Berlin - Washington, 1800–2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities
Abstract
This 2006 collection examines the urban spaces of Berlin and Washington and provides a comparative cultural history of two eminent nation-states in the modern era. Each of the cities has assumed, at times, a mythical quality and they have been seen as collective symbols, with ambitions and contradictions that mirror the nation-states they represent. Such issues such stand in the centre of this volume. The authors ask what these two capitals have meant for the nation and explore the relations between architecture, political ideas, and social reality. Topics range from Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the new capital of the United States to the creation of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, from nineteenth-century visitors to small-town Washington to the protesters of the 1968 student movement in West Berlin. This lively collection of essays speaks to audiences as diverse as historians, urban sociologists, architects and readers interested in cultural studies. © German Historical Institute 2005 and Cambridge University Press, 2007.
... Cette querelle mobilise non seulement des arguments généraux, mais également des représentations de l'espace qu'une lecture (Gottmann, 1977 ;de Seta, 1985 ;Marguerat, 1991 ;Daum, Mauch, 2005), à mener en particulier avec la capitale allemande 2 4 . Si ces logiques de localisation se combinent spécifiquement dans le choix de localisation italien, elles possèdent également une portée générale, sur laquelle attirent l'attention les comparaisons effectuées par les protagonistes mêmes du débat. ...
This article reflects on the epistemological and methodological issues related to a geographical interpretation of historical archives using a study of the debate on Rome as a capital (1861-1871). On the basis of the analysis of parliamentary Acts and of contemporary opuscules, geographical questions are posed such as « where (should the Italian capital be located)? » and « why here? ». These differ from an historiographical approach which is dominated by diplomatic and political issues. The study of territorial representations as part of a process of unification leads up to the identification of location principles that have been at work in the choice of the Italian capital. This article ends by presenting the possibilities for generalisations contained in such an approach.
Land suitability analysis is a process of evaluating various criteria to assess the appropriateness of land for specific purposes, such as agriculture, urban development, conservation, or infrastructure projects. This paper integrates multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and geographic information systems (GIS) to assess potential residential development suitability in Nusantara—the new Indonesian Capital. This study used two models to evaluate residential development suitability—a simple suitability model with equal criteria weight and a weighted suitability model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach with two scenarios (waterfront city and biodiversity-positive city). Various criteria, including physical attributes, natural preservation and protection, blue amenities, transport accessibility, and natural disaster risks, were analysed. Integrating MCA with the AHP approach and GIS can be considered an advanced methodology. The simple suitability model is relatively more straightforward than the weighted suitability model since it does not require a weighting process. However, the weighted suitability model produced more nuanced results for the case study as the approach more accurately models real-world conditions. The weighted suitability analysis showed that most of the western and eastern parts of the new capital are highly suitable for future residential development. Comparing the Indonesian government’s planned residential areas with the result of the weighted suitability model for the biodiversity-positive city scenario showed that most planned residential areas are in highly suitable areas. The methodologies in the paper can be extended to similar contexts in different geographical areas.
The relocation of Indonesia’s capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara in East Kalimantan, as proposed by President Joko Widodo, represents a profound shift in the nation’s urban and political geography. This initiative, founded on development equity and national unity goals, seeks to shift from an ‘evolved city’ framework to a ‘designed city’ model. However, the rapid decision-making process, which lasted only 43 days, and the apparent lack of inclusive public deliberation and participation in critical decisions raises concerns about the democratic underpinnings of this endeavour. Historical precedents from countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia highlight the benefits of a democratic approach to capital determination, while examples from Nigeria highlight the risks associated with non-democratic processes. For Indonesia, ensuring a democratic, participatory, and inclusive approach is critical not only for successfully relocating the capital but also for preserving the integrative, symbolic, and cultural functions of a capital city. In Indonesia, the hasty passage of the capital city law jeopardizes not only the successful implementation of the relocation but also the integrative, symbolic, and cultural roles that a capital city should play. This paper contends that the absence of democratic and spatial compromise could jeopardize the relocation’s intended goals, putting Indonesia’s new capital’s functional efficacy at risk.
The reasons for representing places are manifold, and so are the ways in which they are represented. Travel guides, music, and paintings give an impression of often distant places, and scientific texts seek to represent places and their context objectively. By going beyond the existing semantic discourse on representations and focussing on places more specifically, this article seeks a better understanding of the representations of places. First, naturally occurring representations are discussed as the result of the patterns that are formed by place-making and the very being of a place, such as archaeological finds and traditions. Subsequently, I argue that many of the natural as well as non-natural representations can be understood as ‘representation-as’ in Goodman’s and Elgin’s sense, because they represent places as part of a genre, for example, as a tourist attraction or a retreat. This understanding facilitates the conceptualization of individual representations and their placement in the overall context, which in turn helps laying the foundation for a conceptual framework for ‘platial’ information.
Both Canberra and Bangkok have in recent times invoked design competitions to initiate new Parliament buildings. The Canberra case was in a tradition of open international competition, that of Bangkok limited to Thai architects, with both bringing ‘the nation’ into deliberation. In each, the design needed to negotiate an established urban landscape: in Canberra an urban design of axial set-pieces, formal and geometric, of largely US derivation; in Bangkok, a less ordered urban landscape, organically evolved over centuries. The resulting urban design complexes raise questions of how the idea of the nation is to be represented in urban space.
Hauptstädte in demokratischen Staaten sollen wie jene in den alten Monarchien und den modernen nicht-demokratischen Regimen den Willen und die Vision des Souveräns ausdrücken, sind aber mit dem Problem konfrontiert, dass der Souverän ein eher abstraktes Kollektiv, nämlich das Volk, ist. Vor diesem Hintergrund erörtert der Beitrag, wie Demokratie in Hauptstädten symbolisiert und repräsentiert wird, welche Funktionen die Hauptstädte im demokratischen Kontext erfüllen müssen und wie Demokratie als Versprechen und Praxis die Standortwahl und die Gestaltung der Stadt sowie ihrer wichtigsten öffentlichen Gebäude und Plätze beeinflusst. Dies geschieht durch einen Überblick zur Thematisierung demokratischer Architektur in der Literatur, und zwar anhand der zentralen Gesichtspunkte Hauptstadtbau und –umbau im demokratischen Regimekontext und damit einhergehende Repräsentationsaufgaben, die Rolle historischer Hinterlassenschaften und adäquater Formsprachen sowie funktionale und performative Anforderungen an die Architektur demokratischer Bauten, einschließlich der besonderen Anatomie von Parlamentsgebäuden. Es stellt sich heraus, dass die demokratische Qualität von Staatsarchitektur weniger an einer bestimmten Formensprache oder am Baumaterial, sondern vor allem an der demokratischen politischen Praxis, d.h. durch das demokratische Verfahren ihrer Errichtung und die demokratische Aneignung der Bauten, abzulesen ist.
Toponymic inscriptions are an ‘authorized version’ of history written on space. This article aims to explore the toponyms on a French map of Beirut published in 1936 to show how France, as a sovereign power, transformed her ‘Lebanese policy’ into place names and thus created a different reality, in rupture with the past. This reality still endures today on the map. The new polity was created under the mission protectrice of France. The ‘mission’ is read on the map through the names of Gouraud, Foch, Pétain, and other generals of World War I, and by key features of the French Republic (‘The Marseillaise’, ‘the French’, ‘Paris’, and so on). With Lebanon being a ‘refuge for minorities’, the 1936 map of Beirut has thoroughfares named after saints, ulemas, and religious figures of Christians and of Muslims (‘rue patriarche Hoyek’, ‘rue Ibn Arabi’, and ‘rue Abou Bakr’). In 1918, political martyrdom was introduced to political discourse, but also to the map; thus the main square of the city is renamed ‘Place des Martyrs’, with numerous streets named after intellectuals hanged by the Ottomans and considered martyrs of the new Republic. These three ‘toponymic systems’ are in discontinuity with the toponymic past of Beirut. These toponymic dynamics still shape the map of Beirut; no constitution change or ‘toponymic cleansing’ happened after Independence in 1943. There are more ‘martyrs’ and religious figures added to the map and mandate army generals are still commemorated. Mandate-made maps continue to shape Beiruti place names today.
The phenomenon of urban primacy has been much studied in the social sciences since Mark Jefferson introduced the term in 1939. It is less well recognized that many European and American writers of stature from the late seventeenth century onward had discussed the same phenomenon under other names, often that of a “capital” or its cognates in other languages. Their work attests to the wide currency that the concept enjoyed and offered many important suggestions regarding urban primacy's causes and consequences. Jefferson nonetheless remains a central figure in the history of the idea for having inaugurated the coordinated academic study of the topic.
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This research “Indicators of Tourism City Reputation in Thailand” aims to explore the criteria of tourism city reputation’s indicators through perception of each stakeholder group in Thailand. This also includes an exploratory study of corporate reputation’s indicators to create the new indicators to specifically measure city reputation in tourism. The research methodology is consisted of both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitatively, each group of stakeholders have been interviewed such as residents, visitors, private sectors, public sectors, and investors. This was conducted in a total of 18 interviewees in three different types of tourism destination including Bangkok as recreational and entertainment tourism city, Kanchanaburi province as natural tourism city, and Ayudhya province as historical and cultural tourism city. Quantitatively, primary data were collected by survey questionnaire from 979 respondents and was statistically analysed by Exploratory Factor Analysis to categorize factors and variables for measuring tourism city reputation. Lastly, content validation by considering through 5 expertise in academic and practitioners with IOC tool.
Results of this exploratory research with Cronbach’s alpha (α) exceeding .973 revealed that the indicators for tourism city reputation in Thailand were consisted of 93 variable items and can be categorized into 9 factors namely emotional appeals, tourism governance, infrastructure, society, way of life, localness, products and services, communications, and policy.
The article describes the methodological basis of the study of the spatial identity of the fake capital cities held a Сlub of Geopolitical Studies at MGIMO
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