Seeing Cities Change

Seeing Cities Change
Author: Jerome Krase
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317057813

Cities have always been dynamic social environments for visual and otherwise symbolic competition between the groups who live and work within them. In contemporary urban areas, all sorts of diversity are simultaneously increased and concentrated, chief amongst them in recent years being the ethnic and racial transformation produced by migration and the gentrification of once socially marginal areas of the city. Seeing Cities Change demonstrates the utility of a visual approach and the study of ordinary streetscapes to document and analyze how the built environment reflects the changing cultural and class identities of neighborhood residents. Discussing the manner in which these changes relate to issues of local and national identities and multiculturalism, it presents studies of various cities on both sides of the Atlantic to show how global forces and the competition between urban residents in 'contested terrains' is changing the faces of cities around the globe. Blending together a variety of sources from scholarly and mass media, this engaging volume focuses on the importance of 'seeing' and, in its consideration of questions of migration, ethnicity, diversity, community, identity, class and culture, will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists and geographers with interests in visual methods and urban spaces.

Urban Nightlife

Urban Nightlife
Author: Reuben A. Buford May
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2014-09-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813575680

Sociologists have long been curious about the ways in which city dwellers negotiate urban public space. How do they manage myriad interactions in the shared spaces of the city? In Urban Nightlife, sociologist Reuben May undertakes a nuanced examination of urban nightlife, drawing on ethnographic data gathered in a Deep South college town to explore the question of how nighttime revelers negotiate urban public spaces as they go about meeting, socializing, and entertaining themselves. May’s work reveals how diverse partiers define these spaces, in particular the ongoing social conflict on the streets, in bars and nightclubs, and in the various public spaces of downtown. To explore this conflict, May develops the concept of “integrated segregation”—the idea that diverse groups are physically close to one another yet rarely have meaningful interactions—rather, they are socially bound to those of similar race, class, and cultural backgrounds. May’s in-depth research leads him to conclude that social tension is stubbornly persistent in part because many participants fail to make the connection between contemporary relations among different groups and the historical and institutional forces that perpetuate those very tensions; structural racism remains obscured by a superficial appearance of racial harmony. Through May’s observations, Urban Nightlife clarifies the complexities of race, class, and culture in contemporary America, illustrating the direct influence of local government and nightclub management decision-making on interpersonal interaction among groups. Watch a video with Reuben A. Buford May: Watch video now. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCs1xExStPw).

Cities and the Creative Class

Cities and the Creative Class
Author: Richard L. Florida
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780415948869

Richard Florida outlines how certain cities succeed in attracting members of the 'creative class' - the key economic growth asset - and argues that, in order to prosper, cities must harness this creative potential.

Culture Class

Culture Class
Author: Martha Rosler
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-09-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1934105813

In this collection of essays Martha Rosler embarks on a broad inquiry into the economic and historical precedents for today's soft ideology of creativity, with special focus on its elaborate retooling of class distinctions. In the creative city, the neutralization or incorporation of subcultural movements, the organic translation of the gritty into the quaint, and the professionalization of the artist combine with armies of eager freelancers and interns to constitute the friendly user interface of a new social sphere in which, for those who have been granted a place within it, an elaborate retooling of traditional markers of difference has allowed class distinctions to be either utterly dissolved or willfully suppressed. The result is a handful of cities selected for revitalization rather than desertion, where artists in search of cheap rent become the avant-garde pioneers of gentrification, and one no longer asks where all of this came from and how. And it may be for this reason that, for Rosler, it becomes all the more necessary to locate the functioning of power within this new urban paradigm, to find a position from which to make it accountable to something other than its own logic. e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

Metropolitan Belgrade

Metropolitan Belgrade
Author: Jovana Babović
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822983397

Metropolitan Belgrade presents a sociocultural history of the city as an entertainment mecca during the 1920s and 1930s. It unearths the ordinary and extraordinary leisure activities that captured the attention of urban residents and considers the broader role of popular culture in interwar society. As the capital of the newly unified Yugoslavia, Belgrade became increasingly linked to transnational networks after World War I, as jazz, film, and cabaret streamed into the city from abroad during the early 1920s. Belgrade’s middle class residents readily consumed foreign popular culture as a symbol of their participation in European metropolitan modernity. The pleasures they derived from entertainment, however, stood at odds with their civic duty of promoting highbrow culture and nurturing the Serbian nation within the Yugoslav state. Ultimately, middle-class Belgraders learned to reconcile their leisured indulgences by defining them as bourgeois refinement. But as they endowed foreign entertainment with higher cultural value, they marginalized Yugoslav performers and their lower-class patrons from urban life. Metropolitan Belgrade tells the story of the Europeanization of the capital’s middle class and how it led to spatial segregation, cultural stratification, and the destruction of the Yugoslav entertainment industry during the interwar years.

The City in Cultural Context

The City in Cultural Context
Author: John Agnew
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1135667152

Routledge Library Editions: The City reprints some of the most important works in urban studies published in the last century. For further information on this collection please email [email protected].

A Tale Of Two Cities

A Tale Of Two Cities
Author: Karen Evans
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134773676

A Tale of Two Cities is a study of two major cities, Manchester and Sheffield. Drawing on the work of major theorists, the authors explore the everyday life, making contributions to our understanding of the defining activities of life.

The City and Education in Four Nations

The City and Education in Four Nations
Author: Ronald K. Goodenow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2003-12-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780521892919

The City and Education in Four Nations is a response to a long-standing need for the placing of urban educational study in broader comparative contexts, both historical and international. This volume offers an account of the historical educational experiences of four major English-speaking countries, opening up new research agendas in a variety of fields. An international team of contributors has been assembled, combining historical and educational expertise, and the work should interest scholars in a number of disciplines, including urban history, urban and comparative education, social and public policy, social and cultural history and the history of education.

Whose City Is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul

Whose City Is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul
Author: Dilek Özhan Koçak
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2014-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443862827

Whose City is That? shows that Istanbul is produced not only by strong and systematic efforts, corporate influences and/or marketing activities, but also by individual contributions and coincidences. As such, the primary purpose of this book is to find the answer of to whom Istanbul does belong, presenting the reader with the richness of human experience and the practice of everyday life. The chapters in this book are therefore focused on the physical and economic dimensions, as well as the imaginary, fictional and hyper-real dimensions, expressing the concern of bringing the real and imaginary borders of the city together. The book provides an understanding that for each inhabitant there is another city, another Istanbul. Each person living in the city creates or lives in another city which is made of their own personal and particular experiences. In addition, the Istanbul the authors understand and describe turns into something different moment by moment, which cannot be defined or identified because of its very nature as a megacity. However, its flow is not aimless and non-directional, and each sign is not causeless or dateless. In this context, in order to make the possibilities of the city visible, the contributors to this volume ask: “Istanbul, whose city is it?” The title of the book enables different academics to ask the same question using different methodologies and subjects. The question “Whose City is That?” and the necessity of studying Istanbul using multidisciplinary perspectives brought many researchers from different fields together, because the city is larger than one approach and the constraints of one “unique” field. Gathering researchers and academics from various disciplines, such as communication studies, cultural studies, cinema/media studies, literature, the fine arts, city and regional planning, political science, social and economic geography, anthropology, and architecture enables each to think about the city alone and together, so as to create new forms of thought and discourse about Istanbul.

Urban Culture

Urban Culture
Author: Chris Jenks
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2004
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780415304986

This set includes key pieces from Peter Ackroyd, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhaba, Charles Dickens, Fredrick Engles, Paul Gilroy, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, George Simmel, Ian Sinclair, Edward W. Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Nigel Thrift, Virginia Woolf, Sharon Zukin, and many others. The material is arranged thematically highlighting the variety of interests that coexist (and conflict) within the city. Issues such as gender, class, race, age and disability are covered along with urban experiences such as walking, politics & protest, governance, inclusion and exclusion. Urban pathologies, including gangsters, mugging, and drug-dealing are also explored. Selections cover cities from around the globe, including London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and Tokyo. A general introduction by the editor reviews theoretical perspectives and provides a rationale for the collection. This collection offers a valuable research tool to a broad range of disciplines, including: sociology; anthropology; cultural history; cultural geography; art critical theory; visual culture; literary studies; social policy and cultural studies.