Re-generating the culture factory: deconstructing interpretations of culture in the hybrid city
Date
2008-03-06T14:06:32Z
Authors
Dinath, Yasmeen
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Abstract
ABSTRACT:
What is culture? What is the culture of the city?
The premise of this study is that the construction of an official rationality
of culture, as a concept that underlies culture-led urban regeneration and
place-marketing, is often limiting and exclusionary. The official concept of
culture often overlooks the important political nuances and complexities
that are involved in the representation and appropriation of cultural
identities. It also neglects the value of the symbols and practices that are
produced in the everyday life of the city, which may provide a real
inclusionary, socially relevant understanding of identity and difference in
the city.
The study explains the need to prompt urban practitioners and theorists to
begin to deconstruct prevailing interpretations of urban culture so that we
may begin engaging with alternative interpretations of identities, cultures
and difference to more authentically reflect the fluid meanings produced in
the realm of urban everyday life.
Beginning with a brief glimpse into the various meanings constructed for
culture over time, the study then proceeds to analyse the official
documented discourse on culture constructed for the city of Johannesburg.
These ideas are then distilled into four critical themes acting as a
conceptual framework relating to the interpretation of culture in the city.
These four themes lead to an exploration of the space of everyday life as an
alterative source of the multiple shifting meanings and identities being
formed daily in the everyday life of the city. This study extends an
invitation to urban theorists and practitioners to embark upon the task of
critically deconstructing the realities and political complexities of
prevailing interpretations of culture in the city that underlies urban
regeneration. In this way the study aims to stimulate the development of
alternative rationalities in urban planning about the nuances and
representations of social life, identities and difference in the city, urging a
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critical review and critique of urban decision making and its consequences
for the everyday social experience of the city.
This research concludes by suggesting that the concept of culture be
deprivileged in the context of urban regeneration and that a new direction
in practising urban regeneration and place-marketing be explored in the
spaces of everyday life.
Description
Keywords
Culture-led urban regeneration, cities, planning