City, Culture and Society最新文献

The wider shifts in the conditions of mobility wrought by the pandemic, on the one hand, invoke anxieties around the ideas of health and wellness; and on the other hand, occasion the use a variety of health apps meant to carve out niche ‘safe spaces’. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with leisure cyclists in Kolkata, in this article, we demonstrate how app-enhanced cycling practices, primarily intended as a wellness activity during the pandemic, manifest certain ‘temporal spaces’ – quasi-virtual spaces, as extension of the online/digital-offline/material continuum, connected to locally contingent data environments – through tactical use of jugaad. In this scheme, individual practices of mobility eventually yield solidarities – digitally-mediated ‘networked publics’ – wherein human agencies, technological materialities and socio-political relationalities imbricate toward reconfiguring urban geographies. This phenomenon of informal place-making leverages the affordances of the very digital apparatus that, during the pandemic, has often underpinned the statist techniques of surveillance on mobilities.

This article looks at the creative district development process of a rural area in Thailand and sheds light on the transformative potential of utilising arts- and culture-based activities like festivals as a rural community development and regeneration strategy towards its creative placemaking agenda. Using Old Town District, Sakon Nakhon as a case study, this research investigates the application and implementation of the creative district concept outside of the usual urban centres and as a specific output of the development process. It utilises the logic model framework in evaluating the process and is further supported by interviews, focus group, observations, and document analysis in examining the various contexts surrounding its development and in analysing festivalisation as its main operational approach. Key findings highlight Thailand's political context and the selective community engagement as major barriers to the process. It also underscores the lack of authenticity and the quasi-coerced participation of the residents in the curation of the festival, reducing the locals' sense of place and belongingness instead of enriching it. This paper concludes that there is a shortfall in theory and implementation on the creative district development process of the Old Town District.

This paper examines how the spatial environment and the activities within these spaces contribute to their social value in turn informing the concept of everyday heritage within urban public spaces. We develop a novel methodological framework that combines visual representation and narrative analysis to provide insights into how the physical, emotional and perceptual dimensions of a public open space translate into associative social values. By including both adults and children in our study, we capture a comprehensive range of perceptions, highlighting the diverse ways in which different user groups give meaning to everyday heritage. Children and their guardians showed agreement on natural elements and personal representations, but differed on the garden's spatial layout and activities. While they shared values like childhood memories and family time, children prioritized play, forming new friendships, and connecting with nature, whereas parents emphasized children's happiness and personal space. Notably, both groups indicate that childhood – both lived and remembered – is that which gives this public urban space its everyday heritage status. The findings advocate for an expanded understanding of urban public spaces, recognizing the significance of everyday heritage in shaping collective cultural identity.

This study examines the perceptions of public spaces through the five senses on place attachment, place loyalty and civic participation. The study proposes an innovative analytical model (based on the stimulus-organism-response model) that maps the complex relationships between the five senses (sight, sound, scent, touch and taste) and desired community outcomes. An online survey was conducted with 396 residents of Rasht and the data were analyzed using structural equation modelling (SmartPLS 3). The results show that sensory experiences have a modest effect in strengthening people's attachment to the city, which in turn induces loyalty to the city and generates higher levels of civic participation. The study provides recommendations for urban planners and government officials on how best to encourage place attachment, place loyalty, and civic participation by adopting policies for promoting sensory experiences.

This article focuses on the cultural politics of contemporary urban Muslim men's fashion in Malaysia. By looking at the debates surrounding these Muslim men's fashion trends and based on my observation in Muslim men's fashion boutiques and other urban spaces, this article explores how masculinity, ethnicity and Islam implicate each other. Most Malay Muslim men wear baju Melayu (traditional Malay clothing) during the festive seasons. However, there have been evolving trends in Malay men's fashion. The jubah (a long Arabic robe) and kurta (a long upper garment which many South Asians wear) have become popular, especially among segments of young Muslim men in urban Malaysia. The popularity of jubah a decade ago prompted some observers to worry about an ‘Arabisation’ or the perceived growth of Islamic conservatism. However, as I observe, the jubah in Malaysian fashion industries has been adapted to the local taste and fashion trends; hence, it is a modern and creative adaptation of ‘Arabness’ instead of a form of sweeping ‘Arabisation’. Since 2018, there has been a trend of wearing tanjak (traditional Malay headgear) to assert Malay political power and cultural identity. From modern appropriation of ‘Arabness’ to the contemporary reinvention of traditional Malay costume, urban Malay Muslim men's aesthetic expressions reveal the mediation of religious and ethnic identities amidst rapid urbanisation and socio-political change in contemporary Malaysia. How should an ideal Malay Muslim man dress? This debate reveals the politics of different versions of Islamic piety and Malay identity in Malaysia today.

Globally, as cities shift towards becoming cultural and creative cities, the role of creative hubs as catalyst of economic development has garnered attention. The paper aims to examine and reconceptualise creative hubs based on a Malaysian perspective. Findings from a questionnaire survey conducted for this study highlighted that creative hubs tend to attract the youth, and can be a viable employment opportunity for them. Physical hubs are preferred over virtual spaces, and the location aspect is deemed still important for creative hubs. As way forward, more government support, better stakeholder coordination and capacity-building are required. The findings will have implications on urban and cultural/creative policies as well as trigger the need for a clearer conceptualisation of creative hubs in theory, policy and practice.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the urban acupuncture movement in Bandung through the lens of aesthetic governmentality (Ghertner, 2015). Drawing on qualitative data collected online and on-site, I propose two ways in which aesthetic governmentality extends to Bandung. First, I explore how the interactions between urban acupuncture and the political context of Indonesian Islamist urbanism (Kusno, 2022) have shaped and been shaped by the Bandung aesthetic governmentality regime. Secondly, I highlight how Instagram has become a political tool for Bandung leadership's aesthetic campaigning. My overarching argument is to show how urban acupuncture – originally created as a form of grassroots urbanism in Bandung – has been co-opted by the city government to create aesthetic images that serve as masking mechanism to impose state control beneath the façade of a seemingly organic, bottom-up community movement. The Bandung case, the paper concludes, points to a unique form of aesthetic governmental logic, where photogenic images of acupunctural beautifications have been used as political tools to deflect attention away from the fact that deep underlying infrastructure problems – such as traffic jams and poor park maintenance – and resident needs for functional public spaces remain unaddressed.