Cities and Cultures

Cities and Cultures
Author: Malcolm Miles
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2007-04-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1134257708

Cities and Cultures is a critical account of the relations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce and which in turn shape them. The book questions received ideas of what constitutes a city's culture through case studies in which different kinds of culture - the arts, cultural institutions and heritage, distinctive ways of life - are seen to be differently used in or affected by the development of particular cities. The book does not mask the complexity of this, but explains it in ways accessible for undergraduates. The book begins with introductory chapters on the concepts of a city and a culture (the latter in the anthropological sense as well as denoting the arts), citing cases from modern literature. The book then moves from a critical account of cultural production in a metropolitan setting to the idea that a city, too, is produced through the characteristic ways of life of its inhabitants. The cultural industries are scrutinised for their relation to such cultures as well as to city marketing, and attention is given to the European Cities of Culture initiative, and to the hybridity of contemporary urban cultures in a period of globalisation and migration. In its penultimate chapter the book looks at incidental cultural forms and cultural means to identify formation; and in its final chapter, examines the permeability of urban cultures and cultural forms. Sources are introduced, positions clarified and contrasted, and notes given for selective further reading. Playing on the two meanings of culture, Miles takes an unique approach by relating arguments around these meanings to specific cases of urban development today. The book includes both critical comment on a range of literatures - being a truly inter-disciplinary study - and the outcome of the author's field research into urban cultures.

Cities of Culture

Cities of Culture
Author: John R. Gold
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351951467

City authorities in recent years have competed vigorously to gain the right to host international festivals. In doing so they are heirs to a long tradition, since cities have always served as a natural location for festivals and fairs, providing settings on a scale impossible elsewhere. Cities of Culture examines the role of the Western city as the scene of staged cultural events over the last 150 years. Adopting a lively comparative perspective, it highlights the development of international festivals since London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Making extensive use of case studies and illuminating examples, it offers thought-provoking insight into the material and symbolic significance of international festivals in urban affairs. The book opens with an historical analysis of the role of the city as centre for celebrations, rites and festivities from Antiquity to the French Revolution. The next three sections of the book each focus on a different form of international festival. The first deals with the history of staging the International Expositions, with case studies of the Great Exhibition (1851), New York's World's Fair (1939-40) and Montreal's Expo 67 (1967). The next part covers the Summer Olympic Games from their revival at Athens in 1896 to the Atlanta Games (1996), discussing the implications of their fluctuating fortunes for their host cities. The third section discusses the history of a recently-founded event that is assuming ever-greater importance - the European Cities of Culture programme. The conclusion provides an overview of the events that celebrated the Millennium and examines the prospects for international festivals as part of the urban agenda of the twenty-first century. Cities of Culture will appeal to students of cultural history, urban and cultural geography, specialists in arts and heritage events management, and anyone with an interest in the development of the contemporary Western city.

Cities of Opportunities

Cities of Opportunities
Author: Jason Pomeroy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2020-01-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000056023

Culture refers to not only the arts but also other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. It similarly refers to the customs, institutions, and achievements of a social group, a people, or a nation. Innovation refers to the action or process of change, alteration, or revolution; a new method of idea creation or product that may bring about change. It is easy to assume that innovation may be juxtaposed to the preservation of culture and time-tested rituals. Yet as human settlements grew; and as streets and squares evolved through the diverse exchanges of people trading, celebrating, rallying and socially interacting, it should come as little surprise that cities and its places would become, and continue to be, centres of culture and innovation that can be inextricably linked. Culture and Innovation in cities can potentially take on different complexions if viewed through the lens of academics and practitioners drawn from different geographies, disciplines, or fields of expertise when addressing particular urban challenges. It is through this complexity of views that this book seeks to provide a broad perspective on culture and innovation in the context of global cities today; and a rich cornucopia of insights from thought leaders within their respective fields to shape the cities of tomorrow.

Urban Culture

Urban Culture
Author: Alan C Turley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2015-09-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 131734264X

This innovative text uses the lens of culture to examine the various theoretical perspectives and paradigms of urban analysis. It explores the city's impact on how we make and consume all types of culture—art, music, literature, architecture, film, and more—not only illustrating the effects the urban environment has on the production of culture, but, at times, how culture has influenced the city. Theoretically diverse, Urban Culture employs the major theoretical perspectives in sociology and the major paradigms in Urban Sociology and Urban Studies: Urban Ecology, Marxism, New Urbanism, Socio-Psychological Perspective, Structuralists/Econometrics, and Urban Elites/ Entrepreneurs. Urban Terrorism is also addressed to provide a timely examination of the cultural impact and sociological effects of terrorism in an urban setting.

The Cultures of Cities

The Cultures of Cities
Author: Sharon Zukin
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 338
Release: 1996-01-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781557864376

How do cities use culture today? Building on the experience of New York as a "culture capital" Sharon Zukin shows how three notions of culture - as ethnicity, aesthetic, and marketing tool - are reshaping urban places and conflicts over revitalization. She rejects the idea that cities have either a singular urban culture or many different subcultures to argue that cultures are constantly negotiated in the city's central spaces - the streets, parks, shops, museums, and restaurants - which are the great public spaces of modernity. While cultural gentrification may contribute to making our cities both safer and more civilised places to live, it has its darker side. Beneath the perceptions of "civility" and "security" nurtured by cultural strategies, Zukin shows an aggressive private-sector bid for control of public space, a relentless drive for expansion by art museums and other non-profit cultural institutions, and an increasing redesign of the built environment for the purposes of social control. Tying these developments to a new "symbolic economy" based on tourism, media and entertainment, Zukin traces the connections between real estate development and popular expression, and between elite visions of the arts and more democratic representations. Going beyond the immigrants, artists, street peddlers, and security guards who are the key figures in the symbolic economy, Zukin asks: Who really occupies the central spaces of cities? And whose culture is imposed as public culture? Combining cultural critique, interviews, autobiography and ethnography, The Culture of Cities is a compelling account of the public spaces of modernity as they are transformed into new, more troubling landscapes.

Cities of Culture

Cities of Culture
Author: Deborah Stevenson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134084358

Culture now has a prominent place on the urban policy and re-profiling agendas of cities around the world. City-based cultural planning emphasising creativity in all its guises has emerged as a significant local policy initiative, while the notion of the ‘creative city’ has become an urban imaging cliché. The proliferation of local blueprints for cultural planning/creative cities has been remarkable, while supra-state bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO are also fostering the use of culture in strategies to revive cities and urban economies and to brand places as ‘different’. Cities of Culture highlights significant trends in cultural planning since its inception, revealing and analysing key discourses and influential (globally-circulating) manifestos and processes, as well as their interpretation and implementation in specific places. With reference to examples drawn from Europe, Australia, Asia and North America, Cities of Culture provides insights into the application of urban cultural strategies in different local, national and international contexts, highlighting regularities, tensions and intersections as well as core underpinning assumptions. This book explores the now-pervasive expectation that cultural planning is capable of achieving a wide range of social, economic, urban and creative outcomes. It will be of interest for students and scholars of urban sociology, urban studies, cultural policy studies and human geography.

Cities, Culture and Creativity

Cities, Culture and Creativity
Author: UNESCO
Publisher: UNESCO Publishing
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9231004522

Culture and creativity have untapped potential to deliver social, economic, and spatial benefits for cities and communities. Cultural and creative industries are key drivers of the creative economy and represent important sources of employment, economic growth, and innovation, thus contributing to city competitiveness and sustainability. Through their contribution to urban regeneration and sustainable urban development, cultural and creative industries make cities more attractive places for people to live in and for economic activity to develop. Culture and creativity also contribute to social cohesion at the neighborhood level, enable creative networks to form and advance innovation and growth, and create opportunities for those who are often socially and economically excluded. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a deep impact on the cultural sector, yet it has also revealed the power of cultural and creative industries as a resource for city recovery and resilience. More generally, cities are hubs of the creative economy and have a critical role to play in harnessing the transformative potential of cultural and creative industries through policies and enabling environments at the local level. 'Cities, Culture, and Creativity' (CCC) provides guiding principles and a CCC Framework, developed by UNESCO and the World Bank, to support cities in unlocking the power of cultural and creative industries for sustainable urban development, city competitiveness, and social inclusion. Drawing from global studies and the experiences of nine diverse cities from across the world, the CCC Framework offers concrete guidance for the range of actors -- city, state, and national governments; creative industry and related private-sector organizations; creatives; culture professionals and civil society-- to harness culture and creativity with a view to boosting their local creative economies and building resilient, inclusive, and dynamic cities.

Culture and Sustainability in European Cities

Culture and Sustainability in European Cities
Author: Svetlana Hristova
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317677145

European cities are contributing to the development of a more sustainable urban system that is capable of coping with economic crises, ecological challenges and social disparities in different nation-states and regions throughout Europe. This book reveals in a pluralistic way how European cities are generating new approaches to their sustainable development, and the special contribution of culture to these processes. It addresses both a deficit of attention to small and medium-sized cities in the framework of European sustainable development, and an underestimation of the role of culture, artistic expression and creativity for integrated development of the city as a prerequisite to urban sustainability. On the basis of a broad collection of case studies throughout Europe, representing a variety of regionally specific cultural models of sustainable development, the book investigates how participative culture, community arts, and more generally, creativity of civic imagination are conducive to the goal of a sustainable future of small and medium-sized cities. This is an essential volume for researchers and postgraduate students in urban studies, cultural studies, cultural geography and urban sociology as well as for policymakers and practitioners wanting to understand the specificity of European cities as hubs of innovation, creativity and artistic industriousness.

Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities

Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities
Author: Lily Kong
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2015-01-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1784715840

While global cities have mostly been characterized as sites of intensive and extensive economic activity, the quest for global city status also increasingly rests on the creative production and consumption of culture and the arts. Arts, Culture and the

Cities, Culture and Granite

Cities, Culture and Granite
Author: Edmund P. Fowler
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1550711946

In North America, we are generally desensitised to our surroundings, whether they are buildings or forests. This lack of awareness makes it easier to accept the fact that cities, towns, and suburbs are all built for us, not by us. It also makes sensible urban planning or policy difficult. The results have not been pretty. Cities are dysfunctional in part because we have built them in ways that pollute our ecosphere, something that harms our health in a direct way. Ecological stupidity is also economic stupidity, and North American urban development is incomprehensibly expensive. But cities also don't work socially: their design discourages casual public contact, which is the source of strong local communities and of self-confident collective action. Fowler points to numerous examples of humans who have transcended this culture of separation.