In 1960 Kevin Lynch analysed the ‘city-image’ in The Image of the City; seven years later American artist Robert Smithson surveyed the suburb of Passaic in ‘A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey’. Both approaches use narrativity as an instrument to connect urban space with the lived experience of its users. Where Kevin Lynch analyzes the visual perception and mental representation (‘imageability’) of the postwar American metropolis, Robert Smithson explores the temporality of its peripheral terrain vague. Where Kevin Lynch frames his inquiry within then-current conventions of perception and cognition, Robert Smithson rejects these conventions precisely because they do no justice to his experience of the suburb and offer him no method to analyze or describe it. In his analysis, there is no coherent map of the territory, no mental representation to consult. How does Smithson’s practice relate to the paradigm of ‘imageability’? What is being narrated, and how does narrativity operate? By juxtaposing the two approaches this text reflects on some ideas and issues that surround a narrative analysis of urban landscape.
Culture of the Selfie is an in-depth art-historical overview of self-portraiture, using a set of theories from visual studies, narratology, media studies, psychotherapy, and political principles. Collecting information from various fields, juxtaposing them on the historical time-line of artworks, the book focuses on space in self-portraits, shared between the person self-portraying and the viewer. What is the missing information of the transparent relationship to the self and what kind of world appears behind each selfie? As the ‘world behind one’s back’ is gradually taking larger place in the visual field, the book dwells on a capacity of selfies to master reality, the inter-mediate way and, in a measure, oneself.
There is an increasing interest in outdoor play, both in research and in policy. However, in (re)designing, planning and managing the public space, there is still limited attention for children’s actual playing behavior. A lot of urban planning decisions are based on adults’ perceptions of children’s playing behavior and focus on formal play spaces, rather than on their actual behavior and on other, more informal, play places children might also use. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore where children play outdoors, with whom and what kind of activities they are performing there. Between February 2022 and March 2023 1,127 – mainly primary school - children were systematically observed after school in three post-war residential districts in three cities in The Netherlands. The majority of the children were between 5-8 years old (50%). Above the age of 8 years, substantially more boys (70%) than girls (30%) were playing outdoors. Most of the children (79%) were playing with other children, 8% were playing alone. The playground was the most popular play space (36% of the observed children were playing there), followed by public sports fields (14%) and sidewalks (13%). With respect to the type of activities, relaxing (21%) was the most common activity, followed by ball sports (14%), climbing or hanging (11%), swinging (10%), and riding on wheels (9%). This study showed differences in play behavior by gender, age, district and play space and stress the need for a broader definition of play, and for focusing on formal as well as informal play spaces.
