206 research outputs found
Introduction
No full textThe developing world has seen an urban transformation dramatic even by the standards of our urbanized world today. Urban population in the developing world has overtaken that of the developed world in less than a generation. However, the urban challenges within this region remain diverse: managing the near-saturated urbanization in Latin America (the world’s most urbanized continent), rapid transformation into ‘metacities’ in Asia and the fastest rates of urbanization (albeit from a low base) in Africa. The urban growth in the tropics - much of it in the developing world - is particularly distinctive, from demographic, cultural and climatic points of view….</p
Achieving thermal pleasure in tropical urban outdoors
No full textWe showed in the previous chapter that growing urbanization and increasing prosperity in the tropical region appears to lead to greater thermal comfort expectation. The question remains as to how to provide thermal comfort at the ‘right’ level of energy expenditure. Could the active provision of thermal comfort be combined with the adaptive approach? (i.e. greater tolerance of thermal comfort variations across seasons/time of day/functions while combining the building-oriented thermal comfort approach with ‘urban design’?) How does one ‘climate-proof’ tropical neighborhoods so that the possibility for thermal comfort at building-scale is enhanced….</p
ROHINTON MISTRY AS A DIASPORIC AUTHOR
Full text linkThe writings of the Indian Diaspora have received a great deal of attention and critical acclaim throughout the world. Rohinton Mistry is a well renowned author in the contemporary commonwealth literature and occupies a significant place among the writers of Indian Diaspora. Even though he is settled in Canada; it is his upbringing in Mumbai that reflects in all his writings. The distinct Mumbai culture, particularly the Parsee way of life, the people of the city and even the politics of India are major themes in his novels. Rohinton Mistry as a writer of Diaspora has carved a niche for himself. His works such as: “Tales from Firozsha Baag”, “Such A Long Journey”, “A Fine Balance” and “Family Matters”;mark a new kind of writing, resulting from a fragmented, splintered world. As a Diasporic Parsi writer, very sensitively he has recalled his community’s journey through time and history with a sense of loss and nostalgia. His books portray diverse facets of Indian socioeconomic life; as well as Parsi Zoroastrian life, customs, and religion. Many of his writings are markedly “Indo-nostalgic”. Rohinton Mistry through his Diasporic discourse has well depicted his ancestral background, his community’s engaged situation in a metropolis like Bombay and his deep attachment with and nostalgia for a world gone by. In this paper an attempt has been made to delineate diasporic discourse in the works of Rohinton Mistry. Although he is obsessed with the colonial and postcolonial experiences in India, we can find some traces of Canada in his literature. His characters dream of being integrated into, and accepted by, Canadian society on the one hand and on the other hand, these same characters are torn by an insatiable desire to be true to their native culture; to honor and cherish their own, distinct cultural identity
Rohinton Mistry AS A Diasporic Author
No full textThe writings of the Indian Diaspora have received a great deal of attention and critical acclaim throughout the world. Rohinton Mistry is a well renowned author in the contemporary commonwealth literature and occupies a significant place among the writers of Indian Diaspora. Even though he is settled in Canada; it is his upbringing in Mumbai that reflects in all his writings. The distinct Mumbai culture, particularly the Parsee way of life, the people of the city and even the politics of India are major themes in his novels. Rohinton Mistry as a writer of Diaspora has carved a niche for himself. His works such as: “Tales from Firozsha Baag”, “Such A Long Journey”, “A Fine Balance” and “Family Matters”; mark a new kind of writing, resulting from a fragmented, splintered world. As a Diasporic Parsi writer, very sensitively he has recalled his community's journey through time and history with a sense of loss and nostalgia. His books portray diverse facets of Indian socioeconomic life; as well as Parsi Zoroastrian life, customs, and religion. Many of his writings are markedly “Indo-nostalgic”. Rohinton Mistry through his Diasporic discourse has well depicted his ancestral background, his community's engaged situation in a metropolis like Bombay and his deep attachment with and nostalgia for a world gone by. In this paper an attempt has been made to delineate diasporic discourse in the works of Rohinton Mistry. Although he is obsessed with the colonial and postcolonial experiences in India, we can find some traces of Canada in his literature. His characters dream of being integrated into, and accepted by, Canadian society on the one hand and on the other hand, these same characters are torn by an insatiable desire to be true to their native culture; to honor and cherish their own, distinct cultural identity
Potential impacts of green infrastructure on NOx and PM10 in different local climate zones of Brindisi, Italy
Full text linkThis study delves into Green Infrastructure (GI) planning in Brindisi, Italy, evaluating its influence on urban air quality and thermal comfort. Employing an LCZ-centered Geographic Information System (GIS)-based classification protocol, the prevalence of LCZ 6 (Open low-rise) and LCZ 2 (Compact mid-rise) is highlighted. Despite generally low PM 10 levels in Brindisi, intermittent NOx spikes surpassing WHO and EU standards pose health risks. Within LCZ 2, diverse GI interventions (green walls, hedges, trees) were tested, with green walls emerging as the most effective, albeit falling short of expectations, while trees exhibited adverse air quality impacts. LCZ 6 demonstrated enhanced air quality attributed to wind patterns, GI, and urban canyon improvements. Thermal comfort analysis consistently revealed positive outcomes across various GI types, reducing discomfort by a minimum of 10%. The study emphasized GI’s favorable comfort impact on sidewalks but cautioned against trees in street canyons with aspect ratios exceeding 0.7, heightening pollutant levels and implying increased exposure risks. Conversely, street canyons with lower aspect ratios displayed variable conditions influenced by prevailing regional wind patterns. In conclusion, the integrated assessment of LCZ and GI holds promise for informed urban planning, guiding decisions that prioritize healthier, more sustainable cities. This underscores the crucial need to balance GI strategies for optimal urban development, aligning with the overarching goal of promoting urban well-being and sustainability.</p
Representations of migrant and nation in selected works of Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie
Full text linkThis thesis explores the representations of, and the relationship between. the migrant and the nation in selected works of the Bombay-born novelists Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie. I explore each writer's engagement with contemporary debates surrounding the material, political, social and imaginative consequences of the crisis in secularism in India during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and consider how this engagement is informed by their
migrant positions beyond India's borders. A primary concern is the way in which Mistry's and Rushdie's representations of the nation, and of migrant and diasporic subjects, intersects with the representation of Bombay in their work.
This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first two chapters concentrate on Mistry's fiction, the remaining three on Rushdie's work. Published between 1988 and 2002, the central novels examined are situated within debates regarding the founding principles of the Indian nation, and notions of Indianness, the rise of communalism in general and Hindu nationalism in particular, and the renaming of Bombay as Mumbai. My readings foreground the necessity of a
close understanding of the historical and political transformations taking place within Bombay and India during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, but also during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that Mistry's and Rushdie's work is informed by a deepening anxiety over these socio-political transformations, and over how reconfigurations of Indianness increasingly position minority communities, and migrant and diasporic subjects, outside of definitions of national identity.
This anxiety extends into the negotiation of their own migrant positions. My reading of the differing representations of the migrant in Mistry's and Rushdie's work engages with ideas of accountability, political responsibility, and with notions of cosmopolitanism. In doing so, I question familiar assumptions regarding the migrant condition as one of predominantly empowering political agency. I argue that, while both authors emphasise the importance of the migrant sustaining a critical engagement with India's politics, they also foreground the anxious difficulties of doing so. This difficulty informs Mistry's and Rushdie's divergent negotiation of their own position as migrant writers, and I examine how their fiction is marked by an anxiety over the adequacy of writing as a mode of political engagement with the crisis in secularism and the parochialisation of Bombay, and as a means of negotiating the politics of migrancy
A decision-making framework for promoting the optimum design and planning of nature-based solutions at local scale
Full text linkUrbanization is a key driver of land use/land cover changes climate change. It produces a reduction in natural capital with alteration to the energy budget of land, air ventilation and land surface temperature. The urban morphology derived from the combination of natural capital and human-derived capital is important in urban ecosystem services (UESs) provisioning to mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Here we report a decision-making framework starting from an applicative case study to assess UESs and promote the best design and planning of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) at local scale. The human thermal comfort has been chosen here as a surrogate to estimate climate regulation as a priority UES in mitigating UHI. The analysis of human thermal comfort in different urban neighbourhood planning scenarios of a city located in Southern Italy has been carried out using the microclimate model ENVI-met. The analysis has been developed to highlight the variation in human thermal comfort in terms of Physiological Equivalent Temperature index (PET) between past agricultural scenarios (no longer more present), current state and several proposed urban scenarios. Such new scenarios have been developed by considering different building arrangements according to municipal planning rules of the city and choosing different types of NbS composition and structure. The analysis has allowed to identify the best scenario characterized by the presence of a community garden with olive groves and estimate the capacity of NbS to reduce the human thermal comfort by about 3.5ºC and improve the PET in selected locations within the current state. In accordance with the aim and topics of the Special Issue, this study shows how such a framework can be useful to support decision-making processes in choosing the best strategy in terms of urban plans and thus making the urban transformation process more sustainable, contributing to assessing the global targets of the 2030 Agenda at local scale
Analysis of olive grove destruction by xylella fastidiosa bacterium on the land surface temperature in Salento detected using satellite images
Full text linkAgricultural activity replaces natural vegetation with cultivated land and it is a major cause of local and global climate change. Highly specialized agricultural production leads to extensive monoculture farming with a low biodiversity that may cause low landscape resilience. This is the case on the Salento peninsula, in the Apulia Region of Italy, where the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium has caused the mass destruction of olive trees, many of them in monumental groves. The historical land cover that characterized the landscape is currently in a transition phase and can strongly affect climate conditions. This study aims to analyze how the destruction of olive groves by X. fastidiosa affects local climate change. Land surface temperature (LST) data detected by Landsat 8 and MODIS satellites are used as a proxies for microclimate mitigation ecosystem services linked to the evolution of the land cover. Moreover, recurrence quantification analysis was applied to the study of LST evolution. The results showed that olive groves are the least capable forest type for mitigating LST, but they are more capable than farmland, above all in the summer when the air temperature is the highest. The differences in the average LST from 2014 to 2020 between olive groves and farmland ranges from 2.8 °C to 0.8 °C. Furthermore, the recurrence analysis showed that X. fastidiosa was rapidly changing the LST of the olive groves into values to those of farmland, with a difference in LST reduced to less than a third from the time when the bacterium was identified in Apulia six years ago. The change generated by X. fastidiosa started in 2009 and showed more or less constant behavior after 2010 without substantial variation; therefore, this can serve as the index of a static situation, which can indicate non-recovery or non-transformation of the dying olive groves. Failure to restore the initial environmental conditions can be connected with the slow progress of the uprooting and replacing infected plants, probably due to attempts to save the historic aspect of the landscape by looking for solutions that avoid uprooting the diseased plants. This suggests that social-ecological systems have to be more responsive to phytosanitary epidemics and adapt to ecological processes, which cannot always be easily controlled, to produce more resilient landscapes and avoid unwanted transformations
Experimentation of the Language in the Novels of Rohinton Mistry
Full text linkIndia is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, and it is one of the major demands of post-coloniality that Transcreation work should be carried on for the sake of literary expansion, national integration and international co-operation. The purpose of this Research Paper is to dwell on the relevance and usefulness of Transcreation as well as creative use of English in the fiction of Rohinton Mistry with reference to his novels Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1996) and Family Matters (2002). Rohinton Mistry mixes Hindi words along with Urdu, Gujarati and Parsi words in his narration to reinforce the impact of his narrative. Mistry being a Diasporic author experimented with the bilingual –and the bicultural competence of the reader in creating a hybrid identity that is typically and multiculturally Indian. Key words- Transcreation, Multi-lingual, Multicultural, Parsi
Indianness in the Novels of Rohinton Mistry with Refrence to Culture & Tradition
Full text linkRohinton Mistry is an author belonging to Parsi community of Indian origin residing in Canada. He migrated to Canada in his early twenties as he wanted to become a Pop singer. He has confessed it even in various interviews that he migrated because it seems to be the fashion at his times. Youngsters of his generation used to migrate for better education, better career prospectus and other opportunities. Rohinton Mistry is one writer who basically deals with the themes of Immigration. Mistry in an author who is writing about a country namely India which he has seen and observed during his youth. Through his novels Mistry has beautifully expressed the pain and grief of immigrant writers who are born in India but staying away from their motherland. In all his works, Rohinton Mistry has not just written about India, but at the same time he has also revised and recalled the memories of his Parsi community also, as most of the characters of his novels are Parsi by religion. In all his novels the Parsi community is also shown as an outsider in Indian subcontinent. Key Words: - Parsi, Migration, Diaspora
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