As the last flames of the Second World War flickered and died, Germany emerged into an apocalyptic wasteland, where the Hitler Youth generation would be cursed with the running sore of National ...Socialism. With the uncaged bear of the Soviet Union flexing its muscles and the escalating tensions between East and West providing some distraction from the funeral pyre of the Third Reich, those living in West Germany soon understood that they were the geological bulkhead, a component in the prevention of communism spreading throughout the infantile peace of post-Second World War Europe.Despite all the destruction and political tensions which surrounded them, the young men and women of Germany were keen to experience the world beyond their own precarious borders. In August 1945, Tia Schuster and Lisa Kraus were two fourteen-year-old Berliners, and - like many - they found themselves shoehorned into what was to be the second 'new era' of their young lives. The first had brought about only death and destruction, yet this second had a cold unfamiliarity about it.As the late 1940s gave way to the 1950s and '60s, a series of new decadent eras - of rock-n-roll, fashion, flower power and sexual revolution - was on the horizon, which posed a threat to the traditional German way of life championed by the Nazi regime and post-Second World War German government. With this heady mixture of newfound freedom, the youth of Germany unwittingly became a feature of everything that both fascism and communism despised.This unique work tells the story of the tentative steps taken by young men and women into the 'afterlife of Nazi Germany'. Encompassing memoirs along the way, it presents a quirky portrayal of charm, humor, mischief and personal accomplishment along with a vitally important slice of (West) Germany's social history, which has remained hidden from the literary world for decades. As Tia Schuster remarked:'The world suddenly became a very big piece of pie, we wouldn't be happy with just taking a slice of this pie, no, we wanted the whole damn thing and we didn't care if it made us sick or not!'
This research tackles the intermediate spaces between buildings and the street, by examining the definition and importance of spatial configuration in relation to urban morphology and social ...relations. It also analyses how the organisation of in-between space affects social interaction in different urban forms. To understand the complex relations and socio-spatial structure of the city, it is important to use mixed methods. This research utilises various methods to focus on three dissimilar urban morphologies in Izmir, Turkey. Two inner city quarters and one modern housing estate of middle-and high-income groups are compared using space syntax analysis and snapshot observations. These neighbourhoods are selected according to their syntax measures from more integrated to segregated neighbourhoods in the axial analysis. And for a detailed zoomed-in analysis, similar diameter areas are covered for observations. Subsequently, activity patterns are observed at different times of the day, one weekday and one Sunday in three cases. In each neighbourhood, syntactic measures of all selected streets are correlated with these recorded activities. This study reveals that connectivity of streets is important for supplying niches that trigger long-duration activities and social interaction. In modern estates, stationary activities are not correlated strong enough with movement as it is in inner city neighbourhoods. Additionally, in-between spaces increase the frequency of social interaction and co-presence of people particularly in more integrated areas. However, this is only one element in developing sense of community. Further research is needed especially in correlating space syntax with environmental issues, as well as people's behaviour.
Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of defining place identity. This paper aims to define the identity of place through the distinctiveness of the urban heritage of Chiang Mai Old City, Thailand. ...Chiang Mai Old City has unprecedented levels of diversity and a cultural dynamics related to its intangible and tangible urban heritage. Moreover, the city is in the important stage of being nominated as a new World Heritage Site of UNESCO, with the city’s distinctiveness being significant in supporting further heritage management strategies. The research presented in this paper mainly focuses on how local people interpret and understand the urban heritage identity of Chiang Mai Old City. This has been achieved through surveys of four hundred participants who live in the Old City and a two-way focus group with five participants in each group. The results provide seven aspects to describe the distinctiveness of Chiang Mai Old City. Moreover, the results can also be used to develop an assessment indicator for defining the distinctiveness of other cities through the engagement of local people.
The late twentieth and early twenty-first century has witnessed the unfortunate plight of demolition or irreparable damage for thousands of historic streets across China as a result of urbanization ...and redevelopment. A core of committed practitioners, academics and enlightened local governments have begun to recognize the important historical legacy of these streets and are undertaking conservation and revitalization projects. In Suzhou, approximately 100 km west of Shanghai, Pingjiang Street/district is an historical urban area that has recently undergone sensitive conservation and become one of the 'must-see' places in the city. This paper presents a historical account of the development, demise and resurrection of the houses, streets and waterways of Pingjiang district. The area's long history can be broadly structured into two critical and dialectical phases: the period of growth and incremental change during the Imperial period, and the pressures for change and development during the twentieth century. The paper will compare the socio-cultural factors that have shaped the layout of houses, streets and waterways and thus the whole street/district during these contrasting periods. These periods of transition will be followed by a critical review and assessment of urban conservation and revitalization of the area under the banner of 'heritage'.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose: This paper investigates the potential of virtual reality (VR) technologies—specifically, building information modeling (BIM) (“Autodesk Revit”) and game engines (“Unreal Engine”)—to enhance ...public involvement in the design and execution of architecture and urban projects. The main research question focuses on comparing the effectiveness of these two methods in creating an interactive design model for participatory design in public spaces. Methods: The study employed a VR exploratory experiment with 33 participants, followed by semi-structured interviews to analyze two recent developments in London: the Sky Garden, and Crossrail Place Roof Garden. Participants interacted with the design models and provided feedback on their experiences. Results: The findings demonstrate that integrating VR with BIM software using the Enscape plugin effectively enhances user involvement, enabling real-time generation and testing of design alternatives. While both methods were found to be beneficial, participants reported a preference for the direct implementation of VR in BIM software. Conclusions: This research highlights the potential of VR technologies—specifically, BIM and game engines—as a co-design approach for public and social spaces in urban environments. It also identifies limitations and future research opportunities in adopting these methods for participatory design.
Informal learning spaces play a significant role in enriching student experiences in learning environments. Such spaces are becoming more common, resulting in a change to the spatial configuration of ...built environments in higher education. However, previous research lacks methods to evaluate the influence of the spatial design characteristics of informal learning spaces on student preferences and their activities within. This paper aims to tease out the spatial design characteristics of informal learning spaces to examine how they shape students’ preferences in terms of their use of the spaces and what they do within them. The two case studies selected for this study, both in the UK, are the Diamond at the University of Sheffield, and the Newton at Nottingham Trent University. A mixed-methods study is applied, including questionnaires, observation, interviews, and focus groups. Six significant design characteristics (comfort, flexibility, functionality, spatial hierarchy, openness, and other support facilities) that influence student use of informal learning environments are identified. These can be used to inform future design strategies for other informal learning spaces in higher education.
Cities face considerable fundamental sustainability challenges, and scholars have developed many sustainability assessment tools (SATs) to assess and address these problems. As an important pillar of ...the tools, the institutional dimension, though added to one of the main dimensions, needs to be stressed more in the existing studies, especially in the field of political geography. Territory, as one of the core concepts of political geography, is considered an essential practical perspective of institutional issues. This paper aims to clarify the limitations of the institutional dimension in SATs from the perspective of territory. Nineteen SAT tools are filtered and reviewed after refining the concept of institutional sustainability. Their categories and indicators are divided into four themes in order to clarify the intent of the institutional dimensions. After documentary analysis, we argue that the main shortcomings of the existing research are the need for more balanced integrality and spatial embeddedness of institutional indicators in the tools. The institutional dimension should be first considered before defining other dimensions through more detailed explanations than the existing one and should lay the roots in the specific institutional arrangements. This paper suggests that the preferential consideration for institutional dimension and the appropriate increase of its specific gravity can be considered in future SAT optimization and development. Some sociological approaches, like grounded theory, can be regarded as an introduction to form institutional indicators based on specific institutional arrangements. This study can provide an opportunity to improve the existing sustainability assessment tools or develop new tools to reflect more holistic understandings of institutional sustainability.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
With the development of inventory planning and the contradiction between land supply and demand, urban renewal development has been gradually replacing reconstruction in China's community ...redevelopment projects. Such projects need multiple stakeholders' engagement. However, China's patterns of public engagement with top-down governance are different from those in developed countries with bottom-up initiatives. This fact also indicates that such developed patterns are not suitable for the context of China. Meanwhile, research on micro rehabilitation is relatively new and requires further analytical work on development pattern analysis. Therefore, the protagonist status of different stakeholders and allowing them to participate in redevelopment projects are social issues that need to be solved urgently. This paper explores patterns of public engagement in community micro-rehabilitation projects in China. Eleven communities in Guangzhou are taken as cases through participatory observation, document analysis, and interviews. This paper analyses opinions and comments from different stakeholders and summarises their information delivery paths. The findings indicate four present patterns: single-threaded, representative feedback, property involvement, and external party service patterns. Through comparative analysis, the study highlights that the participating stakeholders in the four patterns involved the projects to different degrees. However, they are all still in the "Tokenism" degree, which is in the middle category of the ladder of engagement. Furthermore, an appropriate and sustainable pattern is put forward to provide a reference and research basis for improving public engagement in community micro-rehabilitation projects in China.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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