Download or read book Brutal Beauty written by Jisha Menon and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India follows a postcolonial city as it transforms into a bustling global metropolis after the liberalization of the Indian economy. Taking the once idyllic “garden city” of Bangalore in southern India as its point of departure, the book explores how artists across India and beyond foreground neoliberalism as a “structure of feeling” permeating aesthetics, selfhood, and everyday life. Jisha Menon conveys the affective life of the city through multiple aesthetic projects that express a range of urban feelings, including aspiration, panic, and obsolescence. As developers and policymakers remodel the city through tumultuous construction projects, urban beautification, privatization, and other templated features of “world‐class cities,” urban citizens are also changing—transformed by nostalgia, narcissism, shame, and the spaces where they dwell and work. Sketching out scenes of urban aspiration and its dark underbelly, Menon delineates the creative and destructive potential of India’s lurch into contemporary capitalism, uncovering the interconnectedness of local and global power structures as well as art’s capacity to absorb and critique liberalization’s discontents. She argues that neoliberalism isn’t just an economic, social, and political phenomenon; neoliberalism is also a profoundly aesthetic project.
Download or read book The New Urban Aesthetic written by Mónica Montserrat Degen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Urban Aesthetic explores how cities worldwide are being transformed and reconfigured by the twin forces of digital technologies and 'urban branding' in the name of global capitalism. Both of these shifts entrain new sensory bodily experiences, and this digitally-mediated reconfiguration of what cities feel like is what this book terms the new urban aesthetic. Focussing on major case-studies of urban change from London to Doha, the book explores how different kinds of digital mediation play a central role in urban transformation, from smart city phone apps, to social media interactions, to computer-generated visualisations. The book reveals how different versions of the new urban aesthetic organize different sensory experiences of temporality and spatiality – leading to a new understanding of the way we experience cities today. The New Urban Aesthetic is essential reading for researchers and students in urban studies, architecture, digital studies, sociology, and human geography.
Download or read book Aesthetics of Renewal written by Martina Urban and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Buber’s embrace of Hasidism at the start of the twentieth century was instrumental to the revival of this popular form of Jewish mysticism. Hoping to instigate a Jewish cultural and spiritual renaissance, he published a series of anthologies of Hasidic teachings written in German to introduce the tradition to a wide audience. In Aesthetics of Renewal, Martina Urban closely analyzes Buber’s writings and sources to explore his interpretation of Hasidic spirituality as a form of cultural criticism. For Buber, Hasidic legends and teachings were not a static, canonical body of knowledge, but were dynamic and open to continuous reinterpretation. Urban argues that this representation of Hasidism was essential to the Zionist effort to restore a sense of unity across the Jewish diaspora as purely religious traditions weakened—and that Buber’s anthologies in turn played a vital part in the broad movement to use cultural memory as a means to reconstruct a collective identity for Jews. As Urban unravels the rich layers of Buber’s vision of Hasidism in this insightful book, he emerges as one of the preeminent thinkers on the place of religion in modern culture.
Download or read book Cities Surround The Countryside written by Robin Visser and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-12 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Denounced as parasitical under Chairman Mao and devalued by the norms of traditional Chinese ethics, the city now functions as a site of individual and collective identity in China. Cities envelop the countryside, not only geographically and demographically but also in terms of cultural impact. Robin Visser illuminates the cultural dynamics of three decades of radical urban development in China. Interpreting fiction, cinema, visual art, architecture, and urban design, she analyzes how the aesthetics of the urban environment have shaped the emotions and behavior of people and cultures, and how individual and collective images of and practices in the city have produced urban aesthetics. By relating the built environment to culture, Visser situates postsocialist Chinese urban aesthetics within local and global economic and intellectual trends. In the 1980s, writers, filmmakers, and artists began to probe the contradictions in China’s urbanization policies and rhetoric. Powerful neorealist fiction, cinema, documentaries, paintings, photographs, performances, and installations contrasted forms of glittering urban renewal with the government’s inattention to a livable urban infrastructure. Narratives and images depicting the melancholy urban subject came to illustrate ethical quandaries raised by urban life. Visser relates her analysis of this art to major transformations in urban planning under global neoliberalism, to the development of cultural studies in the Chinese academy, and to ways that specific cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, figure in the cultural imagination. Despite the environmental and cultural destruction caused by China’s neoliberal policies, Visser argues for the emergence of a new urban self-awareness, one that offers creative resolutions for the dilemmas of urbanism through new forms of intellectual engagement in society and nascent forms of civic governance.
Download or read book The Ancient Middle Classes written by Emanuel Mayer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Our image of the Roman world is shaped by the writings of Roman statesmen and upper class intellectuals. Yet most of the material evidence we have from Roman times--art, architecture, and household artifacts from Pompeii and elsewhere--belonged to, and was made for, artisans, merchants, and professionals. Roman culture as we have seen it with our own eyes, Emanuel Mayer boldly argues, turns out to be distinctly middle class and requires a radically new framework of analysis. Starting in the first century B.C.E., ancient communities, largely shaped by farmers living within city walls, were transformed into vibrant urban centers where wealth could be quickly acquired through commercial success. From 100 B.C.E. to 250 C.E., the archaeological record details the growth of a cosmopolitan empire and a prosperous new class rising along with it. Not as keen as statesmen and intellectuals to show off their status and refinement, members of this new middle class found novel ways to create pleasure and meaning. In the décor of their houses and tombs, Mayer finds evidence that middle-class Romans took pride in their work and commemorated familial love and affection in ways that departed from the tastes and practices of social elites."--Jacket.
Download or read book Urban Interstices The Aesthetics and the Politics of the In between written by Dr Andrea Mubi Brighenti and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-12-28 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a team of international scholars with an interest in urban transformations, spatial justice and territoriality, this volume questions how the interstice is related to the emerging processes of partitioning, enclave-making and zoning, showing how in-between spaces are intimately related to larger flows, networks, territories and boundaries. Illustrated with a range of case studies from places such as the US, Quebec, the UK, Italy, Gaza, Iraq, India, and South-east Asia, the volume analyses the place and function of interstitial locales in both a ‘disciplined’ urban space and a disordered space conceptualized through the notions of ‘excess’, ‘danger’ and ‘threat’. Warning not to romanticize the interstice, the book invites us to study it as not simply a place but also a set of phenomena, events and social interactions. How are interstices perceived and represented? What is the politics of visibility that is applied to them? How to capture their peculiar rhythms, speeds and affects? On the one hand, interstices open up venues for informality, improvisation, challenge, and bricolage, playful as well as angry statements on the neoliberal city and enhanced urban inequalities. On the other hand, they also represent a crucial site of governance (even governance by withdrawal) and urban management, where an array of techniques ranging from military urbanism to new forms of value extraction are experimented. At the point of convergence of all these tensions, interstices appear as veritable sites of transformation, where social forces clash and mesh prefiguring our urban future. The book interrogates these territories, proposing new ways to explore the dynamics, events and visibilities that define them.
Download or read book Urban Aesthetics in Early Modern London written by Christopher D'Addario and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the demonstrative aesthetic shift in literary writings of fashionable London during the late 1590s, this book argues that the new forms which emerged during this period were intimately linked, arising out of a particular set of geographic, intellectual, and social circumstances that existed in these urban environs. In providing a cohesive view of these disparate generic interventions, Christopher D'Addario breaks new ground in significant ways. By paying attention to the relationship between environment and individual imagination, he provides a fresh and detailed sense of the spaces and social worlds in which the writings of prominent authors, including Thomas Nashe and John Donne, were produced and experienced. In arguing that the rise of the metaphysical aesthetic occurred across a number of urban genres throughout the 1590s, not just in lyric, but also earlier in Nashe's prose, as well as in the verse satire, he rewrites English Renaissance literary history itself.
Download or read book Ecoaesthetics and Ecosophy in China written by Cheng Xiangzhan and published by Transnational Press London. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese ecoaesthetics, which originated in 1994, has developed theoretically over the last 30 years. This branch of aesthetics, which is "based on ecology" and to "transform aesthetically towards the era of ecological civilization," uses ecological realism as its philosophical foundation and ecohumanism as its guiding principles. Its central aesthetic paradigm is known as the "body-mind-environment" model. Its main research object is "...ecological aesthetic appreciation," an exploration of how to appreciate aesthetics and ecology through "ecological beauty." Additionally, ecohumanism can be further improved by referring to principles of ecology and examining the aesthetic synergies between humans and the earth's ecosystem. Ultimately, ecohumanism is not only a method to aid in survival in an ecological crisis, but to elevate the human condition through assuming ecological responsibilities and promoting ecological civilization, leading to a more valuable and meaningful life. The theme of this book, Ecosophy C, can be summarized as "Moving toward the Aesthetics of Eternal Engendering". Its key phrase, "Creating life" corresponds to shengsheng (生生) in Chinese, literally implying a continuous cycle of reproduction. Philosophically, this concept translates to "eternal engendering". In essence, ecoaesthetics is the pursuit of the endless cycling of bio-engendering, which is the main goal of ecoaesthetics. "Cheng Xiangzhan is outstanding among Chinese environmental aestheticians in joining classical and contemporary Western environmental aesthetics with his original contributions to the more recent work by Chinese scholars. Cheng’s creative and integrative accomplishments are supported by a remarkable facility in English and reflected in his original and systematic consideration of the outstanding issues. While much can be debated, there is substantial material here, and this book makes a signal contribution to carrying the discussion forward." - Arnold Berleant, distinguished environmental aesthetician. His latest book, The Social Aesthetics of Human Environments, will appear in September 2023. Contents SECTION I - BASIC ISSUES IN ECOAESTHETICS CHAPTER 1. Ecohumanism and the Construction of Ecoaesthetics in China CHAPTER 2. The Four Keystones of Ecological Aesthetic Appreciation CHAPTER 3. An Ecoaesthetic Reflection on the Hazy Weather: The Naturalization of Nature CHAPTER 4. Ecological Civilization and Ecological Aesthetics in China SECTION Ⅱ - ECOLOGICAL AESTHETIC APPRECIATION AND ECOSOPHY C CHAPTER 5. Aesthetic Engagement, Ecosophy C, and Ecological Appreciation CHAPTER 7. The Archetype of Chinese Aesthetic Activity and a Construction of Everyday Aesthetics CHAPTER 8. Creating with Nature: Ecosophy C as an Ecological Rationality for Healing the Earth Community SECTION Ⅲ - ECOAESTHETICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS CHAPTER 9. Arnold Berleant’s Environmental Aesthetics and Chinese Ecological Aesthetics CHAPTER 10. Some Critical Reflections on Berleantian Critique of Kantian Aesthetics from the Perspective of Ecoaesthetics CHAPTER 11. Critical Reflection on Arnold Berleant’s Ideas on Ecological Aesthetics SECTION Ⅳ - ECOAESTHETICS’ APPLICATION CHAPTER 12. Ecoaesthetics and Ecocriticism CHAPTER 13. Contribution of Ecological Aesthetics to Urban Planning CHAPTER 14. Urban Image and Urban Aesthetics: Urban Aesthetics in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Download or read book Urban Aesthetics and the Planner written by Lynda Hughes Wannamaker and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urban Sustainability Through Environmental Design written by Kevin Thwaites and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2007-12-06 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban Sustainability Through Environmental Design provides the analytical tools and practical methodologies that can be employed for sustainable and long-term solutions to the design and management of urban environments.
Download or read book Sound as a Factor in Urban Aesthetics written by Heinz Fenichel and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Aesthetics of Gentrification written by Gerard F. Sandoval and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gentrification is reshaping cities worldwide, resulting in seductive spaces and exclusive communities that aspire to innovation, creativity, sustainability, and technological sophistication. Gentrification is also contributing to growing social-spatial division and urban inequality and precarity. In a time of escalating housing crisis, unaffordable cities, and racial tension, scholars speak of eco-gentrification, techno-gentrification, super-gentrification, and planetary-gentrification to describe the different forms and scales of involuntary displacement occurring in vulnerable communities in response to current patterns of development and the hype-driven discourses of the creative city, smart city, millennial city, and sustainable city. In this context, how do contemporary creative practices in art, architecture, and related fields help to produce or resist gentrification? What does gentrification look and feel like in specific sites and communities around the globe, and how is that appearance or feeling implicated in promoting stylized renewal to a privileged public? In what ways do the aesthetics of gentrification express contested conditions of migration and mobility? Addressing these questions, this book examines the relationship between aesthetics and gentrification in contemporary cities from multiple, comparative, global, and transnational perspectives.
Download or read book Urban Health written by David Vlahov and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twentieth century, the urban settings of the wealthy nations were largely associated with opportunity, accumulation of wealth, and better health than their rural counterparts. In the twenty-first century, demographic changes, globalization, and climate change are having important health consequences on wealthy nations and especially on low- and middle-income countries. The increasing concentration of poverty and significant inequalities between urban neighborhoods and the physical and social environments in cities are important determinants of population health. In this important new book, experts identify the priority problems and outline solutions that can generate and sustain healthy urban environments. Foreword by Michael H. Bloomberg Contributors include: Sue Atkinson, John G. Bartlett, Angela Beaton, Karl Brown, Pamela Ligouri Bunker, Robert J. Bunker, Scott Burris, Waleska Teixeira Caiffa, Roel A. Coutinho, Manuel Carballo, Ruth Colagiuri, Beatriz de Faria Leao, Amélia Augusta de Lima Friche, Alex Ezeh, Geoff Green, Claudio Giulliano da Costa Octavio Gómez-Dantés, Ruth Finkelstein, Julio Frenk, Nicholas Freudenberg, Fu Hua, Sandro Galea, Ticia Gerber, Carola Hein, Catherine Hull, Tord Kjellstrom, Jacob Kumaresan, Catherine Ronald Labonté, Stephen Leeder, Godfrey Mbarauku, Gordon McGranahan, Patricia Monge, Mark R. Montgomery, Martin Mulenga, Ana Luiza Nabuco, Julie Netherland, Ndioro Ndiaye, Rougui Ndiaye-Coïc, Kalala Ngalamulume, Danielle Ompad, Stipe Oreskovic, Ariel Pablos-Méndez, Jonathan Parkinson, Fernando Augusto Proietti, Thomas C. Quinn, Carlos E. Restrepo, Kevin J. Robinson, Jonathan M. Samet, David Satterthwaite, Richard H. Schneider, Ted Schrecker, Elliott Sclar, Maria Steenland, Agis Tsouros, Arnoud P. Verhoeff, Nicole Volavka-Close, Michael Ward, Vanessa Watson, Rae Zimmerman.
Download or read book An Annotated Bibliography on Urban Aesthetics written by and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Environmental Aesthetics written by Jack L. Nasar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-07-31 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.
Download or read book Hollywood in San Francisco written by Joshua Gleich and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2018-11-14 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the country’s most picturesque cities and conveniently located just a few hours’ drive from Hollywood, San Francisco became the most frequently and extensively filmed American city beyond the production hubs of Los Angeles and New York in the three decades after World War II. During those years, the cinematic image of the city morphed from the dreamy beauty of Vertigo to the nightmarish wasteland of Dirty Harry, although San Francisco itself experienced no such decline. This intriguing disconnect gives impetus to Hollywood in San Francisco, the most comprehensive study to date of Hollywood’s move from studio to location production in the postwar era. In this thirty-year history of feature filmmaking in San Francisco, Joshua Gleich tracks a sea change in Hollywood production practices, as location shooting overtook studio-based filming as the dominant production method by the early 1970s. He shows how this transformation intersected with a precipitous decline in public perceptions of the American city, to which filmmakers responded by developing a stark, realist aesthetic that suited America’s growing urban pessimism and superseded a fidelity to local realities. Analyzing major films set in San Francisco, ranging from Dark Passage and Vertigo to The Conversation, The Towering Inferno, and Bullitt, as well as the TV show The Streets of San Francisco, Gleich demonstrates that the city is a physical environment used to stage urban fantasies that reveal far more about Hollywood filmmaking and American culture than they do about San Francisco.
Download or read book Rule by Aesthetics written by D. Asher Ghertner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule by Aesthetics draws on extensive fieldwork in Delhi's slums, courtrooms and state offices to shed fresh light on the violent underpinnings of contemporary city making. Presenting a new theory of urban power, Ghertner shows how aesthetic codes replaced conventional city planning tools in Delhi's millennial slum clearance drive.
