coordination, motivational crowding in/out, and long-term commitment. The overview ends with reflections on implementing a global carbon price, whether through a carbon tax or emissions trading. The discussion goes beyond traditional arguments from environmental economics by including relevant insights from energy research and innovation studies as well.
