Ways of seeing: landscape-infrastructure as critical design framework to analyse the production of Paris’s Boulevard Périphérique

When studying change in urban infrastructure landscapes, technical, political, and aesthetical choices are often considered in isolation. Yet, large-scale infrastructures such as urban motorways are the crystallisation of design entanglements. The decisions taken by an engineer—to build an elevated highway instead of a tunnel, to erect soundproof walls, to destroy a church instead of a housing block—are the expression of technical knowledge, cultural prejudices, socio-political frameworks, and value-based opinions reframed as expertise. This paper will be focussing on the ‘social imagination’ of the designers, by calling for a recontextualisation of design choices within their professional and cultural discourses, practices and imaginaries in order to question these infrastructural artefacts as socially produced. This paper will illustrate the relevance of applying a critical design framework to study infrastructure landscape change by focussing on the Boulevard Périphérique of Paris, and specifically on the emergence of noise from road traffic as nuisance

Inventing 'infrastructure': tracing the etymological blueprint of an omnipresent sociotechnical metaphor

This article proposes an archaeology of the concept of ‘infrastructure’, focusing specifically on a period ranging from 1842 until 1951, before the term entered the English language from French. In doing so, it contributes to an ongoing discussion on ‘What does infrastructure really mean?’ by deconstructing the omnipresent concept of ‘infrastructure’ as an expression of modernity that has crystallised a sociotechnical imaginary: a relation between technology, space and power. Indeed, our understanding of its etymological, epistemological and intellectual origins is patchy, based on repeated chronological mistakes and conceptual misunderstandings. To put it bluntly: we do not know how the word came to be. By unearthing the origins of ‘infrastructure’, this article aims to contribute to scholarly debates on the definition(s) of infrastructure in social sciences, urban studies, science and technology studies and infrastructure studies. It also wishes to contribute to ongoing debates taking place in the public sphere regarding what should count as ‘infrastructure’. This paper’s findings demonstrate a clear relation to Karl Marx’s ‘historical materialism’; the paper also analyses how the word evolved over a short period of time to become sociotechnical metaphor; finally, the paper demonstrates the emergence of a concept that linked engineering to larger socioeconomic concerns in the 1890s, well before the emergence of ‘infrastructure’ as a key concept of development economics in the 1950s

Prácticas ambientales que se realizan en establecimientos de hospedaje del balneario de Huanchaco, julio - setiembre 2016

RESUMEN El presente trabajo de investigación se realizó con el propósito de determinar las prácticas ambientales más frecuentes que se realizan en establecimientos de hospedaje del balneario de Huanchaco. A pesar de que no tuvo el suficiente apoyo por parte de Gercetur y la Municipalidad de Huanchaco, se puso obtener el número de establecimientos categorizados registrados en Mincetur. Se aplicó un cuestionario de 20 preguntas dirigido a los gestores o responsables de 10 establecimientos de hospedaje, incluyó a 6 hoteles y 4 hostales del balneario de Huanchaco, de categorías 2 y 3 estrellas. Para ello se tomaron en cuenta preguntas enfocadas en gestión de residuos, gestión del agua, gestión de la energía, gestión de compras, comunicación y monitoreo. El cuestionario aplicado, permitió a los gestores de las empresas evaluar el uso de 20 prácticas ambientales en una escala de Likert de 5 puntos. La calificación total se obtuvo mediante la suma de las puntuaciones obtenidas en cada uno de los ítems, considerándose prácticas ambientales adecuadas cuando el puntaje fue mayor o igual que 80. Los resultados obtenidos fueron que las prácticas ambientales más frecuentes que se realizan en los establecimientos de hospedaje evaluados son “Utilización de focos ahorradores” y “Desarrolla acciones para economizar energía”, que hacen referencia a la gestión de la energía. El total de empresas evaluadas obtuvo una puntuación total menor a 80, es decir sus prácticas ambientales no califican como adecuadas.ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to ascertain the most frequently used environmental practices by lodging establishments in the beachside town of Huanchaco. Although not had enough support from Gercetur and the Municipality of Huanchaco, it stood get the number of establishments registered in MINCETUR categorized. The study was conducted via a questionnaire (20 questions) posed to managers in charge of 10 2-star and 3-star establishments, including 6 hotels and 4 hostels. The questions focused on specific themes such as waste management, water management, energy management, procurement, training and monitoring. The questionnaire allowed the lodging managers to specify their use of 20 enviromental practices using a 5-point Likert scale. The final scores are the sum of each of the ítems for each establishment, where a score of 80 and above signals and adequate level of compliance with environmental practies. The results show that the most frequently used environmental practices are those that have and economic benefit (savings). Finally, all of the lodgings had a score lower than 80, meaning that they do not adequately comply with the environmental practices understudy

The Battle of the Schedulers: FreeBSD ULE vs. Linux CFS

This paper analyzes the impact on application performance of the design and implementation choices made in two widely used open-source schedulers: ULE, the default FreeBSD scheduler, and CFS, the default Linux scheduler. We compare ULE and CFS in otherwise identical circumstances. We have ported ULE to Linux, and use it to schedule all threads that are normally scheduled by CFS. We compare the performance of a large suite of applications on the modified kernel running ULE and on the standard Linux kernel running CFS. The observed performance differences are solely the result of scheduling decisions, and do not reflect differences in other subsystems between FreeBSD and Linux. There is no overall winner. On many workloads the two schedulers perform similarly, but for some workloads there are significant and even surprising differences. ULE may cause starvation, even when executing a single application with identical threads, but this starvation may actually lead to better application performance for some workloads. The more complex load balancing mechanism of CFS reacts more quickly to workload changes, but ULE achieves better load balance in the long run

The Battle of the Schedulers: FreeBSD ULE vs. Linux CFS

International audienceThis paper analyzes the impact on application performance of the design and implementation choices made in two widely used open-source schedulers: ULE, the default FreeBSD scheduler, and CFS, the default Linux scheduler. We compare ULE and CFS in otherwise identical circumstances. We have ported ULE to Linux, and use it to schedule all threads that are normally scheduled by CFS. We compare the performance of a large suite of applications on the modified kernel running ULE and on the standard Linux kernel running CFS. The observed performance differences are solely the result of scheduling decisions, and do not reflect differences in other subsystems between FreeBSD and Linux. There is no overall winner. On many workloads the two schedulers perform similarly, but for some work-loads there are significant and even surprising differences. ULE may cause starvation, even when executing a single application with identical threads, but this starvation may actually lead to better application performance for some workloads. The more complex load balancing mechanism of CFS reacts more quickly to work-load changes, but ULE achieves better load balance in the long run

Relief heurté... Opinions contrastées ?

Raymond Justinien. Relief heurté... Opinions contrastées ?. In: Le Globe. Revue genevoise de géographie, tome 125, 1985. Les Alpes dans le temps et dans l'espace. pp. 227-234

The Boulevard Périphérique, anonymous oeuvre of the Parisian technocracy: dissecting a design process at the crossroad of technical reason, social imagination and politics

The Boulevard Périphérique of Paris, a 35km ring road built around the city between 1956 and 1973, is a politically-loaded infrastructure whose omnipresence in the landscape is inversely proportional to the amount of critical literature dedicated to it. Was its design process the expression of an ‘apolitical’ professional expertise seeking to maximise efficiency? What role did political, social and aesthetical considerations, often reframed as ‘technical reason,’ play in its construction? To address these questions, based on archival work this thesis analyses the ‘social imagination’ of the technocrats who designed the ring road, focusing on the administrative correspondence of civil servants working at the Paris prefecture as they communicated internally, with elected officials and with citizens. I recontextualise their design choices within their professional and cultural discourses, practices and imaginaries to analyse the Boulevard Périphérique as socially produced. First, I challenge the assumption that the ring road was built in an empty ‘zone’ by demonstrating how specific actors managed to re-route the Boulevard Périphérique, sometimes leading to evictions in suburban towns. Second, focusing on the socio-political construction of noise from road traffic as a nuisance, I argue that the shift from a technocratic governement to a democratically-elected mayor in Paris in 1977 impacted engineers’ evaluation of the technical feasibility of retroffiting the ring road with noiseproof walls. Third, I uncover evidence about the correlation between the social status of the ring road’s neighbours and their capacity to impact on its design, demonstrating the ability of social elites to push for its concealment in their vicinity. Altogether, this thesis dissects the ring road as a ‘design entanglement’ by challenging the notion of technical reason as the guiding force of technocrats involved in its construction, throwing light on their biases, the political pressures they faced and hierarchies they were entwined in

La théorie des réflexes conditionnels en psychatrie

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

A new classification of small island economies based on geography, demography and sovereignty

International audienceWe explore and use correlations (not causations) between geographic and demographic characteristics and current levels of sovereignty in order to propose a new classification of small, island and coastal territories. While previous analyses mostly rely on descriptive statistics between the group of UN-members and subnational jurisdictions, we take advantage of a "formal sovereignty" index developed by Alberti and Goujon (2020) that provides a continuous and multidimensional measure of sovereignty or autonomy for a sample of 100 small island states and coastal/island territories. Huge heterogeneity within such a sample leads us to use a data-driven method of principal component analysis and clustering in order to secure a multidimensional typology of small islands relative to their main geographic and demographic characteristics and their level of sovereignty. The PCA results show that heterogeneity is firstly explained by a combination of geographic and demographic variables, and secondly by sovereignty, associated (positively) with population size and (negatively) with insularity. The clustering analysis leads to divide the 100 territories into four clusters mainly characterized by, respectively: Group 1 (32 territories): high sovereignty associated with a large population; Group 2 (26 territories): high values of latitude and life expectancy (mostly Atlantic and Baltic territories); Group 3 (40 territories): large distance to metropolitan power and high insularity (Pacific Regions); and Group 4: Greenland and Nunavut, two territories with a large land area, high latitude, low populations and large EEZ surface area

A new classification of small island economies based on geography, demography and sovereignty

International audienceWe explore and use correlations (not causations) between geographic and demographic characteristics and current levels of sovereignty in order to propose a new classification of small, island and coastal territories. While previous analyses mostly rely on descriptive statistics between the group of UN-members and subnational jurisdictions, we take advantage of a "formal sovereignty" index developed by Alberti and Goujon (2020) that provides a continuous and multidimensional measure of sovereignty or autonomy for a sample of 100 small island states and coastal/island territories. Huge heterogeneity within such a sample leads us to use a data-driven method of principal component analysis and clustering in order to secure a multidimensional typology of small islands relative to their main geographic and demographic characteristics and their level of sovereignty. The PCA results show that heterogeneity is firstly explained by a combination of geographic and demographic variables, and secondly by sovereignty, associated (positively) with population size and (negatively) with insularity. The clustering analysis leads to divide the 100 territories into four clusters mainly characterized by, respectively: Group 1 (32 territories): high sovereignty associated with a large population; Group 2 (26 territories): high values of latitude and life expectancy (mostly Atlantic and Baltic territories); Group 3 (40 territories): large distance to metropolitan power and high insularity (Pacific Regions); and Group 4: Greenland and Nunavut, two territories with a large land area, high latitude, low populations and large EEZ surface area