Reflecting on the City Through Literature
Reflecting on the City Through Literature

Author: Daan Wesselman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-11

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1000906477

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book develops and demonstrates an interdisciplinary method that reads literary works as a way of thinking about the city. Literary works do not only provide reflections of the city – depictions of the city as an aesthetically compelling setting – but the literary reflection of the city also offers a critical reflection on the city. How can spatial difference be conceived in cities that are changing beyond the form of the classical modern metropolis of the early 20th century? How can one think of the relation between individual urban subjects and their urban environment, when neither spaces nor discourses of the city provide them with an answer to the question where they might "belong"? How does the human body interact with its urban surroundings, and how should technological mediations be thought of? This book approaches these questions through analysing literary texts, focusing on concepts like heterotopia, non-place and the posthuman. This book will be of interest to interdisciplinary scholars and students of the city, particularly in the fields of Urban Studies, Literary Studies, Geography, and Architecture.

Feminist City
Feminist City

Author: Leslie Kern

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1788739841

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Feminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world. We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and women-friendly cities together.

The Image of the City
The Image of the City

Author: Kevin Lynch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1964-06-15

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780262620017

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

City
City

Author: William H. Whyte

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-09-10

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 081220834X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Named by Newsweek magazine to its list of "Fifty Books for Our Time." For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics. City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to those responsible for planning it. Whyte uses time-lapse photography to chart the anatomy of metropolitan congestion. Why is traffic so badly distributed on city streets? Why do New Yorkers walk so fast—and jaywalk so incorrigibly? Why aren't there more collisions on the busiest walkways? Why do people who stop to talk gravitate to the center of the pedestrian traffic stream? Why do places designed primarily for security actually worsen it? Why are public restrooms disappearing? "The city is full of vexations," Whyte avers: "Steps too steep; doors too tough to open; ledges you cannot sit on. . . . It is difficult to design an urban space so maladroitly that people will not use it, but there are many such spaces." Yet Whyte finds encouragement in the widespread rediscovery of the city center. The future is not in the suburbs, he believes, but in that center. Like a Greek agora, the city must reassert its most ancient function as a place where people come together face-to-face.

Cities' Identity Through Architecture and Arts
Cities' Identity Through Architecture and Arts

Author: Anna Catalani

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 1351680331

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Every city has its unique and valuable identity, this identity is revealed through its physical and visual form, it is seen through the eyes of its residents and users. The city develops over time, and its identity evolves with it. Reflecting the rapid and constant changes the city is subjected to, Architecture and Arts, is the embodiment of the cultural, historical, and economical characteristics of the city. This conference was dedicated to the investigation of the different new approaches developed in Architecture and Contemporary arts. It has focused on the basis of urban life and identities. This volume provides discussions on the examples and tendencies in dealing with urban identities as well as the transformation of cities and urban cultures mentioned in terms of their form, identity, and their current art. Contemporary art, when subjected to experiments, continues to be produced in various directions, to be consumed and to put forward new ideas. Art continuously renews itself, from new materials to different means of communication, from interactive works to computer games, from new approaches to perceptional paradigms and problems of city and nature of the millennium. This is an Open Access ebook, and can be found on www.taylorfrancis.com.

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two

Author: Philip A. Greasley

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-08-08

Total Pages: 1074

ISBN-13: 0253021162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Routledge Handbook of African Literature
Routledge Handbook of African Literature

Author: Moradewun Adejunmobi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-13

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 1351859374

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal interface alongside more familiar discussions of postcolonial politics. Every chapter is an original research essay written by a broad spectrum of scholars with expertise in the subject, providing an application of the most recent insights into analysis of particular topics or application of particular critical frameworks to one or more African literary works. The handbook will be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for scholars and students of African literature, African culture, postcolonial literature and literary analysis. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Literary and Social Diasporas
Literary and Social Diasporas

Author: Gaetano Rando

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9789052013831

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This volume seeks to map an understanding of the Italian experience onto the broader picture of diasporic stories, though with an anchor in the Australian-Italian experience. It brings together key essays and testimonials that frame a picture of Italy's rich legacy at "home", in Europe more widely, and in the (post)colonial sphere, with a particular emphasis on the Australian experience. The essays collected here focus on the way an Italian Australian story has emerged and evolved in its own unique way. In some respects it might be possible to define Australia, through this community, as an Italian space, very much inscribed and described by the many voices that characterise it. What is clear throughout these pages is that past, present and future circulate through and around each other, just as notions of nation - colonial, postcolonial, emigrant and immigrant - jostle for purchase in what is in fact a contested space always under negotiation." --Back cover.

Smart Cities and Smart Spaces: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
Smart Cities and Smart Spaces: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Author: Management Association, Information Resources

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2018-09-07

Total Pages: 1742

ISBN-13: 1522570314

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As populations have continued to grow and expand, many people have made their homes in cities around the globe. With this increase in city living, it is becoming vital to create intelligent urban environments that efficiently support this growth and simultaneously provide friendly and progressive environments to both businesses and citizens alike. Smart Cities and Smart Spaces: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an innovative reference source that discusses social, economic, and environmental issues surrounding the evolution of smart cities. Highlighting a range of topics such as smart destinations, urban planning, and intelligent communities, this multi-volume book is designed for engineers, architects, facility managers, policymakers, academicians, and researchers interested in expanding their knowledge on the emerging trends and topics involving smart cities.

Soft City
Soft City

Author: David Sim

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1642830186

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites—separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources—to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.