In the Qur’ān the most significant words used to indicate settlement are diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad. Among these, qarya and madīna are the most important ones. While Qarya means, county, city, urban, land and settlement, madīna means town. Miṣr is used for a city as well as for a specific name of a country. Diyār indicates a geographic border and the places of a settlement, and balad infers a political unity of a number of settlements. Due (...) to this use in ‘Arabic, the word balad is used as a country and a state at the same time. Recently, there are some studies focusing on examining the terms of qarya and madīna. Hovewer, we cannot encompass the semantic area of these words only by looking up their dictionary meaning and how they were used in the Qur’ān. Therefore, in this study the old cities are examined as they exist in their places. In this study, we have utilised from the modern and contemporary scientific findings which were made for urbanization and its history. For a better understanding of the concept of urbanization, some prophets’ stories have been revised. In Qur’ān the words indicating urbanization are related to society, nature, place, human, art, economy, politics and reconstruction. Therefore, the concepts of the diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad used to describe the settlements point to the relationship of society with different elements and activities.Summary: Cities, the birth of the cities, sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history are the major subjects in social science. Among them, the birth of cities are especially important for history, anthropology and sociology. For some researchers, cities are the most important revolution of humanity. Cities do not merely mean the places where the human settle down or form a society. In many human languages there is a strong relation between the words expressing civilization and settlement. There is a strong connection between cities and civilization. In Turkish, the word civilization/uygarlık comes from Uygurlar/Uighurs which means those who settled down first. Again in Turkish, the word of madaniyet which is originally Arabic is derived from madīna which means city. In English and French, civilization derives from civitas which is originally Latin. Civitas means a settlement and also the people who live within it. In ‘Arabic, the word hadārī, means settling in a place, is used for civilization, In this study, the words related to urbanization to which social science like sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history attribute a great importance are investigated from the mufassirs’ perspective. As a result of the researches, it was observed that the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad were used in the Qur’ān in close terms with the city. Before examining the words which refer to city in the Qur’ān like qarya, madīna, diyār, mıṣr and balad, the approaches of sociology, history and anthropology are investigated for comparative purposes. According to modern and contemporary researches, jobs like art writing, music and architecture appeared after urbanization. The evolution of humanity from primitive period to modernity is because of urbanization. Cities are the crops of social relationships between people. Urbanization caused wider social interactions and the formation of more complicated societies. People who constitute societies and complicated relationships founded cities. With the increase of specialization and jobs, people of one or more job were able to meet the needs of each other through social cooperation.Before the urbanization the human-nature relation was more important but in cities human-human relation got more important. Cities caused social status to be a result of human-human relations. In these social categories, jobs like managers, merchants, guilds, soldiers and religious groups like religious leaders and darvīsh appeared. The physical features of a city are as important as their social structure. A city firstly has walls, administration, bazaar, laws, and the sense of common belonging among people.In the Qur’ān, it can be noticed that the history of settlement is developed chronologically. In the Qur’ān, the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad are used in the meaning of the city. These words have a close relationship with people and society. For example, because societies and cities were not formed during the time of Adam, there is no word in the stories that evokes society and the city. The same is true for Idrīs. When we look at the narratives about Noah, for the first time there are words like the people, mala/the leaders of the community, erāzil/shameless, and the ship. Although no word meaning city or city is used in these stories, it is seen that society and social strata are formed. In the Hoad period, the word house, palace, building and Irem were used in addition to the word peoples/tribe. In addition to the words that express the civilized developments in the stories of Noah and Hoad, the existence of the words diyār and madīna draws attention during the reign of Ṣāleḥ. In the Qur’ān, the first terms related to urbanization were mentioned in the story of Hoad, and the words meaning settlement and city were mentioned in the story of Ṣāleḥ. Moreover, the words realm and madīna were used in the story of Ṣāleḥ. In the periods of Abraham and Moses, the words qarya and miṣr were added to this. The word Midian was used specifically for the city of Shu‘ayb, and the word balad was used for Mecca during the time of Prophet Muhammad.As mentioned in Noah’s era peoples and the states of people were present; in Hoad’s era, vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, buildings and small scale settlements started to be constructed. In the Qur’ān, during the era of prophet Hoad, words like: vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, building and palace, were used, however there is not a single word which means city. In Ṣāleḥ’s era the words dār and diyār were used in a general meaning? Therefore, it can be safely said that urbanization seriously started in Ṣāleḥ’s era. Additionally, dār also means house, vineyard, garden, grassland, region and home. Descriptions of dār, diyār and madīna in Ṣāleḥ’s parable point out the three directions of Thamūd peoples about urbanization. The word dār refers to the architectural features of their houses; the word diyār refers to their vineyards, gardens, houses and lands; and the word madīna refers to the largest and most important settlement in their homes. As modern and contemporary science has argued, according to the commentators, madīna is used for the settlements surrounded by walls, with its bazaar, army, ruler, tradesman and merchant.In the Qur’ān, the word qarya is closer to diyāri even if its used as madīna in some of the parables. Nevertheless, qarya is different from diyār due to its two distinctive features of political structure and intimacy. Qarya is a city or city state in some way, but it is not only a center but also a city or city state with a political structure with villages, towns, mountains, slopes and plains. So today, it refers to a city which has political integrity with its provincial borders or environment. Diyār was used for the places which were suitable for agriculture, while qarya was used for the cities of Sāmī people as a common word in Sāmī languages. For this reason, qarya was never used for the settlements of Copti, which are African communities; instead, the misr, which is a common word in Coptic and Arabic, was preferred. Even the word miṣr which means city in the Coptic language was used as a country name in the Egyptian regions. The word Balad indicates more a political formation, so it only means country. In the time period of Jahiliyyah they used balad for Mecca which owned a political formation.In the Qur’ān the words qarya and balad are used for Mecca but words like diyār, madīna and miṣr were never used for it. The use of the name qarya for Mecca indicates that it was established by a non-Arab like Abraham on the one hand and that it was the common place of all people. The word of madīna is not used to describe it because Mecca has not embody walls, bazaar, army or craftmanship. The reasons for not using diyār is because there are no vineyards or gardens. The lack of the word miṣr for Mecca also indicates that there is no influence of North African races such as Hāmī in Mecca.Briefly, Qarya is a settlement with its village and towns which is under administration. Madīna is a important center which exists inside qarya with walls, bazaar and architecture. Diyār is a settlement of the city center with houses, vineyards and gardens. Miṣr is a city where the Northern Africans are residing and Balad is a settlement where is prominences as political organization. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the structural optimization of community governance in smart cities and optimize the structure based on the game analysis of dynamic planning evolution. Theoretically, the connotation and extension of the concept of “self-organization” are cleared, and the environment and conditions of community self-organization formation, the formation process of community self-organization, and the types of community self-organization are discussed. The so-called “self-organization” is a process of spontaneously moving from disorder to order, and the environment and conditions (...) of community self-organization are mainly the openness, nonequilibrium state, and nonlinearity of the system. The key parameters of the contract with the change of the values of each factor make up for the inability to collect data for the empirical study in this paper; then, it presents four linear stages along with the cause such as self-creation, self-expansion, self-maintenance, and self-degeneration, respectively. The types of community self-organization mainly include community self-organization with random aggregation, socialized community self-organization, and stable community self-organization with autonomy orientation. By systematically sorting out the relationship between community self-organization and government, while confirming the positive significance of community self-organization to community cultural governance, various complex conflicts and game relationships will deeply affect the actual effectiveness of cultural governance and provide useful knowledge reference for future community cultural governance. (shrink)

At present, there are problems in the construction of the tourism public service system such as poor coordination and coordination among various departments, lack of resource integration mechanism, and low level of information of tourism public services. Therefore, by analysing the problems existing in the tourism public service system in the context of smart cities, this paper puts forward strategies to optimize the tourism public service system. First, we build a smart tourism public service system platform for overall development and (...) optimize the tourism public service platform. Secondly, by focusing on the behaviour of tourists, we construct a big data analysis and management system for the behaviour of smart tourism tourists. Finally, for the traffic situation in the process of tourism, a smart traffic line network based on pheromone ant colony is constructed. The results of the questionnaire survey on tourists show that the optimized public service system platform has achieved great satisfaction. (shrink)

The Philippines has a young population with an estimated median age of 22.9 years in 2010. About 19.8 million or are 15–24 years old. About 48 % of these young people are adolescents aged 15–19. Studies in local settings provide varied information on the prevalence of adolescent pregnancy in the Philippines, depending on source and time of survey as well as age of respondents. The Cordillera Administrative Region has the highest teen pregnancy rate based on the 2013 Young Adult Fertility (...) and Sexuality Study. In the YAFS survey, the region registered 18.4% for teen fertility, making the Cordillera top all other regions. Likewise, a dramatic increase of teenage pregnancy is also evident in Barangay Irisan, Baguio City. Barangay Irisan is the biggest and most populated barangay in Baguio City. It had a population of 28,357 as of the 2010 Census, which accounts for about seven percent of the city's total populace. The barangay is located at the northwestern tip of the city, and is primarily accessible via the Naguilian Road. It is widely known for the dumpsite in the area. The Philippines is a signatory to numerous international agreements related to women in general, with implications for teenage pregnancy. These include the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action signed in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994; the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, developed during the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in September 1995; the Fourth World Summit on Social Development, the World Conference on Human Rights Programme of Action; and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. The country is not lacking in laws nor policies and programs that could protect and empower women of all ages. Political bickering, religious interference, and the population’s ambivalent attitudes toward sex and reproductive health have, however, negatively affected the effective implementation of adolescent reproductive health programs in the Philippines. Adolescents having unprotected heterosexual intercourse are at risk of both HIV infection and unwanted pregnancy. (shrink)

Heritage values are basic in conservation, nevertheless there is not a methodology to analyze their variation over time and how it has affected the conservation of heritage assets. Therefore, a methodology that allows us to determine their variation in written descriptions about a specific heritage site was needed. In this article we have addressed the concept of heritage values and stressed their importance and their variability over time, but also analyzed different methods from the field of linguistics that would better (...) adapt to determine heritage values variation and their application in the heritage field. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is devoted to identifying features of spatial placement of health clinics in megacities and assessing the degree of compliance/ deviation with standards of pedestrian accessibility. Methods. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is scientific ideas in the field of regional economics, spatial and normative analysis. Scientific novelty of the research consists in as- sessing availability and saturation of territories by health clinics, in the context of features of their spatial placement, taking into account the (...) estab- lished regulatory requirements. Results. The place of the megacities of Ural Federal District among the megacities of Russia has been determined according to the conditions affecting availability of health clinics for the population. When carrying out a cartographic analysis of spatial placement of health clinics in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, district features of the cities studied were established, which made it possible to identify the existing problem areas characterized by an im- balance in the level of infrastructure facilities acces- sibility in relation to the regulatory requirements. The authors show the uneven coverage of clinic service areas, which reduces pedestrian and transport accessibility for citizens when receiving medical services. The features and differences of territorial localization of clinics in the actively built- up areas of Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk are revealed. Conclusions. The results obtained can be applied in the framework of determining priorities for implementing spatial transformations of studied territories and the authorities’ decision-making in order to increase medical services availability. (shrink)

With the progress of urbanization, urban management is facing a series of challenges in the new situation. The scale of the city is growing, urban management problems are increasingly prominent, the urban population is showing a rapid growth trend, and various elements of urban infrastructure management, such as rapid growth and urban expansion, have increased the load of urban infrastructure. To make overall planning for urban transportation, municipal administration, economic industry, and public service, intelligent urban planning and construction came (...) into being. Big data technology provides important support for the construction and development of smart city, which is not only an effective means to improve the design of smart city, but also the premise for the development of smart city. Therefore, this paper first introduces the characteristics of smart city, analyses the application of big data technology in smart city design, and finally evaluates the impact of smart city planning and construction based on big data on economic and social benefits. (shrink)

In the era of the global village, crowd sourcing as a new model of service outsourcing is increasingly being valued by all walks of life. This study uses the data envelopment analysis method to explain the crowd sourcing competitiveness of service outsourcing base cities by using input-output efficiency. The crowd sourcing competitiveness among crowd sourcing base cities is organized and analyzed by collating and analyzing the data of 21 service outsourcing base cities in China from 2016 to 2019. The (...) results show that there is no significant difference in the competitiveness of 21 service outsourcing, the overall trend is that the competitiveness of crowd sourcing is not strong, the match between input and output is not high. Comparatively speaking, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Wuxi are more competitive in crowd sourcing. Combining with the reality of China's economic development, taking the road of crowd sourcing with Chinese characteristics is a good choice for the development of China's crowd sourcing industry. (shrink)

This article has deconstructed the general phenomenon of gentrification in the historic centre of A Coruña in two models. On the one hand, a model based on social class promotion, symbolic capital and economic status in the Cidade Vella. On the other hand, the neighbourhood of Orzán as a transformation process resulting from a phenomenon of commercial gentrification based on two interrelated processes: first, the demand for new places of consumption and entertainment and second, the material devaluation of the neighbourhood. (...) In this regard, this work brings a new dimension to the global debate around commercial gentrification. (shrink)

Modern cities form city networks through complex social ties. City network research is widely applied to guide regional planning, infrastructure construction, and resource allocation. China put forward the Yellow River Basin Development Strategy in 2019, but no research has been conducted on regional social connections among cities. Based on the gravity model modified by two-way “time distance” between cities, this is the first study to empirically examine the intensity and structure of the entire city network in the (...) Yellow River basin using the social network analysis method and ArcGIS software. The connection rules of the cross-city transfer of city officials in the basin are also investigated to illustrate the official ties between cities. The results suggest that the intensity of two-way connections between cities is generally low in the Yellow River basin and there is a positive correlation between city network development level and regional economic development level. The development gap between cities on the north and south banks is larger than that between the east and west regions, and some cities in the middle and upper reaches of the river are marginalized in the network. The status of the central cities in the Yellow River basin is distinct, but their connecting and leading abilities are not strong, showing an inverted T-shaped spatial distribution. The subgroups of city networks have strong internal connections, while the connection among subgroups is weak and the development shows a partitioned and fragmented pattern, making it difficult to form linkages among the upper, middle, and lower reaches. The “beaded chain” spatial development strategy can be adopted in the river basin planning, giving priority to strengthening the links within subgroups of cities and among adjacent subgroups, building central city chains, and reinforcing the overall basin management. (shrink)

Influencers belong to the daily media diet of many adolescents. As role models, they have the potential to play a crucial role in the identity construction of their viewers. In the age of social media, such role models may now be found more local – from the same city – and perhaps with more diverse backgrounds. This may be particularly valuable to adolescents growing up in super-diverse cities, as they are surrounded by a multitude of groups and identities during (...) a life phase in which they have to make sense of who they are and where they belong. Despite the heterogeneity of these identities, there is one thing all have in common: the city they live in. With the city as a common framework, local influencers may be important role models for these adolescents, particularly in negotiating their urban identity. This paper aims toward mapping the ways in which social media can play a role in the negotiation of urban identity among youngsters by investigating how YouTube influencers from a super-diverse city are related to each other online, and how their content relates to the (super-diverse) city of Rotterdam. Findings show that in their videos and on their channel pages, influencers mainly affiliate themselves with the city through having the city as the background and context of the videos, through their involvement with cultural trends (e.g. soccer, hip-hop) that link to the city, and through their affiliation with other local influencers. We argue that influencers may therefore provide their viewers with content that may potentially help their local viewers strengthen their urban identity. (shrink)

The arising of smart cities has shown the limitations of the traditional attempts to understand and characterize cities. The smart city marks a relevant step in the evolution of urban systems which is expected to have disruptive impacts in the near future. Indeed, the ‘smartness’ qualification of cities points to relevant changes in the possibilities these complex systems offer mainly due to changes in the information which is made available. This chapter studies the notion of city from an (...) ontological viewpoint, and provides the first elements of a general framework aimed to characterize and unify how to understand the city and its evolution. It starts from historical considerations to isolate the factors that drove the changes from ancient to modern cities, and the complexity that characterizes the nature of cities. Our analysis departs from the traditional views and leads to distinguish three ontological components in the city: the modified physical place, the distributed agentivity, and the knowledge present in the system. The analysis of these components and their interactions, we argue, provides a coherent reading of the city across its evolution steps, and may be used to establish the maturity of today’s smart cities. (shrink)

Cities and local governments loom large on the sustainability agenda. Networks such as Fair Trade Towns International (FTT) and the Organic Cities Network aim to bring about global policy change from below. Given the new enthusiasm for local approaches, it seems relevant to ask to what extent local groups exercise power and in what form. City networks present their members as “ethical places” exercising _power with_, rather than _power over_ others. The article provides an empirical analysis of the (...) power of FTT and Organic Cities in Germany. In both cases, we found cities that are eager to emphasize their inclusive potential. Their willingness to compromise is demonstrated most illustratively by the fact that several cities are members of both networks: While the FTT campaign aims to address problems of international trade but does not abandon it, Organic Cities advocate for a new localism based on food supply from farmers in the same region. In both cases, city networks use their purchasing power to increase the share of certified products. By doing so, the city networks reproduce privileged positions of consumers benefitting from the global capitalist order (_power over_). However, our analysis revealed that networks also make citizens reflect upon agri-food challenges and allow developing alternatives for more sustainable systems (_power with_). (shrink)

The article is a kind of “project essay” or “brain storm” concerning skyscraper cities. It proposes different approaches for the study of this subject. Starting with the observation that in Danish traditional houses are lying, whereas skyscrapers are “standing”, different phenomenological and discursive perspectives for the study are sketched. The article also suggests that the analysis of contemporary skyscraper cities can shed new light on more traditional cities in the same way as new media illuminate the characterics of old (...) media. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper discusses the housing crisis in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, a phenomenon that particularly affects the socioeconomically vulnerable. The paradigm adopted is the interpretative, with Critical Discourse Analysis as a theoretical framework and qualitative methodology. The Converging Linguistic Approaches Method is adopted. By studying a corpus of relevant legal texts, this paper explores the way in which the poor are constructed as subjects in City Law No. 3706, the only text where they feature as (...) a dominant focus category. To that end we need to deepen our understanding of the way in which the linguistic and discursive category of the poor as actors/subjects is constructed in the text. This paper also aims to show the ways in which linguistic discourse enquiry may use a qualitative analysis tool to shed light on social issues. (shrink)

This comprehensive research was conducted in Duhok City, Iraq, encompassing both university and high school levels in the academic year 2022-2023. The primary objective was to thoroughly examine the influence of technology on English language teaching and learning. Employing a historical analysis, this study traced the evolution of technology within the realm of English language education while meticulously scrutinizing its advantages and potential challenges. Participants encompassed a diverse group, comprising university students and teachers, as well as high school (...) teachers and students. Through rigorous investigation, the research sought to shed light on effective strategies for integrating technology into TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) classrooms, with the overarching aim of enhancing language proficiency and communication skills. The study underscored the critical significance of striking a harmonious balance between technology and traditional teaching methods. This thoughtful integration was found to hold the potential for positively transforming students' language acquisition experiences. By strategically incorporating multimedia resources and cutting-edge tools, this research succeeded in enriching the landscape of English language learning. The result was a more engaging, dynamic, and immersive educational environment. While the abstract outlines the study's participants and the period during which it was conducted, it does not specify the exact tools or methods used for data collection and analysis. Furthermore, the abstract does not provide specific findings or outcomes of the research, focusing instead on the broader implications and significance of the study for educators, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in language education in Duhok City, Iraq, and beyond. (shrink)

This paper presents a philosophical reflection on the city and the space. It proposes a different interpretation of the city, shifting the traditional focus on the historical and time-related aspects to a consideration of the space as a central category of analysis. This perspective seeks to define what a city is and to understand the different dynamics and processes that influence its constitution, development, transformation, or disappearance. In contrast to the traditional approach focused on the (...) class='Hi'>city with a temporal perspective, this paper highlights the relevance of the space as a fundamental element of analysis. The central premise lies in presenting an interpretation that highlights how the existence of the city is not only based on the processes of construction but also on the very act of inhabiting. This act, cemented by our relations with space, enables the existence of spatiality. (shrink)

There is a nationwide resurgence of tuberculosis in the country’s urban centers; New York City stands at the forefront of this resurgence. The root causes are increased homelessness, drug addiction and poverty, all symbols of deteriorating social and economic conditions in the city. The inadequate level of public health resources devoted to TB has also contributed to its spread. Still, even with these factors, it is questionable whether the escalating number of TB cases in this country would have (...) occurred without the reservoir of immunosuppressed persons, who are less resistant to the disease, created by the AIDS epidemic. The fear and urgency of this public health crisis, which has been emerging since the beginning of the last decade, are fueled by the rise of TB strains resistant to the first-line drugs and by the disease’s contagiousness. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a concerted effort to shift bioethics’ traditional focus from clinical and research settings to more robustly engage with issues of justice and health equity. This broader bioethics agenda seeks to embed health related issues in wider institutional and cultural contexts and to help develop fair policies. In this paper, we argue that bioethicists who ascribe to the broader bioethics’ agenda could gain valuable insights from the interdisciplinary field of environmental justice and transportation justice, in particular. We (...) then proceed to demonstrate the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to transportation and health. The paper concludes with the argument that intersectional gender inequality is of particular importance when studying both health equity and the unequal distribution of burdens associated with transportation systems in local contexts. This essay is meant to be the beginning of a robust conversation concerning health equity, transportation justice, and intersectional distributions of both benefits and burdens. (shrink)

This is an exploration of the political thought of the American transcendentalists focusing on Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. They were writing at a time when the American state was thought of as sacred, the two cities of Augustine, the City of God and the City of Man, combined as one. Indeed the Augustinian metaphor was a powerful one, frequently invoked in this period. American republican democracy in the City of Man enabled citizens through their participation in the (...) state to achieve something close to the spiritual status of the City of God. The transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the importance of individual freedom, did not accept this analysis, according to Daniel Malachuk. They looked at American democracy and saw much that did not support individual pursuit of goodness nor a society that approached the status of the City of God. For example, the continued existence of slavery hardly fit with a godly place. Malachuk argues that the separation between the City of God and the City of Man remains important to transcendentalists who thought that individuals needed to be given space by the state to pursue their individual development. (shrink)

Saving the City provides a detailed analysis of the attempts of ancient writers and thinkers, from Homer to Cicero, to construct and recommend political ideals of statesmanship and ruling, of the political community and of how it should be founded in justice. Also, Malcolm Schofield debates to what extent the Greeks and Romans deal with the same issues as modern political thinkers.

Weber's piece on the development of the north-European Western city has not commanded attention in the recent theoretical literature. This article argues that it can however provide fresh insights into some key problems of Weber's diagnosis of modernity and into his general sociological theory, especially as to his theory of action and creativity. A more open-ended conception of modernity can be gained from its analysis, which is more compatible with Weber's own methodological assumptions. A different relationship between freedom (...) and rationality may be derived as a theoretical and political consequence from the discussion of The City. Key Words: collective subjectivity • creativity • freedom • modernity • rationalization • Weber • Western city. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cities of Alexander the GreatMuhammad Usman ErdosyP. M. Fraser. Cities of Alexander the Great. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 263 pp. Cloth, $72.Fraser’s survey aims at determining “what cities [Alexander] did indeed found, how many out of the large number attributed to him by our various sources are actually historical, and in what sense” (vi). Resolving these issues requires the analysis of sources which are plagued (...) by inconsistent geographical information on the one hand, and a general silence concerning Alexander’s motives behind his foundations on the other. Consequently, Fraser opens with a critical survey of the Alexandrias listed in Stephanus of Byzantium’s as well as in the corpus of texts preserving, or inspired by, the Western traditions of the Alexander Romance. This is followed, in chapter 2, by an analysis of lists found in the Perso-Arabic and Syriac versions of the Romance. Having disposed of the baggage of mythical foundations, Fraser then identifies those Alexandrias which are authenticated by historical and geographical texts, in chapters 3 and 4, and attempts, in chapter 5, to locate them on the ground. In conclusion, chapter 6 considers Alexander’s motives in founding cities, and the Epilogue surveys the subsequent fortunes of those few foundations which Fraser feels justified at the end of his analysis in attributing to Alexander himself. The book is also supplied with appendices detailing the formation of the Alexander Romance and the accounts of Chinese pilgrims to India, with a table summarizing references to Alexander foundations known from literature, and with detailed indices.As in his Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fraser brings an encyclopedic knowledge of sources—both primary and secondary—to the issues at hand, reserving the text for general discussion and relegating detailed argumentation to the notes. Although the material available to him had been known to previous generations, his study is the first comprehensive survey of the various Alexander foundations since Tarn’s The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge 1951). Unlike Tarn, however, he prefers to dismiss (or assimilate to attested foundations) most of the Alexandrias named in Stephanus and the Romance; some because they are unsubstantiated in historical and geographical texts, and others because they represent cities actually founded by the Seleucids. In doing so, he lays strong emphasis on identifying the “pre-texts” of the Alexander Romance (in appendix 2), as well as the political motivations of their Ptolemaic authors (in chapter 1), and while he concedes that his conclusion can “only be reached by as much unverifiable argument as that of Droysen and Tarn” (viii), this part of the book is highly valuable for creating a framework with which to approach the mythical accretions to Alexander’s historical achievements.Similarly useful is the analysis of Alexander’s aims in creating a network of new cities, in chapter 6, even if it is based only partly on statements attributable to Alexander, and relies heavily on patterns observable in his foundations, on general geopolitical considerations, and, consequently, on our ability to locate [End Page 133] the historical Alexandrias. As above, there is little to quarrel with in the general conclusion that the foundations represent rather Alexander’s ambition to recreate the Achaemenid Empire under Macedonian domination than an attempt to spread Greek culture, and that even reduced to a historical scale they are of a magnitude to foreshadow the strategic thinking of the British Raj.Although Fraser considers the task of locating authentic Alexander foundations subordinate to the study of sources, his assertion (102) that the historicity of the foundations does not rest, even partly, on their precise identification on the ground is surprising, given the inability of the textual evidence to resolve many geographical and historical questions, and the difficulty, just mentioned, of establishing Alexander’s motives in founding cities without pinpointing their location. Consequently, the lengthy excursus on topography, making up chapter 5, carries considerable importance. It also testifies to the complexity of the issues, since the evidence consists of conflicting geographical data regarding cities, which remain frequently unreconcilable with the archaeological record even when supplemented by the presumed course of troop movements, in turn determined by logistics and by the presumed political motives of... (shrink)

In an era where decolonizing architectural pedagogy is imperative, cities stand as the forefront of radical thought, acting as crucibles for ideological, activist, and spatial dynamics. These urban landscapes are not just breeding grounds for new paradigms, but also reflect significant shifts in political and social frameworks. This study adopts the concept of the “radical city” as a prism to understand how local events echo global political and sociocultural disturbances. This research takes an innovative approach by integrating mixed-method pedagogies, (...) student-driven inquiries, and diverse case studies, spanning continents from Asia to Latin America, Europe to Africa, and the US to the UK. The aim is to explore the deep-rooted changes in these cities and to promote a decolonized approach to architectural education, moving beyond traditional, Eurocentric narratives. The backbone of this research is the course “Visualizing Radical Urbanism,” offered at the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University, in Fall 2022 and Fall 2023. Through this course, students engage in a pedagogical journey involving exploration, research, analysis, and introspection on their selected radical city. Their diverse methodologies and expressive mediums converge in a comprehensive portfolio, showcasing their intellectual growth and culminating in a reflective essay on their urban subject. By focusing on educational research and time investment in this course, the study highlights the importance of sustained, critical engagement with urban environments. This approach not only enriches architectural education but also contributes to the broader discourse on urban activism and decolonization, reinforcing the need for diverse, inclusive, and globally aware architectural pedagogies. (shrink)

Philosophical theories that take analysis as their methodological centerpiece compare objects and events by setting them in individual relations to one another. For Bergson, this privileging of discontinuity, which requires picking the processes of change apart, is driven by the adaptive needs of our species but does not probe into the essence of reality. For him, the ontological point of departure is not a series of discrete states or events, but rather the temporal continuity in which they flow: a (...) qualitative multiplicity he refers to as durée. In this article, I will examine the echoes of Bergson's theory of durée in two inaugural figures of architectural modernism: the Catalan Antoni Gaudí and the Austrian Adolf Loos. The deep consonance between Gaudí and Loos, all the more surprising given their antithetical aesthetics, offers a view of architecture as the framing of an unbounded flux. This is what I have called the durational life of their respective cities, captured in a state of permanent self-transformation. (shrink)

The present study provides an analysis of Socrates’ account of the first polis in Republic 2 as a thought experiment and draws attention to the fact that Socrates combines both explanatory and evaluative aspects in his scenario. The paper further shows how the analysis of the city of pigs as a thought experiment can explain the lack of pleonexia by saving both the letter of the text, according to which there are no “pleonectic” desires in the (...) class='Hi'>city of pigs, and the fact that the first polis is nonetheless concerned with human beings. For, in contrast to the account offered by Glaucon earlier in Book 2, Socrates highlights our needs and lack of self-sufficiency as well as our compatibility with an advantageous and happy life in a community. (shrink)

Gentrification has led to the eviction and displacement of many people from working-class areas around the world. However, the relationship between gentrification and displacement has sparked much debate in the literature, with some researchers downplaying displacement, while others have argued that gentrification can occur without the displacement of people. These studies have tended to be quantitative in nature. However, there are few qualitative accounts of the experience of displacement and there is little consideration of the affective or phenomenological dimensions of (...) displacement in current debates about gentrification. This is in part because researchers have tended not to engage directly with displaced people as it is often difficult to locate them. The purpose of this article is to describe the essence of displacement from the perspective of a group of individuals who were evicted from their homes in a gentrifying inner-city area of Johannesburg, South Africa. Through the methodology of transcendental phenomenology, five interrelated themes were derived from in-depth interviews with the participants. The findings show that the essence of displacement is one of great pain, loss and trauma, which disrupts the lifeworld of those displaced and impacts their overall health and well-being. (shrink)

This article draws the city into the limelight of social studies of technology. Considering that cities consist of a wide range of technologies, it is remarkable that cities as an object of research have so far have been relatively neglected in the field of technology studies. This article focuses on the role of obduracy in urban sociotechnical change, an issue that, it is argued, has considerable importance for both students of the cities and the daily practice of town planners (...) and architects, and, at the same time, forms an important theoretical debate in science, technology, and society studies. The article provides an overview of theoretical conceptions of obduracy in both technology studies and urban studies and proposes a heuristic model for the analysis of this phenomenon. In this way, this article aims to contribute to the establishment of a common interdisciplinary playground for these disciplines. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe ‘City of David’ in Silwan is on the original site of Jerusalem. Located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, it is both an illegal Israeli settlement in a Palestinian neighbourhood and a popular international tourist destination. This article examines how the site is narrated by tour operators and tourists through fieldwork, interviews and analysis of tourist comments on the TripAdvisor site. It argues that Israeli settlers have successfully harnessed tourist discourse in order to present their vision of a Jewish (...) Jerusalem in which Palestinian existence is ignored or treated as a threat. The site allows tourists to connect to and experience a mythical biblical past, something which answers to tourist desires to have an authentic encounter with the destination culture. In the site’s narratives, the presence of Palestinians in the area is elided over through spatial and linguistic separation and by denying their legitimate presence. This indicates how the congruence between Zionist and tourist discourses discursively legitimises Israeli colonisation of Silwan. (shrink)

This paper aims to measure the quality of all Romanian cities’ websites in 2019 and 2022, before and after the disruptive event of COVID-19. Since the official websites are the core instrument of e-governance, the changes in the quality of Romanian cities’ websites reflect the changes in the development of urban e-governance in Romania. The COVID-19 lockdowns and contact restrictions and the moving of most activities into the online environment had the potential to impact the performance of Romanian cities’ websites (...) significantly and catalyze the progress of local e-governance. The quality of Romanian cities’ official websites was measured using an adapted survey instrument proposed by Holzer and Kim and Manoharan, Melitski, and Holzer. The tool covers five critical criteria of website quality or performance: personal data security, usability, content, services, and citizen participation. The research results may seem contrary to expectations: the improvements of websites have been incremental rather than transformational. Although our research provides only a case study, we may assert that the reform of traditional administration remains a step-by-step process. Our study’s main contribution consists in showing that the progress of e-governance is an incremental process even in a situation of emergency that requires the moving of most activities into the online environment. (shrink)

This article takes a speculative and design fiction approach to the critical analysis of the role of smart and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the context of smart cities. The article explores arguments that these cars of the future will have decisive impacts on mobility, sustainability and road safety. The article examines the main parameters of smart city and smart car developments and then focuses on the visions of increasing AI-driven autonomy. The article demonstrates how these debates are linked (...) to speculative design as full autonomy does not currently exist but takes a speculative position as to what the critical issues are that face smart/autonomous city visions (enhanced surveillance and data mining) and considers the potentially hazardous ethical dilemmas that AVs may encounter once fully rolled out onto city roads. From a design fiction perspective, the article envisions the viability of AV prioritizing public rather than private transport as a means by which the ‘techno-utopic’ visions of smart city/AV integration can be realized and make positive impacts to enhance urban living in rendering future cities as more sustainable, efficiently mobile and safer urban spaces. (shrink)

Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the record of (...) one of the foremost environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias.". (shrink)

The essay examines the intersection between aesthetic the-ory and representations of the city in the periodical essay_ The Spectator_ (1711-1714). Focusing on this intersection allows for an analysis of the cultural work aesthetic pleasure is supposed to do according to _The Spectator_, and also shows key differenc-es between “spectatorial” and later, Kantian aesthetics. In _The Spectator_ aesthetic pleasure has to do with producing a model for how one should relate to the realm of politics—rather than disin-terest, the precondition (...) of aesthetic pleasure turns out to be disengagement. Read through the lens of the city, aesthetic pleasure turns out to be a key component in The Spectator’s vision of how to live a good life as a privileged subject of a modern state. (shrink)

Based on the perspective of the regional innovation system, this study constructs an analytical framework for the influence of government R&D funding on regional innovation quality and uses 283 Chinese cities as research samples to empirically test the influence of government R&D funding methods such as subsidies and tax preferences on regional innovation quality by the spatial Durbin model. According to the study, China’s regional innovation quality has a positive spatial correlation. Subsidies can improve regional innovation quality, which is mainly (...) realized by increasing the input of innovation resources from local direct innovation subjects, attracting the inflow of innovation resources from neighboring areas, and increasing the innovation support from local indirect innovation subjects. Besides, spatial competition for subsidies makes it beneficial to improve the regional innovation quality in neighboring regions, while the promotion effect of tax preferences is not significant. When considering the heterogeneity of the city location and administrative hierarchy, it shows that the government R&D funding cannot improve the innovation quality of the Eastern cities and higher-administrative-hierarchy cities, while it can improve that of the Middle and Western cities and general-administrative-hierarchy cities. Furthermore, government R&D funding widens the gap of regional innovation quality, which may be related to the existing “insufficient intervention” and “excessive intervention” of government R&D funding. This study provides insights into the implementation of R&D funding by the government to promote the development of regional innovation quality. (shrink)

Over the last century, psychoanalysis has transformed the ways in which we think about our relationships with others. Psychoanalytic concepts and methods, such as the unconscious and dream analysis, have greatly impacted on social, cultural and political theory. Reinterpreting the ways in which geography has explored people's mental maps and their deepest feelings about places, The Body and the City outlines a new cartography of the subject. Mapping key coordinates of meaning, identity and power across the sites of (...) body and city, author Steve Pile explores a wide range of critical thinking, particularly the work of Lefebvre, Freud and Lacan to present a pathbreaking psychoanalysis of space. (shrink)

1. Firmly grounded in Political Discourse Theory (PDT), this article is a study of how the spatial–political imaginary of conservative Protestants in nineteenth-century Derry city, a contested spac...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 218-219 [Access article in PDF] David Roochnik. Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 159. Cloth, $35.00. Plato makes no general assertions, certainly none about "universals" (108). The Republic does not advocate the creation of an ideal state (78, 93) but transcends utopias to acknowledge the merits of democracy and democratic (...) diversity (92). Nor does Plato hold the tripartite psychological theory associated with the Republic (18-20). Such theories are impossible for human souls with their essentially temporal natures (104). The Republic is a dialectical work (2). Its movement shows without Plato's saying it that diversity is a social good; that the psychological theory of Book 4 "is preserved in its partiality as a moment of the dialectical development of the dialogue" (3); and so on.David Roochnik belongs in the tradition of Leo Strauss, unearthing an odd and unknown Republic from beneath the dialogue familiar to hordes of readers (beginning with Aristotle) who evidently read it wrongly. Roochnik brings intelligence to his project, clear writing, and a mind inclined toward originality. Nevertheless Strauss's influence is everywhere. E.g.: The Republic is "a conversation that twists and turns, develops, and at times revises what was earlier said. In its totality it gives voice to the truth about the human soul" (131).Roochnik's main subject is that truth about the soul. He says that the Republic corrects Book 4's tripartite analysis with the temporally oriented psychology told in the anecdotes of Books 8 and 9. The wise reader respects both approaches. The soul is "erotic and therefore necessarily diverse, but... desires arithmetical simplicity," and both diversity and simplicity "must be included in an adequate psychology" (120). "Our souls are... suspended between... time and eternity, the divine and the beastly" (108). The erotic and the arithmetical serve as poles between which Plato navigates. Book 4 proposes a mathematical psychology, but Eros increasingly dominates the Republic and the rigid arithmetic designed to harness Eros fails. Book 4's arithmetical account of the soul is "inadequate, and... it is meant to be inadequate" (19). One should see the soul as arithmetical in one respect, irrepressibly erotic in another.Number plays a defining role in the Platonic city, too (38). Kallipolis battles Eros with an arithmetical ideal but loses (44-45). The failure of arithmetic amounts to the failure of utopia. The Republic "teaches that perfect justice is neither possible (the marriage number fails) nor desirable (we don't really want to exile everybody over ten)" (93). Notice: because "we"—Roochnik and his friends?—don't want to found a city among impressionable children, the Republic teaches that Kallipolis is not desirable.To similar effect: "if Kallipolis were to come into being, then the Republic could not. But since Kallipolis requires the Republic in order to come into being, it contains in itself the seeds of its dissolution" (69). Nonsense! Kallipolis needs the Republic in order to come into existence but not to remain existent. The dialogue's disappearance implies nothing about the city's dissolution.Straussians routinely deny that the Republic constructs its city. Though typical, Roochnik claims not to be (7 n. 4, 75). His reading "is not ironic": "the... revisions I have discussed take place on the surface of the dialogue itself, and the kinds of negations that follow are dialectical ones which... preserve what is negated in its partiality" (91).But garble about surfaces and dialectic will not rescue a hermeneutical method if one begins (Roochnik does, all Straussians do) by calling every flaw in a Platonic argument intentional. That Platonolatry is implausible in itself; it is methodologically shoddy for other reasons too. In the first place, it yields meager results. When every argumentative failure is intentional the Republic becomes platitudinous. Thus Roochnik's dialectical meaning is less memorable than the laziest reader's understanding of the Republic (Forms, cave, archons). He dismisses radical claims as unworthy of Plato but replaces them with the mealy... (shrink)

The bigness of cities has attracted much attention from urban academics and professionals whose perspective may be divided into two camps: productive science using agglomeration-based analysis or impact science using anxiety-based analysis. The two approaches need to be joined in order to resolve issues of urban ‘bigness’, and in this article the growth of Perth is used to illustrate the potential and challenges of this integration.

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed (...) systems, such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

On paper, ‘smart cities’ are an easy sell. Thanks to the transformative power of information and communication technologies (the much-vaunted ‘internet of things’), smart cities purport to offer managers and bureaucrats a more harmonious and efficient means of reducing traffic, managing assets, and increasing public safety. However, I am dubious of these utopian sentiments. Indeed, I argue that the benefits that smart cities purport to provide cohere poorly with a number of our shared phenomenological intuitions about the relationships(s) between authentic (...) experience and technologised society. While many of these intuitions are, strictly speaking, pseudo-problems, they deserve our attention. The belief that technologised urban spaces somehow corrode our potential for authentic experience is one that carries enormous power, as Charles Taylor argues, authenticity is nothing less than the contemporary moral ideal. Consequently, it indelibly colours the relationships that we forge with our artefacts. These issues will only grow more pressing as our ‘dumb cities’, already so opaque to experience, give way to hyper-technologised ‘smart cities’. -/- However, it is possible to design our way out of these pseudo-problems. Assuming we accept my argument that the distinction between authenticity and the device paradigm is premised upon a certain kind of category error, there is no categorical or definitional reason why it is not possible for urbanised, technologised spaces to feel authentic, whether by virtue of their aesthetic properties, or because they facilitate ‘authentic’ behaviour. Indeed, I argue that ‘inauthenticity’ is an aesthetic rather than an ontological category (much like ‘ugliness’, or ‘boring-ness’), with feelings of inauthenticity serving as evidence of a basic failure of design. Redressing these failures of design requires that we adopt a novel approach to the design and use of technical objects—and particularly when these objects are the almost invisible, semi-autonomous constituents of the ‘smart city’. Consequently, in the concluding analysis of the chapter I outline how the feeling of authenticity can be invoked in the smart city and, consequently, how these failures of design can be avoided. (shrink)

In recent years, the relation between studying and learning has been a topic of debate. This article is mainly interested in a concept of study practices, conceived of as practices that are strongly engaged with issues of living together in a superdiverse city. Such practices firstly require to think the relation between studying and learning in other-than-oppositional terms, and secondly, to raise questions concerning the political role of education. The aim of the article is double in that it wants (...) to further elaborate the concept of study practices in relation to a concrete practice on the one hand, and, on the other, that it has the objective to rethink in educational terms the notion of solidarity—deeply entwined with matters of living together in superdiversity. These aims are pursued based on an analysis of the study practice of System_D, a film festival in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Brussels, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway. (shrink)

Local food initiatives are steadily becoming a part of contemporary cities around the world and can take on many forms. While some of these initiatives are concerned with providing consumers with farm-fresh produce, a growing portion are concerned with increasing the food sovereignty of marginalized urban communities. This chapter provides an analysis of urban contexts with the aim of identifying conceptual barriers that may act as roadblocks to achieving food sovereignty in cities. Specifically, this paper argues that taken for (...) granted commitments created during the birth of the modern city could act as conceptual barriers for the implementation of food sovereignty programs and that urban food activists and programs that challenge these barriers are helping to achieve the goal of restoring food sovereignty to local communities, no matter their reasons for doing so. At the very least, understanding the complexities of these barriers and how they operate helps to strengthen ties between urban food projects, provides these initiatives with ways to undermine common arguments used to support restrictive ordinances and policies, and illustrates the transformative potential of food sovereignty movements. (shrink)

In the 1980s, when the American art market flourished, critics were heavily concerned with theory. In T_he Aesthete in the City_ David Carrier offers a personal view on the artistic activity of that decade. He begins with a theoretical perspective on the relationship between two very different forms of artwriting: art criticism and art history writing. Carrier surveys the developments within theory during the 1980s, focusing on constructive critical analysis of the then fashionable work of Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, (...) T. J. Clark, and Jacques Derrida. He provides detailed accounts of a number of painters, among them Thomas Nozkowski, David Reed, and Sean Scully, whose development he followed closely. Carrier argues that the greatest American artistic tradition,Expressionism, provides the basis for an ongoing tradition of abstract painting, a rich system whose potential has not yet been exhausted. Carrier's earlier work was concerned with a philosophical study of the methods of art criticism. This book turns to the theory and practice of art criticism, concentrating on a concrete discussion of individual theorists and artists. (shrink)