City, Culture and Society最新文献

The paper attempts to provide a critique of the premise of territoriality in creative cities. A validated hypothesis in the literature on economic geography is that the density and “territoriality” of members of the so-called "creative class" influence the volume of creative goods and services produced in cities. This hypothesis gave rise to several sub-related themes, such as the premise that cities are, par excellence, a place where middleground spaces emerge because of place-based activities located in close-knit communities imbued with creativity and innovation commons. In line with this argument, recent studies have yielded an analytic framework to explain the dissemination of creativity through the so-called “middleground” spaces in cities: places, spaces, projects, and events. This framework presupposes the dissemination of creativity from the physical place to a cognitively constructed space. We revise this argument by suggesting that post-digitalized forms of creation and dissemination of knowledge often blur the boundaries between place and space (which we characterize in this paper as domains of “the local” and “the digital”). By mediating creativity through digital platforms, agents are also capable of outreaching different localities and creating ties that are not subsumed to close-knit communities. As such, our framework incorporates a “digital middleground” space into this existing “middleground” framework, thereby extending the scope of creativity in cities to digitally dispersed forms of exchange. We theorize that contemporary forms of creativity unfold openly, virtually, and non-hierarchically yet are imbued by local concerns such as the ones channeled by crowdfunding communities, which we use as an example in our discussions. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of the increasingly digitalized “urban” spaces and the impossibility of pursuing a dichotomous digital-local divide. We expect that scholars will consider the possibility for creativity to manifest not only in territorial-based middlegrounds, but also in online communities where creativity unfolds dispersedly.

Efficient parking management is essential for enhancing customer experience, mobility, accessibility, and overall quality of life in urban areas. In recent years, parking analytics have emerged as valuable tools for understanding drivers’ behavior and developing data-driven management strategies. However, the application of these tools is often hindered by the complexity of data extraction, transformation, loading and analysis. Additionally, the implementation of these tools can be time-consuming and costly, further limiting their practical use for operators and urban authorities. To address this issue, this paper presents the development of a Business Intelligence tool specifically designed to facilitate parking management through the automated flow of transaction data between collection, processing, and analysis systems. The tool provides easy-to-use analytical capabilities that allow parking managers to analyze parking transaction data, identify trends and patterns, and make informed decisions about parking management quickly and easily. The cost-effective implementation of this tool presents a valuable solution for managing on-street parking in urban areas. This study highlights the potential of Business Intelligence tools for parking management and contributes to improving the effectiveness of parking management.

Globally, as cities shift towards becoming cultural and creative cities, the role of creative hubs as catalyst of economic development has garnered attention. The paper aims to examine and reconceptualise creative hubs based on a Malaysian perspective. Findings from a questionnaire survey conducted for this study highlighted that creative hubs tend to attract the youth, and can be a viable employment opportunity for them. Physical hubs are preferred over virtual spaces, and the location aspect is deemed still important for creative hubs. As way forward, more government support, better stakeholder coordination and capacity-building are required. The findings will have implications on urban and cultural/creative policies as well as trigger the need for a clearer conceptualisation of creative hubs in theory, policy and practice.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the urban acupuncture movement in Bandung through the lens of aesthetic governmentality (Ghertner, 2015). Drawing on qualitative data collected online and on-site, I propose two ways in which aesthetic governmentality extends to Bandung. First, I explore how the interactions between urban acupuncture and the political context of Indonesian Islamist urbanism (Kusno, 2022) have shaped and been shaped by the Bandung aesthetic governmentality regime. Secondly, I highlight how Instagram has become a political tool for Bandung leadership's aesthetic campaigning. My overarching argument is to show how urban acupuncture – originally created as a form of grassroots urbanism in Bandung – has been co-opted by the city government to create aesthetic images that serve as masking mechanism to impose state control beneath the façade of a seemingly organic, bottom-up community movement. The Bandung case, the paper concludes, points to a unique form of aesthetic governmental logic, where photogenic images of acupunctural beautifications have been used as political tools to deflect attention away from the fact that deep underlying infrastructure problems – such as traffic jams and poor park maintenance – and resident needs for functional public spaces remain unaddressed.

This article presents a systematic literature review on urban heritage. It analyses (a) how urban heritage is conceptualized and interpreted in academic research, (b) urban heritage management modes. This literature review interprets urban heritage as a resource, collective memory, and space. It categorizes urban heritage management practice into six management modes according to stakeholders' collaboration levels: community-led, expert-coordinated, government-led, conflict-resolution, and privatization. These modes are analyzed based on different political regimes. The review observes five approaches to conceptualizing urban heritage: researching people's perspectives towards urban heritage, framing urban heritage, tracing the process of urban heritage forming, reviewing international policies and charters, and exploring the functions of urban heritage. Finally, for the future research agenda, the article recommends a focus on the following themes: the causal relations between factors and effects of adopting different urban heritage modes, researching community engagement and interactions between different levels of government, and analyzing conflict-resolution processes systematically.

Culture’s role in sustaining urban development is recognised in this Special Issue and yet the urban setting is not an island of cultural development, but rather merges into suburban, rural and remote areas where the significance of cultural activity and the local actors can be overlooked by the urban observer and funder. In Australia, communities outside of capital cities differ significantly from each other, with community arts and cultural development efforts operating at various scales, to address unique local issues, through diverse artforms and ways of working. Funders with different processes, priorities, and relationships with funding recipients support this activity and can play a role in limiting or enabling community-determined responses to complex local issues.

This article explores a case study where adoption of an online outcomes focussed cultural activity planning and evaluation platform unexpectedly contributed to a deepening of trust between a city-based corporate funder and a regional arts producer working in a suburban area of the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. Interviews with stakeholders revealed that the platform, together with the trust that it helped to cultivate, supported a creative, responsive, and flexible community arts and cultural development project that achieved cultural and social outcomes for local young people considered disadvantaged while working towards the funder’s global goal to enable social equity.

The case study suggests that when funders are removed from the contexts where activities will be delivered, a trusting relationship spanning geographic and socio-cultural divides can encourage mutually beneficial collaboration, reduce rigidity to allow an emergent strategy, and achieve impactful community-determined arts and cultural activity.

This case study is concerned with the arrival and impact of private art museum Mona in Tasmania, examining how the local creative community perceives its impact and how it influences the broader cultural landscape. The museum represents a larger trend where affluent individuals establish prestigious private museums with significant global reach. This study has found Mona to be a highly personal endeavour, providing influential networks in support of the owner's personal and business objectives. It highlights the perception that the museum has had a transformative impact on Tasmania, particularly in adding a sophisticated dimension to the state's cultural visage and a new vibrancy that is thought to resonate strongly with tourists. Previous scholarship has shown that private museums operate in a different context and play by different rules to their public counterparts and this study has shown this to be true in identifying problems with how to govern Mona and the local creative scene trying to negotiate a place within this changing context. Mona has brought credibility to the arts, but set high expectations for the local arts scene, creating entry barriers for young artists and challenging arts institutions with more limited resources.

The far right has now entered into the mainstream politics of nearly every European country, yet we have confirmed little about the social context in which far-right parties thrive. While most of the literature assumes that far-right sympathies are driven by economic or cultural grievance, this paper looks to cities and contact theory. Recent advances suggest that even indirect or vicarious intergroup contact can reduce prejudice toward out-groups such as migrants. Urban theorists, as well, have long argued that urban design can influence social outcomes by promoting or discouraging interaction between residents. This paper applies this literature to the rise of the far right, which often scapegoats out-groups in its rhetoric. Using data from 73 cities in Spain, we find that residents of cities rich in continuous urban fabric—which promotes contact—are less likely to consider voting for the far right but that this relationship is weaker in highly segregated cities.

This article describes the specific issues faced by the Ottawa Culture Research Group (OCRG) as it sought to develop cultural indicators for Ottawa, Canada. It examines this effort in the light of conceptual and collaborative challenges in developing indicators of culture and sustainability and how these challenges have been addressed in cities elsewhere. In focusing on the collaborative relationships among the various partners in the OCRG, the article highlights the difficulties of integrating cultural measures of sustainable development within urban administration and governance when the partners have differing priorities and are dependent on multiple and unstable sources of support. It ends with several conclusions about the practices and resources required to sustain measurement initiatives that address both tangible and intangible aspects of culture’s role in the sustainability of cities.

This ethnographic research examines the interplay between perceived Islamic regulatory regime and cosmopolitan space through the experiences of a group of well-educated young Chinese female Muslim converts in Hong Kong, where Islam largely evokes imaginaries of ethnic minorities and “otherness.” As Chinese Muslim converts transition from the ethnic majority to an ethnic minority within the Muslim minority, which is predominantly comprised of Indonesian, South Asian, and African migrants, they navigate the challenges of being both insiders and outsiders. Moreover, Muslim-majority societies are often stereotypically perceived as being incompatible with gender equality and modernity. By focusing on the intersections of gender and ethnicity, this article argues that these women embody and represent regulatory enclosure and cosmopolitan identities simultaneously, necessitating continuous negotiations and contestations. They identify themselves as members of both the local and global Islamic communities, as well as modern, independent females in a cosmopolitan city. Through an exploration of their strategic creation of Islamic practices in response to different situations, this article sheds light on how the gendered, ethnicized body negotiates regulatory enclosure and cosmopolitanism, and how Islam is dynamically constituted and re-constituted locally in response to constantly evolving challenges.