The Integration of Tradition and Modernity: A Search for an Urban and Architectural Identity in Arriyadh, The Capital of Saudi Arabia

About 40 years ago, traditional villages, towns and cities of the Arabian Peninsula started to lose their regional characteristics and embody modern forms and shapes. Since then, these characteristics have been subject to dilution due to social and cultural changes as well as institutionalized changes imposed by planning and architectural practices. This process creates debates and clashes between tradition and modernity. Projects carried out since 1975 are the least representative of the regional characteristics but do attempt to have urban and architectural identity. This paper argues that all the actors in “design formulation” (clients, architects, urban designers and planners) are trying to use historic elements in the creation of architectural identities. In fact they are making efforts to create urban and architectural identity to substitute regional characters. These attitudes flourished as a result of dynamic cultural, economic, political and ritualistic influences. This paper highlights the importance of urban and architectural identity in architectural and urban projects in Arriyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia because such projects create precedents for other Saudi villages, towns and cities. The study identifies the forces behind the initiation, transformation and evolution of the urban and architectural identity and attempts to supplement scholarship in the fields of architecture, urban design, and planning with regard to the role of identity as a tool for improving the spatial quality of the built environment. Architectural identity participates in setting up meaningful schemata which influences human behavior as a cultural process. The paper supports the concern for search for historic symbols which may influence the architectural identity and the quality of perceived environment during the design process of new or transformed physical environments. The paper views the traditional part of the city as an amalgamation of history and economic interests and its symbolic importance seems to be a perfect place for the emergence of different forms of engagement between tradition and modernity. The importance of the traditional part is unique while the importance of continuity of tradition is very likely complementary.     

Black Gotham: African Americans in New York City, 1900–2000

For almost four centuries, African Americans in New York City have engaged in ethnic “dream-work,” shaping the city and being shaped by the city in return. The longstanding practice of racism forced a heterogeneous community of Blacks—originating in different parts of the country and the world, speaking many languages, and comprised of different economic classes— to coalesce as a community in order to challenge their subjugation. This article explores the issues, conditions, and experiences that frame the coalescence of the African American community in New York City during the twentieth century, highlighting how racial identities have been produced in the city. In the first part of this article, I reflect on the presence of Blacks in New York City to illuminate some of the common themes that have emerged from the African American experience in Gotham. The second section is a historical exploration of the black experience in New York City, illuminating the conditions, expectations, events, and spaces that have shaped its formation.

     

Post-Communist Transition: The Case of Two Lithuanian Capital Cities

Even though officially Lithuania has but one capital, Vilnius, it is often thought and spoken as if there were two important capitals for the Lithuanian consciousness. Vilnius is the official capital, but in modern Lithuanian history Kaunas, the country's second-largest city, from 1920 to 1990 played a symbolic role as the temporary capital. This resulted from the fact that for a part of this period Lithuania had lost Vilnius due to a conflict with Poland.

The 15 years after the fall of communism brought to Lithuania not only the fruits of independence but also a host of identity problems. Intense discussions were aroused by the fortunes of sites in Vilnius and Kaunas that had symbolic importance for the national consciousness. The current urbanistic-architectural development of Vilnius first of all reflects the desire to implement the projects that the Lithuanians could not realize during the long decades of war and occupation. An extreme expression of these sentiments is embodied in the much-disputed endeavor to reconstruct the Renaissance Ducal Palace.

Though contemporary Lithuania and its national identity are more or less products of the twentieth century, the current state policy has given priority to the romantic symbols of the old Lithuanian Grand Duchy. The memorial sites in the temporary capital, especially the Resurrection Church, once a symbol of the nation's vital tenacity, were accorded a merely local significance. On the other hand, after 1990 Kaunas lost the real significance it once had in the Lithuanian consciousness as the temporary capital. Slowly but inevitably it is becoming a normal and free university city in a maturing civil society.     

A century of mosques in France: building religious pluralism

The public debate in France has rolled out heatedly on the building of minarets, with opinion polls giving a majority of French opposed to the idea. Nevertheless, a fair number of mosques has been built throughout the past century. The French reception of mosques is therefore a complicated case. Recalling the history of French mosques and its different turns, with a focus on recent history, allows a glimpse at the visibility of Islam in the national sphere in France and its public reception. It also underlines that religious buildings, in the city, are at the intersection of different levels: questions of identity, of politics, of faith, and of integration, are all at stake.     

Positive Feedback Model for City Vitalization

Abstract  In the present study, we first attempt to construct a model for the dynamics of city images, in which intra- and intercity communications promote the joint possession of city images by residents and the establishment of a city identity. It is suggested that community spirit, which emerges strongly associated with city identity, urges citizens to voluntarily take part in a city's cultural events. The voluntary participation of citizens may change various aspects of a city's functions and physical structure, and as a result the city becomes vitalized in a bottom-up way. Based on this model, we propose a new planning method to facilitate city vitalization as a substitute for hardware-oriented planning. Finally, to ascertain the effectiveness of the new planning method, we focus on Iida City, which has recently successfully established its identity as a puppet drama town.     

波士华城市群与京津冀城市群的比较研究

21世纪是城市群主导经济发展的世纪,城市群逐渐成为区域经济的增长极。然而与美国波士华城市群相比,我国京津冀城市群在空间结构已失先天优势的基础上,又凸显出城市承栽功能集中、城市发展关系不协调等问题。比较分析两大城市群特点,有助于我们发现问题,获得有益的对策启示。     

Intellectual spaces of practice and hope: power and culture in Portugal from the 1940s to the present

This paper examines configurations of power, authority and culture in Portugal in the twentieth century, and intellectual practices and spaces related to those configurations and in opposition to them. Portuguese national history and essentialized versions of Portugueseness are analysed in the work of such distinguished and influential intellectuals as António Sérgio, António José Saraiva and Eduardo Lourenço, in articulation with the role of high culture in the process of nation building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One particular structure of attitude and reference, constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is foregrounded with reference to the History of Portugal by Oliveira Martins, in the context of the persistent contradictions and conflicts between progressive and conservative, modernizing and traditional, ‘historical’, formations and projects. In such a context, moments of oppositional, alternative and independent projects are worth looking into. Two decisive moments of social change in the second half of the twentieth century were the 1940s, and the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper pays attention to the politics of culture of Neo-Realismo in the 1940s and its consequences for high and popular culture over the following decades, especially in the years leading to the democratic revolution of 25 April 1974. A brief analysis of the 1990s is articulated to the study of the change-producing projects in the 1940s and 1960s as part of the cultural studies practice the paper argues for.     

Outcharming crime in (D)urban space

This paper is an inquiry into the uses of space and emotions in the governance of urban dangers. Cities have always been affective assemblages, yet the role of both space and affect in the control of urban crime has dramatically changed over the century. What defines spatial urban management today, in Africa and elsewhere, are not the prohibitive, moralising or forcefully exclusionary techniques of the past; instead, the powers of seduction and atmosphere have gained pride of place and given rise to a regime of spatial management through flirty surfaces. Crime, according to security strategists and city makers in the South African city of Durban, can be literally charmed out from particular bubbles of governance. Urban practitioners do not search for the root causes of violent crime somewhere deep in the history of society, but rather in space itself, right at the city's surface. While part of a worldwide trend, this recent fascination with the charming aspects of space has a particularly strong South African dramatic. Governing through handsome space in South Africa is not simply a creation of beautiful illusions against the reality of pervasive violence, but a constant endeavour to re‐draw a troubled spatial history.     

网络文化提升城市认同的路径探析

城市认同感体现着城市对于主体的凝聚力、感召力和吸引力,是城市文化和城市软实力建设的重要维度。网络媒介作为一种强势崛起的新的文化范式和传播范式,在城市认同感的构建中具有不可忽视的重要地位。要加强对于网络文化提升城市认同的路径和机制的研究,充分发挥网络文化在时间、空间、符号、仪式、共同体等维度对于城市认同的构建作用,促进网络所形构的城市记忆、城市地方感、城市符号、城市媒介仪式、城市共同体想象,增强网络主体与城市之间的情感、记忆和审美等纽带联结,使网络媒介成为构建城市认同、增进城市文化魅力和文化软实力影响效果的有效途径和方式。     

Petropolis: a social history of urban animal companions

This essay provides an overview of the argument and scope of an exhibition, “Petropolis: A Social History of Urban Animal Companions” (15 July to 9 November 2003), curated by the authors for the New-York Historical Society. The visual history of pets in New York City from the 18th century to the present reveals a great deal about the changing relationships between humans and animals as the city became increasingly urbanized and industrialized and as the city came to have its dramatic mix of people drawn from many races, ethnicities and social classes. The exhibition shows a remarkable diversity of animals participating in domestic and in public city life, proving that the social history of New York City really cannot be told without including companion animals as actors and objects in that history.     

Abandonment and accessibility in railway historical buildings: Central do Brasil and Leopoldina Railstation

This paper aims to demonstrate the evolution of a study in the city of Juiz de Fora-MG, whose objective is the assessment of areas of train station in relation to the inclusion of people with disabilities and consequently promote the historical and cultural heritage of this city. The railway buildings are important landmarks in the history of the city and its surroundings was formed the first core of urban development. Because this building was of the early nineteenth century, these were not designed to assist people with disabilities, in effect, we observed that the buildings are being underutilized. The difficulty of insertion of incentive policies is therefore not due to the commitment by the majority, making the deployment of new access.     

GIS technology and survey sampling methods: The Khayelitsha/Mitchell's plain 2000 survey

This paper explores the entwining of city and song with a focus on the genre of isicathamiya in the city of Pietermaritzburg. It argues that the making of song involves the shaping of new subjectivities and it looks in particular at the role of isicathamiya performance in the making and re‐making of a particular urban space. It argues that the life and history of a city or town holds within it the songs and singers that shape it culturally and thus write themselves into the memory and being of the place. The paper searches for a new cultural topography of place that embraces this view. It situates a study of two isicathamiya groups, the Washing Boys and Naughty Boys, within a study of the life of the changing and suffering city and argues that the resilience of the genre and of its singers gives it a unique place as an interpretive voice in the New Era of post‐1994 and in the Pietermaritzburg of the present.     

创建传统，彰显特色——新中国阿拉伯语专业一甲子谈

本文梳理了中国阿拉伯语专业自1946年迄今的成长历程，阐述了新中国成立60年来阿语专业建设的成就和特色，并对新世纪阿语专业的发展作了高屋建瓴的展望。尤其强调，新中国高校阿语专业已超越传统宗教语言范畴，正式成为中国外语教育的一个组成部分，且学科内涵得到了不断拓宽。     

Gambling and the Older Chinese in Canada

In Canada, there is a lack of research on gambling among the older adults from ethnic minority groups, especially the older Chinese. In this study, two research questions were used to examine gambling among the older Chinese: (1) What is the pattern of gambling among the older Chinese in Canada? (2) What are the predictors associated with gambling among the older Chinese in Canada? The data for this study were collected as part of a multi-site study on health and well-being of 2272 older Chinese in Canada. Four main questions related to gambling were used in this study. Among the 2257 participants who answered the questions on gambling, 26.6% of them reported that they gambled. Results of the hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed that being male, having lived in Canada longer, having a higher level of social support, having more service barriers, and having a stronger level of Chinese ethnic identity would increase the probability for an older Chinese to participate in gambling. Conversely, having a post-secondary and above level of education and having a higher level of life satisfaction would reduce one’s probability of gambling. Although city of residency was also significant in predicting gambling, further analysis showed that its effect was actually caused by other factors including services barriers, social support, life satisfaction, Chinese ethnic identity, and education.     

从世界城市、全球城市到世界名城——一种理论的视角

从某种意义上说,世界城市和全球城市是一对既相关联又略有差别的概念。世界城市研究的是20世纪上半叶以来的世界顶尖城市,而全球城市主要研究20世纪下半叶以来的世界顶尖城市,特别看重的是全球化进程中的城市功能与地位。当代中国提出的中国名城和世界名城之说则强调城市的气质和特性,研究世界城市之林中具有品牌特色和地位的城市。我们需要利用名城思维来整合各种资源,找准城市的主题,需要站在全球的视野看名城品牌,从而打造全新的世界名城。     

Looking beyond ‘buildings of chrome and glass’: Hong Kong’s ‘uncanny postcoloniality’ in photographs of Tin Shui Wai

Hong Kong has a unique postcolonial identity. After being colonised by Britain for over a century and a half, it was ceremoniously handed over to China in 1997, without necessitating any bloody wars or even skirmishes. Hong Kong has continued to enjoy a privileged status within China due to the doctrines enshrined in the ‘one country two systems’ policy. She has benefited from becoming part of a nation with the fastest growing economy in the world, and the people of Hong Kong have for the most part acquiesced to the reduction in levels of political freedom. However, recent events like the Umbrella Movement spearheaded mainly by student protesters has brought to the fore the cracks in Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity and the city finds itself once again precariously poised in a moment of transition.

Theorising a connection between Hong Kong’s postcolonial predicament and the city state’s physical landscape, I analyse Hong Kong photographer Derrick Chang’s photos of Tin Shui Wai, a remote new town located on Hong Kong’s northwestern edge. Tin Shui Wai is a failed new town – it was developed to house workers who would serve the industries that were projected to develop there in the 1990s. However, these labour-intensive industries never materialised due to the meteoric rise of Guangdong’s manufacturing industry. Instead Tin Shui Wai has now come to be known as the ‘city of sadness’, notorious for its gruesome murders, high rate of domestic abuse and tragic suicides. Through an analysis of Chang’s photographs of Tin Shui Wai depicting isolation, stagnation and urban detritus, this article argues that the uncanny, spectral spaces of encounter raise questions and provide an alternative and more disquieting narrative of Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity.     

The Welsh Patagonian Connection: A Neglected Chapter in Australian Immigration History

This article is an account of the history of Welsh migrants to Patagonia from 1865 to 1914, their motivations for emigrating, their experiences in Argentina, and the subsequent relocation of several hundred to the British dominions in the early twentieth century.
The focus in the first part of the article is on the nature of those who went from Patagonia to Australia between 1910 and 1915 and the migration of a group of Australians to Paraguay in the 1890s. The second half of the article examines the experiences of the Welsh Patagonians in Australia, their relationships with federal and state governments in the light of the intense rivalry to procure them as settlers, and their involvement in two New South Wales Royal Commissions concerning the operations of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.
The article concludes with a discussion on the degree to which a Welsh cultural heritage and identity has been preserved by these settlers in an assimilationist post-Federation Australia. Not only is this a unique double migration experience, but it calls into question immigration encouragement policies and official advertising material during this period, a history which parallels other land settlement schemes of both the pre- and post-war eras in Australia.     

广州海上丝路与世界文化名城的建设

广州作为国家历史文化名城、千年不衰港市,其兴起、发展与海上丝绸之路的兴盛历史有不解之缘。海上丝绸之路不仅深刻影响到广州商都形态、用地扩张方向和文化景观,更造就了广州文化的特质和风格。认识这两者的关系,对广州世界文化名城建设和发展有重要意义。     

Male‐Partnered Bisexual Women's Perceptions of Disclosing Sexual Orientation to Family Across the Transition to Parenthood: Intensifying Heteronormativity or Queering Family?

Drawing from queer and communication privacy management frameworks, this study examines the narratives of 22 bisexual, male‐partnered women who were interviewed during the perinatal period and one year postnatally about their disclosures of sexual identity to family of origin. Most women rarely discussed their sexual identity with family; participants who had disclosed described such disclosures as provoking discomfort. Some women stated that their parental status seemed to invalidate the need to talk about their sexual history or identity with family, due its declining salience and increased concerns about judgment. This study reveals how partnership and parenthood statuses contribute to the intensification of heteronormative pressures in relation to family. Therapists should attend to the role of heteronormative values regarding partnering, family‐building, and parenting.     

Political Transformation and the Reinvention of the Ulster-Scots Identity and Culture

In the 1990s, Ulster-Scots language and culture was mobilized by some Ulster unionists in Northern Ireland as a badge of their cultural identity. The Ulster-Scots language and culture had its eighteenth century, premodern heyday in the north-eastern counties of the north of Ireland where it expressed distinctiveness from English and Englishness. However, in common with many regional dialects elsewhere in Europe, the processes of modernization signalled the demise of Ulster-Scots. The contemporary reinvention of an Ulster-Scots identity was precipitated by the 1990s political transformation of Northern Ireland. This reinvention has multiple manifestations. It is, variously, a myth of origin, a language and culture, a communal consciousness, a reaction against Irish nationalist cultural assertiveness in Northern Ireland, an embryonic nationalism, and a component part of the British identity. Ultimately, the reinvention of the Ulster-Scots cultural narrative appears designed to offset advances made by Irish nationalists in the assertion of their culture in Northern Ireland. Ulster-Scots has also been reinvented in an attempt to provide the Ulster unionist identity with the cultural booster required to deliver security and continuity to an identity experiencing chronic insecurity and doubt during a period of political transformation. However, the ability of Ulster-Scots to deliver on these aims is questionable.