Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture
Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture

Author: Miles Orvell

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 9042025743

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We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L'Enfant's initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.

Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies
Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies

Author: Udo J. Hebel

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 3110237857

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The pictorial turn in the humanities and social sciences has emphasized the political power of images and the extent to which historical, political, social, and cultural processes and practices are shaped visually. The volume gathers original articles by visual culture studies experts in the fields of Art History, American Studies, History, and Political Science from Europe and the United States. The collection explores the political function and cultural impact of images and how political iconographies interpret norms of actions, support ideological formations, and enhance moral concepts. Visual rhetorics are understood as active players in the construction and contestation of the political realm and public space. Individual essays address concepts and theories for a politics of art and perception, investigate national(ist) forms of political representation on both sides of the Atlantic, and interpret the iconographic repertoires of specific cultures and political systems from the eighteenth century to the immediate present.

Why Cities Need Large Parks
Why Cities Need Large Parks

Author: Richard Murray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1000510050

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The large parks and green infrastructure presented here illustrate the diverse uses and many benefits of large urban parks across 30 major cities. Demand for large urban parks emerged at the height of the First Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, when large urban parks represented new ideas of accessible public spaces, often established on land previously owned by aristocracy, royalty or the army. They represented new ideas on how city life could be improved and how large green spaces could enhance urban citizens’ physical and psychological well-being (e.g. Birkenhead Park in Liverpool, Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Tiergarten in Berlin and Central Park in New York City). Today, large urban parks are habitats for biodiversity and spaces of climate change adaptation. For people living in cities, this biodiversity may represent high cultural, recreational and aesthetic values, but is also important for other aspects of health and well-being, for example by reducing the urban heat island effect, air pollution and risks of flooding. At a time when we are seriously reconsidering how we live in cities and our urban quality of life, while also grappling with serious challenges of climate change, the authors of this book detail the much-needed evidence, pathways and vision for a future of more liveable, resilient cities where large urban parks are at the core. This book will help park managers, NGOs, landscape architects and city planners to develop the green city of the future.

Metropolis
Metropolis

Author: Ben Wilson

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 0385543476

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In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations. “A towering achievement.... Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first time—dazzling.” —The Wall Street Journal During the two hundred millennia of humanity’s existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new professions, new forms of art, worship and trade—that they kick-started civilization. Guiding us through the centuries, Wilson reveals the innovations nurtured by the inimitable energy of human beings together: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Époque Paris. In the modern age, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page-turning, irresistible, and rich with engrossing detail, Metropolis is a brilliant demonstration that the story of human civilization is the story of cities.

Global Coffee and Cultural Change in Modern Japan
Global Coffee and Cultural Change in Modern Japan

Author: Helena Grinshpun

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1000203824

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This book explores the impact in Japan of the rise of global coffee chains and the associated coffee culture. Based on extensive original research, the book discusses the cultural context of Japan, where tea-drinking has been culturally important, reports on the emergence of the new coffee shop consumer experience, and reflects on the link between consumption and identity, on cultural fantasies about modern, Western, or global lifestyles, on the effects of global standardization, and on much more.

Ideology in America
Ideology in America

Author: Christopher Ellis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-16

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1107394430

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Public opinion in the United States contains a paradox. The American public is symbolically conservative: it cherishes the symbols of conservatism and is more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. Yet at the same time, it is operationally liberal, wanting government to do and spend more to solve a variety of social problems. This book focuses on understanding this contradiction. It argues that both facets of public opinion are real and lasting, not artifacts of the survey context or isolated to particular points in time. By exploring the ideological attitudes of the American public as a whole, and the seemingly conflicted choices of individual citizens, it explains the foundations of this paradox. The keys to understanding this large-scale contradiction, and to thinking about its consequences, are found in Americans' attitudes with respect to religion and culture and in the frames in which elite actors describe policy issues.

Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture
Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9042028785

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We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L’Enfant’s initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.

Understanding Tall Buildings
Understanding Tall Buildings

Author: Kheir Al-Kodmany

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1317608666

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In recent years, the rapid pace of tall building construction has fostered a certain kind of placelessness, with many new tall buildings being built out of scale, context and place. By analyzing hundreds of tall buildings and by providing hundreds of visuals that inspire, stimulate and engage, Understanding Tall Buildings contends that well-designed tall buildings can rejuvenate cities, ignite economic activity, support social life and boost city pride. Although this book does not claim to possess all the solutions, it does propose specific tall building design guidelines that may help to promote placemaking. Through this work, it is the author’s hope that ill-conceived developments will become less common in the future and that good placemaking will become the norm, not the exception. This book is a must-read for students and practitioners working to create better tall buildings and better urban environments.

Italian American Poetics of Place
Italian American Poetics of Place

Author: Sabrina Vellucci

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2024-12-15

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1683934334

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This volume examines the significance of place in contemporary Italian American literature from an ecocritical perspective. It fills a gap in the theoretical discourse on Italian American culture, whose concerns about environmental justice have been mostly overlooked. From mid-twentieth-century poets such as John Ciardi and Diane di Prima to late twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction writers such as Carole Maso and Salvatore Scibona, the study combines Italian American literary criticism with the spatial turn that, over the last decades, has asserted the interpretive significance of place and the environment in literary texts. Questioning the prejudice that sees Italian American culture as detached from ecological issues, these works show that such diasporic heritage has helped forge different modes of relationship and new forms of expression in contact with the “American” land. Their relevance lies not so much in defining or redefining Italian American ethnicity but in forging ideas and futures beyond their immediate framework and subject matter. By focusing on the intersection of gender and ethnicity with local and transnational spaces and aesthetic practices, Italian American Poetics of Place contributes to the growing field of inquiry that explores the resources of the literary in laying the basis for more dialogic and inclusive forms of awareness and community with both the human and other-than-human.