What do you think?
Rate this book
The Cultures of Cities
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.
337 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 1996
333 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Zukin
17 books25 followersSharon L. Zukin (born September 7, 1946) is a professor of sociology who specializes in modern urban life. She teaches at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. As of 2014, she was also a distinguished fellow in the Advanced Research Collaborative at the CUNY Graduate Center and chair of the Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological Association. Zukin was a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2010–11.
Zukin's research interests and analytical framework place her in the broad category of Neo-Marxist social thinkers. She began teaching urban sociology just as the “new urban sociology” was emerging, partly in response to a series of urban riots (many of which involved African-Americans reacting to police brutality or other manifestations of systemic racism) that took place in U.S. cities in the late 1960s. Widespread urban unrest in the U.S. and Europe prompted worried governments and agencies to increase the funding for urban research. Sociologist Manuel Castells and geographer David Harvey were two of the theorists influential in developing the new urban sociology.
Zukin's research interests and analytical framework place her in the broad category of Neo-Marxist social thinkers. She began teaching urban sociology just as the “new urban sociology” was emerging, partly in response to a series of urban riots (many of which involved African-Americans reacting to police brutality or other manifestations of systemic racism) that took place in U.S. cities in the late 1960s. Widespread urban unrest in the U.S. and Europe prompted worried governments and agencies to increase the funding for urban research. Sociologist Manuel Castells and geographer David Harvey were two of the theorists influential in developing the new urban sociology.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 6, 2012
In The Cultures of Cities, Zukin discusses how culture has become a powerful force in shaping cities. When looking at cities, it is no longer enough to talk about the service economy or the manufacturing economy. Zukin argues that it is the "symbolic economy" that can play the most significant role in shaping the identity of places - as defined by their landmarks, cultural institutions, recreational spaces, etc. But in a multiethnic city with different social classes, just whose culture is shaping the city? Whose city is it anyway? The use of the term "cultures" in the title is deliberate; Zukin argues that there is no single monolithic "culture" for a city, even if economic forces seek to create visual aesthetic for the city that is coherent and consistent.
On the whole, Zukin has written a thought provoking book that makes one take a step back and consider various developments in the city, what they mean for public space and public access to that space. In NYC for instance, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have done a good job cleaning up parts of the city and enhancing the provision of certain services e.g. sanitation, that the city administration has been unable to supply as effectively. But what does it mean when the look and feel of a place is controlled primarily by commercial interests, and where the individuals behind these commercial interests don't even live in the district whose identity they play such a large role in shaping? And can we consider these planned and tightly managed urban spaces to be authentic representations of the city, when oftentimes their image is dictated less by the demographics, history and economic realities of the space, than by some aspiration towards an idealised, visually coherent and sanitised aesthetic? Whose preferences does this aesthetic reflect? And conversely, who is kept out by this new visual aesthetic?
Some of the chapters in the book read better and are more thought-provoking than others. I found the first two chapters - "Whose Culture? Whose City?" and "Learning from Disney World" to be the most compelling and coherent in terms of presenting the case on how the notion(s) of culture have shaped place identity. But I felt Zukin lost the thread a little in her chapters on "High Culture and Wild Commerce in NYC", where she talks about the importance of the arts economy in NYC, and "Artists and Immigrants in NYC Restaurants", where she tries to discuss the idea of culture as reflected in the multiethnic food offerings in the city and the role of the artist (in the form of struggling actors) in the F&B industry. In the latter chapter, in particular, Zukin came across as grasping at straws to create a new angle (and a new chapter) on culture and the economy of cities. Too many random observations - on the ethnic division of labour, on struggling artists working as waiters, on food culture as manifested in restaurants - that didn't cohere in a strong argument. Still, not a bad read for someone interested in urban issues and the forces that play a role in shaping the look and feel of cities.
On the whole, Zukin has written a thought provoking book that makes one take a step back and consider various developments in the city, what they mean for public space and public access to that space. In NYC for instance, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) have done a good job cleaning up parts of the city and enhancing the provision of certain services e.g. sanitation, that the city administration has been unable to supply as effectively. But what does it mean when the look and feel of a place is controlled primarily by commercial interests, and where the individuals behind these commercial interests don't even live in the district whose identity they play such a large role in shaping? And can we consider these planned and tightly managed urban spaces to be authentic representations of the city, when oftentimes their image is dictated less by the demographics, history and economic realities of the space, than by some aspiration towards an idealised, visually coherent and sanitised aesthetic? Whose preferences does this aesthetic reflect? And conversely, who is kept out by this new visual aesthetic?
Some of the chapters in the book read better and are more thought-provoking than others. I found the first two chapters - "Whose Culture? Whose City?" and "Learning from Disney World" to be the most compelling and coherent in terms of presenting the case on how the notion(s) of culture have shaped place identity. But I felt Zukin lost the thread a little in her chapters on "High Culture and Wild Commerce in NYC", where she talks about the importance of the arts economy in NYC, and "Artists and Immigrants in NYC Restaurants", where she tries to discuss the idea of culture as reflected in the multiethnic food offerings in the city and the role of the artist (in the form of struggling actors) in the F&B industry. In the latter chapter, in particular, Zukin came across as grasping at straws to create a new angle (and a new chapter) on culture and the economy of cities. Too many random observations - on the ethnic division of labour, on struggling artists working as waiters, on food culture as manifested in restaurants - that didn't cohere in a strong argument. Still, not a bad read for someone interested in urban issues and the forces that play a role in shaping the look and feel of cities.
February 19, 2024
Who determines culture and who is it for? Zukin’s argument and observations are very promising in the first half, but as i continued reading they seemed to falter and become a bit jumpy and generalized — especially in her study of division of labor in the service industry..
Still a great introduction into the symbolic economies of urban spaces with anecdotes throughout. I want to hear her thoughts on Avalon
Still a great introduction into the symbolic economies of urban spaces with anecdotes throughout. I want to hear her thoughts on Avalon
February 29, 2008
This was a pretty interesting book made up of a collection of academic essays in the vein of cultural anthro/urban studies. Focus on NYC as she's based there. There's some interesting stuff on Disneyland -but if you're writing about visual culture and design it'd be an omission not to. Also interesting re: intersection of artistic and business interests in NYC.
October 17, 2007
Essential Reading.
October 31, 2007
i love her style of writing and the way she explain things. very detailed and refined, at the same time with a sense of humor and still not neglecting her main story.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews