Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

Making news and making space: Framing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

How is inner city space represented and by whom? Drawing from an extensive framing analysis of print media portrayals of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside between 1996 and 2008, we offer a detailed assessment of the predominately negative portrayal of the neighbourhood, and the centrality of three frames: medicalization, criminalization, and socialization. Certain social actors are given a privileged position in the media in the representation of the inner city. Outsiders are privileged over insiders, with the neighbourhood constituted as a problematic space and its residents as passive victims. The effect is to further the stigmatization of an already marginalized neighbourhood, and to accentuate the disempowerment of its residents.     

Modeling tides and tsunami propagation in the former Gulf of Tartessos,as a tool for Archaeological Science

After the last Holocene sea level rise (about 6900 BP), the Gulf of Tartessos extended over the south-western area of the nowadays Guadalquivir Valley (Spain). With the development of some depositional littoral landforms and the progressive infill, the system evolved towards an inland lagoon. The first political system in the area emerged and collapsed from the fourth to the second millennium BC. Around the first millennium BC the culture of Tartessos flourished in this area under the Phoenician influence, but it vanished by the sixth century BC. The quest of its lost capital, the city of Tartessos, has been one of the most exciting archaeological enterprises in the past century. The former coastline and the bathymetry of the gulf can be reasonably reconstructed from geo-archaeological studies, and it can be used for the numerical modeling of tide and tsunami propagation in this water body. Models, with a spatial resolution of 30 s of arc, are based on the 2D non-linear hydrodynamic equations and have been previously validated under nowadays conditions. Computed tidal elevations and currents can provide some insight on the ancient trades for ship traffic and fisheries. The simulation of tsunami propagation, like the catastrophic one of 1755, allows estimating their potential hazardous effects on ancient coastal cities.     

Identifying of buried archaeological remains with ground penetrating radar,polarized microscope and confocal Raman spectroscopy methods in ancient city of Nysa,Aydin – Turkey

The aim of this study was to image buried remains and appoint buried Hellenistic street system, and identify minerals and rock types of the ancient city of Nysa, one of the most important historical sites of Turkey. This study used polarized microscope and confocal Raman spectroscopy (CRS) ground penetrating radar (GPR) method, to identify the buried remains, rock types and minerals.     

Mapping Past and Present: Leonardo Bufalini's Plan of Rome (1551)

Leonardo Bufalini's plan of Rome (1551) was the first printed map of the Eternal City and a landmark in the history of city plans. This article fills several lacunae in the scholarship on the map by reconsidering its intended function and audience and by situating it at the intersection of technical and antiquarian endeavour in sixteenth‐century Rome. At issue are Bufalini's methods for making the map, along with the distinctive combination of practical and scholarly interests that motivated him. The anomalous status of Bufalini's plan in the realm of popular printed imagery of the city signals, moreover, that the Renaissance audience had a marked preference for pictorial city views over maps.     

Controlling the Waters of Granducal Florence: A New Look at Stefano Bonsignori's View of the City (1584)

ABSTRACT

A striking feature of Stefano Bonsignori's Nova pulcherrimae civitatis Florentiae topographia accuratissime delineata, printed in 1584, is the pre-eminence of the Arno River and the detailed depiction of a variety of often quite minor water-related structures. This large (nine-sheet) map was dedicated to Francesco I de' Medici, Granduke of Florence. Contemporary initiatives and legislation as well as works of art and literature reveal that water management had been an important aspect of the policies of Francesco's father, Cosimo I, whose achievements had transformed the city's landscape and whose efforts earned the Medici ruler the title of Granduke of Tuscany in 1569. Bonsignori's portrayal of urban structures was created as a celebration of Cosimo's architectural legacy, and the depiction of the Arno, with its embankments and riverside structures, along with some of the city's fountains and wells, acknowledged granducal ambition to control its waters.     

Development of a Methodological Framework for Handling Urban Archaeological Resources: Tarsus Historic City Centre,Turkey

In Turkey, most of the historic city centres have been continuously occupied since early ages, and ongoing research or ad hoc findings indicate urban archaeological resources beneath modern cities. According to the results of such research, archaeological and conservation sites are determined in terms of current legal frameworks. However, urban archaeological resources have not been included in the planning process because of inadequacy in spatial documentation, so archaeological deposits have been seen as problem areas in urban development. Thus, urban archaeological resources — not only subsoil resources, even monumental sites — could not be integrated into urban daily life, so most citizens are not aware of archaeological layers beneath their feet. The research project in Tarsus historic city centre, which is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), primarily aims to develop a method to include urban archaeology — especially subsoil archaeological resources — into the urban conservation planning process of multilayered historic city centres in Turkey. In this way, planners would be informed, aware, and equipped about the urban archaeological potential at the earliest stages of the planning process. Consequently, urban archaeology, as an inter-/ multi-disciplinary field of research, is going to evolve as a crucial planning analysis in urban conservation including not only archaeological research, but also in evaluating settlement history and issues in urban development.     

Introduction

The city has been ubiquitous in cultural analysis of the Victorian period and continues to provide the impetus for some of the most exciting and innovative work in nineteenth-century studies across a range of disciplines. While showing how new work is building on earlier studies and theoretical models, this Introduction demonstrates the emergence of a new agenda characterized by three fresh emphases: on demographic mobility, on material culture and everyday life, and on social networks. Accordingly, the essays in this collection have identified new sources: archaeological excavations of household objects, unpublished diaries, tracts and archival records of late-nineteenth-century missions, articles published in the periodical press and cartographic material, as well as literary texts. All of the essays in this collection concentrate on London, but London now is construed as a meeting point or intersection in a web of national and international relations. The city is newly conceptualized as a hub in wider networks of exchange and communication, and the critical attention moves between the local and its relationship to the transnational. There is a fresh attention to scale, as the minutiae of everyday life reveal stories of much larger significance.     

泛珠三角中心城市互动的动力、模式及合作领域分析

中心城市之间的互动,可以有力促进泛珠三角区域合作与发展,符合城市发展的内在需求和区域合作与发展的潮流,同时也符合中心城市与区域合作的发展历程。泛珠三角中心城市互动的重要动力是政府推动、市场机制、资源共享以及区域发展的差异性、互补性。有效的互动模式包括政府和企业双主体互动、产业对接、城市圈互动、友城战略等。泛珠三角中心城市互动可以在规划、加工制造业的分工与合作、口岸合作和大通关平台建设、社会资源等重点领域展开。     

内蒙古阿尔山森林资源枯竭型城市转型战略决策量化分析

本文通过对阿尔山市实际情况分析基础上,采用层次分析法(Analytical Hierarchy Process),通过建模、计算,对阿尔山市资源枯竭转型战略作了定量化分析,得出以下结论:在相当长的时期内,阿尔山追求生态效益应是第一位的,因此加强森林资源环境的保护与生态治理是首要战略目标,且加强森林养护与生态功能建设是第一重要的发展战略;当前亟待解决的首要发展问题是森林资源枯竭及生态环境恶化、林业系统体制矛盾及资金欠账严重,应采取的重要措施是依托国家政策尽快建立生态补偿机制及衰退产业援助机制,加快阿尔山林业企业的资产剥离重组,理顺政府与林业局关系,进而培育以"绿色"为主题的接续产业体系。