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This book collects a set of reflections concerning the planning of contemporary cities by urban design, with a special emphasis on some needs and shortcomings emerged during the coronavirus pandemic. With the ultimate goal of designing accessible, inclusive and welcoming green cities, it discusses the urgent need for new systems of public spaces across the city, together with alternative solutions for individual mobility (especially slow mobility) and social interaction. It is intended for a broad readership, including designers, engineers, architects, social scientists, stakeholders, and public administrators, who deal with various aspects of the realization of the City 4.0.
Evolution and Conversion explores the main tenets of René Girard's thought in a series of dialogues. Here, Girard reflects on the evolution of his thought and offers striking new insights on topics such as violence, religion, desire and literature. His long argument is a historical one in which the origin of culture and religion is reunited in the contemporary world by means of a reinterpretation of Christianity and an understanding of the intrinsically violent nature of human beings. He also offers provocative re-readings of Biblical and literary texts and responds to statements by Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Including an introduction by the authors, this is a revealing text by one of the most original thinkers of our time.
This book reports on a large research project on community regeneration, which integrated the spatial, social, economic and organizational factors with the dimensions of sustainability, resilience and participation. Upon providing a detailed review on concepts of community and urban regeneration, it analyses a set of successful case studies from 30 European cities, which were selected by the authors from different rankings and awards. Fifty-seven key performance indicators and the results of self-assessment questionnaires are here introduced to allow a comparative study of best practices and eventually to outline 20 guidelines and 100 strategic actions for future community regeneration projects. All in all, this book offers extensive information and a source of inspiration for urban planners, economists, sociologists, public administrators, stakeholders and all those involved in the development and management of sustainable cities.
From prehistoric stone tools, to machines, to computers, things have traveled a long road along with human beings. Changing with the times, places, and methods of their production, emerging from diverse histories, and enveloped in multiple layers of meaning, things embody ideas, emotions, and symbols of which we are often unaware. The meaning of “thing” is richer than that of “object,” which is something that is manipulated with indifference or according to impersonal technical procedures. Things also differ from merchandise, objects that can be sold or exchanged or seen as status symbols. Things, in the philosophical sense, are nodes of relationships with the life of others, chains ...
The essays in this collection are based on papers given at a conference on detective fiction in European culture, held at the University of Exeter in September 1997. The range of topics covered is designed to show not only the presence and variety of narratives of detection across different European countries and their different media (although there is a predictable emphasis on the novel). It also illustrates the fertility of the genre, its openness to a spectrum of readings with different emphases, formal as well as thematic. Approaches to detective fiction have often tended to confine them-selves to ‘symptomatic’ interpretation, where details of the fictional world represented are use...
This book offers the first comprehensive report on the topic of organizational innovation and sustainability of urban regeneration from the public manager's perspective. Starting from a rich set of case studies on urban regeneration from the region of Apulia, in Italy, it develops a framework for measuring their sustainability performance. It proposes the use of indicators related to different aspects of the urban regeneration process, including the participations of stakeholders; land use and buildings; economy and jobs; transportation; environmental pollution; energy use; waste management; as well as open spaces and wildlife. This book offers extensive information to graduate students and researchers, and to authorities, developers, investors and stakeholders alike, involved in the design, planning and management, and sustainable development of urban spaces. It is expected to foster a better understanding of the level of organizational innovation and sustainability of urban regeneration projects and the role of governing bodies in their implementation.
Now in its fifth edition, A Concise Introduction to Linguistics provides students with a detailed introduction to the core concepts of language as it relates to culture. The textbook includes a focus on linguistic anthropology, unpacking the main contributions of linguistics to the study of human communication and culture. Aimed at the general education student, the textbook also provides anthropology, linguistics, and English majors with the resources needed to pursue advanced courses in this area. Written in an accessible manner that does not assume previous knowledge of linguistics, this new edition contains expanded discussions on linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics (including a section on gender and language), and pragmatics. The textbook incorporates a robust set of pedagogical features including marginal definitions, a substantial glossary, chapter summaries, and learning exercises. Brand new to this edition are suggested reading lists at the end of every chapter, and recommended websites and apps to further aid students in their study.
Both architecture and anthropology emerged as autonomous theoretical disciplines in the 18th-century enlightenment. Throughout the 19th century, the fields shared a common icon—the primitive hut—and a common concern with both routine needs and ceremonial behaviours. Both could lay strong claims to a special knowledge of the everyday. And yet, in the 20th century, notwithstanding genre classics such as Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects or Paul Oliver’s Shelter, and various attempts to make architecture anthropocentric (such as Corbusier’s Modulor), disciplinary exchanges between architecture and anthropology were often disappointingly slight. This book attempts to l...
Today, students are more familiar with other cultures than ever before because of the media, Internet, local diversity, and their own travels abroad. As such, traditional intercultural communication textbooks which focus solely on the ′differences′ approach aren′t truly effective for today′s students, nor for this field′s growth. Using a social constructionist framework—which explores how culture is constructed and produced in the moments in which it is experienced—Inter/Cultural Communication provides today′s students with a rich understanding of how culture and communication affect and effect each other. Inter/Cultural Communication improves upon current textbooks in four s...