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1、C I T Y CULTURES Seeing Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. Beneath the haze stirred up by the winds, the urban island, a sea in the middle of the sea, lifts up the skyscrapers over Wall Street, sinks down at Greenwich, then rises again to the crest of Midtown, quietly passes o

2、ver Central Park and finally undulates off into the distance beyond Harlem. A wave of verticals. Its agitation is momentarily arrested by vision. A gigantic mass is immobilized before our eyes. (de Certeau 1988: 91) Who built it? Anon, thats who. Nobody built the New York skyline. Nobody by the thou

3、sands. (Helene Hanff, Apple of My Eye, 1984: 35) Introduction: a city imagined On 11 September 2001, graphic images of the destruction of two of the worlds tallest buildings - the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City -unfolded on television sets around the world. The eno

4、rmity and complexity of this tragedy, while manifest, were, nevertheless, compounded by the fact that most people witnessed it as a media spectacle. Thus, it was within established media interpretative frames (including the plots and images of countless Hollywood movies) that their initial reactions

5、 were formed. But then in many respects New York is a media construction - the skyline of Manhattan is instantly and globally familiar even though the majority of the worlds population has never been there and will never go. Indeed, Manhattan emerged as a landscape of towers at the same time as film

6、 technology and the movie industry were developing in the United States. It was largely as a result of this coincidence that the Manhattan backdrop became one of the most significant and defining images not just of architectural modernism, but also of the values and achievements of the twentieth cen

7、tury. Manhattan equals Neiy York and New York is perhaps the worlds greatest city. It was within this set of imaginings that in the early 1970s the twin towers assumed their place both as potent symbols of late modernity and testimonies to the global economic power of New 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - -

8、 - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 1 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - York and the United States. Rising 411 metres above ground level, the towers dominated the citys skyline and provided some of the most sought-after postcard views and establishing shots of New York. The destruction of the tower

9、s, therefore, was considerably more than a personal or local tragedy. It was imbued with a range of national, global, cultural, urban and symbolic significances. Indeed, it went to the core of what it meant to be modern. Those who are old enough can remember when the twin towers passed the Empire St

10、ate building (also in New York City) as the worlds tallest buildings. Even in the 1970s, such facts were still regarded as important markers of mans ability to conquer nature and nowhere was evidence of this supremacy more visible and irrefutable than in the great cities of the world and their archi

11、tectural and engineering triumphs - in particular, their bridges and skyscrapers. The metropolis was the antithesis of nature and the symbol of its defeat. In order to appreciate the depth of this sentiment and the cultural significances that the New York skyline came to assume, it is necessary firs

12、t to understand the social and economic contexts within which its early skyscrapers were constructed and the skyscraper building frenzy that gripped New York between the First World War and the great depression of the 1930s. Robert Hughes (1997: 404ff) suggests in his book American Visions about the

13、 history of American art that it was during this period that the New York skyscraper emerged both as a cultural icon and artform. He argues that from 1926 in particular, the building boom in New York was dominated by a race to the sky - a race ultimately won by the Empire State building on its compl

14、etion in 1930. Skyscrapers were seen as heroic not only because of their breathtaking height. The entire process of building them was regarded with fascination and awe, while speculation abounded regarding how high these buildings might eventually go. In addition, key milestones reached during the c

15、onstruction of 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 2 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - many skyscrapers became the focus of public celebrations which often featured such attractions as girl dancers being hired to perform on . . . bare girders, hundreds of feet up in the d

16、izzying air, for the avid media (Hughes 1997: 405). Needless to say, it was opportunistic local politicians and the commercial enterprises responsible for building the towers who staged such promotional stunts. Until the early 1930s, the construction, completion, official opening and final form of e

17、ach new skyscraper were events - central elements of the spectacle of New York City. What developed, according to Hughes (1997: 405) was a romance between New Yorkers, their skyscrapers and their city. Although all Americans were dazed by the force of their new imagery (Hughes 1997: 405) to such an

18、extent that, Hughes goes on to assert: No American painting or sculpture . . . was able to accumulate, at least in the ordinary publics eyes, the kind of cultural power that the skyscrapers had. Nor indeed, could it have done so - most Americans didnt care about art, especially modern art . . . Big

19、buildings were always before you; mere paintings were not. (Hughes 1997: 419) And courtesy of film, art and photography the big buildings were also before the rest of the world, and it too was mesmerized. The landscape of New York looked vastly different from those of European cities: In Paris, only

20、 monumental buildings devoted to sacred or governmental institutions were allowed to exceed the height limit; in London, only purely ornamental towers could rise above the roofscape. In New York, however, the soaring commercial tower had already become the salient ornament of the city-scape and the

21、inalienable right of realtors. (Stern et al. 1987:508) One visits New York first and foremost to see and experience its landscape. In the passage quoted at the start of this chapter cultural theorist Michel de Certeau describes the elation he felt at seeing (from the observation deck of the World Tr

22、ade Center) the city of New York laid out and immobilized before him. Similarly, Philip Kasinitz 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 3 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - (1995), echoing de Certeau, celebrates the worlds great cities (and the significant structures we gaze

23、on them from) in the following way: The exhilaration we feel when we view a great city from one of those rare vantage points where one can take it all in - Paris from the Eiffel Tower, Lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge - is the thrill of seeing in one moment the enormity of . . . human work.

24、(Kasinitz 1995: 3) Despite the exhilaration that might be felt when viewing a great city from the top of a great built structure, our feelings towards the city and its skyscrapers are also deeply contradictory, being simultaneously sources of exhilaration, fear and apprehension -cities are great as

25、well as fearsome (Zukin 1997: vii). They also represent the basest instincts of human society (Zukin 1997: 1). We are aware of this ambiguity even as we celebrate them - we are both attracted and repelled. Viewing a city from a great height is a way of taming it. However, the observer is also render

26、ed ifolnerable by the experience. In order to journey to the top of a skyscraper one must trust in the knowledge and skills of countless faceless experts - builders, engineers, labourers, maintenance workers and architects. This trusting is, as Anthony Giddens (1990) explains, a core feature of late

27、 modernity. The helplessness felt when watching the wounded towers of the World Trade Center crumble onto the streets of lower Manhattan revealed the ambivalence with which we regard the skyscraper and the fragility of our trust in the expert knowledge systems on which we rely. In art, too, the dark

28、er side of our relationship with the city and the skyscraper has also been explored/exposed. The citys looming shapes frequently have been compelling symbols of danger and the unknown even as they speak of progress, modernity and the future. For instance, the plays of light and shade featured in Hug

29、h Ferrisss (1929, 1953) architectural renderings of New York in the 1920s create brooding landscapes that capture the conflicting emotions stimulated by cityspace and the skyscraper. In many of Ferrisss 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 4 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - -

30、 - drawings the tops of skyscrapers are shrouded in shadow while their bottoms - those edges encountered on the street - are luminous. The result evokes notions of the known and the unknown. What is known is what can be seen at street level, while what is unknown looms in the twilight above. In repr

31、esenting the ideas and urban imaginings of those architects who were at the forefront of reshaping the Manhattan skyline, Ferrisss work was as much about the city as its future was being imagined during this period of skyscraper-building as it was about the city at the time. His representations were

32、 of an urban and architectural Utopia that was inspired by the present and made possible by contemporary technology but which was yet to take shape. Many key themes in the study, interpretation and experience of cities coalesced around the events of 11 September and, thus, this moment points to a ho

33、st of issues that underpin the concerns of this book - in particular, the nature of (post)modern urbanism, the ambivalent relationship that exists between people and their cities, and the various ways in which this relationship is shaped through experience, imagination and power. The academic study

34、of the city is an endeavour that can be traced back to the nineteenth century and the work of the founding fathers of sociology, including Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Max Weber. Sociology was concerned with industrialization and modernity - and as cities were the places where the consequences an

35、d contradictions of both were most evident and most profoundly experienced, they became the almost accidental objects of their attention. During the twentieth century, however, a specific urban subdiscipline developed within sociology and continues to be a major field of enquiry. The concerns of urb

36、an sociologists have been varied, though, not just in terms of their particular urban object of study but also methodologically and theoretically. Research has focused variously on such issues as defining and quantifying urbanism, exploring the relationship between the city 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - -

37、 - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 5 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - and society, and investigating the role of the state in framing urban development. Thus urban sociology has connected with and informed the work of many within other disciplines, including human geography, urban planning, eco

38、nomics and urban history. Since the 1970s, the city has become a source of fascination for those working outside established urban studies traditions as an increasing number of cultural theorists started to focus on the city as it is lived rather than on its structures and patterns. At the same time

39、 sociology and its established methods and interpretative frames were (paradoxically) both being challenged and augmented by the insights of cultural theory. The result of these differing influences has been the opening of a number of potentially fruitful pathways for urban research and analysis, as

40、 Rosalyn Deutsche (1996) explains: Now there is growing interest in interdisciplinary mergers of critical urban and cultural discourses. On the one hand, aesthetic practitioners - architects, urban planners, artists - have used the contributions of urban theory to examine how their work functions in

41、 urban social contexts. Urban scholars, on the other hand, have turned to cultural theory to study the city as a signifying object. Both groups hope that encounters between the two fields - themselves composed of several disciplines - will expand our ability to understand and intervene in what urban

42、 theorists call the politics of place. (Deutsche 1996: 206) Too often, though, dialogue between the cultural studies and more sociological approaches to the urban has not been easy and attempts to bring the considerable insights of each together have often been strained Morris 1992; Deutsche 1996).

43、Thus, as academics seek to understand the fabric of the urban environment and the cultures of everyday urban life, there are those more sociologically informed analyses which continue to emphasize the role of the city in fostering social and cultural inequality, arguing that the urban landscape is i

44、mplicated in structural oppression and marginalization, in particular those 精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 6 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - based on class, gender, race and ethnicity. While, on the other hand, many cultural studies approaches to urbanism regard th

45、e city as a significant site of empowerment and resistance, with academics working within this broad tradition often seeking to celebrate lived urban rhythms, anonymity and difference. The challenge of exploring both approaches and making some connections is taken up in this book. Cities and Urban C

46、ultures seeks to make sense of a range of culturally informed theories of the city by considering them alongside broader (established) urban studies traditions. A central underpinning assumption of the book is that these seemingly contradictory approaches can, in shirting combinations, provide rich

47、complementary conceptual and empirical insights into the complex cultures of urbanism. From this intellectual foundation Cities and Urban Cultures also explores some of the key themes in the study and the development of the city since the industrial revolution. 城市文化看到曼哈顿110 层的丐界贸易中心。在霾挑唆被风吹、城市岛,海在海中

48、 ,丼起摩天大楼在华尔街,沉下来 ,然后在格林威治上升再建 ,安静地穿过市中心中央公园,最后undulates 走开迚入距离超出哈莱姆区。 纵向的浪潮。它的风是瞬间被规觉。质量是一个庞大的固定在我们眼睛。(德 Certeau 1988:91) 究竟是谁建造了吗?马上就来 ,那是谁。没有人建造了纽约的地平线。没有人成千上万的。(海伢汉芙、苹果我的眼睛 ,1984:35) 简介 :一个城市想象2001 年 9 月 11 日,图形图片的破坏的两个丐界上最高的建筑南北塔丐界贸易中心在纽约展开电规机在丐界各地。细节和复杂,而显化这个悲剧,丌过 ,由亍这一事实,大多数人目睹它作为一个媒体的景象。因此,它是

49、在已建立的媒体解释框架(包括策划 ,无数的好莱坞电影影像),他们的最初的反应是形成。但后来在很多斱面 ,纽约是一个媒体建筑,曼哈顿地平线时,立即和整体虽然大多数的熟悉,丐界人口已没有那里 ,再也丌会去。事实上,曼哈顿成为一个景观塔的同时,电影技术和电影工业収展在美国。 这很大程度上是由亍这个巧合曼哈顿的背景,成为最重要和定义形象丌精品资料 - - - 欢迎下载 - - - - - - - - - - - 欢迎下载 名师归纳 - - - - - - - - - -第 7 页，共 10 页 - - - - - - - - - - 只是建筑现代主义 ,而丏也和价值二十丐纨所叏得的成就。Neiy 纽约

50、曼哈顿等亍纽约可能是丐界上最伟大的城市。这是在这个组的胡思乱想在1970 年代早期的“双子塔”假设他们把两个有力的象征 ,晚了现代性和法度全球经济纽约的力量和美国。地面上升411 米以上塔为主的水平 ,城市的天际线 ,提供了一些最炙手可热的明信片的观点和建立的镜头纽约。这毁灭的塔 , 因此大大超过一个个人戒当地的悲剧。这是充满一系列国家、全球,文化 ,城市和象征意义。事实上 ,它走到它的核心命中注定的现代化”。那些足够大可以记得“双子塔”了帝国大厦 (纽 约市 )为丐界上最高的建筑。即使是在1970 年代 ,这样的“事实”仍规为重要的“男人的”标记的征服的本质的能力,没有一个证据这个霸主地位无