The City as an Entertainment Machine: Volume 9

We all do it. We label persons or groups as chic, funky, chauvinist, cool, Uncle Tom, nerdy, liberated, Baby Boomers, and more. Political and religious leaders similarly make moral statements, for instance by applying Biblical characters’ names to contemporaries like Bill Clinton or Saddam Hussein – as Satanical or a Good Samaritan. Muslims analogously invoke the Koran.

Consumption is a new central issue, globally, driven by more visible consumption concerns of citizens. For instance, entertainment and the environment rise as political issues, while workplace issues decline. To link individual choice with public and urban context, we outline a theory of consumption in specific propositions. They start with individual and personal influence characteristics in shopping and political decisions, then add socio/cultural characteristics. Three cultural types adapted from Elazar are Moralistic, Individualistic, and Traditional – which shift individual patterns. For instance moralistic persons favor more environmentally sensitive consumption, even boycotting cars, TV, and paper towels, backing green groups and parties. Such protest acts via personal consumption are ignored by many past theories. Individualists instead favor more conspicuous, status-oriented consumption, à la Veblen, or the modernism of Baudelaire and Benjamin. For traditionalists, consumption reinforces the past, via family antiques and homes, ritualized and less individualized. The three types help interpret differences in consumption politics by participants in different social movements, cities, and countries.

Several theories of the new politics and new economy suggest that amenities drive urban development. Do they? Two new amenity measures affect population growth differently. Natural amenities include six components like moderate temperature and water while constructed amenities include opera, juice bars, museums, and Starbucks.

Do people move toward such amenities? Yes the total population does, controlling up to 20 variables in multiple regressions for 3,111 U.S. counties. But subpopulations differ. College graduates are more numerous where there are fewer natural but more constructed amenities. The elderly are the opposite: they increase more with natural amenities, but less with constructed amenities. Residents filing high tech patents live in locations with more of both natural and constructed amenities.

Globalization, advanced by technologies of production and information, created seamless world markets with profound impacts on the world economy. Vast amounts of wealth have been created, but that wealth has been unequally distributed. Such inequality has meant that large numbers of young people have not been able to find the kinds of jobs and careers that provide the “goods” life extolled in a consumer society. Nor do the dominant values of rationality, neo-liberalism or secularism hold much appeal. These conditions have encouraged the emergence of a number of subcultures of transgression, identity-granting communities of meaning which provide members with a sense of community with recognition and empowerment. As many such subcultures repudiate dominant norms, we note how they resemble the medieval carnival, which Bakhtin showed was a time and place of inversion, transgression, and celebration of the grotesque. It allowed the common people encapsulate realms of agency to articulate disdain and resistance. Yet this served to reproduce the dominant system.

In much the same way, insofar as globalization is intimately tied to cities, we have seen the growing importance of cities as nodal points for global commerce as well as sites for entertainment and tourism. These factors, together with the longstanding anonymity and toleration of the city, have become focal points for the emergence of a number of oppositional subcultures. They include those who embrace extreme body modification, numerous forms of body adornment through piercings (rings, posts, studs), tattoos, and surgical modifications such as implanted horns, furrows, or split tongues. Following Simmel, adornment can be seen as a means of inclusion within a group and differentiation from others. The practitioners of extreme body modification label themselves “urban primitives,” who see themselves rejecting global modernity, the occupation-based status hierarchies of the dominant occupational system and its shallow, materialistic culture. They see themselves as a moment of the “transvaluation of values” in which Dionysian passion triumphs over Apollonian control and restraint. This is especially evident in various genital decorations in which what heretofore has been private and exposure was a matter of shame. There has been a “cultural transformation of the pubic sphere.” While such groups find community, identity and recognition, they must also be understood as a key ingredient of the city in a global age in which diversity, cosmopolitanism, and the offbeat constitute essential moments of urban ambience.

Urban economics has traditionally viewed cities as having advantages in production and disadvantages in consumption. We argue that the role of urban density in facilitating consumption is extremely important and understudied. As firms become more mobile, the success of cities hinges more and more on cities’ role as centers of consumption. Empirically, we find that high amenity cities have grown faster than low amenity cities. Urban rents have gone up faster than urban wages, suggesting that the demand for living in cities has risen for reasons beyond rising wages. The rise of reverse commuting suggests the same consumer city phenomena.

This paper charts new ground by first considering a paradigmatic shift in the nature of political decision making, driven by globalization and post-industrial trends. Second, it uses an original methodology to identify political culture and policy focus – a content analysis of some 60 websites of local authorities across Britain. We hope that the substantive results as well as the methodological lessons about how to study these issues systematically may interest British readers as well as persons confronting similar issues around the world. We particularly recommend the website analysis methodology as a relatively inexpensive procedure for conducting research globally. Many local governments worldwide now have websites – for instance over 80% of Korean local governments do, as Korean researchers reported in starting a similar content analysis.

The rules of the economic development game have changed. Companies were the force behind the old game. Cities and suburbs gauged their status by the number of corporate headquarters within their borders. Economic developers used financial and other incentives to lure companies to their communities. Now, however, people are the center of the action. High human capital individuals – or as we like to call them, talent – are the key to success in this new era of economic growth. Their ideas and creativity are the most important ingredients in the economic success of a firm or region.

Reports that gays are correlated with high tech job growth have generated consternation and debate. This paper reviews the key results and offers several overlapping interpretations, stressing human capital, tolerance, amenities, and statistical spuriousness. Competing hypotheses are tested using the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, 300 metro areas, 3,111 counties, and surveys of 84,989 citizens. Gays alone are generally insignificant. Still they are associated with other factors in ways that shift results across different levels: gay relations with jobs appear strong in large metro areas, but fall in smaller locations.

Below are summaries of some of the most cited works on amenities by economists. The review started with key recent works, such as those by Edward Glaeser et al., and worked back to major earlier works. Review articles were given preference, as they provide a summary of the field. Website addresses are available for many papers, to facilitate global access.

The International Mayor provides a quick but precise overview of mayors and their cities around the world. As the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project is unique in its extensive coverage, so is this report.

To subscribe: All commands must be sent to LISTSERV@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDULots of enthusiasm is emerging among Comurbanists for urban biking, so I have to pass on a new table I am refining on amenities in cities (county data shown here). It shows that NYC, LA and some other urban locations rank very high nationally, and above many suburban and smaller population counties, even in bike events (for mountain and road bikes).

Studies of the city traditionally posit a division between a city’s economy and its culture, with culture subordinate in explanatory power to “work.” However, post-industrial and globalizing trends are dramatically elevating the importance of culture. Cultural activities are increasingly crucial to urban economic vitality. Models to explain the growth of cities from the era of industrial manufacturing are outmoded. Loss of heavy industry impacts the dynamics of urban growth, increasing the relative importance of the city both as a space of consumption and as a site for “production” which is distinctly symbolic/expressive. Some have seen globalization, the wired city, and electronic communication as destroying cities as proximity should decline in importance. This may be correct for some production concerns, but this in turn raises questions about consumption versus production decisions affecting urban growth and dynamics. Even in a former industrial power like Chicago, the number one industry has become entertainment, which city officials define to include tourism, conventions, restaurants, hotels, and related economic activities. Citizens in the postindustrial city increasingly make “quality of life” demands, treating their own urban location as if tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns. These practices impact considerations about the proper nature of amenities that post-industrial cities can sustain. The city increasingly becomes an Entertainment Machine, leveraging culture to enhance its economic well being. The entertainment components of cities are actively and strategically produced through political and economic processes. Entertainment becomes the work of many urban participants. We elaborate this theme in general and illustrate its force with case study materials from Chicago and a national study of U.S. mayors in cities over 25,000 in population.

Anne Bartlett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She holds a degree in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of the West of England and Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Prior to this, she worked in various capacities in the British government for over fifteen years. Her Ph.D. research centers on the changing nature of political subjectivity in London, particularly as it pertains to the lives of refugees and migrants. Her other areas of interest include sociological theory, globalization, human rights and evolving forms of political culture.Katie Cangemi is a student at DePaul University.Terry Nichols Clark is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds MA and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has worked at the Brookings Institution, The Urban Institute, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and US Conference of Mayors. His books include Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Society, City Money, The New Political Culture, and Urban Innovation. Since 1982 he has been Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project, which includes a data base of over 10,000 municipalities in up to 35 countries. It is the most extensive study to date of local government in the world, including data, some 700 participants, a budget exceeding $20 million, and 50 published books, much available on the website http://www.src.uchicago.edu/depts/faui/archive.htmlRichard Florida is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure Community and Everyday Life Basic Books 2002, stressing the rise of creativity as an economic force. He is the H. John Heinz III Professor of Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is founder and co-director of the Software Industry Center. He has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-author of five other books, including Industrializing Knowledge; Beyond Mass Production and The Breakthrough Illusion, and more than 100 articles in academic journals. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and Ph.D. from Columbia University.Gary Gates works in the Population Studies Center of The Urban Institute in Washington DC 20037. He completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, and is a leading researcher on gays in the U.S.Edward Glaeser is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory. He has published dozens of papers on cities, economic growth, and law and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He also edits the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992.Pushpam Jain completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.Jed Kolko is at the Department of Economics, Harvard University.Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago. His interests include alienation studies, Marxist sociology and cultural sociology. Recent publications include: Suppose They Gave a Culture War and No-one Came: Zippergate and the Carnivalization of Political Culture, American Behavioral Scientist (December, 2002); The Body and the Mediation of Hegemony: From Subject to Citizen to Audience, in Richard Brown (Ed.) Body, Self and Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2002); From the Poetics of Pleasure to the Poetics of Protest, in Paul Kennedy (Ed.) Identity in the Global Age (Macmillan & Palmore, 2001); with Douglas Morris and Jackie Zalewski, Globalization, Domination and Cyberactivism, in Wilma A. Dunaway (Ed.) The 21st Century World-System: Systemic Crises and Antisystemic Resistance (Greenwood Press, 2002).Richard Lloyd teaches at Vanderbilt University, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His research interests include urban culture. Postindustrial economy, and labor force participation.Dennis Merritt completed a BA at the University of Chicago and MA at DePaul University. He was Analysis Manager of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project for four years.Albert Saiz is in the Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He completed a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard.Lenka Siroky studied at the Universities of Prague and Budapest, spent two years at the University of Chicago, and is currently studying at Harvard University.Kenneth Wong is Professor of Public Policy and Education and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. He was Associate Professor in the Department of Education and the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in political science. He has conducted research in American government, urban school reform, state finance and educational policies, intergovernmental relations, and federal educational policies (Title I). He is author of Funding Public Schools: Politics and Policy (1999), and City Choices: Education and Housing (1990), and a co-author of When Federalism Works (1986). He is currently the President of the Politics of Education Association.Alexei Zelenev is an Associate Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago.