The city-text in post-communist Budapest: street names,memorials, and the politics of commemoration

As in most parts of Central and Eastern Europe, there is a tradition in Hungary of changing street names and memorials in the wake of major political transitions. This article focuses on the change of street names and memorials, i.e. the city-text, in Hungary’s political capital, Budapest, between 1985 and 2001. The city-text in Budapest became a locus of dispute between different political authorities, including the nation state, the metropolitan municipality, and the district, each bearing different political ideals during and after the fall of communism. Discursive changes in the post-communist city-text emerged expressing specific conceptions of national sovereignty, but the direction of the changes were debated. Different levels of administration in Budapest and Hungary had divergent visions of what the new discourse on national sovereignty should be. The changes, therefore, did not express a simple transition to an agreed-upon post-communist value system, but were the result of a symbolic struggle between different levels of administration over what should be commemorated in the city-text.     

Dislocating modernity: Identity, space and representations of street trade in Durban, South Africa

South Africa’s cities have experienced dramatic changes over the past decade. Cities are now home to a multiracial population, and have been transformed by new forms of economic and social interaction. For some, these changes have become a significant source of fear and anxiety. In this paper, we examine reactions to urban spatial change in the city of Durban, as expressed in local newspapers and interviews with suburban residents. We describe how the discourses of urban change in Durban have centred on the increased presence of street traders within the city’s public spaces, and the various ways in which the activity of street trade has disrupted long-established modernist norms governing the occupation and use of the urban space. Specifically, we offer a detailed reading of three prominent narratives within the discussion of street traders in Durban--chaos, congestion and pollution. We argue that street traders have come to embody a wide range of more deeply seated cultural anxieties, which have been brought to the fore in the context of South Africa’s transition. These anxieties arise from the ways in which modern understandings of order, agency and subjectivity have been called into question by material changes in the city, and have implications for the nature of citizenship and civic engagement in post-apartheid South Africa.     

Journeys to the street: the complex migration geographies of Ugandan street children

Children have generally been afforded little attention in migration research or unsatisfactorily included within family migration. Although they are an important consideration in family decisions to move, children also engage in autonomous, independent migration. Further, researchers now argue for the need to situate migration within political, economic and social conditions to obtain a full understanding of why people migrate. Through the use of children-centred research methods, and in-depth interviews with key informants, this paper considers children's journeys to the street in Uganda. By integrating an analysis of Ugandan street children's spatial origins with the familial and societal contexts of their migration decisions, this research highlights the complexity of their migration. In addition, an exploration of the impact of changing social, spatial and temporal conditions on street children's movements illustrates that their journeys are far more than just single processes.     

Scattering of plane SV waves by cylindrical canyons in saturated porous medium

On the basis of Biot dynamic theory, an analytic solution of two-dimensional scattering and diffraction of plane SV waves by circular cylindrical canyons in a half space of saturated porous media is presented in this paper for the first time. The solution is obtained by employing the Fourier–Bessel series expansion technique. Parametric studies had been carried out, which includes: the angle of incidence, the frequency of the incident SV wave, the porosity of saturated porous medium and the stiffness and Poisson's ratio of the solid-skeleton. All the outcomes are useful for the seismic analysis of the surface topography conditions.     

广州市北京路步行街旅游形象策划

商业步行街是当今城市旅游购物和休闲的一个重要场所。广州市北京路是广州历史和现代有名的商业街之一,也是广州的一个著名景点。为了更好地包装广州市北京路的旅游形象,在详细分析其旅游文脉和旅游发展现状的基础上,采用企业识别系统的相关理论,对该区旅游形象MI、BI、VI三个方面进行了较为科学的策划。认为广州市北京路应突出“岭南第一街”的特点,对步行街的企业行为系统、市民行为系统等进行有效管理和规范,并改善现有的视觉景观和视觉标志,着力塑造一个集旅游观光、购物消费和休闲娱乐于一体的旅游形象。     

阳朔“西街现象”的形成机理分析——旅游地发展中的游客理性消费与政府“无为而治”

阳朔县作为中国最早对外开放旅游的县之一,其演化历程具有独特性和典型性。在旅游参与期曾出现过一段主客关系和谐、商业秩序与休闲氛围俱佳的“西街现象”,引起媒体和业界的广泛关注,尚缺乏学术层面的解读。本文采用实证归纳的案例研究方法,借鉴旅游治理和目的地发展的相关理论,分析了“西街现象”的形成过程与内在机理,得出以下结论和启示：在旅游发展初期,信息完全的理性旅游消费者的到来,有助于规范目的地的商业经营环境。市场与社区自下而上互动协商达成共识的秩序,促成激励诚信经营的非正式制度嵌入于人际网络和旅游交易的场域之中,政府顺应市场规律即能实现“无为而治”的良性发展状态。本文通过归纳以有预算的理性游客作为市场推动力所触发的旅游地的发展特点,部分回应消费转型背景下旅游市场理性回归后的可能影响。对现实的启发是,适当控制旅游发展的速度和规模,给予本地人成长的时间和空间,教育游客与提升政府监管力度双管齐下,建立规则在先,更利于目的地实现可持续性的发展。     

新媒体影响下仿制景观的兴起及其形象塑造：以佛山日本街为例

自2000年以来开始出现的大量仿制景观,从经济、社会、文化和政治方面重塑了中国的城市空间,但却没有引起学者的普遍关注。以新兴出现的微型仿制景观——佛山日本街为例,运用实地调查和话语分析方法,首先理清佛山日本街的仿制要素及其特征,以及佛山日本街的兴起原因,其次利用社交平台的文本数据分析新媒体影响下佛山日本街的形象塑造,进而探讨佛山日本街不同形象的产生根源。研究发现,佛山日本街的仿制要素虽受到日本城市街道形态以及ACGN亚文化的启发,但本质上是一种文化借用式的网红打卡地;资本竞争和新型社交方式是佛山日本街兴起的主要动力要素,而新冠肺炎疫情影响下的旅游环境变化进一步刺激和提升了佛山日本街的打卡热度和知名度;在新媒体的影响下,社交平台用户对佛山日本街的讨论主要聚焦于文化原真性和抄袭侵权两个方面,导致其塑造的形象正面、负面并存。     

Application of the weighted residual method to diffraction by 2-D canyons of arbitrary shape: I. Incident SH waves

A solution for the two-dimensional scattering and diffraction of plane SH waves by canyons of arbitrary shape in an elastic half space is presented. The wave field for arbitrary geometry in this paper is computed numerically by the method of weighted residues (moment method). The wave displacement field computed by the present residual method for the case of a semi-circular canyon was shown to agree analytically and numerically with that computed by the exact closed form series solution. The same observations about ground amplifications, their dependence on frequencies and orientations of the incident waves, can be stated here for canyons of arbitrary shape as previously made for circular canyons.     

On the magnitude of upwelling fluxes in shelf-break canyons

A hydrodynamic model is employed to derive the magnitude of on-shelf fluxes through a shelf-break canyon for a wide range of canyon sizes and ambient oceanic conditions. Predicted canyon-upwelling fluxes are of the order of 0.05–0.1 Sv (1 Sv=1 million m³/s), being several orders of magnitude greater than upslope fluxes in the bottom Ekman layer on the ambient continental slope. On the basis of ∼150 simulations conducted, a bulk formula of upwelling flux in a submarine canyon is derived. For typical conditions, the upwelling flux varies quadratically with forcing strength (speed of incident flow), linearly with canyon depth, and is inversely proportional to the buoyancy frequency of the density stratification inside the canyon. Other parameters such as density stratification above shelf-break depth and bottom friction are found to have minor influences on the resultant canyon-upwelling flux.     

‘Big data’ for pedestrian volume: Exploring the use of Google Street View images for pedestrian counts

New sources of data such as ‘big data’ and computational analytics have stimulated innovative pedestrian oriented research. Current studies, however, are still limited and subjective with regard to the use of Google Street View and other online sources for environment audits or pedestrian counts because of the manual information extraction and compilation, especially for large areas. This study aims to provide future research an alternative method to conduct large scale data collection more consistently and objectively on pedestrian counts and possibly for environment audits and stimulate discussion of the use of ‘big data’ and recent computational advances for planning and design. We explore and report information needed to automatically download and assemble Google Street View images, as well as other image parameters for a wide range of analysis and visualization, and explore extracting pedestrian count data based on these images using machine vision and learning technology. The reliability tests results based on pedestrian information collected from over 200 street segments in Buffalo, NY, Washington, D.C., and Boston, MA respectively suggested that the image detection method used in this study are capable of determining the presence of pedestrian with a reasonable level of accuracy. The limitation and potential improvement of the proposed method is also discussed.