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1、C I T Y CULTURESSeeing Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. Beneath thehaze 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 risesagain to the crest of Midtown, quietly passes over

2、Central Park and finallyundulates off into the distance beyond Harlem. A wave of verticals. Its agitationis momentarily arrested by vision. A gigantic mass is immobilized before oureyes.(de Certeau 1988: 91)Who built it? Anon, thats who. Nobody built the New York skyline. Nobodyby the thousands.(Hel

3、ene Hanff, Apple of My Eye, 1984: 35)Introduction: a city imaginedOn 11 September 2001, graphic images of the destruction of two of theworlds tallest buildings - the north and south towers of the World TradeCenter in New York City - unfolded on television sets around the world.The enormity and compl

4、exity of this tragedy, while manifest, were, nevertheless,compounded by the fact that most people witnessed it as a mediaspectacle. Thus, it was within established media interpretative frames(including the plots and images of countless Hollywood movies) that theirinitial reactions were formed. But t

5、hen in many respects New York is amedia construction - the skyline of Manhattan is instantly and globallyfamiliar even though the majority of the worlds population has never beenthere and will never go. Indeed, Manhattan emerged as a landscape oftowers at the same time as film technology and the mov

6、ie industry weredeveloping in the United States. It was largely as a result of this coincidencethat the Manhattan backdrop became one of the most significant and definingimages not just of architectural modernism, but also of the values andachievements of the twentieth century. Manhattan equals Neiy

7、 York andNew York is perhaps the worlds greatest city. It was within this set of imaginingsthat in the early 1970s the twin towers assumed their place both aspotent symbols of late modernity and testimonies to the global economicpower of New York and the United States. Rising 411 metres above ground

8、level, the towers dominated the citys skyline and provided some of the mostsought-after postcard views and establishing shots of New York. Thedestruction of the towers, therefore, was considerably more than a personalor local tragedy. It was imbued with a range of national, global, cultural,urban an

9、d symbolic significances. Indeed, it went to the core of what itmeant to be modern.Those who are old enough can remember when the twin towers passedthe Empire State building (also in New York City) as the worlds tallestbuildings. Even in the 1970s, such facts were still regarded as importantmarkers

10、of mans ability to conquer nature and nowhere was evidence ofthis supremacy more visible and irrefutable than in the great cities of theworld and their architectural and engineering triumphs - in particular, theirbridges and skyscrapers. The metropolis was the antithesis of nature and thesymbol of i

11、ts defeat. In order to appreciate the depth of this sentiment andthe cultural significances that the New York skyline came to assume, it isnecessary first to understand the social and economic contexts within whichits early skyscrapers were constructed and the skyscraper building frenzythat gripped

12、New York between the First World War and the great depressionof the 1930s.Robert Hughes (1997: 404ff) suggests in his book American Visionsabout the history of American art that it was during this period that theNew York skyscraper emerged both as a cultural icon and artform. Heargues that from 1926

13、 in particular, the building boom in New York wasdominated by a race to the sky - a race ultimately won by the Empire Statebuilding on its completion in 1930. Skyscrapers were seen as heroic not onlybecause of their breathtaking height. The entire process of building themwas regarded with fascinatio

14、n and awe, while speculation abounded regardinghow high these buildings might eventually go. In addition, key milestonesreached during the construction of many skyscrapers became thefocus of public celebrations which often featured such attractions as girldancers being hired to perform on . . . bare

15、 girders, hundreds of feet up inthe dizzying air, for the avid media (Hughes 1997: 405). Needless to say, itwas opportunistic local politicians and the commercial enterprises responsiblefor building the towers who staged such promotional stunts. Until theearly 1930s, the construction, completion, of

16、ficial opening and final formof each new skyscraper were events - central elements of the spectacle ofNew York City. What developed, according to Hughes (1997: 405) was aromance between New Yorkers, their skyscrapers and their city. Althoughall Americans were dazed by the force of their new imagery

17、(Hughes 1997:405) to such an extent that, Hughes goes on to assert:No American painting or sculpture . . . was able to accumulate, at leastin the ordinary publics eyes, the kind of cultural power that the skyscrapershad. Nor indeed, could it have done so - most Americansdidnt care about art, especia

18、lly modern art . . . Big buildings werealways before you; mere paintings were not.(Hughes 1997: 419)And courtesy of film, art and photography the big buildings were alsobefore the rest of the world, and it too was mesmerized. The landscape ofNew York looked vastly different from those of European ci

19、ties:In Paris, only monumental buildings devoted to sacred or governmentalinstitutions were allowed to exceed the height limit; in London, onlypurely ornamental towers could rise above the roofscape. In New York,however, the soaring commercial tower had already become the salientornament of the city

20、-scape and the 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 deCerteau describes the elation he felt at seeing (from the observation deck ofth

21、e World Trade Center) the city of New York laid out and immobilizedbefore him. Similarly, Philip Kasinitz (1995), echoing de Certeau, celebratesthe worlds great cities (and the significant structures we gaze on themfrom) in the following way:The exhilaration we feel when we view a great city from on

22、e of thoserare vantage points where one can take it all in - Paris from the EiffelTower, Lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge - is the thrill ofseeing in one moment the enormity of . . . human work.(Kasinitz 1995: 3)Despite the exhilaration that might be felt when viewing a great city fromthe to

23、p of a great built structure, our feelings towards the city and its skyscrapersare also deeply contradictory, being simultaneously sources ofexhilaration, fear and apprehension - cities are great as well as fearsome(Zukin 1997: vii). They also represent the basest instincts of human society(Zukin 19

24、97: 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 isa way of taming it. However, the observer is also rendered ifolnerable by theexperience. In order to journey to the top of a skyscraper one must trust inthe know

25、ledge and skills of countless faceless experts - builders, engineers,labourers, maintenance workers and architects. This trusting is, as AnthonyGiddens (1990) explains, a core feature of late modernity. The helplessnessfelt when watching the wounded towers of the World Trade Center crumbleonto the s

26、treets of lower Manhattan revealed the ambivalence with whichwe regard the skyscraper and the fragility of our trust in the expert knowledgesystems on which we rely.In art, too, the darker side of our relationship with the city and the skyscraperhas also been explored/exposed. The citys looming shap

27、es frequentlyhave been compelling symbols of danger and the unknown even asthey speak of progress, modernity and the future. For instance, the plays oflight and shade featured in Hugh Ferrisss (1929, 1953) architectural renderingsof New York in the 1920s create brooding landscapes that capturethe co

28、nflicting emotions stimulated by cityspace and the skyscraper. In manyof Ferrisss drawings the tops of skyscrapers are shrouded in shadow whiletheir bottoms - those edges encountered on the street - are luminous. Theresult evokes notions of the known and the unknown. What is known iswhat can be seen

29、 at street level, while what is unknown looms in the twilightabove. In representing the ideas and urban imaginings of those architectswho were at the forefront of reshaping the Manhattan skyline, Ferrissswork was as much about the city as its future was being imagined duringthis period of skyscraper

30、-building as it was about the city at the time. Hisrepresentations were of an urban and architectural Utopia that was inspiredby the present and made possible by contemporary technology but whichwas yet to take shape.Many key themes in the study, interpretation and experience of citiescoalesced arou

31、nd the events of 11 September and, thus, this moment pointsto a host of issues that underpin the concerns of this book - in particular,the nature of (post)modern urbanism, the ambivalent relationship that existsbetween people and their cities, and the various ways in which this relationshipis shaped

32、 through experience, imagination and power. The academicstudy of the city is an endeavour that can be traced back to the nineteenthcentury and the work of the founding fathers of sociology, including KarlMarx, Friedrich Engels and Max Weber. Sociology was concerned withindustrialization and modernit

33、y - and as cities were the places where theconsequences and contradictions of both were most evident and most profoundlyexperienced, they became the almost accidental objects of theirattention. During the twentieth century, however, a specific urban subdisciplinedeveloped within sociology and contin

34、ues to be a major field ofenquiry. The concerns of urban sociologists have been varied, though, notjust in terms of their particular urban object of study but also methodologicallyand theoretically. Research has focused variously on such issues asdefining and quantifying urbanism, exploring the rela

35、tionship between thecity and society, and investigating the role of the state in framing urbandevelopment. Thus urban sociology has connected with and informed thework of many within other disciplines, including human geography, urbanplanning, economics and urban history.Since the 1970s, the city ha

36、s become a source of fascination for thoseworking outside established urban studies traditions as an increasingnumber of cultural theorists started to focus on the city as it is lived ratherthan on its structures and patterns. At the same time sociology and its establishedmethods and interpretative

37、frames were (paradoxically) both beingchallenged and augmented by the insights of cultural theory. The result ofthese differing influences has been the opening of a number of potentiallyfruitful pathways for urban research and analysis, as Rosalyn Deutsche(1996) explains:Now there is growing interes

38、t in interdisciplinary mergers of criticalurban and cultural discourses. On the one hand, aesthetic practitioners- architects, urban planners, artists - have used the contributions ofurban theory to examine how their work functions in urban social contexts.Urban scholars, on the other hand, have tur

39、ned to cultural theoryto study the city as a signifying object. Both groups hope that encountersbetween the two fields - themselves composed of several disciplines- will expand our ability to understand and intervene in what urbantheorists call the politics of place.(Deutsche 1996: 206)Too often, th

40、ough, dialogue between the cultural studies and more sociologicalapproaches to the urban has not been easy and attempts to bring theconsiderable insights of each together have often been strained Morris1992; Deutsche 1996). Thus, as academics seek to understand the fabric ofthe urban environment and

41、 the cultures of everyday urban life, there arethose more sociologically informed analyses which continue to emphasizethe role of the city in fostering social and cultural inequality, arguing thatthe urban landscape is implicated in structural oppression and marginalization,in particular those based

42、 on class, gender, race and ethnicity. While, onthe other hand, many cultural studies approaches to urbanism regard thecity as a significant site of empowerment and resistance, with academicsworking within this broad tradition often seeking to celebrate lived urbanrhythms, anonymity and difference.T

43、he challenge of exploring both approaches and making some connectionsis taken up in this book. Cities and Urban Cultures seeks to make senseof a range of culturally informed theories of the city by considering themalongside broader (established) urban studies traditions. A central underpinningassump

44、tion of the book is that these seemingly contradictoryapproaches can, in shirting combinations, provide rich complementary conceptualand empirical insights into the complex cultures of urbanism. Fromthis intellectual foundation Cities and Urban Cultures also explores someof the key themes in the stu

45、dy and the development of the city since theindustrial revolution.城市文化看到曼哈顿110层的世界贸易中心。在霾挑唆被风吹、城市岛,海在海中,举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走开进入距离超出哈莱姆区。纵向的浪潮。它的风是瞬间被视觉。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。(海伦汉芙、苹果我的眼睛,1984:35)简介:一个城市想象2001年9月11日,图

46、形图片的破坏的两个世界上最高的建筑南北塔世界贸易中心在纽约展开电视机在世界各地。细节和复杂,而显化这个悲剧,不过,由于这一事实,大多数人目睹它作为一个媒体的景象。因此,它是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。但后来在很多方面,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,世界人口已没有那里,再也不会去。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发展在美国。这很大程度上是由于这个巧合曼哈顿的背景,成为最重要和定义形象不只是建筑现代主义,而且也和价值二十世纪所取得的成就。Neiy纽约曼哈顿等于纽约可能是世界上最伟大的城市。

47、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或当地的悲剧。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)为世界上最高的建筑。即使是在1970年代,这样的“事实”仍视为重要的“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可置疑的更清晰,比在伟大的城市世界和他们的建筑和工程的胜利,特别是他

48、们的桥梁和摩天大楼。大都市是对立的性质和其失败的象征。为了感谢这份感情的深度文化意义,纽约景致来承担,它是首先需要了解社会和经济条件下内早期的摩天大楼构成和摩天大楼建设狂热抓住之间,纽约第一次世界大战和大萧条时期困难重重1930年代。罗伯特休斯(1997:404 ff)暗示在他的书里,美国的幻想美国艺术的历史,正是在这个时期纽约的摩天大楼出现两个图标,并详阅新苗作为一种文化。他认为,从1926年的建筑热潮,尤其是在纽约主导的种族天空”一个种族最终赢得了帝国大厦建筑于1930年竣工。摩天大楼被视为英雄不止因为他们惊人的高度。建造他们的整个过程被认为与魅力和敬畏,猜测关于丰富吗这些建筑有多高,最终

49、可能会去。此外,关键里程碑到达的建设过程中,成为许多摩天大楼让民众庆祝经常出现这样的游乐项目的女孩being雇演员演出。裸露的大梁,几百英尺高令人眼花缭乱的空气中,因为这位狂热的媒体”(休斯):1997 - 405)。不用说,是投机取巧的当地政治家和商业企业负责为建立塔这样的宣传他们排演了特技动作。直到1930年代早期,施工、竣工,正式开通和最终的形式每一个新摩天大楼是项目核心内容的景象纽约市。什么发展,根据休斯(1997:405)是一个之间的浪漫的纽约人,他们的摩天大楼和他们的城。虽然所有的美国人的晕眩的力量是他们的新意象”(休斯1997:405)到了如此程度,以至于,休斯继续断言:绘画或雕

50、塑的美国。能够积累,至少两个方面在普通公众的眼里,这两种文化的权力的摩天大楼有。事实上,这可能也这样做了大多数的美国人不关心艺术,尤其是现代艺术。大建筑总是在你面前,你仅仅是绘画。休斯1997:419)礼貌,影片,艺术和摄影“大建筑”也之前的世界,它太玄。景观纽约看起来截然不同的欧洲城市:在巴黎,只有不朽的建筑或政府致力于神圣机构被允许超过极限高度,在伦敦,而已纯观赏塔可以上升超过roofscape。在纽约,然而,飙升的商业大厦已经成为引人注目的city-scape点缀的和不可剥夺的权利的一处豪宅。(斯特恩吴昱。1987:508)一个访问纽约首先去看、去体验它的景观。在文章中引用在开始这章米歇

51、尔文化理论家Certeau得意洋洋,他感到了看到(从观景台世界贸易中心)纽约的“固定”了在他的面前。同样,菲利普Kasinitz(1995),与德Certeau,庆祝世界的“极好”的城市(和我们的目光的重要结构从下列道:充满我们的感受,当我们看一个伟大的城市从其中之一罕见的角度,在这里您可以“把它全部在 -巴黎的埃菲尔铁塔从塔,曼哈顿布鲁克林大桥是一段激动人心的看见在那一刻的凶残。人类的工作。(Kasinitz 1995:3)尽管“愉快”可能会觉得时,观赏一次“极好”的城市最高的一次“极好”的结构,我们的感情对建造城市和它的摩天大楼是矛盾的,同时也深刻的来源是吗愉快、恐惧和忧虑“城市是伟大的以及可怕的”(Zukin 1997:7)。 他们也”代表了人类社会的本能立极卑微的(Zukin 1997:1)。 据我们所知,甚至当我们庆祝这含糊不清我们都是吸引和排斥。看一个城市和一个伟大的高度驯服它的一种方式。然而,也使ifolnerable观测器经验。为了旅行到一座摩天大楼的顶端,