Nostalgia for home is quite natural among expatriates. The English country life recreated in the hill stations of India, however, was elaborated on by the greater prestige of an imperial people. This paper examines the hill station as a landscape type tied to nineteenth‐century discourses of imperialism and climate. Both discourses serve as evidence of a belief in racial difference and, thereby, the imperial hill station reflected and reinforced a framework of meaning that influenced European views of the non‐western world in general. Because the hill station was seen as a resource to be protected for use by the British ruler, the standards used in colonial settlement planning are framed in these discourses of privilege and difference. Primary attention is given to the high imperial age from 1870 to 1914 when construction activity was greatest. Ootacamund, the summer capital of the Madras presidency in southern India, serves as the case study for evaluating this landscape type.
In this era of competitive capitalism, American cities have sought to orchestrate strategies of both image and material regeneration. The recent revival of central Milwaukee demonstrates the convergence of three discourses in the city’s image-making and redevelopment schemes. These three are the cultural discourse of neo-traditionalism, the planning discourse of the New Urbanism, and neo-liberalism in the arena of public policy. This paper examines the convergence of these three as a case study of the role of culture in contemporary urban development. We structure our argument in three parts. First, we give attention to a campaign designed to promote metropolitan Milwaukee, reflecting its most recent incarnation as a city that nostalgically embraces its industrial past. The promotional image includes the city’s grounding in traditional Midwestern values, the cultural capital represented by its late nineteenth-century industrial landscape, and its claim to the title ‘Genuine American City’. This reflection on ‘genuineness’ and ‘tradition’ reveals nostalgia for an earlier era that appeals to a significant segment of the population. The second portion of the paper examines the links between Milwaukee’s ‘traditional’ urban form, its design and investment strategies, and the city’s evolving New Urbanist landscape. The third section addresses the mayor’s neo-liberal views as they relate to his particular vision of Milwaukee. We conclude our exploration by examining the potential consequences of such neo-traditional ideologies for various communities within the city.
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