Contours of visual studies of a city

The paper defines and analyzes the methodological optics options of vision of the city as a whole and its individual visual epiphenomena. In the naturalistic paradigm, the city appears to the researcher as a material object, the substrate of which is its architectonics, understood as the representation of the objective social reality. The structuralist paradigm draws attention to the interpretive nature of the images of the urban environment. Urban communities are considered as actors of the semantic construction of the urban environment reality and urban lifestyle. In the constructivist paradigm, the focus of attention is the role of socio-cultural background, which causes the difference in the vision of the urban reality. In the phenomenological horizon a special procedure of constructing the reality is articulated - the development of environment. In the phenomenological perspective the image of the city is a structure generating new meanings through the experience of the perception of the urban environment. The system of these paradigms proposes organization of the material gained in visual sociology of the city by subject areas and problem fields. In the naturalistic paradigm of understanding the visual as a reflection of objective social reality there develops a thesis that in the urban morphology one can see features of socio-economic and political organization and problems of a particular society. In the structuralist paradigm, the subject of analysis is semiotics of the urban environment - the visual text of the city. There are two types of text: the iconic and images of the environment appearing in the process of "colonization of space" (M. de Certeau). In the constructivist paradigm, attention is drawn to the fact that the space of the city is produced, not just interpreted. In this context, the visuals allow learning performative practices as ways to change and produce the social space. The most important subject and problem area of research in the constructivist paradigm is the public space of the city. The functions of public space are defined that can and should be studied with the help of visual aids: formation of identity, self-presentation of urban communities, formation of tolerance as spatial equality. The problems of public space are given, which are necessary not only to know, but to see - to diagnose their presence by visual tools: 1) privatization and commercialization of these spaces; 2) lack of demand for public spaces; 3) lack of skills and mechanisms of social and cultural integration of different styles and ways of life; 4) "space of flows" (M. Castells), 5) "desert of the real" (J. Baudrillard); 6) extinction of communication as a result of space utilization; and 7) the problem of environmental identity. In the phenomenological tradition, the city image is a projection of human life world formed in the process of experiencing a real life situation.

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