Ledroit Park, A Portrait In Black And White: A Study Of Historic Districts, Social Change, And The Process Of Neighborhood Placemaking

This research examines the process of placemaking in LeDroit Park, a residential Washington, DC, neighborhood with a historic district at its core. Unpacking the entwined physical and social evolution of the small community within the context of the Nation’s Capital, this analysis provides insight into the role of urban design and development as well as historic designation on shaping collective identity. Initially planned and designed in 1873 as a gated suburb just beyond the formal L’Enfant-designed city boundary, LeDroit Park was intended as a retreat for middle and upper-class European Americans from the growing density and social diversity of the city. With a mixture of large romantic revival mansions and smaller frame cottages set on grassy plots evocative of an idealized rural village, the physical design was intentionally inwardly-focused. This feeling of refuge was underscored with a physical fence that surrounded the development, intended to prevent African Americans from nearby Howard University and the surrounding neighborhood, from using the community’s private streets to access the City of Washington. Within two decades of its founding, LeDroit Park was incorporated into the District of Columbia, the surrounding fence was demolished, and the neighborhood was racially integrated. Due to increasingly stringent segregation laws and customs in the city, this period of integration lasted less than twenty years, and LeDroit Park developed into an elite African American enclave, using the urban design as a bulwark against the indignities of a segregated city. Throughout the 20th century housing infill and construction increased density, yet the neighborhood never lost the feeling of security derived from the neighborhood plan. Highlighting the architecture and street design, neighbors successfully received historic district designation in 1974 in order to halt campus expansion. After a stalemate that lasted two decades, the neighborhood began another period of transformation, both racial and socio-economic, catalyzed by a multi-pronged investment program led by Howard University. Through interviews with long-term and new community members, this investigation asserts that the 140-year development history, including recent physical interventions, is integral to placemaking, shaping the material character as well as the social identity of residents.

A língua do «pas compris»

Os militares portugueses enviados para as trincheiras da Grande Guerra, pedaços vivos do Portugal rural do princípio do século XX, eram na sua maioria homens analfabetos ou com escassa instrução. A actuação militar em território estrangeiro e inserida num contexto que obrigava à comunicação com tropas de outros países, propiciava o estabelecimento de pontes comunicativas que passavam invariavelmente pela transposição linguística. Todavia, a forma improvisada, inventiva e/ou criativa como os portugueses se expressavam ante soldados e civis franceses, ainda que errónea e por vezes confusa à luz da gramática oficial, não constituiu por si só um obstáculo ao entendimento e à compreensão.

Simone Weil’s questions about God

We can say that the 20th century was not an era for seeking the truth in the first place. Philosophers and others were absorbed with the idea that we cannot know anything for certain. No one is able to claim that something is really true. However, we can find philosophers who were willing to die for the truth. We can discover them in the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Churches. For example, father Pavel Florensky, a Russian philosopher and priest, played an important role in solving the problem of correlation between culture and religion. He died executed by the firing squad at the Solovki Gulag on December 8th, 1937. Another such philosopher was St. Edith Stein. She was martyred equally for the truth of the Catholic Faith and for the truth of Mosaic Faith. Edith Stein was put on a train heading for the East and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz probably on 9th August, 1942. The third person, who died for the truth in those horrible times, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The integrity of his Christian faith and life led him to a concentration camp, where he was hanged on April 9th, 1945. Looking at those great people of European history in the 20th century, we can see some contrasts and similarities to the life and activity of a French thinker – Simone Weil. Simone Weil was looking for the truth all her life. She was Jewish, but she was attracted to Roman Catholicism and sure that the truth is in God. Simone Weil persuades us that it is at the same time possible and impossible to know God, because “Dieu ne peut ętre présent dans la création que sous la forme de l’absence”.

Relatório de estágio realizado na Direcção Regional de Cultura de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo

O relatório de conclusão de Mestrado Integrado em Gestão e Valorização do Património Histórico e Cultural aqui apresentado tem como principal objectivo a descrição e análise das várias actividades realizadas na Direcção Regional de Cultura de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo. Cada actividade descrita neste relatório, esta ligada a diferentes áreas de actuação da Direcção Regional de Cultura de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo. Todos eles foram realizados por mim durante os sete meses de estágio. As várias actividades estão divididas em três pontos: estudo, classificação e reabilitação do património. Este relatório tem inicialmente uma análise sobre gestão e valorização do património, procurando contextualizar as várias actividades desempenhadas durante o estágio. Essa analise mostra a evolução do conceito de património e as apolíticas para a sua protecção e valorização, destacando o contributo do património na evolução económica e cultural dos centros urbanos. ABSTRACT; Report done for the Master Degree in Management and Valorisation of Cultural and Historic Heritage. The report main purpose is to describe and to analyse the internship activities in the Regional Direction of Culture of Lisbon and Tagus Valley, carried out in seven months. The report is structure in three main points: study, classification, and heritage rehabilitation. Begins with the history of the heritage concept since the beginning of the 20th century and follows with the study of the evolution of the protection and valorization politics in Portugal, standing out the contribution of the heritage in the economic and cultural improvement in urban centres. Contextualization of the several activities performed in the internship.

Limpiando el cuerpo y el alma. Higiene y control social en Medellín al iniciar el siglo XX

Este artículo pretende mostrar algunos de los cambios sociales que se dieron en Medellín al finalizar el siglo XIX e iniciar XX, momento en el que la ciudad vivió un proceso de crecimiento urbano no experimentado antes y que provocó la progresiva adecuación de nuevos organismos e instituciones para suplir las demandas económicas y sociales que también se fueron incrementan­do. Organizar e higienizar el espacio urbano, acorde con las ideas de ciudad y de ciudadano que se estaban imple­mentando en Europa, fueron algunas de las metas que se establecieron para planear la ciudad y, a la vez, tratar de mitigar el impacto del crecimiento de­mográfico que acusaba problemáticas de tipo social. Casas de beneficencia, manicomios, orfelinatos, hospitales, cárceles, patronatos, teatros, universi­dades, entre otras, fueron algunas de aquellas alternativas que se idearon con el fin de prevenir estas problemá­ticas, así como también propendieron por moralizar, distraer y castigar los comportamientos que se calificaban de inadecuados por parte de las élites.

Someone Else's Textbooks: German Education 1945-2014

In the 20th century, German education repeatedly transformed as the occupying Americans, Soviets, and western-dominated reunification governments used their control of the German secondary education system to create new definitions of what it meant to be German. In each case, the dominant political force established the paradigm for a new generation of Germans. The victors altered the German education system to ensure that their versions of history would be the prevailing narrative. In the American Occupation Zones from 1945-1949, this meant democratic initiatives; for the Soviet Zone in those same years, Marxist-Leninist pedagogy; and for the Bundesrepublik after reunification, integrated East and West German narratives. In practice, this meant succeeding generations of German students learned very different versions of history depending on the temporal and geographic space they inhabited, as each new prevailing regime supplanted the previous version of “Germanness” with its own.

Combater as secas e defender as florestas a natureza nos desafios da ciência e da técnica para modernizar o Brasil (1889 a 1934)

In the first decades of 20th century the just instituted Brazilian Republic faced the challenge to modernize the country. Considering that the progress was associated with the exhaustion of the forest reserves and with climatic changes, two big issues were seen as fundamental: To Fight the Droughts and To Defend the Forests; headed by professionals who were dedicated to these ideals. This research starts from the premise that these were the main challenges enforced by nature to the Brazilian development; the general objective was delimited in the search to understand the meaning and the conception of the natural world by this group of professionals who faced the shock between modernizing the country and conserving its natural resources. Aiming to contribute with the construction of the Brazilian environmental history and to bring historical elements to the debate about the environment in the country, the author concentrates his attention to the analyses, the discussions and the actions that preceded the regulation on the use of natural resources and the implementation of the environmental legislation in Brazil, occurred in 1934. The investigation uses as methodological basis the theoretical directions of environmental history, using sources of data still little explored and valued. In such way, it is taken as starting point some published papers about this subject during the period between 1889 and 1934 in two technical magazines the Revista Brazil Ferro-Carril and the Revista do Club de Engenharia. National engineering played a basic role in this process while arguing, projecting and constructing the development. The formulated proposals, after being divulged, had fomented the interchange with other professionals and had favored the advance of ambient questions in Brazil, in the sense to preserve natural resources, to construct more harmonic relations between the society and the nature and to equate the development with the environment preservation

A agricultura na construção da paisagem multifuncional. Contributos para a definição de uma estrutura ecológica municipal sustentável nas freguesias de Ferreiras e Paderne

Dissertação de Mestrado, Arquitetura Paisagista, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer (1881-1954), comediógrafo e impresor-editor. Entre la plenitud del cambio de siglos y el exilio

This thesis has its origin in a previous work: “The Catalan theatrical life in the magazine ‘El Teatre Català’ (1912-1917)” (DEA, UCM, 2004-2005), focused on the history, description and the indexes of that magazine. Among the historical and literary references ordered there, we chose a figure that would make a monographic work resulting in the present Doctoral Thesis. The choice fell on Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer (1881-1954), whose personality and literary corpus, allow additional possibilities for research. The cultural and literary reach of his life and his work covers a whole historical cycle in Catalan culture and literature, which moves from its contemporary consolidation towards the drama of its temporal dislocation, between the Spanish Civil War and the exile experience. This e historical itinerary is represented by Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer, being a playwright and a publisher. He’s been considered a comedy playwright since his editions bear titles such as “comedy”, “pas comedy”, “sainet” “quadro”, “farce” or “dialogue”, at most we find the word “Drama” once and “tragicomedy” twice, and we can find all this, in a series of texts for the representation ranging from 1909 to 1938. Secondly, as a professional fully involved in printing and publishing, thereby covering since its first steps as a compositor in the late nineties of the 19th century until his activity as a crucial character for magazines and other publishing projects, from the first decade of the 20th century until the last year of his Mexican exile...

Le fait littéraire au temps du numérique. Pour une ontologie de l’imaginaire

Souvent conçues comme le vecteur de changements majeurs, les pratiques numériques constituent une occasion de mieux comprendre le fait littéraire en faisant apparaître de manière plus explicite que jamais des aspects ontologiques qui, en tant que tels, ont une valeur atemporelle. En particulier, et c’est l’objet de cet article, le fait numérique donne l’occasion de réinvestir une problématique qui parcourt l’ensemble de la réflexion sur le statut de la littérature depuis Platon et Aristote : celle du rapport entre littérature et réalité, dont Sartre et Derrida avaient déjà œuvré à déconstruire l’opposition au XXe siècle. Selon nous, le numérique souligne l’absence de séparation entre symbolique et non-symbolique, nous empêchant de penser une rupture entre imaginaire et réel. Pour rendre compte de cette structure, nous nous appuierons sur le concept d’éditorialisation, qui vient désigner l’ensemble des dispositifs permettant la production de contenus dans l’espace numérique en tenant compte de la fusion entre espace numérique et espace non numérique. À travers des exemples littéraires – Traque Traces de Cécile Portier et Laisse venir d’Anne Savelli et Pierre Ménard – nous démontrerons comment la littérature participe aujourd’hui à l’éditorialisation du monde, enterrant ainsi définitivement le dualisme imaginaire-réel pour lui préférer une structure anamorphique.

Hazardous alcohol consumption among university students in Ireland: a cross-sectional study

Objective: There is considerable evidence of a cultural shift towards heavier alcohol consumption among university students, especially women. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence and correlates of hazardous alcohol consumption (HAC) among university students with particular reference to gender and to compare different modes of data collection in this population. Setting: A large Irish university. Design: A cross-sectional study using a classroom distributed paper questionnaire. Participants: A total of 2275 undergraduates completed the classroom survey, 84% of those in class and 51% of those registered for the relevant module. Main outcome measures: Prevalence of HAC measured using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for Consumption (AUDIT-C) and the proportion of university students reporting 1 or more of 13 adverse consequences linked to HAC. HAC was defined as an AUDIT-C score of 6 or more among males and 5 or more among females. Results: In the classroom sample, 66.4% (95% CI 64.4 to 68.3) reported HAC (65.2% men and 67.3% women). In women, 57.4% met HAC thresholds for men. Similar patterns of adverse consequences were observed among men and women. Students with a hazardous consumption pattern were more likely to report smoking, illicit drug use and being sexually active. Conclusions: The findings highlight the high prevalence of HAC among university students relative to the general population. Public policy measures require review to tackle the short-term and long-term risks to physical, mental and social health and well-being.

When the virtual influences reality. The conservation project of the toledo gate in ciudad real (Spain)

The Toledo Gate of Ciudad Real, Spain, constructed between the late 13th and early 14th centuries, is the last remaining portion of a once complete medieval city wall. It represents the long history of the city and constitutes its main heritage symbol, dividing the historic city centre from the later 19th and 20th century expansions. In October 2012, the Town Hall and the Montemadrid Foundation started the conservation works to preserve this important monument. The preliminary phase of this project included an in-depth series of scientific studies which were carried out by a multidisciplinary team focusing on archival research, historic investigations, archaeological excavations as well as material composition analysis and main treatment application tests. As a result of these studies a series of virtual 3D models were created to inform, discuss and study the monument. A first digital model permitted visualization of the gate in the 19th century and how the main entrance to the city was integrated as a fundamental part of the city walls. This virtual reconstruction also became an important part of the campaign to raise awareness among the citizens towards a monument that had remained in the shadows for the last century, isolated in a roundabout after the systematic demolition of the city walls in the late 19th century. Over the last three years and as a result of these archaeological and historic investigations and subsequent virtual models, surprisingly new and interesting data were brought to light thus permitting the establishment and corroboration of a new and updated hypothesis of the Toledo Gate that goes beyond the previous ideas. As a result of these studies a new architectural typology with construction techniques of has been suggested. This paper describes how the results of this continuous and interdisciplinary documentation process have benefitted from a computer graphic reconstruction of the gate. It highlights how virtual reconstruction can be a powerful tool for conservation decision making and awareness raising. Furthermore, the interesting results of the final reconstruction hypothesis convinced the technical team responsible for the conservation to alter some aspects of the final project physical interventions in order to focus on some of the features and conclusions discovered through the virtual model study.

Le fait littéraire au temps du numérique. Pour une ontologie de l’imaginaire

Souvent conçues comme le vecteur de changements majeurs, les pratiques numériques constituent une occasion de mieux comprendre le fait littéraire en faisant apparaître de manière plus explicite que jamais des aspects ontologiques qui, en tant que tels, ont une valeur atemporelle. En particulier, et c’est l’objet de cet article, le fait numérique donne l’occasion de réinvestir une problématique qui parcourt l’ensemble de la réflexion sur le statut de la littérature depuis Platon et Aristote : celle du rapport entre littérature et réalité, dont Sartre et Derrida avaient déjà œuvré à déconstruire l’opposition au XXe siècle. Selon nous, le numérique souligne l’absence de séparation entre symbolique et non-symbolique, nous empêchant de penser une rupture entre imaginaire et réel. Pour rendre compte de cette structure, nous nous appuierons sur le concept d’éditorialisation, qui vient désigner l’ensemble des dispositifs permettant la production de contenus dans l’espace numérique en tenant compte de la fusion entre espace numérique et espace non numérique. À travers des exemples littéraires – Traque Traces de Cécile Portier et Laisse venir d’Anne Savelli et Pierre Ménard – nous démontrerons comment la littérature participe aujourd’hui à l’éditorialisation du monde, enterrant ainsi définitivement le dualisme imaginaire-réel pour lui préférer une structure anamorphique.

Normative reference values for the 20-meter shuttlerun test in a population-based sample of schoolchildren in Bogota, Colombia: The FUPRECOL Study

Our aim was to determine the normative reference values of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and to establish the proportion of subjects with low CRF suggestive of future cardio-metabolic risk.