Cities 07

Zukin’s perspective on revitalization hit home for me. I have been thinking about these issues a lot lately and this reading has helped me to organize some of my thoughts. As an interior design major, I hear a lot about how the design of space can control behavior. However, aside from one studio course that focused on culturally-sensitive housing, I have not heard a lot about how the design of space can control cultural perceptions. The more I think about it, the more I see it as being very true. In the following paragraphs I will discuss the Main Street Program, which is an initiative of the National Trust of Historic Preservation to help revitalize neighborhoods. The program is one of the “gentrification, historic preservation…cultural strategies” Zukin discussed (144). As someone who has been interested in historic preservation for a long time, I originally had found this initiative to be an exciting one. However, recently I have questioned what exactly it contributes to cities and if ALL the citizens of the cities which implement it are really better off in the long run.
Basically, the Main Street Program is an initiative that aids city officials in combining historic preservation with economic development in order to revitalize a deflated commercial district. Now, first, I should give credit where credit is due. The program does promote, among other things, local ownership, pedestrian-friendly streets, and community development, which I think are all good, important components. And to be perfectly honest, I would not mind spending a nice summer day in one of these areas, sitting at a café (with a quaint historical façade), sipping a latte, and people-watching. The problem is, when I envision this scenario in my head, I see all the same people walking by. I see middle-class, white Americans who are spending their afternoon happily perusing the streets that take them back to a simpler time in American history. And the homeless people and lower class that used to live in the same area, well, they are no where to be seen.
I think it is very possible that what the Main Street Program does is use “culture as an economic base” (140). It is a way for the powers-that-be in the city to “stamp a collective identity” (138) on the city, that reflects the ideals and history of the white, middle-class, but nobody else and helps the city become more economically stable while doing it. Preserving the city to what may have been a simpler, happier time for Caucasians may mean preserving it to a time that was tainted by discrimination and injustice for African Americans and immigrants.
Zukin discusses “public culture” as being “socially constructed on the micro-level.” She explains that the daily encounters in the “streets, shops, and parks” are ways in which one experiences this culture and is able to invest them self into the city and claim it as their own (139). With the Main Street program, a select number of people have the opportunity to do this. As for everybody else, they are most likely scared away by the “aesthetics of fear (140)” - the police that are no-doubt abundant on the revitalized Main Street, the overabundance of the middle-class, and the central spaces (e.g., parks) that reaffirm the control of this class over the city.
In conclusion, I do not think this structure works well for revitalizing cities inside-out. It revitalizes them at one level, and leaves the others more ostracized than they were before.