DOCSLIB.ORG

The Afropolitan Flâneur: Literary Representations of the City and Contemporary Urban Identities in Selected African and Transnational Texts

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Afropolitan Flâneur: Literary Representations of the City and Contemporary Urban Identities in Selected African and Transnational Texts The Afropolitan Flâneur: Literary Representations of the City and Contemporary Urban Identities in Selected African and Transnational Texts A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Rhodes University by Carol Leff March 2019 Supervisor: Prof Sam Naidu Abstract When an individual walks the urban landscape there is a unique symbiosis between self and city. It is through walking the cityscape and observing the crowd and the surrounding environment that the archetypal literary figure of the European flâneur acts as a mirror of a particular time and space. But how might such a flâneur walk and observe the city in contemporary African and transnational literary texts? I argue that there is a literary re- imagining and repurposing of the flâneur figure which has hitherto not been acknowledged and explored: an Afropolitan flâneur. ‘Afropolitan’ is a term popularised by Taiye Selasi in a 2005 essay to refer to a ‘scattered tribe’ of ‘Africans of the world’ (n. pag.). In this dissertation, the entanglement of the Afropolitan subject and the European flâneur brings together past and present, Africa and the West. I first provide a historical and theoretical framework to illustrate how the flâneur figure ‘migrated’ from Europe to Africa, and how this figure is to be understood as a literary construct, in relation to current considerations of Afropolitanism. I go on to discuss a wide range of texts that engage with Afropolitan flâneurs who traverse cities in Africa (such as Johannesburg, Cape Town and Lagos), or global north cities (New York, Paris and London). While some of the Afropolitan flâneurs depicted in these texts are migrants or homeless individuals who struggle to adapt easily to a new environment, others, despite being more privileged, also sometimes experience uncomfortable assimilation in their new or strange city space. There are also those who seem to feel equally at home wherever they find themselves. As these Afropolitan flâneurs walk their way through the urban landscape in the texts under examination, they reflect different ways of being in the city. By problematising the binaries of local/global, national/transnational, black/white, slum/paradise, this dissertation seeks to address issues of belonging or not belonging and gestures towards new ways of understanding what it means to be an African in the world. i Notes Style and Orthography The referencing format used throughout this thesis is based on Rhodes University’s Department of Literary Studies in English Style Sheet for Writers of MA and PhD Theses1 which follows that of the Modern Language Association (MLA). This thesis conforms in particular to the seventh edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. While standard UK English spelling has been used throughout, sometimes the orthography that appears in quotations will depart from this, in keeping with the spelling and punctuation used in the original source. Gender and Race Since language shapes the world we see, I have used unbiased language as much as possible. Gender-inclusive language is employed in this thesis, but in cases where specific terms have both masculine and feminine forms (such as flâneur and flâneuse), the gender specific word is used when discussing a particular character. For instance, in Chapter 3 the word flâneuse is used since the narrator of Skyline is a female flâneur. Similarly, while the term sapeur also has a feminine form (sapeuse), the feminine form of the term is not used as the sapeur analysed in Chapter 5 is a male character. Throughout this thesis, I avoid the use of inverted commas or capitalisation of initial letters for the terms “black”, “white” or “coloured”, as I do not wish to reify apartheid race classification which affected the lives of millions of people in horrifically unjust ways. Over the last few decades, such usage has been a controversial issue among scholars as the terms were historically constructed labels for racial categories.2 While mixed race South Africans are generally referred to as “coloured”, according to contemporary South African usage, the term “black” also includes the coloured community as well as the Indian and Asian population groups. 1 The Style Sheet is available online at <https://www.ru.ac.za/english/coursematerials/>. 2 In Not White Enough, Not Black Enough, Mohamed Adhikari notes that during the apartheid period and beyond, certain scholars “refused to capitalize the first letter of the term Coloured in order to indicate both opposition to the enforced classification of people into racial and ethnic categories and distaste for ethnocentric values” (xv). More recently, adds Adhikari, such capitalisation was again in use, partly as “a response to the gradual normalization of South African society in the postapartheid period” and partly “in recognition of a growing grass-roots sentiment neatly expressed by journalist Paul Stober: ‘As a distinct ethnic group with over three million members, we deserve a capital letter’” (Adhikari xv). ii Acknowledgements My own journey as a flâneuse began more than three years ago when I had little idea what a massive undertaking this project would prove to be. While the path has been filled with ups and downs, with detours and intersections, the view along the way has afforded me the opportunity to stretch my eyes. It is largely as a result of emotional, financial and intellectual support that this research was made possible, and I am most grateful to a number of organisations and individuals. Foremost, I am indebted to the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa for funding which enabled me to take six months off work from a full-time administrative post to complete this PhD. I gratefully acknowledge supplementary financial support from Rhodes University in the form of a grant from the DVC: Research & Development’s Office, a Humanities Discretionary Grant, and funding from the Institute for the Study of English of Africa (ISEA) while I was on unpaid leave. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my supervisor, Sam Naidu, co-ordinator of the Intersecting Diasporas Group (IDG) at Rhodes University, for her intellectual guidance, encouragement and support over the past few years. For the many hours Sam spent reading and commenting in detail on each of my chapters, even when her own scholarly workload was enormous, I am most grateful. To my colleagues in the IDG, thanks go in particular to Sean Bosman, Niki Botes and Andrea Thorpe, whose companionship and constructive feedback at our regular meetings filled an otherwise lonely journey with words of encouragement as each chapter unfolded. Thank you also to a number of individuals in the Department of Literary Studies in English: Siphokazi Khanyile and Tammy Youthed, for their behind-the-scenes administrative efficiency; Aretha Phiri, Lynda Gichanda Spencer, and Dan Wylie, whose suggestions over the years have proven to be invaluable; Yolisa Kenqu, whose smile and sisterly solidarity is valued; Sue and Mike Marais, for their hospitality and friendship and for long walks on Kleinemonde beach before my weekends disappeared entirely. Thank you to Monica Hendricks, Director of the ISEA, for supporting my long leave request and motivating for extended time off work in order for me to complete my dissertation. I am most grateful for Monica’s ongoing encouragement and for allowing me a chance to pursue my research interests despite the confines of a full-time administrative job. To my colleagues at the ISEA, thank you for keeping things running smoothly, and in iii particular Nomangesi Kelemi, whose calm presence in the office is always a blessing: enkosi kakhulu. To Laurence Wright, who inspired me, and convinced me that it was indeed possible to return to academia decades after completing my undergrad degree, I am deeply grateful. My gratitude also extends to Albert Awolaja, for gifting me with a beautiful book of images and essays, Lagos – A City at Work, which I continue to treasure. Thank you to the staff at Rhodes University Library, especially Linda Cartwright, Jabulile Nene and Rina Goosen, for going out of their way to acquire books and other reading materials which were not always easily available. I am equally grateful to the staff at the National English Literary Museum (NELM) over many years, in particular Marike Beyers, Thomas Jeffery, Andrew Martin, Petro Nhlapo and Crystal Warren, who magically produced reading lists, found obscure reading matter, and provided the space and quiet for me to read and write. I am indebted to Sheila Hicks for her expert proofreading which was carried out in a small window of time between dog walking and the busyness of life. I am also beholden to anonymous peer reviewers for their critical feedback provided on an article that arose out of sections of Chapter 1, as well as feedback on a potential journal article currently under review which arose from a portion of Chapter 5. I would furthermore like to acknowledge the valuable feedback received over the years from audience members, peers and colleagues where sections of this dissertation were presented at seminars or conferences. I would like to thank my daughters, Amy, Nathalia, and Verena, for all their love, support, and understanding, even from a distance and across oceans, and for their relentless optimism that kept me going during difficult times. I remain deeply thankful to my parents, for their unwavering love and support throughout my life, and especially my mother, who is the wisest woman I know. To my husband Paul Mason, for being there when I was not, and for his creativity in the kitchen when preparing meals, I am eternally grateful. Thank you for listening to my voice ramble on when I tried to put thoughts into words, and for helping me find words when I spoke only gibberish.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Literary Studies
    Book reviews: Ashbridge 271 Robert T. Tally Jr and Christine M. Battista (eds) (2016) Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Literary Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. xii + 214pp., £58 (hardback), ISBN 981137553676. Despite longstanding examination of the environment in literary studies, ‘spatiality’ in its broadest sense continues to be an emergent area of enquiry for scholars of literature. Within the arts and humanities, geographers including David Harvey, Doreen Massey and Edward W. Soja, (all of whom influence essays in Ecocriticism and Geocriticism), have done much to pioneer the intricate relationship between the social and the spatial, an association best summarised in what Soja terms the ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ (Soja 1980: 207). The practice of spatial literary studies concerns not only literary representation of place and environment but pays equal attention to accounts of the psychological experience of space and (dis)placement. While psychogeographers have attempted to bridge the gap between spatial and symbolic experience since the ‘spatial turn’, the collection addresses the timely need for the convergence of critical practices attuned to both environmental and geocritical relations. A recent aspect of the wider discipline of spatial studies has been the focus on postmodern, socially- produced space—including human experience and subjectivity, the poetics of everyday life, and socio- economic manifestations of spatiality— in addition to the notion of a material sense of ‘place’ and ‘placedness’. Robert T. Tally Jr and Chrstine Battista’s collection attempts to overcome this disjuncture between ecocriticism and geocriticism. While geocriticism is principally orientated towards physical ‘space, place and mapping’ (2), owing much to the intellectual pedigree of cultural geographers and situationist thinkers Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault, in addition to those mentioned above, ecocriticism’s principal concern is the environment and its effect on human experience.
    [Show full text]
  • Nature&Gender in Alice Munro's “Meneseteung”
    1 ﻣﺠﻠﺔ ﻛﻠﻴﺔ اﻵداب ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﺑﻮرﺳﻌﻴﺪ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ Nature&Gender in Alice Munro’s “Meneseteung” and “Before the Change” Submitted by Amany Abdullah Abdel-Aziz Eldiasty Lecturer of English Literature Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Arts Damietta University DOI: 10.21608/jfpsu.2020.32136.1003 ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ اﻟﻌﺪد اﻟﺴﺎدس ﻋﺸﺮ / ﻳﻮﻟﻴﻮ- 2020م 2 ﻣﺠﻠﺔ ﻛﻠﻴﺔ اﻵداب ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﺑﻮرﺳﻌﻴﺪ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ Abstract Within the theoretical framework of ecofeminism, the paper seeks to delineate the vision of the contemporary Canadian short story writer, Alice Munro(1931-), in juxtaposing culture oppressing women, and manexploiting Nature through reading “Meneseteung” and “Before the Change”. The paper investigates the social dimensions oppressing women and the woman/nature bond in the selected works focusing on their affinity and their shared experienceof exploitation and oppression at the hands of men. In “Meneseteung,” Munro uses gender to oppose social trivialities and expected roles while in “Before the Change” she uses gender to oppose apparently
    [Show full text]
  • Literature and Geography
    Literature and Geography Literature and Geography: The Writing of Space throughout History Edited by Emmanuelle Peraldo Literature and Geography: The Writing of Space throughout History Edited by Emmanuelle Peraldo This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Emmanuelle Peraldo and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8548-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8548-5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Meeting of Two Practices of Space: Literature and Geography. Emmanuelle Peraldo PART 1: LITERARY CARTOGRAPHY, LITERARY GEOGRAPHY AND GEOCRITICISM Chapter One: Literary Cartography 1 ................................................................................................................. 20 Adventures in Literary Cartography: Explorations, Representations, Projections Robert T. Tally Jr 2 ................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Directors Fortnight Cannes 2000 Winner Best Feature
    DIRECTORS WINNER FORTNIGHT BEST FEATURE CANNES PAN-AFRICAN FILM 2000 FESTIVAL L.A. A FILM BY RAOUL PECK A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE JACQUES BIDOU presents A FILM BY RAOUL PECK Patrice Lumumba Eriq Ebouaney Joseph Mobutu Alex Descas Maurice Mpolo Théophile Moussa Sowié Joseph Kasa Vubu Maka Kotto Godefroid Munungo Dieudonné Kabongo Moïse Tshombe Pascal Nzonzi Walter J. Ganshof Van der Meersch André Debaar Joseph Okito Cheik Doukouré Thomas Kanza Oumar Diop Makena Pauline Lumumba Mariam Kaba General Emile Janssens Rudi Delhem Director Raoul Peck Screenplay Raoul Peck Pascal Bonitzer Music Jean-Claude Petit Executive Producer Jacques Bidou Production Manager Patrick Meunier Marianne Dumoulin Director of Photography Bernard Lutic 1st Assistant Director Jacques Cluzard Casting Sylvie Brocheré Artistic Director Denis Renault Art DIrector André Fonsny Costumes Charlotte David Editor Jacques Comets Sound Mixer Jean-Pierre Laforce Filmed in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Belgium A French/Belgian/Haitian/German co-production, 2000 In French with English subtitles 35mm • Color • Dolby Stereo SRD • 1:1.85 • 3144 meters Running time: 115 mins A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE 247 CENTRE ST • 2ND FL • NEW YORK • NY 10013 www.zeitgeistfilm.com • [email protected] (212) 274-1989 • FAX (212) 274-1644 At the Berlin Conference of 1885, Europe divided up the African continent. The Congo became the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. On June 30, 1960, a young self-taught nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became, at age 36, the first head of government of the new independent state. He would last two months in office. This is a true story. SYNOPSIS LUMUMBA is a gripping political thriller which tells the story of the legendary African leader Patrice Emery Lumumba.
    [Show full text]
  • Quality Measure Development and Maintenance for CMS Programs Serving Medicare- Medicaid Enrollees and Medicaid-Only Enrollees
    Healthcare Nutrition Council 529 14th Street, NW • Suite 750 • Washington, DC 20045 October 7, 2016 Andrew Slavitt Acting Administrator Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Department of Health and Human Services Attention: CMS-1632-P Mail Stop C4-26-05 7500 Security Boulevard Baltimore, MD 21244-1850 RE: Quality Measure Development and Maintenance for CMS Programs Serving Medicare- Medicaid Enrollees and Medicaid-Only Enrollees. Measures for Medicaid enrollees in managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) Dear Acting Administrator Slavitt: The Healthcare Nutrition Council (HNC), representing manufacturers of enteral nutrition formulas, parenteral nutritional formulas, supplies and equipment, submits these comments on Quality Measure Development and Maintenance for CMS Programs Serving Medicare-Medicaid Enrollees and Medicaid-Only Enrollees. Measures for Medicaid enrollees in managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS). Our primary recommendation to CMS can be summarized as follows: HNC urges CMS to advance quality measures that promote systematic nutrition screening, assessment, diagnosis, and appropriate nutrition intervention when considering quality measures appropriate for this population of Medicaid enrollees. A set of malnutrition care quality measures has recently been submitted to CMS by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and is described in more detail in the following comments. As one of the stated goals of CMS’ project is to “identify and prioritize candidate measures and measure concepts for development,”
    [Show full text]
  • Sport-Led Urban Development Strategies: an Analysis of Changes in Built Area, Land Use Patterns, and Assessed Values Around 15 Major League Arenas
    Sport-led Urban Development Strategies: An Analysis of Changes in Built Area, Land Use Patterns, and Assessed Values Around 15 Major League Arenas By Stephanie F. Gerretsen A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sport Management) in the University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Professor Mark Rosentraub, Chair Professor Rodney Fort Assistant Professor Ana Paula Pimentel-Walker Associate Professor David Swindell, Arizona State University Stephanie F. Gerretsen [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4934-0386 © Stephanie F. Gerretsen 2018 Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. xvii List of Appendices ..................................................................................................................... xxiv Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... xxv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 1.1 CITIES, ARENAS, AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................ 1 1.1.1 The Cost of Arena-led Strategies: Public Subsidies for Major League Arenas ............
    [Show full text]
  • 25 Great Ideas of New Urbanism
    25 Great Ideas of New Urbanism 1 Cover photo: Lancaster Boulevard in Lancaster, California. Source: City of Lancaster. Photo by Tamara Leigh Photography. Street design by Moule & Polyzoides. 25 GREAT IDEAS OF NEW URBANISM Author: Robert Steuteville, CNU Senior Dyer, Victor Dover, Hank Dittmar, Brian Communications Advisor and Public Square Falk, Tom Low, Paul Crabtree, Dan Burden, editor Wesley Marshall, Dhiru Thadani, Howard Blackson, Elizabeth Moule, Emily Talen, CNU staff contributors: Benjamin Crowther, Andres Duany, Sandy Sorlien, Norman Program Fellow; Mallory Baches, Program Garrick, Marcy McInelly, Shelley Poticha, Coordinator; Moira Albanese, Program Christopher Coes, Jennifer Hurley, Bill Assistant; Luke Miller, Project Assistant; Lisa Lennertz, Susan Henderson, David Dixon, Schamess, Communications Manager Doug Farr, Jessica Millman, Daniel Solomon, Murphy Antoine, Peter Park, Patrick Kennedy The 25 great idea interviews were published as articles on Public Square: A CNU The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) Journal, and edited for this book. See www. helps create vibrant and walkable cities, towns, cnu.org/publicsquare/category/great-ideas and neighborhoods where people have diverse choices for how they live, work, shop, and get Interviewees: Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff around. People want to live in well-designed Speck, Dan Parolek, Karen Parolek, Paddy places that are unique and authentic. CNU’s Steinschneider, Donald Shoup, Jeffrey Tumlin, mission is to help build those places. John Anderson, Eric Kronberg, Marianne Cusato, Bruce Tolar, Charles Marohn, Joe Public Square: A CNU Journal is a Minicozzi, Mike Lydon, Tony Garcia, Seth publication dedicated to illuminating and Harry, Robert Gibbs, Ellen Dunham-Jones, cultivating best practices in urbanism in the Galina Tachieva, Stefanos Polyzoides, John US and beyond.
    [Show full text]
  • Walking and Cycling Interactions on Shared-Use Paths
    Walking and Cycling Interactions on Shared-Use Paths Hannah Delaney A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Faculty of Environment and Technology, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK February 2016 Abstract Central to this research are the interactions that take place between cyclists and pedestrians on shared-use paths and the impact of these on journey experiences. This research proposes that as active travel is promoted and as walking and cycling targets are set in the UK, there is a potential for levels of active travel to increase; putting pressure on shared-use paths, and potentially degrading journey experiences. Previous research on shared-use paths focuses on the observable aspects of shared path relations, such as visible collisions and conflict. However, this thesis suggests that it is necessary to investigate shared-path interactions in more depth, not only focusing on the visible signs of conflict but also examining the non-visible experiential interactions. Thus, this research addresses the following questions: - What are the different kinds of interactions that occur on shared-use paths? - How do path users experience and share the path? - What are the respondents’ expectations and attitudes towards the path? - What are the practice and policy options in relation to enhancing shared-path experiences? - Are video recordings a useful aid to in-depth interviews? The Bristol-Bath railway path (Bristol, UK) was chosen as a case study site and a two phased data collection strategy was implemented. Phase I included on-site intercept surveys with cyclists and pedestrians along the path.
    [Show full text]
  • Circulations Et Renouvellement Des Savoirs En France Et En Allemagne
    Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 51-2 | 2019 Les Humanités environnementales : circulations et renouvellement des savoirs en France et en Allemagne Aurélie Choné, Tim Freytag, Philippe Hamman et Evi Zemanek (dir.) Édition électronique URL : https://journals.openedition.org/allemagne/1877 DOI : 10.4000/allemagne.1877 ISSN : 2605-7913 Éditeur Société d'études allemandes Édition imprimée Date de publication : 10 décembre 2019 ISSN : 0035-0974 Référence électronique Aurélie Choné, Tim Freytag, Philippe Hamman et Evi Zemanek (dir.), Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande, 51-2 | 2019, « Les Humanités environnementales : circulations et renouvellement des savoirs en France et en Allemagne » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2020, consulté le 18 mai 2021. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/allemagne/1877 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ allemagne.1877 Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande revue tome51 numéro 2 d’Allemagne juillet-décembre 2019 et des pays de langue allemande Dossier Les Humanités environnementales : circulations et renouvellement des savoirs en France et en Allemagne AURÉLIE CHONÉ, TIM FREYTAG, STEFAN HECHT PHILIPPE HAMMAN & EVI ZEMANEK Zur Konstruktion „humanimaler“ Emotio- Environmental Humanities: Wissenstransfer nen in Otto Alschers Die Bärin. Natur- und und Wissenserneuerung in Frankreich und Tiergeschichten aus Siebenbürgen ...................... 371 Deutschland – Einleitung ................................................... 275 GUILLAUME CHRISTEN GABRIELE DÜRBECK De la gestion à la naturalité : le lynx vient- Der Mensch als Gärtner oder Parasit il déplacer les savoirs de la nature ? der Erde: Narrative des Anthropozän in Le cas du retour du lynx dans la Réserve deutschsprachigen Qualitätszeitungen de biosphère transfrontalière Vosges du (2010-2016) ..................................................................................... 285 Nord-Pfälzerwald .......................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile
    From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile: How Urban Park Systems Can Best Promote Health and Wellness Related publications from The Trust for Public Land The Excellent City Park System: What Makes It Great and How to Get There (2006) The Health Benefits of Parks (2007) Measuring the Economic Value of a City Park System (2009) Funding for this project was provided by The Ittleson Foundation, New York, New York PlayCore, Inc., Chattanooga, Tennessee The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia About the authors Peter Harnik is director of The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence and author of Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities (Island Press, 2010). Ben Welle is assistant project manager for health and road safety at the World Resources Institute. He is former assistant director of the Center for City Park Excellence and former editor of the City Parks Blog (cityparksblog.org). Special thanks to Coleen Gentles for administrative support. The Trust for Public Land Center for City Park Excellence 660 Pennsylvania Ave. SE Washington, D.C. 20003 202.543.7552 tpl.org/CCPE © 2011 The Trust for Public Land Cover photos: Darcy Kiefel From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile: How Urban Park Systems Can Best Promote Health and Wellness By Peter Harnik and Ben Welle TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 1. A MIXTURE OF USES AND A MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF PROGRAMMING 6 Cincinnati Recreation Commission 8 Fitness Zones, Los Angeles 9 Urban Ecology Center, Milwaukee 10 2. STRESS REDUCTION: CALMING TRAFFIC AND EMOTIONS 12 Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 15 Sunday Parkways, Portland, Oregon 17 Seattle’s P-Patch 18 Patterson Park, Baltimore 20 3.
    [Show full text]
  • Unrevised Transcript of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee On
    Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before The Select Committee on Economic Affairs Inquiry on THE ECONOMIC IMPACT AND EFFECTIVENESS OF DEVELOPMENT AID Evidence Session No. 12. Heard in Public. Questions 399 - 459 TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2011 3.40 pm Witnesses: Ms Michela Wrong USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and webcast on www.parliamentlive.tv. 2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record. If in doubt as to the propriety of using the transcript, please contact the Clerk of the Committee. 3. Members and witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Clerk of the Committee within 7 days of receipt. 1 Members present Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Chairman) Lord Best Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Lord Hollick Lord Lawson of Blaby Lord Lipsey Lord Moonie Lord Shipley Lord Smith of Clifton Lord Tugendhat ________________ Examination of Witness Ms Michela Wrong, Author of It’s Our Turn to Eat Q399 The Chairman: Welcome to the Economic Affairs Committee. This is the 12th public hearing of our inquiry into the impact and effectiveness of development aid, and I have to say as a matter of form that copies are available of Members’ entries in the Register of Interests. Welcome back to the Committee, Ms Wrong, and I would very much like to thank you for your written submission to us which was very eloquent, very well expressed and extremely interesting. Michela Wrong: Thank you.
    [Show full text]
  • ACE Walking Toolkit
    The American Council on Exercise (ACE), a leading non-profit health and fitness organization, is dedicated to ensuring that individuals have access to well-qualified health and fitness professionals, as well as science-based information and resources on safe and effective physical activity. Ultimately, we want to empower all Americans to be active, establish healthy behaviors and live their most fit lives. ACE envisions a world in which obesity and other preventable lifestyle diseases are on the decline because people have been understood, educated, empowered, and granted responsibility to be physically active and committed to healthy choices. We are excited that the Surgeon General used the influence of his position to draw attention to physical inactivity—a critical public health issue—and to create a pathway to change the sedentary culture of this nation through his introduction of Step It Up! The Surgeon General’s Call to Action on Walking and Walkable Communities. ACE strongly supports this emphasis on walking and walkable communities as part of our mission and commitment to fighting the dual epidemics of obesity and inactivity, and creating a culture of health that values and supports physically active lifestyles. But we know that we can’t accomplish our mission alone. Creating a culture of health will require the focus of policymakers, the dedication of fitness professionals, and the commitment of individuals to live sustainable, healthy lifestyles. This toolkit is a demonstration of our commitment to support the landmark Call to Action. It has been designed to help fitness professionals “Step It Up!” and lead safe and effective walking programs, and become advocates for more walkable communities.
    [Show full text]