From "Spaces of Fear" to "Fearscapes": Mapping for Reframing Theories About the Spatialization of Fear in Urban Space

The article engages with theory about the processes of spatialization of fear in contemporary Western urban space (fortification, privatization, exclusion/seclusion, fragmentation, polarization) and their relation to fear of crime and violence. A threefold taxonomy is outlined (Enclosure, Post-Public Space, Barrier), and “spaces of fear” in the city of Palermo are mapped with the aim of exploring the cumulative large-scale effects of the spatialization of fear on a concrete urban territory. Building on empirical evidence, the author suggests that mainstream theories be reframed as part of a less hegemonic and more discursive approach and that theories mainly based on the analyses of global cities be deprovincialized. The author argues for the deconstruction of the concept of “spaces of fear” in favor of the more discursive concept of “fearscapes” to describe the growing landscapes of fear in contemporary Western cities.

New York City: "gilt cage" or "promised land" ? : representations of urban space in Edith Wharton and Anzia Yezierska

This thesis explores the importance of literary New York City in the urban narratives of Edith Wharton and Anzia Yezierska. It specifically looks at the Empire City of the Progressive Period when the concept of the city was not only a new theme but also very much a typical American one which was as central to the American experience as had been the Western frontier. It could be argued, in fact, that the American city had become the new frontier where modern experiences like urbanization, industrialization, immigration, and also women's emancipation and suffrage, caused all kinds of sensations on the human scale from smoothly lived assimilation and acculturation to deeply felt alienation because of the constantly shifting urban landscape. The developing urban space made possible the emergence of new female literary protagonists like the working girl, the reformer, the prostitute, and the upper class lady dedicating her life to 'conspicuous consumption'. Industrialization opened up city space to female exploration: on the one hand, upper and middle class ladies ventured out of the home because of the many novel urban possibilities, and on the other, lower class and immigrant girls also left their domestic sphere to look for paid jobs outside the home. New York City at the time was not only considered the epicenter of the world at large, it was also a city of great extremes. Everything was constantly in flux: small brownstones made way for ever taller skyscrapers and huge waves of immigrants from Europe pushed native New Yorkers further uptown on the island, adding to the crowdedness and intensity of the urban experience. The city became a polarized urban space with Fifth Avenue representing one end of the spectrum and the Lower East Side the other. Questions of space and the urban home greatly mattered. It has been pointed out that the city setting functions as an ideal means for the display of human nature as well as social processes. Narrative representations of urban space, therefore, provide a similar canvas for a protagonist's journey and development. From widely diverging vantage points both Edith Wharton and Anzia Yezierska thus create a polarized city where domesticity is a primal concern. Looking at all of their New York narratives by close readings of exterior and interior city representations, this thesis shows how urban space greatly affects questions of identity, assimilation, and alienation in literary protagonists who cannot escape the influence of their respective urban settings. Edith Wharton's upper class "millionaire" heroines are framed and contained by the city interiors of "old" New York, making it impossible for them to truly participate in the urban landscape in order to develop outside of their 'Gilt Cages'. On the other side are Anzia Yezierska's struggling "immigrant" protagonists who, against all odds, never give up in their urban context of streets, rooftops, and stoops. Their New York City, while always challenging and perpetually changing, at least allows them perspectives of hope for a 'Promised Land' in the making. Central for both urban narrative approaches is the quest for a home as an architectural structure, a spiritual resting place, and a locus for identity forming. But just as the actual city embraces change, urban protagonists must embrace change also if they desire to find fulfillment and success. That this turns out to be much easier for Anzia Yezierska's driven immigrants rather than for Edith Wharton's well established native New Yorkers is a surprising conclusion to this urban theme.

The incidents of housing policies in the process of nesting the urban space (Buenos Aires, 1870-1999)

This article describes the housing policies displayed historically in B.A. that affected the processes of configuration and of giving hierarchy to the urban space. Since the process of modernization of B.A., at the end of the XIXth century, housing measures, urbanistic projects and political decisions have influenced the building of the city and the space distribution of their inhabitants: in this way, they have integrated some people and excluded others. No wonder, that, historically, popular sectors have established themselves in the South of the city (and in outskirt villages). These zones have been disregarded by the state, which has invested less in these areas. We will see how the connection between state housing policies and the population redistribution in the city, confirms the persistence of a strong process of urban and residential segregation that tends to expel the inhabitants of popular sectors and to attract the ones of the middle-class and high class sectors.

Rearrangement of the urban space in the sector of Saint Victorino and Saint Ines (Bogota) in relation with the dynamics of informality and marginality (1948-2010)

The present article analyze the urban transformations happened in the sector of Saint Victorino and Saint Ines in the city of Bogota D.C. between 1948 and 2010, making use of the "Genealogical Methodology" during the process of inquiry that allow to contrast the visions that are usually accepted of "progress" and "urban renovation" in the urban market context by the existence of a informal economic and a population in conditions of marginality that configures a good part of the "popular urban culture" of the Bogota in the 20th and 21st century. This vision permit to observe from various perspectives the changes that happened in this sector of the city, the impacts of the history facts occurred en this time period and, in special, the real effects of a rearrangement urban process that began in 1998 and has been prolonged to date, which has left a significant mark about the urban and social physiognomy of the place.

Intra-urban space in Brazil

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Characterising the use of urban space: a geochemical case study from Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester, Hampshire, UK) Insula IX during the late first/early second century AD

The geochemical analysis of soil samples from the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester, Hampshire, UK) has been undertaken in order to enhance our understanding of urban occupation during the late first/early second century AD. Samples taken from a variety of occupation deposits within several, contemporary timber buildings, including associated hearths, have been analysed using laboratory-based x-ray fluorescence for a suite of elements (Cu, Zn, Pb, Sr, P and Ca). The patterns of elemental enrichment seen across the site have allowed us to compare and contrast the buildings that were occupied during this time in an attempt to distinguish different uses, such as between domestic and work-space. Two of the buildings stand out as having high concentrations of elements which suggest that they were dirtier work spaces, whilst other buildings appear to be have lower chemical loadings suggesting they were cleaner.

‘This square is our home!’: the organisation of urban space in the spanish 15M movement

Why should a progressive planner/urbanist pay attention to the Spanish 15M movement? From a disciplinary standpoint, its most complex and interesting aspect, which could hypothetically be transferred to other contexts (as in fact happened in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London movements), is its 'spatiality'. This article analyses the spatial practices of the so called #spanishrevolution, one of the 2011 social movements that showed the possibility for a new collective appropriation and self-management (autogestion) of urban public space. Although the political goals of the movement were vague at the time of its inception, the practices and spatial imaginaries deployed by it have become consolidated and proven to be yet another of its more successful facets in promoting the spreading and organisation of the protest, making it a phenomenon that calls for reflection on the part of urban thinkers and planners.

Citizens Interactive Behaviour in the Performance of the Urban Space of Cohabitacion. Interactive Atlas of Urban Habitability

The article shows a range of contemporary phenomena linked with urban space and the increasing citizens? interactivity in the network. The sources for theory and reflection are related to the ongoing research project ?Interactive Atlas of urban habitability" which is based on citizen participation in the sensitive description of the urban environment. It addresses a classification of variables related to the desires of urban habitability.

Air Mines. Urban Space Station

Air Mines The sky over the city's port was the color of a faulty screen, only partly lit up. As the silhouette of nearby buildings became darker, but more clearly visible against the fading blur-filter of a background, the realization came about how persistent a change had been taking place. Slowly, old wooden water reservoirs and rattling HVAC systems stopped being the only inhabitants of roofs. Slightly trembling, milkish jellyfish-translucent air volumes had joined the show in multiples. A few years ago artists and architects seized upon the death of buildings as their life-saving media. Equipped with constructive atlases and instruments they started disemboweling their subjects, poking about their systems, dumping out on the street the battered ugliness of their embarrassing bits and pieces, so rightly hidden by facades and height from everyday view. But, would you believe it? Even ?old ladies?, investment bankers or small children failed to get upset. Of course, old ladies are not what they used to be. It was old ladies themselves that made it happen after years of fights with the town hall, imaginative proposals and factual arguments. An industry with little financial gains but lots of welcome externalities was not, in fact, the ground for investment bankers. But they too had to admit that having otherwise stately buildings make fine particulate pencils with their facades was not the worse that could happen. Yes, making soot pencils had been found an interesting and visible end product of the endeavor, a sort of mining the air for vintage writing tools one can actually touch. The new view from the street did not seem as solid or dignified as that of old, and they hated that the market for Fine Particulates Extraction (FPE, read efpee) had to be applied on a matrix of blocks and streets that prevented undue concentration of the best or worse solutions. It had to be an evenly distributed city policy in order for the city to apply for cleaning casino money. Once the first prototypes had been deployed in buildings siding Garden Avenue or Bulwark Street even fast movers appreciated the sidekick of flower and plant smell dripping down the Urban Space Stations (USS, read use; USSs, read uses) as air and walls cooled off for a few hours after sunset. Enough. It was all nice to remember, but it was now time to go up and start the lightweight afternoon maintenance of their USS. Coop discussions had taken place all through the planning and continued through the construction phase as to how maintenance was going to be organized. Fasters had voted for a pro, pay a small amount and let them use it for rent and produce. In the end some neighbors decided they were slow enough to take care and it was now the turn. Regret came periodically, sometimes a week before, and lasted until work actually started. But lately it had been replaced by anxiety when it needed to be passed over to the next caretaker. It did not look their shift was good enough and couldn?t wait to fix it. Today small preparations needed to be made for a class visit next day from a nearby cook school. They were frequenters. It had not been easy, but it shouldn?t have been that hard. In the end, even the easiest things are hard if they involve a city, buildings and neighbors. On the face of the data, the technicalities and the way final designs had been worked out for adaptation to the different settings, the decision of where to go was self evident, but organization issues and the ever-growing politics of taste in a city of already-gentrified-rodents almost put the project in the frozen orbit of timeless beautiful future possibilities. This is how it was. A series of designs by XClinic and OSS had made it possible to adapt to different building structures, leave in most cases the roof untouched and adapted a new technology of flexing fiberglass tubes that dissipated wind pressure in smooth bending.......

Urban Space Station

Urban Space Station, investigación llevada al cabo en colaboración con X Clinic de la Universidad de Nueva York, que ha tenido como resultado la producción de un prototipo a escala 40% instalado en el Museo Reina Sofia durante la exposición Almas y Maquinas

Urbanization patterns and their impacts on social restructuring of urban space in Chilean mid-cities: The case of Los Angeles, Central Chile

El artículo analiza las relaciones entre los cambios de uso en el territorio rural de la región del Biobío y sus efectos en el crecimiento urbano y demográfico de una ciudad de tamaño medio. En forma específica se estudia el desarrollo de la industria forestal y sus efectos sobre el proceso urbano de Los Angeles.