Community As Place Making

This paper examines street performance management models in the Cincinnati area and compares them to experiences performers have had in New Orleans and Canada. The paper is the result of interviews with different performers and seeks to find a solution to creating a successful street performance scene in the city.  Anyone interested in place making or city environment will find this a helpful resource.

Abstract: To identify and evaluate architect Christopher Alexander’s theory of wholeness, this article draws on the work of British philosopher J.G. Bennett, who developed a conceptual method—what he called systematics—to clarify phenomena by drawing upon the qualitative significance of number. A central assumption of systematics is that there is something inherent in number itself that is fundamental to the way the world is and the way we can understand it. For Bennett, each whole number provides different but complementary modes for examining any phenomenon; thus, one-ness relates to the wholeness of the phenomenon; two-ness, to complementarity; three-ness, to relatedness, and so forth. This article draws on Bennett’s interpretation of four-ness, summarized by a diamond-shaped symbol that he called the tetrad. Bennett claimed that the tetrad provides an interpretive means for understanding any activity directed toward a focused outcome, for example, writing a book, designing a building, or planning a new city district. The tetrad is used in this article to probe and evaluate Alexander’s conceptual and practical efforts to recognize and fabricate wholeness, drawing on evidence from his four-volume Nature of Order (2002-2005) and New Theory of Urban Design (1987). The article first discusses the tetrad broadly and then considers how it helps to clarify Alexander’s efforts to understand and make wholeness.

A PDF of this article is available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/3/2/46/pdf

2007 was a significant landmark in human history since it was the first time that a majority of the world’s population lived in urban areas. In 1950, one-third of the world’s population lived in cities. Only 50 years later population had increased to one-half and predictions say that it will get to two-thirds by 2050.
Urbanization is a transformative process and, as a consequence of cities growth and development, slums formations and informal settlements arise. This urbanization outcome is mainly taking place in the developing world, where the informal city is a growing phenomenon and is becoming the norm. According to the United Nations estimates, 32 percent of the world’s population live in slums, and the number will reach 50 percent by 2030.
Recent approaches to regeneration of informal settlements are evolving into strategies characterized by improving their existing conditions, minimizing relocations of their inhabitants. This on-site approach together with street-based upgrading constitutes an effective eviction alternative that facilitates the regeneration of informal areas.
But, can streets in informal areas be designed? What is the role of urban design in informal and low-income areas? Is street-based urban design and placemaking possible in these areas? Can productivity and economic activity be stimulated through design?
This paper argues that street-based upgrading plays an essential role in the regeneration process of informal areas. It preserves the social organization network of communities, secures land tenure rights and promotes productivity and economic activity. Streets are more than only spaces for mobility, accessibility or pipelines, they are fundamental places where social, cultural and economic activities are promoted.
Drawing upon experiences in Jakarta, Manila and Medellín, this paper concludes that street-based upgrading in informal settlements work as a catalyst for the revitalization and transformation of neighborhoods, generating productive spaces for economy and creating sense of community.

This project aims to scrutinize consumer and shopkeeper perception of the UP Diliman Shopping Center (SC) to pinpoint areas of improvement both materially and aesthetically, with the hopes that all concerned parties would take a closer look into making the SC a place that the UP community could be truly proud of.

Esta comunicación presenta las reflexiones teóricas acerca de la sostenibilidad psicosocial de las ciudades. Se analizan los factores que hacen psicosocialmente insostenibles las ciudades y aquellos que, por el contrario, promueven la habitabilidad de las mismas: en particular, ...

Salama, A. M. (2013). Urban Diversity Under the Microscope: A Brief Examination of Public Open Spaces in the City of Doha. B’Here Annual Review-Qatar 2013, Arab Communication Consult, Beirut, Lebanon, PP.126-129.


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With their socio-physical, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political presence, cities have always been highly differentiated spaces expressive of heterogeneity, diversity of activities, entertainment, excitement and pleasure. They have been - and still are - melting pots for the formulation of and experimentation with new philosophies and religious and social practices. They produce, reproduce, represent, and convey much of what counts today as culture, knowledge, and politics. This article presents a brief examination of public open spaces, Doha, Qatar.

"Press overview:
How did the American people come to develop a moral association with this land, such that their very experience of nationhood was rooted in, and their republican virtues depended upon, that land? And what is happening now as the exclusivity of that moral linkage between people and land becomes ever more attenuated? In Place and Belonging in America, David Jacobson addresses the evolving relationship between geography and citizenship in the United States since the nation's origins.

Americans have commonly assumed that only a people rooted in a bounded territory could safeguard republican virtues. But, as Jacobson argues, in the contemporary world of transnational identities, multiple loyalties, and permeable borders, the notion of a singular territorial identity has lost its resonance. The United States has come to represent a diverse quilt of cultures with varying ties to the land. These developments have transformed the character of American politics to one in which the courts take a much larger role in mediating civic life. An expanding web of legal rights enables individuals and groups to pursue their own cultural and social ends, in contrast to the civic republican practice of an active citizenry legislating its collective life.

In the first part of his sweeping study, Jacobson considers the origins of the uniquely American sense of place, exploring such components as the Puritans and their religious vision of the New World; the early Republic and agrarian virtue as extolled in the writings of Thomas Jefferson; the nationalization of place during the Civil War; and the creation of post-Civil War monuments and, later, the national park system. The second part of Place and Belonging in America concerns the contemporary United States and its more complex interactions between space and citizenship. Here Jacobson looks at the multicultural landscape as represented by the 1991 act of Congress that changed the name of the Custer Battlefield National Monument to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and the subsequent construction of a memorial honoring the Indian participants in the battle; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He also reflects upon changing patterns of immigration and settlement. At once far-reaching and detailed, Place and Belonging in America offers a though-provoking new perspective on the myriad, often spiritual connections between territoriality, national identity, and civic culture."

Reviews:
Jacobson's lucid and insightful analysis is multilayered and interdisciplinary. Along with deft historical interpretation and incisive sociological investigation, he integrates discussions on politics, philosophy, literature, and religion, highlighting their roles in revealing American's evolving sense of place and identity.
(Virginia Quarterly Review )

Paying keen attention to interpretation, textuality, and the social uses of landscape, Jacobson's study engages questions that make it a must read.
(Susan Kollin, Journal of American History )

A thoughtful overview of major events and changes to the American linkages of place and identity to the landscape.
(William G. Holt, Contemporary Sociology )

Modeling the best of interdisciplinary scholarship, David Jacobson demonstrates the ways in which American representations of self, the human, and consciousness are interwoven with shifting American conceptualizations of time, place, and civic life. Grounded in historical analysis, philosophical in tone, and shaped largely by insights derived from the social sciences, Place and Belonging in America recalls Jonathan Edwards's eighteenth-century reflections on the beauty of history as much as the most slashing postmodern depictions of historical irony. This is an impressive work of synthesis, a beautifully-written book that deserves a wide audience.
(John Corrigan, Edwin Scott Gaustad Professor of Religion and Professor of History, Florida State University, author of Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century )

This well-written and well-researched book addresses a topic of particular interest to a variety of disciplines: the symbolic representation of space. Its specific concern is the shifting understanding and experience of 'place' in the history of the United States. In addressing this specific concern, the author has drawn upon material from the disciplines of law, history, art, and architecture. David Jacobson has moved into new areas from those covered in his previous book, and Place and Belonging in America places that earlier, good work in a conceptually richer context.
(Stephen Grosby, Clemson University )

Place and Belonging in America should provoke reflection on the importance of issues such as immigration, geographic mobility, and globalization for the viability of politics, properly understood.
(Jeremy Beer, Perspectives on Political Science )

Finding reasons for prosperity for middle size and small communities in a global world apparently pushing towards megaconurbations. Where do identity fall into the picture? But by 2012 78% of the world's population will still reside in small and medium cities....