Speaker: Wendy Griswold, Professor of Sociology and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University
Cities that have lost their industrial raison d’être look to culture not only as a vehicle for attracting investment and tourism but also as an assertion of their distinctive qualities, developing and promoting their brands as they compete for attention. They designate, preserve (or reconstruct), and market their urban attributes, especially historical ones that they claim as heritage, making them both attractive and accessible. Cultural development and promotion involves five dimensions: architecture, institutions, experiences, scenes, and consumer products. This talk considers how these five dimensions work in response to similar problems but different contexts in Harbin, China, and in Detroit.