In today’s postindustrial economy, the extent to which cities and neighborhoods can develop and promote their cultural assets has become a key strategy for maintaining competitiveness by attracting tourism, investment, and job and population growth. These cultural modes of urban development fit the logic of the urban growth machine, in that they foster ideologies of place to encourage investment and enhance the profitability of the local economic base. This article examines the often-neglected role of the local newspaper in this process by focusing on how the Los Angeles Times represents one neighborhood—Koreatown, Los Angeles—over an approximately forty-year period. Through critical discourse analysis, this article unpacks four discursive frames used by the local newspaper and analyzes how these frames commodify cultural communities for consumption by the urban elite.
Since the 1990s, urban planners in the United States have developed systems of neighborhood governance as a way to better involve citizens in decision making. Simultaneously, place branding emerged as an economic development strategy employed by local, municipal, and regional organizations. While often discussed as an elite-controlled game, little attention has been paid to the role of residents in branding their own communities. This study investigates the extent to which different neighborhood governance systems encourage neighborhood branding. Through qualitative analysis of thirty-five cities, this paper demonstrates that across systems, there is an ongoing tension between empowering residents and managing place branding.
As a means for neighbourhood improvement, cultural urban revitalisation seeks to draw business growth and investment by attracting a creative class of young urban professionals. Though criticisms abound that these strategies benefit the wealthy and displace low-income communities, there is little research focusing on how the efforts of social actors can shape or resist this process. The purpose of this study is to offer a micro-level look at the spatial and political contestations and negotiations that occur amongst a variety of community organisations and individuals in two adjacent neighbourhoods in downtown Los Angeles undergoing revitalisation. By approaching 'revitalisation' as an arena where different neighbourhood groups can compete to achieve their goals, it argues that we scrutinise prevailing notions of gentrification and seek to understand the values and actions of stakeholders involved in order to enable more equitable outcomes of urban revitalisation.
As multiculturalism has become a valued aspect of the city, ethnic enclaves have taken on new economic power in the cultural economy. However, as Western cities become increasingly diverse, multiple ethnic communities often overlap in shared urban spaces. Employing ethnographic methods, this article examines Wilshire Center, Los Angeles, to better understand how multiethnic communities perceive of and experience the culture of their community and how different actors foster or resist neighborhood change. In doing so, this research complicates our understandings of gentrification dynamics in multiethnic areas, and highlights important considerations for community development practitioners seeking to plan for multiple publics.
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