Book
eflecting on Social Smart Cities. Plymouth : Plymouth University, 2015.
The development of local media products gives citizens a chance to struggle for the city. In some cases, it means literally to appropriate urban space and to maintain control over it within the game (“Ingress the Game”). In other cases, it refers to attempts to produce a legitimate language of urban descriptions within the district blog (“Local blogs”). We distinguish different media formats containing the specific organization of citizens’ participation in urban life and analyze their initial goals and failures. Reflecting upon some of the ways how everyday life practices, an imaginary dimension of the city and technical issues of communication are linked together, we conclude that new media are as a simulator of more complex social interactions. The “Local blogs” project provides the communication platform that lacks the mechanism of self-presentation and has too many alternatives in field of social networks. Meantime the foolproof gameplay of Ingress integrated with other services and networks tends to overcome the simplified idea of competition and appropriation for constructing more advanced urban descriptions of a consolidated game community.
The article considers the phenomenon of nostalgia for the late Soviet times. The author presents the results of his observations over the nostalgia segment of the Russian blogosphere. The article is based on the concepts of the past, collective memory and nostalgia, which have been worked out by M. Halbwachs, D. Lowenthal and S. Boym.
The article describes routs of visitors of museum-reserve Tsaritsyno (Moscow) after its reconstruction -- in the most popular and crowded "historical" part of the park and in the distant areas. In addition, we consider which type of visitors prefer certain routes, as well as how visitors experience space in different parts of the park (or different modes of perception). The article describes such modes as "consumption of public space", "romantic tourist gaze" and "existential" mode.
Through the example of the U Street block in Washington, D.C., the noted American urbanist shows that urban “contact zones” in which people disunited by racial, ethic, confessional and class conflicts are living side by side, serve as generators of new adaptive strategies. The inexhaustible source of viability and flexibility of these communities lies in the need for survival in the conditions of “deliberate social complexity”. It is precisely this experience that enables such communities effectively to adapt to the aftermaths of natural calamities and social conflicts.
The United Nations estimates that by 2030, more than two-thirds of the total world population will live in urban areas. Most of this increase will take place not in Europe or in the United States but in the megacities and newly emerging urban regions of what used to be called the developing world. Urban studies is an expansive and growing field, covering many disciplines and professional fields, each with its own schedule of conferences, journals, and publication series. These two volumes address the specific theories, key studies, and important figures that have influenced not just the individual discipline but also the field of urban studies more generally. The Encyclopedia of Urban Studies is intended to present an overview of current work in the field and to serve as a guide for further reading in the field.
The article investigates the problem of ethics in the media. On the one hand, social networking affects business ethics and employees behavior at work. On the other hand, the idea of ethic finds its reflection in the layout of most web-site, created for different purposes, even during elections. Much attention is given in the United States, where ethics has become one of the most significant priorities.