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Costas Spirou 25 Urban Beautification: The Construction of a New Identity in Chicago DURING THE LAST 20 YEARS, cultural policy has become an integral part of economic and physical redevelopment strategies for many urban centers across the United States. Driven bydeindustrialization,populationdecentralization , and globalization, many cities have turned to cultural strategies as a means to reposition themselves in a rapidly changing economic environment or to reaffirm their standing in an evolving metropolitan hierarchy. One factor fueling culture-driven strategies in urban development is that citizens now have more leisure-expendable income than ever before . This fact has led city governments to increase expenditures on culture and related specialized bureaucracies. As a result, policymaking bodies have ventured to enhance their provision of cultural services to cater to a growing , more differentiated, and increasingly sophisticated public demand. The outcome of these trends has resulted in the development of an economy of urban tourism. This has encouraged cities and their governments to turn their attention to policies that center on showcasing their cultural heritage, exporting their cultural identity, and translating these policies into revenue streams that can then be used for social and economic transformation. Hence, promoting festivals, arts, sport, music, cinema, conventions , and exhibits has come to be viewed as central activities of this strategy. This trend is the focus of an April 2000 report published by the National League of Cities entitled Tourism and Entertainment as a Local Economic Development Strategy: A Survey of City Halls (Judd et al. 2000), which discusses how tourist and entertainment infrastructure has recently emerged as a primary form of public investment in American cities. How has this tourism-focused economic restructuring come to fuel emerging urban-planning strategies ? Although there is no simple answer to this question, multiple issues can be identi- fied as factors that have caused the ascendance of urban tourism and associated public works activities. In the past, tourism and related cultural forms did not fit the planning mix and were viewed at best as inconsequential elements of local economic activity (Beauregard 1998). The motivation and rising demand for urban tourism may be found in two fundamental factors . The first can be drawn from a recent and continuing desire by people to explore the unfamiliar and to construct or to solidify their identity through travel and appropriately utilized leisure time (Law 2002). Whether it is the search for self-actualization (Maslow 1970), the acquisition of “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1984), or identity formation through consumption (Baudrillard 1988) and pilgrimages to famous places (MacCannell 1976), or even the “tourist gaze” as projected onto destinations by the media (Urry 1990), tourism and leisure activities have entered and influenced the realm of human experiences in ways more powerful and profound than ever before. The second factor relates more directly to the dynamics of city governance and to the contemporaryconditionofcities .Theeconomicdecline following the post war restructuring; the impact ofglobalization,whichsubstantiallyreducedthe 296 Costas Spirou primacy of the U.S. economy in production activities; and diminishing contributions by the federal government to the cities and states, presented a series of challenges for local officials facing the new fiscal reality of shrinking budgets and services. Cities responded by divorcing themselves from their manufacturing dependency ; instead, they searched for ways to diversify and strengthen the various remaining sectors of their economy. Within this framework, urban tourism emerges as an appealing alternative , one that slowly has gained favor with local officials and civic boosters alike. As cities rush to take advantage of this new growth potential, they face numerous challenges , mainly in the areas of urban identity and urban competition. Specifically, how can a city with a formerly strong and nationally or internationally identifiable manufacturing economy convertitselfintoatouristdestination?Mostimportant , how does it convince potential visitors of its new services and sense of “attractiveness”? Similarly, what are its competitive advantages within this reformulated environment? The rise of urban tourism increases intermunicipal competition and requires cities to be more entrepreneurial. In Marketing Places: Attracting Investment, Industry, and Tourism to Cities, States, and Nations, international marketing guru Philip Kotler along with Donald H. Haider and Irving Rein (1993) definitively make the point that competition is a new reality that cannot be avoided: “Places have to visualize a clearer sense of the functions they perform and the roles they play. . . . A place that fails to examine its prospects and potential critically is likely to lose out to more attractive competitors” (p. 311). Within this context, the city is no...

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