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In the post-Soviet period, a political decision was taken to relocate Vilnius' old center to the Neris River's right bank, thus completing the tortuous and complicated process of urban transformation that began during the 1970s modernization. This article examines the development and evolution of the unsuccessful transformation of the former Vilnius suburb of Šnipiškės into a new representative center of the capital. The authors attempt to clarify how the future problematic identity of the new center has been influenced by the neglect and disregard of the historical spatial development of this part of the city and the genius loci of the heritage of wooden architecture. The new center has not yet acquired a new cultural identity, has not become an attractive place for the city's residents, and therefore, cannot be considered a successfully created official 'face' of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflections on the collective traumas that have shaped Japan’s more recent history (primarily the triple disaster of Fukushima) have ignited a new boom in dystopian productions that have achieved an unprecedented success. These narratives explore themes that deal with the erosion of the ecosystem in which humans live – but also of the human body itself. However, it is not only human beings who play a part in some of these dystopias: the city of Tokyo also plays a key role within them. The purpose of this paper is to explore this peculiar role of Tokyo in three selected case studies: namely, Adou (2021-) by Amano Jaku, Soundtrack (2003) by Furukawa Hideo, and The Emissary (2013) by Tawada Yōko. Destroyed and rebuilt in multiple media productions over the last seventy years and at the center of psychedelic futuristic visions, Tokyo becomes either a swarming center of human life or an abandoned wasteland, an urban skeleton that stands as a reminder of the impending or preceding catastrophe, forcing the reader to think about the actual future of our urban spaces – and whether it will include us humans or not.

This visual anthropology project was informed by a series of plein-air water-color sketches of panel-block apartment buildings, painted in conversation with ethnographic research participants in Moscow in 2021. Such housing, built on an industrial scale during Nikita Khrushchev’s mass-housing campaign between 1955 and 1964, and which came to be nicknamed khrushchevkas, became ubiquitous across the Soviet Union. In 2017, in Moscow, Russia, panel-block apartments were threatened by the renovatsiya campaign, which asked residents to vote to demolish their own homes, now declared dilapidated housing. The author painted a number of these apartment buildings slated for demolition, recording details in the construction, ornamentation, and topography of each apartment block. The author also gathered testimonies of artists who live in-, and whose artistic practice revolves around such housing, asking participants to share their artistic process, memories of growing up and living in such housing, and feelings about the prospect of losing their home. While supported by the majority of the population, the renovatsiya campaign would erase local histories, revealing the state’s authoritarian attitude towards its own citizenry, but much worse, it served as premonition for Russia’s renewed aggression in Ukraine, which, less than a year later, caused a widespread political and humanitarian disaster, closing all possibility for further research.

Copyright of South Architecture / Nanfang Jianzhu is the property of South Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Coyotes (Canis latrans) may be important seed dispersal vectors in urban areas, given their omnivorous diet and wide-ranging movement patterns potentially able to bypass fragmentation. Yet, fragmentation itself, anthropogenic food sources, and human activity can limit their natural movement patterns. Previous research has found urbanization limits movement range across mammals; however, it remains unclear the degree to which this may cascade into seed dispersal as seed retention time also plays an important role in seed dispersal distance. Additionally, social and temporal changes in behavior influence coyote movement patterns, likely interacting with the effect of urbanization on net displacement and, consequently, seed dispersal. We used GPS telemetry data to analyze the effect of urbanization on coyote net displacement (n = 94 individuals), in interaction with social and temporal factors, for a series of seed retention timeframes. We found that urbanization led to overall shorter net displacement in comparison to rural areas. The effect of urbanization increased with increasing seed retention timeframe and disproportionately affected long-distance seed dispersal. Seasonality influenced the effect of urbanization to a smaller extent than social status. Social status had a strong interaction effect, as urbanization negatively impacted the net displacement of transient and dispersing coyotes but had a negligible influence on resident coyotes. Territoriality was likely the main limiting factor for the latter, whereas the former, which were wider ranging, were likely most affected by landscape configuration. In terms of seasonality, climate seasons explained variability in the data better than biological seasons, where net displacement remained more stable across climate seasons in urban areas, as opposed to rural areas, where net displacement increased during winter and decreased during summer. Interestingly, despite the urban effect, coyote net displacement varied across social statuses and seasons in both landscape types, suggesting coyotes can provide a heterogenous seed dispersal contribution within and across plant species. Future research on fine-scale movement patterns and scat analysis is needed to better understand the cascading effects of decreased long-distance net displacements on urban plant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the purpose of an exhibit on Atlantic slavery? Does it seek to raise awareness of the trade in enslaved people, with a view to highlighting and overcoming its racist legacy, or to situate the Atlantic trade within the historical – and ongoing – continuum of slavery, or to draw attention to the role of slavery in constituting colonial modernity? Does giving this history its rightful place within the national story of France, Britain or elsewhere ultimately serve to embed racial divisions in contemporary society, or to expunge them? In other words, does a reckoning with Atlantic slavery open a path to tackling racism today? This article addresses these questions in turn. Its principal referent is the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux, set in the wider context of the city's self-image and French debates around commemorating the Atlantic slave trade. The article concludes that even though Bordeaux's slaving past is integrated into the Musée d'Aquitaine's guiding chronology, the full ramifications of slavery for colonial modernity have not been understood or represented. Beyond simplistic dichotomies of guilt and innocence, accusation and repentance, the enormous significance of coloniality and slavery in constituting European modernity, not least the Enlightenment, have yet to be grasped and assimilated in Bordeaux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the near future, more people with dementia will be living at home within an urban context due to a combination of an increased number of people living with dementia and this past decade's urbanization. A common perception is that home-dwelling people with dementia experience a shrinking world, but emerging research from the UK, Sweden, and the Netherlands has broadened this notion by foregrounding how people with dementia experience neighborhoods as a resource in self-care practices. With this article, we contribute to this emerging body of literature and aim to explore how people with dementia experience the cityscape in relation to the onset and progression of their dementia. This study outlines findings from a 7-month ethnographic study involving 12 home-dwelling people with dementia. Using semi-structured interviews, walking interviews, and photovoice, the study explores how the cityscape of Copenhagen, Denmark, affects the everyday life of home-dwelling people living with dementia. Through thematic analysis, three key themes are identified: interaction with the city's life and space as self-care practices, getting out and about as a way to practice a sense of “being in the world” and the loss of orientation abilities and the changing boundaries of the cityscape. The findings from this study contribute to current discussions concerning how people with dementia experience and perceive city and neighborhood environments.

Numerous examples of urban, architectural, and landscape projects indicate global and continuous interest in memorial design without a comparative study of their contextual similarities and differences. There is no clear terminological and conceptual framework of how memorials are designed nor if they are perceived as diverse types of public places. This research combines multiple results of extensive and on-going research on memorials as places for people to reconnect with past events, circumstances, or persons, with the aim of building a theoretical and conceptual framework within the domain of architectural and urban design. The main question is how the design of memorials achieves remembrance as well as healing of both places and communities through conciliation, mediation, forgetting, learning, and planning new concepts for future urban development. The term (de)linking with the past is proposed for describing the importance of achieving these various memorial functions. The resulting dualistic conceptual framework of memorials includes eleven design principles based on models and methods of spatial interventions which can enable communities to move forward from traumatic events and negative emotions towards building a basis for a better future by learning from the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban grasslands (UG) are among the most common types of urban green areas. They are usually species poor, and spontaneous plant migration, which can increase biodiversity, is limited. To improve the range of ecosystem services provided by UG, various seed mixtures are applied during the establishment and restoration of UG. These mixtures vary in content, quality, and cost. High-quality seed mixtures are expensive and are usually only available in small amounts. Meanwhile, alternative methods of seed introduction (e.g., fresh hay application, seeds harvested by brush) have not been well studied in UG restoration, and inexpensive commercial mixtures could have low quality and lead to poor restoration outcomes. Here, we tested the effectiveness of different seed sources to create high-quality UG at two study sites. Based on the results, all seed addition methods increased the species richness of restored grasslands. The outcome of seed addition was satisfactory regardless of differences in residual vegetation species composition and soil properties between the sites. The species richness on plots that received a commercial mixture of flower meadow plants dedicated to pollinators decreased after overwintering. The alternative seed sources (fresh hay and seed incidentally collected during mowing) yielded grassland quality that was comparable to that on plots that received high-quality mixtures with known seed origin (a seminatural meadow mixture and a mixture with the addition of grasses).

Numerous examples of urban, architectural, and landscape projects indicate global and continuous interest in memorial design without a comparative study of their contextual similarities and differences. There is no clear terminological and conceptual framework of how memorials are designed nor if they are perceived as diverse types of public places. This research combines multiple results of extensive and on-going research on memorials as places for people to reconnect with past events, circumstances, or persons, with the aim of building a theoretical and conceptual framework within the domain of architectural and urban design. The main question is how the design of memorials achieves remembrance as well as healing of both places and communities through conciliation, mediation, forgetting, learning, and planning new concepts for future urban development. The term (de)linking with the past is proposed for describing the importance of achieving these various memorial functions. The resulting dualistic conceptual framework of memorials includes eleven design principles based on models and methods of spatial interventions which can enable communities to move forward from traumatic events and negative emotions towards building a basis for a better future by learning from the past.

Dynamic visual experience is the most common way for people to perceive a cityscape. Previous research reviews on cityscapes have mainly focused on spatial planning, social culture, economic development, ecological protection, etc., with little consideration of the impact of dynamic visual perception on the formation of cityscapes, which hinders the provision of references for the practice of people-centered urban design concepts. Therefore, this article selected 94 works in the relevant literature from 1940 to 2022 to conduct a critical review. First, we conceptualized the cityscape in light of earlier substantial discussions on the intimate relationship between dynamic visual perception and the cityscape. Then, we divided the relevant research from the past century and a half into three periods and summarized theoretical and practical research on the cityscape in these different periods from the perspective of dynamic visual perception. Among these, the refined research on interdisciplinary methods, including Visual Quality Assessment based on dynamic visual perception and visibility analysis algorithms based on digital technology, is emphatically described and discussed. Based on a comprehensive review, this article concludes that the main application scenarios for the existing research on dynamic visual perception are cityscape assessment and decision making. Finally, three avenues for future research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-rise buildings have been experiencing a significant boom worldwide over the past two decades. This is true not least for European cities, where church steeples, town hall towers, and chimneys were the main vertical accents in city centers for a long time. This article focuses on the construction of high-rise buildings as a “glocal” phenomenon. The vertical building type has spread around the world, but approaches to it are site-specific and inextricably entangled with local problems, modes of action, and discourses. Construction strategies and discussions about tall buildings are quite diverse even in Europe alone. Presenting case studies of Paris, London, and Vienna, this article looks at three metropolises in which vertical building has caused particular unrest in recent years and reveals enlightening contrasts between them. In exploring the question of how distinctions are made in these cities between desirable and quasi-illegitimate buildings, or “possible” and “impossible” locations, I analyze city-specific patterns relating to vertical construction. Special attention is paid to urban planning—the activities of those actors who are responsible for developing strategies and implementing and concretizing legal regulations. The discussion draws on a larger research project and is based on the grounded theory research perspective. The data pool includes a large number of published and unpublished documents as well as interviews with actors from the fields of urban planning, architecture, and historic preservation. From a theoretical point of view, the article draws on reflections on the “specificity of cities” and “glocalization” in urban research.

Love, passion, and desire often shape the trajectories of many literary characters. The culmination of love or the lack thereof often leads protagonists to embark on a journey of self-exploration. Amruta Patil's Kari (2008) often called India's first lesbian graphic novel, is one such tale. Patil's narrative explores newfound desires against the backdrop of a darkly illustrated city after Kari survives an attempt at joint-suicide with her lover. Her journey, as she wades through the waters of a big city along with friends and acquaintances remains marked by a lost love-that of her lover who has since escaped. Thereon, the novel charts a course that is marked by Kari's strenuous yet stellar mental dialogue. A graphic representation and articulation of such a dialogue lay bare the manifold challenges that often remain ignored in the larger discourse of love and desire. These challenges include but are not limited to one's body image issues, sexual orientation, etc. This paper discusses same-sex desire and love contextualised within a cityscape as in Kari. It seeks to explore the tedious lived experiences of a single lesbian as she embarks on a journey of perhaps self-discovery and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transnational cityscapes of Paris and Beijing in the Sino-French urban-set film Love and Bruises directed by Lou Ye, one of the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers. Drawing on the method of textual analysis and Deleuzian theories of affect, it explores how these two global cities are depicted as dystopian and illusive utopian places respectively, how the cityscapes are connoted, and how they are charged with affects. The author argues that Lou's imaginaries of transnational cityscapes insinuate individuals' bruises of displacement and dislocation in an era of active integration into globalisation. Moreover, cityscapes are presented phenomenologically and affectively in the film by screening the protagonists' act of viewing and the camera's lingering on the urban spaces. Finally, the cityscapes of Paris transmit a sense of estrangement or alienation, while Beijing's counterparts provoke postmodern bewilderment and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the setting of the detective novel The City and the City that estranges its genre by its depiction of borders . Borders are perceived in a sociological sense not only as territorial but also as mental constructions . The investigator functions as a keeper of the law but also a (literal and figurative) border-crosser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to compile the existing knowledge from many fields about the aesthetics of Polish urban space: the conditions of its creation, its perception, and the problems it currently faces, of which a pressure for absolute aestheticisation appears to be the most dangerous. Through a multidisciplinary literature review as well as an analysis of public discourse and interviews with experts, the author attempts to answer the question about why there is such a large discrepancy in the assessment of the aesthetics of urban spaces in Poland, as well as how this is influenced by cultural, legal, administrative, and historical conditions.

Advertising is one of the commonly visible elements of the urban landscape (real and virtual). It also does not require proof that advertisements of cities as such are also part of their “cityscape.” Since at least the nineteenth century, cities have advertised themselves as attractive places to live, visit, or do business. Therefore, the following research question can be asked: How do Polish cities present themselves in advertisements one can find in the landscape? The study assumes that each advertisement should clearly identify the sender and indicate its specific characteristics, distinguishing itself from its competitors. Polish cities began to use logos and slogans as a mecha­nism of description and distinction after 1990, when socioeconomic changes started. There are quite a few studies on this activity, but most of them are single case studies. Therefore, the authors decided to examine a relatively large sample of Polish cities, which allows for statistical analysis. Analysis of the logo and slogan content allows the authors to examine the desired image or the projected identity of Polish cities. The methods were chosen because they admit qualitative and quantitative analysis, especially when there is a sufficiently large sample. Therefore, the survey covered all towns and cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants in Poland. There are 218 such towns in total. The analysis was carried out in the first half of 2021. In conclusion, the authors find that the advertising of Polish cities is embedded in the past, promotes resources (substance), sometimes geographical location, but rarely refers to famous characters and human potential. And such a picture of these cities one may find on outdoor advertisements, which sometimes produce dissonance when accompanying modern buildings or new transport solutions in the city.

Since the 1990s, important regeneration processes have been carried out around urban waterfronts and canals. Urban waterways have undergone a transformation from industrial canals and navigation corridors towards focal points for revitalization and urban development. But, what new roles and values do the canals have as part of sustainable cities development? This article discusses the illustrative case of Regent's Canal, London. The aim is to reveal the relationship and perception changes around Regent's Canal environments through an evolution of its cityscape. Using historic evidence, policy documents, and fieldwork, the article identifies practices of regeneration of the canal's banks in a reciprocal relationship between its capacity for place-making and the influence of the city on its transformation. Although Regent's Canal constitutes a single, continuous element, it defines a changing and more diverse linear canalscape, as a result of the layering of various uses and values like an historical transport, environmental, scenic, and recreational corridor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the nexi between urban aesthetics, power of the affluent elite, property and tourism destinations are complex intersections. These are explored utilising a critical theory approach within the context of neoliberalism and the concept of 'aesthetic common sense' is introduced. New conceptualisations of the ways in which tourists and others are influenced, demonstrate how they, through the processes of commodification and mediatisation, adopt the preferred aesthetics of the affluent elite. Cityscape aesthetics, incorporating both structural, top-down aspects (placemaking) and human agency (place-making) as co-performers in place making, impact on and influence, tourism destinations. An outcome is styled-for-status built environments and streetscapes. This is illustrated through the lens of Malta and its capital city Valletta, which presents a contemporary and dynamic exemplar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the palimpsestic memoryscape of Białystok to illuminate the ongoing struggle in contemporary Poland between two memory regimes: the declarative “multiculturalism” and the submerged racism. It employs the concept of “heterotopia” and the method of walking in order to study the Jewish Heritage Trail (JHT) as an attempt to recover the memory of bygone multiethnicity and, in doing so, to mint a new “multicultural” brand for the city. By analyzing the postJewish spaces located on the JHT—all of which have been appropriated, erased and/or marginalized—the article shows that this new “multicultural” memory regime actually reproduces the inequalities and segregation that structured interethnic relationships in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic visual experience is the most common way for people to perceive a cityscape. Previous research reviews on cityscapes have mainly focused on spatial planning, social culture, economic development, ecological protection, etc., with little consideration of the impact of dynamic visual perception on the formation of cityscapes, which hinders the provision of references for the practice of people-centered urban design concepts. Therefore, this article selected 94 works in the relevant literature from 1940 to 2022 to conduct a critical review. First, we conceptualized the cityscape in light of earlier substantial discussions on the intimate relationship between dynamic visual perception and the cityscape. Then, we divided the relevant research from the past century and a half into three periods and summarized theoretical and practical research on the cityscape in these different periods from the perspective of dynamic visual perception. Among these, the refined research on interdisciplinary methods, including Visual Quality Assessment based on dynamic visual perception and visibility analysis algorithms based on digital technology, is emphatically described and discussed. Based on a comprehensive review, this article concludes that the main application scenarios for the existing research on dynamic visual perception are cityscape assessment and decision making. Finally, three avenues for future research are proposed.

The reputation of Agha Shahid Ali, the Kashmiri-American poet, as a poet of exile is well established. Much of his poetry deals with themes of loss, lamentation, and longing where he speaks in a powerful voice about the plight of people of Kashmir. Shahid's personal memories are not only of Kashmir but also of Delhi, the city where he was born, studied, taught, and published his first collection of poems. In his poems about Delhi he revisits both old Delhi and New Delhi: he roams around the city, listens to Qawwali at Saint Nizamuddin's mausoleum, meets Muslim butchers, remembers his parents, remembers Shahjahan, and recites Bahadur Shah Zafar's poem. This article investigates the representations and recollections of Delhi in Agha Shahid Ali's poems and explores the city's centrality in understanding socio-cultural history, the importance of particular individuals, and spatial specificity. It studies how the poet explores the city in relation to its languages, histories (the Rebellion of 1857, Partition, post-Partition), and cultures (Mughal and modern). I further investigate how Ali's literary cartography of Delhi is influenced both by indigenous genres such as Shehr Ashob and the modern English poetic tradition, and how certain Indo-Islamic tropes become central to the poet's literary memorialization of India's capital city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to compile the existing knowledge from many fields about the aesthetics of Polish urban space: the conditions of its creation, its perception, and the problems it currently faces, of which a pressure for absolute aestheticisation appears to be the most dangerous. Through a multidisciplinary literature review as well as an analysis of public discourse and interviews with experts, the author attempts to answer the question about why there is such a large discrepancy in the assessment of the aesthetics of urban spaces in Poland, as well as how this is influenced by cultural, legal, administrative, and historical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a method for analysing landmark visibility from a pedestrian's perspective. A case study is performed in Kraków, a city with many architectural monuments, where airborne LiDAR is used to model both buildings and urban greenery. The proposed method involves preliminary and detailed stages. The preliminary stage entails an inverse analysis (I–Vis) that departs from the typical visibility analysis to enable the use of landmarks as observers instead of targets. I–Vis results in paths with high landmark visibility. The detailed stage involves the use of a virtual panorama (V-Pan) to determine the visual exposure of the landmarks. Landmarks considered visible by I–Vis are generally consistent with landmarks identified by V-Pan. Discrepancies occur when trees appear in the near field-of-view. In addition, the accuracy of the skyline length and visible landmark surface area is evaluated against ground observations. The obtained results show that V-Pan can evaluate landmark visibility with an accuracy of approximately 75%. The key contributions of the work to visibility analysis of urban landmarks are in the inverse viewshed strategy and evaluation of the visual exposure parameters on LiDAR virtual panoramas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harmonious urban color can reduce urban light pollution, relieve the urban heat island effect, improve the living quality and form a distinctive style. However, due to the manifold architectural styles, urban color in metropolises typically becomes complicated, which may destroy the color harmony of metropolises. Up to now, there has not been enough research on the quantitative expression of the degree of color harmony, and the research on comparing the urban color characteristics of different metropolises is also relatively insufficient. This paper firstly developed a method to quantitatively measure the degrees of color harmony (DCHs) of five metropolises in 2020: London, Tokyo, Chicago, Paris, and Beijing, by writing a Python program and using the Sentinel-2A remote sensing data. GIS buffers were then used to analyze the spatial distribution of the DCHs within each metropolis. In addition, 20 typical samples were selected to analyze the differences of the DCHs between residential and industrial areas. The results showed that: (1) The values of the DCHs of London and Tokyo were the highest, followed by Chicago and Paris, while Beijing was the lowest. (2) The values of the DCHs were increasing from the inside out in Chicago, Paris, and London, while those in Beijing and Tokyo were decreasing. (3) The values of the DCHs in industrial areas were much lower than in residential areas. Based on the above results, policy implications are provided for color management of these metropolises. Lastly, this study may provide a method for the rapid analysis the DCHs for other metropolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Bryan Stanley Johnson, a British post-war avant-garde author, space was a crucial aspect of a literary work. Inspired by architects and film makers, he was convinced that “form follows function” (“Introduction” to Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs) and exercised the book as a material object, thus anticipating liberature – a literary genre defined in 1999 by Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik, which encompasses works whose authors purposefully fuse the content with the form. The goal of this paper is to analyse the cityscape theme in Johnson’s second novel, Albert Angelo (1964), in which London is presented as space that accompanies the character in his everyday life and becomes a witness of the formation of his identity. The protagonist is an architect by profession, so special attention is paid to his visual sensitivity and the way the cityscape is reflected in his memories. Furthermore, Johnson’s formal exploitation of the book as an object and its correspondence to the content is analysed with reference to the metaphor of “[t]he book as an architectural structure” discussed by Bazarnik in Liberature. A Book-bound Genre.

The present article sets out to explore the tradition and the innovative forces involved in the production of the first city atlas, Civitates orbis terrarum, a six-volume collection of town images published by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg between 1572 and 1617. In doing so, it considers the consequences of the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s notions of geography and chorography and traces how time-honoured ideas and new practices of describing places meet in the depiction of early modern cities. The article discusses the potential of chorography as a genre capable of representing a city while trying to convey information about its character and addresses the role of printing in the dissemination of city views. The analysis extends from classic notions and modern practices of chorography to the humanist pursuit of a global vision that can be identified in the design of the Civitates, where the metaphor of the theatre appears to extend from the material of the atlas to the book itself. The research is mostly based on social and cultural histories of cartography and cosmography which can contribute to a better understanding of the complex significance of city images in Braun and Hogenberg’s project.

The former Artistic and Industrial Recreation Pavilion, which was designed by Antonio Palacios (1874–1945) and built for the Galician Regional Exhibition held in 1909 in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, north-western Spain), and which currently houses a nursery school, was completely restored in 2018. The main purpose of the restoration was to recover the original exterior colour of the building. For this purpose, a study was undertaken to identify the original colour of the paintwork by first consulting historical archives and then conducting a micromorphological analysis of stratigraphic paint samples by stereomicroscopic examination and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). Three reformations of the building are documented: one carried out in 1926, when the metal roof was replaced with a tile roof; another conducted between 1967 (when the old pavilion was described as a "destroyed building") and the mid-1970s (when it began to be used as a nursery); and finally, another in 1981, when the building was repainted. The analytical results revealed layers of white or yellow ochre (vanilla) paint corresponding to different periods. The presence of titanium (Ti) in the paint was used as a marker of its age, as titanium white was first formulated in 1921. The original layers include Zn in their composition, indicating that zinc oxide (ZnO) was the pigment used in the “snow” white paint probably used on the building in its first years of existence. In all cases, the pigment base is lime mixed with silicates, kaolin and other clays.

This essay examines how Jorg Abou Mhaya's Madinah Mujawirah lil Ard [City Neighbouring the Earth] depicts a series of crucial ruptures in traditional collective identities, which are connected directly to emerging global realities. Mhaya's Madinah reflects on the political, economic, and social (dis)order in contemporary Lebanon and critiques the unsettling transformations of its capital, Beirut. Carefully tailored to be both universal and phantasmagoric, Mhaya's Beirut embodies the extent to which the hegemonic restructuring forces of neo-liberalisation have moulded the planet into an unfathomable and illegible referent. We argue here that the aesthetic strategies of Mhaya draw at once from hyper-realism and science fiction in order to evoke life as shaped by the aftermath of 'disaster capitalism': rational representations of lived realities seem elusive, and realist attempts to make sense of space, society, politics, and the present time appear destined to fail. In a country where changes are happening fast, reality tends to appear stranger than fiction, and comprehending it seems an impossible endeavour. The graphic novel thus mixes genres in order to make up for the aporia of discourse on life in the neo-liberal era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss revolves around questions of identity and entities flawed by a deep sense of deprivation and loss left by colonization that manifests itself in various forms through generations. The novel chronicles the lives of an Anglophile Indian judge, Jemubhai Patel, whose educational sojourn in Britain permanently brands him as an alien both abroad and in his homeland, and of his orphaned 16-year-old granddaughter Sai, her tutor/lover Gyan, and Patel's cook who pushes his son, Biju, to go seek his fortune in America. This paper seeks to discuss the lives of Jemubhai and Biju as it tracks the role of the city and its impact on the construction of their identities. This impact factor is further analyzed through affective theory, namely Jose Munoz's concept of "disidentification," a tactic of survival by which minoritarian subjects either consciously or unconsciously "neither assimilate nor strictly oppose the dominant regime." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores drawing as an ethico-political practice. Taking London as an example, I speculate about a critical and creative, radical and imaginative engagement with speculative urbanization processes at a time when the extreme right is on the rise and the populist far right has become increasingly mainstream. Reflecting on a nonrepresentational drawing approach that responds to distantiated expert eyes by breaking free from their knowledge and pre-defined moral standards of the capitalist city, I explore different lines: lines that commodify the cityscape; lines that cross commodifying categories; lines that creatively produce alternatives; and lines of violent creativity. In so doing, I scrutinize conservative links between a visuality of capital accumulation and fascist urban aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combined laboratory and field research examining the possible alterations caused by herbicide treatments applied to the construction materials (schist and some granite, bound with mortar) in the Roman wall of Lugo (NW Spain), declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2000, was performed in three separate studies in the past 20 years. In the summers of 1998 and 1999, the herbicides glyphosate, sulphosate and glufosinate–ammonium, as well as physical treatments (infrared and burning) were separately applied to different areas of the wall. In the spring of 2016, the oxyfluorfen herbicide Goal Supreme® was applied to test areas. In the winter of 2018, three essential oils, Origanum vulgare L., Thymus zygis Loefl. ex L., and Thymus vulgaris L., were each applied to test areas. Mineralogical modifications in the materials (determined by X-ray diffraction analysis), as well as visible physical changes, such as colour changes, and the appearance of saline residues were evaluated after the treatments. In the 1998/9 trial, glyphosate and both physical treatments triggered changes in the vermiculite clay minerals in the schists, and the physical treatments also caused changes in the kaolinite. None of the treatments caused highly perceptible colour changes. The oxyfluorfen herbicide did not cause any mineralogical alterations in the construction materials, but it did generate an increase in chloride, nitrate and sulphate contents of the granite and a slight darkening of this material. In the most recent study, the only deleterious effect observed was a perceptible increase in lightness and reduction in the yellow component after the application of Thymus zygis Loefl. ex L. essential oil to granite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City tourism is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. City tourism based on the attractiveness of the city is an important policy objective to secure competitiveness and sustainability of the city. However, as a city attracts more tourists, this uniqueness tends to decrease with the introduction of global corporate franchises as well as the construction of standardised buildings. Policymakers focus more on building hotels and shopping centres than on enhancing the cityscape. Therefore, this article aims to analyse the effect of cityscapes on tourist satisfaction. It encourages policymakers to bear in mind what really matters in fostering tourist satisfaction. During this research, about 250 foreign tourists visiting Seoul were given questionnaires to complete. Ordered logistic regression was used to analyse the data collected. The results demonstrated that among several elements that affected tourist satisfaction, such as shopping, security, and public transportation services, the cityscape had the greatest influence. This fact shows that urban competitiveness and sustainable city tourism are more important than the construction of new buildings or infrastructure in the short term. In the future, policymakers should seek to strengthen the city's competitiveness from a longer-term perspective for its sustainable economic revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several cities built along the waterfront are also accompanied by mountainous backgrounds, and thus have characteristic panoramas contributing to their visual image and identity. However, urban waterfronts are also often subject to high-rise development, which may damage that identity by shielding the mountainous background. Building regulations are adopted as visual impact management policies to retain mountain visibility, but it is difficult to find either scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of such private property control or further empirical guidance for its elaboration. Through a case study of Seoul's Han River, this study thus analyzed the actual impact of relevant building characteristics on the visual preference of urban waterfront views with mountainous backgrounds. Immersive virtual reality experiments using both actual and simulated cityscape images were conducted. Hierarchical linear regression and quasi-rank-based conjoint analysis results confirm that controls on buildings to retain background mountain visibility would actually serve as reasonable visual impact management measures. Insights into what kinds of regulation could be desirable in which circumstances were further obtained—excessively high buildings are especially unrecommended when the height of the background mountain is low, and in all cases a combination of view corridors with convex skylines are advisable for mitigating the negative impacts of mid-to-high building heights. • Previously-lacked scientific justification and implications for urban waterfront visual impact regulations provided • Uses a combination of both the two major VR experiment methods • Combining view corridors with irregular, convex skylines lower than the mountain is advised to ease building height impacts • Excessively high buildings are especially unrecommended in cases of low background mountains • Controls to retain background mountain visibility actually are reasonable cityscape management practices [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gaze of the Other. Representations and Self-representations of Migrants in the Urban Landscape. The “being here” of the migrants acquires meaning only when related to the presence of somewhere “there”, in a polyphonic relation. The dialectic of their gaze tends to withdraw in mainstream media speech. The Italian scenario, in this sense, is particularly significant, as it often abuses of the emergency frame: the Others are invaders, the diversity is a threat. The perception of and interaction with the urban landscape, then, reveals to be crucial: to explore alternative narratives could lead to a change of perception. Recently, Italian cinema has been concerned with these issues. Two examples are particularly meaningful: the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti productions, namely the collective film Benvenuti in Italia (2012) and Dagmawy Yimer’s Va’ Pensiero (2013), and Tumaranké (2018), a juxtaposition of videos made by thirty-eight young asylum seekers. Both modalities of self-representation seem to be extreme: strongly hetero-directed in the former case; strongly self-directed in the latter. This paper will discuss a third way of representing the relationship between diasporic subjects and urban landscape: a hetero-represented self-representation, that is, a process of hybridisation that tends to highlight the distance and irreconcilability of both approaches.