Gradient Strategies: Reconciling the Public and Private Realms in Suburbia

<p>Last century saw significant changes in the way we occupy land for living. Technological advances in individual and mass transportation has both extended city peripheries and effectively claimed the suburban public realm for the automobile. Analysis of historical residential development models reveals that our traditional neighbourhood characteristics and qualities have deteriorated as a direct result of this shift. The urban expansion and resultant neglected street environments are two imperatives for change which lead to the core focus of this research; the reconciliation of the public and private realms within suburbia. A holistic approach to design recognises the benefits of considering community and individual needs simultaneously. This is reflected in the design of a residential subdivision seeking alternative street patterns and use hierarchies, both aimed at stimulating the public realm. Under this premise a robust place-based perception of ‘community’ is important to the idealised functional operation of the public suburban street requiring an effort from the entirely private domain of the suburban house. A graduated transition from public to private is the means used to mediate the pre-existing tension. Through the acquisition of a series of strategies a gradient between public and private is achieved to successfully facilitate and manage the connection to the street from within the house. Thus, the urban responsibility of housing is realised and addressed allowing the private house dweller to participate in the activation of the suburban street.</p>

Gradient Strategies: Reconciling the Public and Private Realms in Suburbia

<p>Last century saw significant changes in the way we occupy land for living. Technological advances in individual and mass transportation has both extended city peripheries and effectively claimed the suburban public realm for the automobile. Analysis of historical residential development models reveals that our traditional neighbourhood characteristics and qualities have deteriorated as a direct result of this shift. The urban expansion and resultant neglected street environments are two imperatives for change which lead to the core focus of this research; the reconciliation of the public and private realms within suburbia. A holistic approach to design recognises the benefits of considering community and individual needs simultaneously. This is reflected in the design of a residential subdivision seeking alternative street patterns and use hierarchies, both aimed at stimulating the public realm. Under this premise a robust place-based perception of ‘community’ is important to the idealised functional operation of the public suburban street requiring an effort from the entirely private domain of the suburban house. A graduated transition from public to private is the means used to mediate the pre-existing tension. Through the acquisition of a series of strategies a gradient between public and private is achieved to successfully facilitate and manage the connection to the street from within the house. Thus, the urban responsibility of housing is realised and addressed allowing the private house dweller to participate in the activation of the suburban street.</p>

"Temporary Couples" among Chinese Migrant Workers in Singapore

The article examines temporary extramarital cohabitation arrangements between low-wage Chinese female migrants and their male counterparts in Singapore, a phenomenon which is widely referred to by the migrants as becoming a "temporary couple" or "teaming up to have a life." In the simulated households, the men usually shoulder most of the daily expenses for both members, while the women are expected to take care of the men's intimate needs and most of the housework. The vast majority of the women involved in such arrangements are married and migrated for work on their own. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019, explores how these women perform and understand such temporary intimacies. I first demonstrate that the women enter the relationships as a reaction to the institutional setup that places them in a suspended status, in which they are treated as nothing more than temporary labourers. I then illustrate how the women put the relationship in a state of suspension: they instrumentalize it as a means to maximize savings, and mark it out as a short-term exception that will end abruptly once they leave Singapore. The structurally imposed and self-inflicted conditions of suspension limit the women's agency to an ambiguous private domain that is away from both work and home. Drawing on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article deploys the notion of suspension as a guiding concept to unravel the tensions and moral anxieties that the women experience with their temporary intimacies.

“He dwells alone:” The Image of Completeness in the Self in Cowper’s “The Snail”

Following the critical lines of Psychoanalysis and Existentialism, the present study aims at conveying how William Cowper, the much acclaimed English poet of the 18th century, presents in his 1799 poem “The Snail” the image of an individual possessing completeness in the self. Not only is Cowper’s snail content with life in seclusion, but also abhors the intrusion of an outsider in its private domain. The article aims at investigating how the snail’s world of completeness bears both the somatic and the psychic dimensions and also how the creature exists in that world narcissistically. Concomitantly, the article would probe into the association between the world of the snail and the poet’s longing to attain sufficiency in the self at a time he is left alone. It would be conveyed how the snail of the poem embodies the poet’s projected self in its idealised form, something which following the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan can be called the poet’s “ideal ego,” than an insignificant creature engrossed merely in nourishment on vegetation. Keywords: Cowper, completeness, private world, self, The Snail.

A Virtual Reality Game to Assess OCD Symptoms

Background: Symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are often underreported by patients and mainly triggered in the patients private domain, making it harder for clinicians to recognize OCD. Virtual reality (VR) can be used to assess OCD symptoms in the clinician's office. We developed a VR game in order to provoke subjective and physiological OCD symptoms. We hypothesize that (1) the VR game provokes more OCD symptoms in patients compared to healthy controls, (2) performing virtual compulsions leads to a reduction in emotional responses in OCD patients and that (3) the severity of VR game provoked symptoms correlates with severity of OCD symptoms.Methods: Participants played the VR game on a laptop while physiological measures were recorded simultaneously. We measured emotional responses, virtual compulsions and physiological arousal in response to our VR game in 26 OCD patients and 26 healthy controls. We determined correlations between emotional responses, virtual compulsions and OCD severity.Results: We found higher levels of VR-provoked anxiety (U = 179.5, p = 0.004) and virtual compulsions in OCD patients compared to healthy controls (p = 0.001). There was a significant reduction in emotional responses after performing virtual compulsions in the OCD patients. The emotional responses and virtual compulsions did not correlate significantly with Y-BOCS scores. A baseline difference between patients and healthy controls was found in heart rate variability (HRV), but no significant change in HRV, heartrate and skin conductance was found during the VR gameConclusions: Our study clearly shows our OCD VR game is capable of provoking more anxiety and virtual compulsions in patients with OCD compared to healthy controls. Providing a direct patient-rated measurement in the clinicians room, the VR game could help in assessing core OCD symptoms and recognizing OCD.Clinical Trial Registry Number: Netherlands Trial Register NTR5935.

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) in Hungary: A Western model, an Eastern illiberal regime, and a case of deferred institutional adaptation

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a mode of research, development and innovation (RDI) governance which has proliferated primarily in European states with a tradition and/or culture of participatory and deliberative technology governance. It assumes the existence of open, transparent and accessible policy-making processes, and a culture of responsibility and accountability in government and in the private domain. In Hungary, where RDI is supposed to be the key to economic competitiveness, RRI has never taken root. Examining the regulation of the Hungarian RDI system, it becomes clear that there is a significant degree of institutional incompatibility with the solutions promoted by RRI. More significantly, the contemporary system of government and administration and the prevailing model of policy-making and governance prevent or exclude deliberately the implementation of RRI.

Cartography of Mangled Minds: Mazen Maarouf’s Jokes for the Gunmen

“Power was the most important subject, as far as we were concerned, during the war” (6). The 20th century was dominated by the two World Wars, the Cold War and the post-Cold War conflicts. The 21st century appears to be no better. Just two decades into the new millennium and we are already experiencing the tremors of outbreaks across the globe, notably referred to as terrorism, ethnic conflict, civil wars and hybrid and special operations warfare. These nonstate, intrastate, and interstate violence have had an impact on the lives of millions of people. It is in this context that Booker longlisted work Jokes for the Gunmen (2019) by the Palestinian-Icelandic author Mazen Maarouf may be read. Maarouf weaves together twelve stories that offer a kaleidoscope of insights on the impact of war on the civilian population. Jokes for the Gunmen is grounded in a conflict zone that is for the most part unspecified, except in the “Gramophone” where it is Lebanon (55) while in “Juan and Ausa” it is Spain. Thus the narratives are universalized to reinforce the idea that war is an act of violence against the global citizen and everybody and everywhere is its target. The characters are never given names except for Hossam in “Other –People’s –Dreams - Syndrome” and Juan and Ausa in the eponymous story. This buttresses the design of the universality of the narratives. The author seems to drive home the fact that no one can claim immunity from war and this becomes only too obvious with the narrative space being inundated with fatalities. Again, as we march along the narratives, we find that the boundaries between combatants and civilians, battlefronts and domestic spaces have almost blurred. Everyone is now at the combat zone and the combat zone is everywhere. The private domain of the hearth and the home that once signified security and well-being has also been transformed into dangerous territory.