The City as an Entertainment Machine

by Terry Nichols Clark (Editor)

People both live and work in cities. And where they choose to live shifts where and how they work. Amenities enter as enticements to bring new residents or tourists to a city. Amenities have thus become new public concerns for many cities in the US and much of Northern Europe. Old ways of thinking, old paradigms - such as "location, location, location" and "land, labour, capital, and management generate economic development" - are too simple. So is "human capital drives development". To these earlier questions, we "how do amenities and related consumption attract talented people, who in turn drive the classic processes which make cities grow?" This new question is critical for policy makers. Urban public officials, business, and nonprofit leaders are using culture, entertainment, and urban amenities to (seek to) enhance their locations - for present and future residents, tourists, conventioneers, and shoppers. This volume explores how consumption and entertainment change cities. But it reverses the "normal" causal process. That is, many chapters analyse how consumption and entertainment drive urban development, not vice versa. It details the impacts of opera, used bookstores, brew pubs, bicycle events, Starbucks' coffee shops, gay residents and other factors on changes in jobs, population, inventions, and more. It interprets these processes by showing how they add new insights from economics, sociology, political science, public policy, and geography. Considerable evidence is presented about how consumption, amenities, and culture drive urban policy - by encouraging people to move to or from different cities and regions. The book also explores how different amenities attract the innovative persons who are catalysts in making the modern economy and high tech hum.

Genres: Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

First published December 16, 2003

About the author

Terry Nichols Clark

Scholar · Teacher · Cyclist

Terry Nichols Clark is a sociologist whose work spans urban politics, cultural sociology, and comparative inquiry. He has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago since 1985 and has also been affiliated with Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago since 2009.

Clark holds MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, with earlier study in Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Munich. Over his career, he has taught or held visiting appointments at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, the University of Florence, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

He is the author or editor of approximately forty books and seven hundred scholarly papers. Since 1982, he has coordinated the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, a comparative study involving more than 10,000 cities. He is also a co-founder and Board Member of the Scenes Academy, an international research network focused on urban culture and policy.

Clark's work has involved research and collaboration with scholars, civic organizations, policy institutions, and city governments in roughly two hundred cities around the world. His publications have appeared in multiple languages, including Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, French, Chinese, and Spanish.

His books include Scenescapes: How Qualities of Place Shape Social Life and Can Tocqueville Karaoke? His broader research examines how culture, social life, place, urban development, and civic participation interact.

Explore More of Terry Nichols Clark's Work

University of Chicago Faculty Page:
http://sociology.uchicago.edu/faculty...

Academia.edu Research Profile:
https://uchicago.academia.edu/TerryClark

TNC Newsletter on Scenes and Urban Innovation:
https://tnc-newsletter.blogspot.com/

Terry Nichols Clark Author & Research Materials:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...

As Clark puts it:

“I tried painting at art schools, but learned I was not a young Renoir. So I sought to help the arts in other ways.”