Short Articles
Category
City: From home of microbes to coronavirus hotspot
– Xenia Kokoula, TU Berlin
Street, sidewalk, façade: What makes this picture instantly recognizable as a late 19th century urban setting is not its architecture but rather the crowds …
Corona and its spatial metaphors
– Paul Bostanjoglo, TU Berlin
COVID-19 spreads best in enclosed and crowded rooms; according to this many potentially dangerous spaces have been detected. In case of outbreaks …
Rethinking urban food systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
– Yuanzhihong Liu, TU Berlin
During the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen several outbreaks related to the urban food supply system. The first known outbreak took place in a big f…
Viruses, particles, and other matters in metropolitan Milan
– Chiara Galimberti, TU Berlin
During the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic the Metropolitan City of Milan was Italy’s most affected urban area. While people had to wear a mask …
Essential workers, caring, space and COVID-19 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
– Mayra Luciana Diaz, TU Berlin
As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first few months of 2020 different countries and cities of the world saw their commercial …
Exposing the inequalities faced by Mumbai’s ‘informal’ residents
– Sima Bhattarai, TU Berlin
Throughout the world, public health measures of maintaining proper hygiene, physical distancing and self-isolation have been implemented to contain …
From the “disease of the rich” to the “disease of the poor”: Inequality, social perception and COVID-19 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
– Ana Villasenin, TU Berlin
During the COVID-19 pandemic social and economic inequalities have become both more visible and more polarized, which can be seen in the different …
Multi-species coexistence, COVID-19 & urban design
– Johanna Schacht and Philine von Zimmermann, TU Berlin
It remains unknown what species caused the spread of COVID-19, and where exactly it was transmitted from non-humans to humans in Wuhan, China, which …
Defaced land: Reading the marks of a social obsession
– Konstantinos Manolidis
Street networks commonly serve some form of human habitation. That’s why the image of a dense pattern of driveways leading to vacant plots in a nat…
Tolerated informality: Weak land governance and dualism at the Chinese urban-rural interface
– Ava Lynam
The increasing scale and pace of urban expansion over recent decades has resulted in uneven socio-spatial development across the globe, polarising inequalities between…
Uncharted Terrain: the clash between “risk management” and informal urbanisation
– Erich Wolff
The ideas of insurgent citizenship and participatory planning also acknowledge the failure of the State in providing equal opportunities for all citizens in contemporary cities, but they propose different solutions for it.
A little island on Pier 55: urban austerity and the eclipse of publicly made public space?
– Anthony Maniscalco
They say history is written by the winners. When public space is constructed and regulated at the behest of park conservancies, public-private part…
Pocket parks as spaces of “Re-public”: the experience of the Alexandrou Svolou initiative
– Spilios Iliopoulos and Michaela Loukia Litsardaki
It is very common in modern cities to find, within the urban fabric, forgotten/neglected parts,which are pieces of land that have either been abandoned in relation to an earlier…
Space activation and re-territorialisation
– Patrick Foong Chan and Camilla Lade
“Space Activation and Re-Territorialisation” examines how alleyways and lanes are transformed through the current trend of space activation. Furthe…
Playscapes in the city of Larissa: a participatory design approach engaging architects, children and adults
– Eliki-Athanasia Diamantouli and Athina Fousteri
In 1989, the United Nations (UN General Assembly, 1989) established the children’s right to play. As a result, cities and municipalities became responsible to fulfill this need…
Does the city have the right to disregard children? The role of children in contemporary Kathmandu, Nepal
– Brinda Shrestha
The urbanization trend in modern Kathmandu, Nepal, as in other developing Asian cities, is broadly scrutinized as the result of an aftermath of un…
From the emergence of urban lighting to a new culture of consumption: department stores and the public life of women
– Nina Margies
The first public lighting system that was centrally organised and legally standardised emerged in France at the end of the 17th century. It was…
Curating capital: tourism, sustainability, and opportunity in Iceland
– Danielle S. Willkens
In 2016 and 2017, there were more Americans in Iceland than Icelanders. With a population of a nearly 333,000, and more than 65% living in the capi…
The art tourist
– Sofia Mavroudis
One of the largest and most important international exhibitions of contemporary art takes place only once every five years. Documenta, the exhibiti…
Applied neuroscience in the research of place
– Negar Ahmadpoor
There is a continuous dialogue between the physical environment and the brain’s functions. The human constructs the physical environment and subseq…