Cultures and Settlements. Advances in Art and Urban Futures, Volume 3

Nicola Kirkham, Dragica Potocnjak

Description

This volume considers the making of settlement as a process of identity formation. Taking the position that a culture signifies a way of life, it asks how cultural frameworks inform patterns of settlement, and how the built environment, as process and design, conditions cultural production and reception. The disciplinary fields this intersects include architecture, urban design, sociology, cultural and human geography, cultural studies and critical theory. Contributors work in a range of such fields, in Europe and Latin America.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Architecture
• Landscape
• General
• Human geography
• General officer
• Social group
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Performing Arts
• Public Policy

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508849
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cultures and Settlements
Advances in Art and Urban Futures Volume 3
Edited by Malcolm Miles and Nicola Kirkham
First Published in 2003 by
Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol, BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2003 by
Intellect Books, ISBS, 5824 Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2003 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Consulting Editor: Masoud Yazdoni
Book and Cover Design: Joshua Beadon - Toucan
Copy Editor: Holly Spradling
Set in Joanna
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-84150-089-5
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd., Eastbourne.
Contents
Foreword
Marion Roberts
Introduction
Malcolm Miles
Contributors
Part One - Culture and Policy
Cultural Planning in East London
Graeme Evans
Culture and Commerce - European Culture Cities and Civic Distinction
Judith Kapferer
Low-income Housing and Community Participation in N E Brazil
Denise Morado Nascimento
Birmingham as a Cultural City
Tim Hall
Part Two - Place Identity
A New Script for the Lake District
Paul Usherwood
Candy Coated Chronotope - Spatial Representations of a Seaside Resort
Nicola Kirkham
Consumption and the Post-Industrial City - Nike Town
Friedrich von Bories
University Campus as Ghost City
Habil Jan Hartman
Part Three - Cultural Practices
Border as Dialectic/Alison Marchant
Judith Rugg
Icy Prospects
Liz Wells
Puppet Theatre & Child Rights
Cariad Astles
Lisbon Capital of Nothing
Mario Caeiro
Southall Project
Helen MacKeith
The Gift of Water
Jackie Brookner
Bibliography
Foreword
The last decade of the twentieth century saw a revision in attitudes towards the city. The views that had characterised urban policy in the early and middle decades of the century were reversed towards a celebration of the traditions of European urbanism. The modernist project, with its programme for wholesale demolition, disdain for historic urban form and over-valuing of the free flow of space in the form of motorways and underpasses, high-rise towers and disconnected urban plazas, became discredited. Instead features of nineteenth-century urbanism were re-evaluated and set out as virtues to be emulated rather than as ills to be cured. High densities, mixed development, streets and squares were reclaimed as essential components of city culture. Anti-urbanism, which had formed such a major paradigm, not only in town planning, but also in other forms of literary and artistic expression, gradually gave way to a fascination with urban intensity and metropolitan culture. The city was cool, fashionable and edgy.
The notion of promoting the city as an entity, as a repository for a broader understanding of culture has been feeding into official bureaucracy, into government policy documents, programmes and projects. The European Union's City of Culture project, the Urban Task Force report, the Urban White Paper, the European cities networks, the New Urbanism movement in the USA, are each expressions of a reformulated, contemporary urbanism that seeks to re-found the virtues and values of traditional, continental European cities.
The latter years of the twentieth century also saw the end of the binary division between capitalism and the so-called socialism of the former Eastern bloc. In urban terms this cataclysmic change has left the cities of the former East with problems of a decaying infrastructure and vast areas of brownfield sites that housed now redundant industry. Yet the centres of these same cities often still have well-preserved historic cores that have been protected from the ravages of rampant land speculation and the incursion of the motor car. In terms of governance, attempts to combine the virtues of a laissez-faire market economy and a vision of fairness and social justice have provided the stimulus for a growth of 'third way politics' that has dominated the Anglo-Saxon world and mainstream European politics. At the local level this has resulted in a new willingness to experiment with different types of relationships and structures. In particular there has been a desire to incorporate ideas generated from protest movements in the 60s and 70s against modernist urbanism in the form of a 'bottom up' community politics.
This new politics has engendered a brave rhetoric of social inclusion, of neighbourhood management, of the virtues of the public realm. The vision is of pedestrian-friendly cities, planned into coherent neighbourhoods clustering around bustling city centres, in an orderly framework of routes, streets and squares, punctuated by spectacular landmark buildings. Civic consciousness and a strong local identity are expressed in built form, through the urban layout and in terms of local customs and cultural activities, food and, of course, the arts. Citizen engagement is welcomed, through the practice of consultation, in all aspects of governance, planning and creative expression. There is a renewed insistence on the importance of the public realm. The public realm is conceived as public space, in a notion of a visual representation of inclusion that can accommodate difference. Public art plays a role in the definition of the public realm, through flagship projects that proclaim the importance of a city in an international hierarchy and through more modest, community based projects that are aimed at integration. In addition, the public realm is imagined in terms of economic regeneration, positing an urban vitality that is based on lively public commerce, visible in the streets.
The vision is laudable but fragile. The sheer scale of contemporary economic units threatens to pull it apart. Major transnational companies operate beyond the boundaries of the nation state, with a total turnover that is larger than the GDP of some developing nations. These companies are driven by growth, by a requirement to provide ever-increasing profits for shareholders. Their commitment is to their balance sheet, not to the country in which they choose to locate, let alone the city region. The dynamic of uninterrupted growth seeks to annihilate competitors to form a global market for their goods.The interest of these corporations in identity is not the identity of the consumer but a desire for brand domination. The situation where local producers and businesses operate within their own markets with a commitment to their city region is gradually giving way to a more global, homogenised culture. This homogenisation has a visible impact on the city's streets as global brands jostle for advertising space and global chains dominate retailing activity.
Furthermore the raison d' tre for a traditional practice of nineteenth-century urbanism has been eroded as cities become centres for consumption rather than production. Tourism and the hospitality industry are now major industries that are encouraged as a replacement for the loss of manufacturing industry. Cultural tourism forms an essential part of any local economic development officer's brief. Again the questions raised are those of identity and authenticity. If a city's culture has to be developed by the local municipality, sponsored by corporations and 'sold' to a world-wide audience, whose culture is it? The extent to which the local populations can have an influence on or draw benefit from investment in artistic activity becomes a key issue.
Cities are not, however, in decline. More people are coming to live in cities with an increase that ranges from a marginal growth in the centres of European cities to an explosion in urbanisation in the countries of the developing world. The 'information age' as as many commentators have elucidated, led not a vaporisation of the urban but its re-affirmation. A new global hierarchy of cities is being forged, with the second tier vying to gain a foothold. Cities have taken on a transformed role as information hubs and as centres for an lite business class. As the middle classes return to inner and central neighbourhoods new markets for urban culture are provided. Although gentrification brings in wealth and the refurbishment of the physical fabric of cities, new spaces of exclusion are formed, whether in the shape of the American Business Improvement District, now imported to Britain, or the gated development.
Uneven development is on the increase, both in terms of differences between rich and poor within counties and between richer and poorer nations. Many hundreds of thousands of economic migrants are now traversing the globe, desperate to seek a better quality of life.The nation state may have declined in importance but the legacy of past imperialism lives on. An influx of immigrants provides cities with a dynamic edge in economic terms as new small businesses are set up and job vacancies filled, but problems are posed in terms of forging new types of cultural representation. This question appeared to be purely rhetorical until 2001 when the growth of a far-right politics across Europe and the events of 9/11 in the USA have revealed the extent of peoples' fears.
In the face of these tensions the role of 'culture', 'settlement' and 'identity' within cities becomes of critical importance.This book is a contribution to a range of debates around such concepts and the complex processes they denote . It comes at a time of intense re-considerations, not least post-September 11th, but also as political agendas are increasingly set outside structures of representation.
The complaint that everywhere looks like everywhere else has literally been taken to the streets by the anti-globalization movement. Cultural producers, intermediaries and commentators have some key issues to address. Does identity accrue to the city, to the neighbo