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Land-Use and Surface-Cover as Urban Ecological Indicators

Stephan Pauleit and Jürgen H. Breuste

in Urban Ecology: Patterns, Processes, and Applications

Land uses represent the different anthropogenic activities in a given area such as housing, commercial activities, transport, recreation, and farming. Surface cover is the physical result of land use ... More

Land uses represent the different anthropogenic activities in a given area such as housing, commercial activities, transport, recreation, and farming. Surface cover is the physical result of land use as process. Ecosystem services, such as climatic energy exchange and hydrology, are clearly related to land use and land cover in urban areas. Therefore, urban planning and regulations that influence the spatial pattern and intensity of land use can have huge implications for the ecology of cities. The mapping of structural types/urban morphology types is presented in this chapter as an approach to characterise the spatial pattern and the physical character of the urban fabric. The approach is exemplified for the Greater Manchester conurbation, UK. Large differences could be observed in surface cover composition between the various urban morphology types. Densely built areas with a very low cover of evapotranspiring surfaces are town centres, large industrial and commercial areas, and transport infrastructures. Urban green spaces, woodlands, and farmland have a very high percentage cover of evapotransipring surfaces of more than 90% each. Urban land use and surface cover dynamics are mainly driven by the expansion of urban areas by urban sprawl, urban densification within urban areas but increasingly also the effect of population shrinkage and brownfield development. Analyses of land use and land cover dynamics and their impacts on ecological processes are important to underpin policies for urban sustainability.Less

City Artisans, Merchants, and Urban Administration

Nandita Prasad Sahai

in Politics of Patronage and Protest: The State, Society, and Artisans in Early Modern Rajasthan

This chapter describes urban morphology and artisanal settlement in caste colonies (muhallas)—which ensured the emergence of strong ties and biradari or brotherhood solidarity—during the early ... More

This chapter describes urban morphology and artisanal settlement in caste colonies (muhallas)—which ensured the emergence of strong ties and biradari or brotherhood solidarity—during the early decades of Maharaja Vijai Singh’s reign. How such patterns of settlement helped artisans to mobilize as a community and bargain with the state as tax-payers or as wage earners are also discussed. The chapter also describes how, to increase the sense of their izzat (honour), the Rathor thakurs of the different cities of Marwar made it a priority to support artists and artisans. The state appointed a senior person as mehatars who acted as representatives of his caste. The author concludes by describing contours of the paternalist discourse of legitimation in the Jodhpur state. State interactions with artisans show a relatively solicitous approach in the early years of Vijai Singh’s reign. Artisanal responses to elite transgressions were constrained within the parameters of elite hegemony, yet watchful for points to exert pressure and seize advantage.Less

Becoming “Boystown” in Neoliberal Chicago: A Critical Urban Morphology of the North Halsted–Broadway Corridor

Alex G. Papadopoulos

Larry Bennett, Roberta Garner, and Euan Hague (eds)

in Neoliberal Chicago

The chapter studies the circumstances under which, Boystown, Chicago’s iconic LGBT community/village, emerged in the 1960s, as well as the changing urban forms and structures that have defined it. It ... More

The chapter studies the circumstances under which, Boystown, Chicago’s iconic LGBT community/village, emerged in the 1960s, as well as the changing urban forms and structures that have defined it. It situates the Boystown phenomenon within broader urban development events in Chicago in the post WWII era, and explores linkages between local change and urban and financial regulatory frames at the city, regional, state, and national scales. The study focuses on the geographic core of Boystown, which is identified as the North Halsted Street-Broadway Corridor. It traces urban morphological change in the Corridor (its town plan of lots, blocks, streets, and open spaces, built forms, and building- and land-uses), as a means of illuminating the causes, agents, and structural forces that have produced Boystown.Less

Interstitial Urban Space: Inhabiting the Pleats and Notches in the Urban Fabric of New Orleans

Scott Bernhard

in Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans

The street grid of New Orleans is uniquely configured relative to its unusual geography and 19th century settlement patterns. The method for creating an ordered street system adjacent to the dramatic ... More

The street grid of New Orleans is uniquely configured relative to its unusual geography and 19th century settlement patterns. The method for creating an ordered street system adjacent to the dramatic undulations of the Mississippi River is as intricate and variable as the landscape itself. A combination of factors from the land-use patterns of plantations to the conflicting geometries of orderly grids and irregular curves conspired to produce the intelligible though complex urban landscape of New Orleans and a unique urban morphology. The order of streets and avenues in New Orleans produces nearly as many urban anomalies as it does regular ones and the building stock of the city often struggles to adapt to the irregularities of the “system.” These unique urban conditions were formed over the course of a century, yielding useful slivers of accidental public space and secret, interstitial worlds of compact living.Less

Introduction

Linda Rui Feng

in City of Marvel and Transformation: Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized ... More

The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.Less