Urban Sociology 2

Reading

• Flanagan Ch 1

• Esp. pp. 12-28

Loving/Hating the City

• long history of this

• audio clip: Three dead trolls in a baggie …

• audio clip: The Vestibules

Café Diplomatico

• First sidewalk café in Toronto

• Frequented by the intelligensia, Mop & Pail journalists etc.,

• Symbol of Toronto’s urbanity?

"The greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin."

-- Harry Houdini

Cities in cultural myth

• Hated/feared:– Sodom & Gomorrah– Babylon

• Loved/admired:– Jerusalem– Benares

London

• “The Great Wen” (pimple)– Arthur Young C19th

“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

— Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

“The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It’s only the people who make them unsafe.”

— Frank Rizzo (ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia)

"Hollywood is the only place where you can wake up in the morning and hear the birds coughing in the trees."

-- Joe Frisco

Difficult to Rate Cities

• Environment?

• Jobs?

• Restaurants?

• Impossible to characterise a place definitively

Demographics

• People have left/are leaving urban areas in North America– for the suburbs, exurbs, edge cities

Edge Cities

Edge City Albuquerque

Cottaging

• Toronto cottage owners often think of the cottage as their “real” home– they just work in the city, live there during the

week– endure 3-hour tailbacks at Gravenhurst to “get

away from it all”

City Boosting

• Cities in competition

• Promoting your city versus others

Selling the City

• Capital (and tourism) is globally mobile

• Ethos of competition– fighting in a global marketplace for tourist and

investor’s dollars

Selling Toronto

• Social phenomena play a key role in Toronto’s place marketing strategy:– Multiculturalism, cosmopolitianism– The Neighbourhood– The safe city

Liverpool UK

From

The Onion

“Gateway to the West” Slogan

• St Louis MO, Pittsburgh PA, San Jose CA, Achison TX

• Winnipeg MB

• Hong Kong

• Kilrush, Connemara and Ballinasloe in Ireland

• Harley-Davidson Motorcycles

“Where East meets West” Slogan

• Philippines

• Macau

• Greenwich UK

“Hub of the North” Slogan

• Hay River NWT, Engelhart ON, Kirkland Lake ON, Thompson MB

• Chester UK, Aberdeen UK, Derry

• Kaikohe NZ

Place Marketing: Moose Jaw

• Paris, TX

Newfoundland

Place Marketing:

Mundare AB• Home of the

Giant Kolbassa Sausage

City as playground

• Festivals to promote a city, enhance its appeal

• Festival districts, sites– often anchor gentrification

• Liverpool: Albert Dock

NYC

• 42nd & Broadway

Political Cities

• Politics: derives from classical Greek polis– the matters of the city

• Arenas for political activity

• Sites of government, control points

• Political use of the street, urban crowd

• Rocket Riders Users Group, Toronto 2002

First World War

• Outbreak of war aided by good summer weather– enabled urban crowds to gather to demand war

from their political leaders