Bodies and everyday practices in designed urban environments

In recent years, the centres of many towns and cities have been reshaped by urban design projects, but little attention has been paid to how these transformations are experienced everyday by users of the city. In other words: how do the users of urban centers, such as shoppers, cleaners, or workers, perceive these changes, as embodied subjects in specific material environments? This paper analyses how bodies in two intensely designed urban spaces – the shopping centre of Milton Keynes, a 1960s new town, and Bedford's recently redeveloped historic town centre – are affected by elements of the built environment. 'Affected' is a term borrowed from Latour (2004), and the paper works with, and elaborates, some of his and others' work on how bodies are effectuated by other entities. Such Latourian work pays a great deal of attention to how bodies are affected by both human and non-human entities of many kinds, and we examine how certain aspects of the built environment in these two towns affects bodies in specific ways. However, we also emphasise the variability in this process, in particular that bodies seem unaware – or ambivalently aware – of many entities' affordances

Kuva rajapintana: Urbaanin digitaalinen visualisoiminen Msheireb Dohan kaupunkikehityshankkeessa

Tietokoneella tuotetuista kuvista on tullut viimeisten viiden vuoden aikana arkipäivää markkinoitaessa kaupunkien kehittämishankkeita. Näiden kuvien luonnetta uudenlaisena kaupunkimaisuuden – urbaanin – kuvallistamisen muotona on kuitenkin tutkittu sangen niukasti. Esitämme artikkelissa, että tietokoneella tuotetut kuvat ansaitsevat enemmän huomiota – ja vieläpä aivan tietynlaista huomiota. Sen sijaan että niitä lähestytään kaupunkitilaan sijoittuvina kuvina, näiden kuvien digitaalisuus kutsuu ymmärtämään ne liityntäkohdiksi, kohtaamispisteiksi tai rajapinnoiksi, jotka kiertävät tietokoneohjelmien kannattelemassa verkostotilassa. Hyödynnämme Bruno Latourin toimijaverkkoteoriaa hahmottaaksemme verkoston suhteiden joukoksi, joka muodostuu toiminnan levittäytymisestä. Tältä pohjalta esitämme, että kyseisten kuvien tekeminen ja työstäminen ovat toimintaa, joka toteutuu rajapintojen sarjana. Niin kuvat kuin niiden kiertämisen ehdotkin ovat tulosta työstä, jota tehdään näissä ihmisten, ohjelmistojen ja laitteiden välisissä ja keskisissä liityntäkohdissa. Tutkailujemme viitepiste ovat kuvat, jotka tuotettiin osana laajaa kaupunkikehityshanketta Qatarin Dohassa. Päädymme ehdottamaan, että kriittisten kaupunkitutkijoiden tulisi puntaroida omaa käsitystään tietokoneella tuotetuista kuvista ja kiinnittää kuvien visuaalisen sisällön ohella yhtäläistä huomiota niihin uppoutuneisiin rajapintoihin. Tilojen ja paikkojen digitaalisia visualisointeja koskevaa ymmärrystä on tarpeen arvioida uudelleen jo siksi, että tällaisten kuvien määrä on lisääntynyt valtavasti kuvallisen kulttuurin eri kentillä

In Vitro Identification of Novel Plasminogen-Binding Receptors of the Pathogen Leptospira interrogans

Background: Leptospirosis is a multisystem disease caused by pathogenic strains of the genus Leptospira. We have reported that Leptospira are able to bind plasminogen (PLG), to generate active plasmin in the presence of activator, and to degrade purified extracellular matrix fibronectin. Methodology/Principal Findings: We have now cloned, expressed and purified 14 leptospiral recombinant proteins. The proteins were confirmed to be surface exposed by immunofluorescence microscopy and were evaluated for their ability to bind plasminogen (PLG). We identified eight as PLG-binding proteins, including the major outer membrane protein LipL32, the previously published rLIC12730, rLIC10494, Lp29, Lp49, LipL40 and MPL36, and one novel leptospiral protein, rLIC12238. Bound PLG could be converted to plasmin by the addition of urokinase-type PLG activator (uPA), showing specific proteolytic activity, as assessed by its reaction with the chromogenic plasmin substrate, D-Val-Leu-Lys 4-nitroanilide dihydrochloride. The addition of the lysine analog 6-aminocaproic acid (ACA) inhibited the protein-PLG interaction, thus strongly suggesting the involvement of lysine residues in plasminogen binding. The binding of leptospiral surface proteins to PLG was specific, dose-dependent and saturable. PLG and collagen type IV competed with LipL32 protein for the same binding site, whereas separate binding sites were observed for plasma fibronectin. Conclusions/Significance: PLG-binding/activation through the proteins/receptors on the surface of Leptospira could help the bacteria to specifically overcome tissue barriers, facilitating its spread throughout the host.FAPESP (Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo)CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico)Fundacao Butantan, BrazilFAPESP (Brazil

Sacred Rhythms and Political Frequencies: Reading Lefebvre in an Urban House of Prayer

In recent years, Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm analysis has been implied in various ways to critically examine how rhythms are formed, disrupted, and reformed through different urban venues. One theme that this body of knowledge has yet to comprehensively examine, however, is how changes in the urban sphere impact the spatial rhythms of religious institutions in cities, which can be pivotal for understanding how religious institutions are formed as urban public spaces. This article addresses this issue with a rhythm analysis of a particular religious urban locus: a synagogue in the mixed Palestinian and Jewish city of Acre in northern Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and an urban survey, the article discusses how different forms of rhythm making undergo a process of contested synchronization with linear and cyclical rhythms of the city. More specifically, how the ability to forge a space hinges on the ability to maintain a rhythmic cycle of attendance, which, in turn, is not only dependent on the ability to achieve synchronization amongst the needs of the different participants but is also intertwined with the larger linear cycle of urban life as a rhythmic equation that fuses the personal with the political, the linear with the cyclical, and the religious with the urban

Looking at digital visualizations of urban redevelopment projects: dimming the scintillating glow of unwork

The urban fabric of global cities is constantly changing. And in the past three or four years, a new form of visualising those changes has become commonplace. On the billboards of almost every building site, a new kind of image is appearing: a digital visualisation of what that site will look like when the construction work has finished (see Figure 1). In particular, the iconic new buildings which no global city can now be without (Kaika 2011) are always surrounded by such visualisations on the hoardings that encircle them as they gradually rise into the city skyline. In the hustle and bustle of many big city streets, the presence of these high-definition, glossy visualisations is often striking, inviting passing pedestrians, passengers and drivers to pause and experience their high-end design, lovely weather, pretty planting, gorgeous lighting and leisured lifestyle

Bodies and everyday practices in designed urban environments

In recent years, the centres of many towns and cities have been reshaped by urban design projects, but little attention has been paid to how these transformations are experienced everyday by users of the city. In other words: how do the users of urban centers, such as shoppers, cleaners, or workers, perceive these changes, as embodied subjects in specific material environments? This paper analyses how bodies in two intensely designed urban spaces–the shopping centre of Milton Keynes, a 1960s new town, and Bedford’s recently redeveloped historic town centre–are affected by elements of the built environment. ’Affected’ is a term borrowed from Latour (2004),and the paper works with, and elaborates, some of his and others’ work on how bodies are effectuated by other entities. Such Latourian work pays a great deal of attention to how bodies are affected by both human and non-human entities of many kinds, and we examine how certain aspects of the built environment in these two towns affect bodies in specific ways. However, we also emphasise the variability in this process, in particular that bodies seem unaware–or ambivalently aware–of many entities’ affordances

Ecologies and economies of action—sustainability, calculations, and other things

In ecological, environmental, and urban-regeneration terms, the participatory turn and the turn to action have been written about at length in both academic and official literatures. From neighbourhood renewal to lay ecologies, people are being ‘given’ all kinds of agency in the making of economy and ecology. Yet relatively little has been said regarding the financial organisation of this new populism, which is often achieved through calculation and audit, and the framing of a return. In this paper we look at the uneasy coalition of civic action and its calculability. It focuses on the funding and running of a British Pakistani and Bangladeshi women’s gardening initiative in inner city Birmingham, England. We fuse empirical work with gardeners and funding agencies with theoretical understandings of calculation in order to argue for a mode of organisation that not only includes a responsibility to act but also a responsibility to otherness. Rather than arguing for or against calculation, we describe a more diverse ecology of action and in so doing open arguments for reconfiguring the ways in which sustainable activities are funded.