Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT:In contrast to North American cities, numerically named streets are a very rare occurrence in Europe. This article explores the exceptions to this rule by charting the history of street numbering in 10 European countries. The medieval and early modern 'new towns' of New Winchelsea, Mannheim and a section of St Petersburg (Vasilievsky Island) were each designed with grid-plan layouts in which the streets were identified according to an alphanumerical system. Although a range of gridiron plans have been subsequently built across the continent, the newer instances of street numbering are characteristically inconspicuous and peripherally located in suburbs or industrial estates. As a result, most European cases of street numbering play a limited role in constituting the broader urban fabric of the streetscape, with the exception of cities such as Milton Keynes that conform more to the North American model. The relative absence of street-numbering plans in European cities can largely be explained by the much longer history of urbanism in Europe compared to North America and, above all else, the privileging of the nationalistic-pedagogic imperative to name streets with the aim of instilling historical 'lessons', which has left little room for the use of street numbering as a means of rationalizing the spatial organization of European cities.

Artikkelissa vertailemme Berliinin olympialaisia (1936) ja Saksan jalkapallon MM-kisoja (2006) Guy Debordin ajatuksia soveltaen keskitetyn (media) spektaakkelin erilaisina ja eri aikakausiin sijoittuvina muotoina. Lähestymme ensin mainittua propagandan, jälkimmäistä brändin käsitteen avulla. Tarkastelemme ihmisten toimintaa kaupunkitilassa urheiluspektaakkelien tuottamiseen kytkeytyvien poliittisten ja taloudellisten valtaintressien kautta. Kohdistamme huomiomme erityisesti propaganda- ja brändikoneistojen tapoihin suostutella kaupungeissa liikkuvia ihmisiä odotetun yleisöyden ja esiintyjyyden ideaalirooleihin suunnitelmallisesti organisoidun ja tunteisiin vetoavan urbaanin ympäristön tuottamisen avulla. Esimerkkitapauksemme ovat historiallisesti merkittäviä hetkiä kehityksessä, jossa joukkoviestintä on ohjannut urheilutapahtumien organisointia, esillepanoa ja niihin liittyvää ihmisten tilallista ja affektiivista (joukko)liikuttamista. Argumenttimme perustuvat tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, dokumentaarisiin elokuviin ja havaintoihin Saksan jalkapallon MM-kisojen kisakaupungeista.

AbstractRecent critical scholarship has theorized the urban commons in terms of value regimes and practices not reducible to market logic. Specifically, it views the urban commons as a counter force to greediness, poverty, and other ills of the neoliberal urban era, but it neglects the centrality of "land." We offer a corrective. Based on a study of the commons that is embedded in religious land, this article interrogates the tradition‐rooted ethical maintenance and mundane uses of religious land in the context of urban Thailand. Buddhist temples (wats) show that monastic landlords are aware of religious land's revenue‐generating possibilities, but they resist the temptation to treat it speculatively. Instead, religious land is leased for housing, vending, and farming at a nominal rent, alongside its use for a range of religious and communal purposes. As a faith‐based, non‐Western, and pro‐poor form of urban commons, the wats provide an understudied type of flourishing alternative to the privatized commodification and financialization of urban land. We discuss the advantages (related to the wats' stability and popular, but anti‐radical, appeal) and problems (perils of repressiveness, otherworldliness, instances of corruption, and quasi‐sovereignty from state power) in conceptualizing the land of faith‐based organizations and their ownership and leasing practices as instances of the urban commons.

This introductory review article develops an analytic-conceptual distinction between spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the present-day digitized urban condition. We reject a scholarly techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism dichotomy and argue that this triadic conceptualization can pave the way for a better understanding of the multiple, often contradictory and unpredictable implications of the fast-proceeding digitalization on cities and people who inhabit them. First, we discuss the intensified spectacularization from the perspective of labeling of cities as technologically advanced "smart" spaces and endeavors to enhance the attractiveness and ICT-glamour of urban public spaces. Next, we highlight two acute "ordinary sides" of living in digitally-mediated cities: the contributions of code-based software and digital media infrastructures to the routinized practices of urban life, and the escalation of the perceived standards of what constitutes "the ordinary" in the face of rapid technological change. Thirdly, we shed light on attempts at re-igniting street-level political agency, and the creation of outside-the-mainstream public spheres, via the aid of digital technology. In the end of the article, we consider how variable spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the media city are co-present in the following articles of this Special Issue.

ABSTRACT:The article investigates the linkages between urban transformation and informal verbalizations of everyday spaces among male juveniles from Sörnäinen (a working-class district in Helsinki) in 1900–39. Sörkka lads' biographically and contextually varying uses of slang names mirrored their itineraries across the city in the search of earning and spare-time opportunities. As a simultaneously practical and stylistic street language, the uses of slang both eroded (in uniting bilingual male juvenile groups) and strengthened (as with providers and teachers, working-class girls, upper-class urbanites and rural newcomers) existing socio-spatial boundaries. Unlike in the late nineteenth century Stockholmska slang studied by Pred, openly irreverent toponymic expressions vis-à-vis the hegemonic conceptions of urban space were relatively few in early Helsinki slang.