What is a city — and whose city is it?

The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity. The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It is in the city, the city as theater, that man’s more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and cooperating personalities, events, groups, into more significant culminations. Lewis Mumford, “What’s a City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity. The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It is in the city, the city as theater, that man’s more purposive activities are focused, and work out, through conflicting and cooperating personalities, events, groups, into more significant culminations. Lewis Mumford, “What’s a City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

For Sharon Zukin (author of The Cultures of Cities), the city is an aesthetic symbol of collective unity and collective division, difference, ambiguity, conflict. 

What is a city — and whose city is it?

Cultural activities are supposed to lift [city dwellers] out of the mire of our everyday lives and into the sacred spaces of ritualized pleasures. Yet culture is also a powerful means of controlling cities. As a source of images and memories, it symbolizes “who belongs” in specific places.  Sharon Zukin, “What City? Whose City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

In recent years, culture has also become a more explicit site of conflicts over social differences and urban fears. Large numbers of new immigrants and ethnic minories have put pressure on public institutions . . . to deal with their individual demands. . . . By creating policies and ideologies of “multiculturalism,” they have forced public institutions to change. Sharon Zukin, “What City? Whose City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

[C]ity boosters increasingly compete for tourist dollars and financial investments by bolstering the city’s image as a center of cultural innovation, including restaurants, avant garde performances, and architectural design. These cultural strategies of redevelopment. . . . often pit the self-interest of real estate developers, politicians, and expansion-minded cultural institutions against grassroots pressure from local communities. Sharon Zukin, “What City? Whose City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

Building a city depends on how people combine the traditional economic factors of land, labor, and capital. But it also depends on how they manipulate symbolic languages of exclusion and entitlement. The look and feel of cities reflect decisions about what – and who – should be visible and what should not, on concepts of order and disorder, and on uses of aesthetic power. Sharon Zukin, “What City? Whose City?”

What is a city — and whose city is it?

• Who sponsors this space? With what purpose(s)?

• How is that/those purpose/s embodied symbolically by the space?

• Who is included in the space and who is excluded by it? How can you tell?

• Specifically who uses this space? For what purpose(s)? Are there conflicts between different users’ purposes? Are there conflicts between users’ purposes and sponsors’ purposes?

• In sum, what “Denver” (or “Denvers”) is written into this space? And whose?

Questions to Ask

What is a city — and whose city is it?