Sujata Shetty and Andreas Luescher
Urban design has historically occupied the gap between architecture and planning. Although there have long been calls for the discipline to bridge this gap, urban design has…
Abstract
Urban design has historically occupied the gap between architecture and planning. Although there have long been calls for the discipline to bridge this gap, urban design has continued to lean more heavily on design than planning. The efforts to revitalize downtown Toledo, a mid-western U.S. town experiencing steep economic decline, present a classic example of the potentially unfortunate results of this approach. Over the past three decades, there have been many attempts to revitalize the city, especially its downtown, by constructing several large public buildings, all within a few blocks of each other, all designed with little attention to each other or to the surrounding public spaces, and with a remarkable lack of civic engagement.
Responding to calls in the literature for inter-disciplinarity in urban design, and to the city's experience with urban design, the authors created a collaborative studio for architects and planners from two neighboring universities with two purposes: first, to establish a collaborative work environment where any design interventions would be firmly rooted in the planning context (i.e., to erase boundaries between architects and planners); second, to draw lessons from this experience for the practice and teaching of urban design.
Despite the difficulties of collaborating, architects and planners benefited from exposure to each other, learning about each other's work, as well as learning to collaborate. The interdisciplinary teams developed richer proposals than the architect-only teams. Finally, critical engagement with the community is essential to shaping downtown development.
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Sabelo Chizwina, Benford Rabatseta, Siviwe Bangani and Mathew Moyo
The purpose of this paper is to highlight how North Western University (NWU) Library used Facebook and Twitter to inform, educate and communicate with library users during the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight how North Western University (NWU) Library used Facebook and Twitter to inform, educate and communicate with library users during the students’ protests #FeesMustFall Campaign.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper follows a case study approach to examine how Facebook and Twitter were used to inform, educate and communicate with library users during the #FeesMustFall Campaign. Data was obtained from the NWU Library’s Facebook Insights, the Facebook page itself and Twitter account, after which content was analysed.
Findings
The paper provides insights that the teaching and learning (educational) aspect still lags behind on social media usage in libraries. Given the period in question, the expectation would have been a higher percentage of posts that could be categorized as educational.
Research limitations/implications
The study is confined to one campus library of the NWU Libraries and the results cannot be generalised to the NWU.
Practical implications
Social media use policies should be developed and awareness created on their availability and meaning/implications to users.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to study how social media can be used by academic libraries. The literature currently focuses on how Twitter has been used in library campaigns. This paper shows how Facebook can be used in a university setting during crises time.