PDF Cities and Cultures (Routledge Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City) by Malcolm Miles in Arts-Photography

Description

Cities and Cultures is a critical account of the relations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce and which in turn shape them. The book questions received ideas of what constitutes a citys culture through case studies in which different kinds of culture - the arts; cultural institutions and heritage; distinctive ways of life - are seen to be differently used in or affected by the development of particular cities. The book does not mask the complexity of this; but explains it in ways accessible for undergraduates.The book begins with introductory chapters on the concepts of a city and a culture (the latter in the anthropological sense as well as denoting the arts); citing cases from modern literature. The book then moves from a critical account of cultural production in a metropolitan setting to the idea that a city; too; is produced through the characteristic ways of life of its inhabitants. The cultural industries are scrutinised for their relation to such cultures as well as to city marketing; and attention is given to the European Cities of Culture initiative; and to the hybridity of contemporary urban cultures in a period of globalisation and migration. In its penultimate chapter the book looks at incidental cultural forms and cultural means to identify formation; and in its final chapter; examines the permeability of urban cultures and cultural forms. Sources are introduced; positions clarified and contrasted; and notes given for selective further reading. Playing on the two meanings of culture; Miles takes an unique approach by relating arguments around these meanings to specific cases of urban development today. The book includes both critical comment on a range of literatures - being a truly inter-disciplinary study - and the outcome of the authors field research into urban cultures.