Scenescapes: How Qualities of Place Shape Social Life by Daniel Aaron Silver & Terry Nichols Clark & Terry Nichols Clark

Author:Daniel Aaron Silver & Terry Nichols Clark & Terry Nichols Clark [Silver, Daniel Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226357041
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.2

These three factors—the rise of arts and culture, the rediscovery of the urbane, and the rise of a new political culture—join to link culture to local politics through a number of mechanisms. The rise of culture gives generalized importance to expressive concerns across the citizenry—what kind of a person am I? How is this expressed in film, music, clothes, and comportment? What sorts of social audiences are in a position to appreciate and share such expressive performances of self? The goals or functional purposes of products are complemented by their design, their appeal to the personality and meanings valued by consumers, as we articulated in chapter 1.

The rediscovery of the urbane joins quality of life to quality of place. This motivates considerations about what kind of place, neighborhood, or city enables one to pursue a life deemed worthy, interesting, beautiful, or authentic. Scenes become fixtures in the urban landscape and more salient in decisions about where to live and work. These expressive dynamics are enhanced by global processes including the spread of the Internet, wider interurban competition, and increasing geographic mobility, spurring deeper searches for meaning and identity as every city and neighborhood can be compared and evaluated against everywhere else (Sassen 1994; Harvey 1989). Thus “cultural branding” and place identity become increasingly crucial and contested issues among civic leaders and ordinary citizens.

The new political culture redefines these issues of quality, culture, and place in political terms, by emphasizing how nascent leaders and social movements champion specific lifestyle issues and consumption concerns. New questions gain political and policy traction, such as how to create attractive and vibrant scenes that offer amenities (parks, music venues, bike paths, etc.) supportive of citizens’ quality of life demands; how to use these amenities and scenes as levers for economic growth, community development, and social welfare concerns; and how, for elected officials and movement leaders, to mobilize citizens’ emotional allegiance to particular types of scenes for electoral advantage and other policy goals. These three factors have combined in many cities where political and civic leaders create a new vanguard reshaping cities in a more culturally expressive direction (cf. Pasotti 2009; Lees 2003; N. Smith 2002). In the process, scenes become political opportunities for ambitious leaders and objects of contestation among citizens.4

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.