{"id":61,"date":"2015-12-02T16:26:06","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=61"},"modified":"2015-12-02T16:26:06","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:26:06","slug":"reinventing-city-christine-donovan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/lectures\/2015\/12\/reinventing-city-christine-donovan\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinventing the City – Christine Donovan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christine<\/a><\/p>\n

This week\u00a0the MANG1020 cohort are receiving a lecture from\u00a0Christine Donovan, a novelist and researcher whom is based within the city of Southampton. Given the nature of the module – understanding Ideas within Business – cities naturally play a large part given the rapid urbanisation occurring globally. Therefore it is widely accepted that they\u00a0play an essential role in the development of business, and concurrently understanding cities; how they operate, function and the link with business is a key skill within the degree program.<\/p>\n

Given the assumption that cities are ‘hubs’ of knowledge, business and activity we tend to associate them with work, leisure and family life. Not only do we feel safe within out houses, the systems in place from public services also aid our feeling of security – with protection in place around streets, schools and shopping centres. However, Christine is coming in to challenge this belief and ask ‘Why are Cities so good?’ – raising the issues of surveillance and public orders such as loitering.<\/p>\n

She then goes on the discuss the possibility of mass monitoring within the context of leisure facilities and shopping malls – whether it is truly ‘our choice’ to congregate and go where we want or whether its for another, possibly more nefarious, purpose. It is however interesting\u00a0to analyse these claims with some of the given case studies – indeed after the 1848 revolution in Paris (as Donovan explains) the streets were made wider to allow easier access to troops and making them difficult to barricade. An even more extreme example of civil engineering being utilised to control a cities populace is within Northern Ireland, where a flyover was built to allow tanks to access the Bogside without risk of being attacked in side streets.<\/p>\n

There are many things to consider when looking at the nature of cities – and these will hopefully all be covered in much greater depth during the lecture on Friday. An interesting teaser however is that the concept of ‘psychogeoraphy’ is introduced. This is the idea of one ‘remaking’ the city based on their individual perspective and outlook. A fascinating case study into this is the actions of a walker who sets out not to arrive at a given destination but rather for the leisure of the walk itself. If the walker were to stroll around the city not using a map, a guide or indeed any conscious decisions they would direct themselves to particular places of interest and thus arrive at a new or unexpected destination. Obviously, this is similar to given walker deciding not to walk down a street due to it seeming dangerous or unappealing.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Donovan intends to look at communities which have removed themselves from the normal city structure and organising life for themselves – which is designed to meet their needs at their own terms. Examples of this include the infamous Dale Farm in Essex, and the Dongas Tribe that settles on the M3 link route in the early 1990’s. Given the way that the civil service tends to violently remove these people, it provides a certain perspective into the resistance of society to accept any other way of living. Alternatively, rather than us joining a traveller community Donovan argues we can ‘take back’ the streets by ignoring No Entry signs, or for those of us whom are more daring by practising parkour – a philosophical activity that makes us re-invent our journeys each time we use it.<\/p>\n

It will be a fascinating insight into the nature of cities, and an opportunity to ask any questions you may have on the topic – indeed even ask yourself, why are cities so good?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u00a0the MANG1020 cohort are receiving a lecture from\u00a0Christine Donovan, a novelist and researcher whom is based within the city of Southampton. Given the nature of the module – understanding Ideas within Business – cities naturally play a large part given the rapid urbanisation occurring globally. Therefore it is widely accepted that they\u00a0play an essential role in the development of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98442,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[428461],"tags":[1030535,417891,6469,65456,1030536,432],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lectures","tag-anarchism","tag-cities","tag-ideas","tag-lecture","tag-parkour","tag-philosophy","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}