The City as an Entertainment Machine - Softcover

The City as an Entertainment Machine brings together a number of research projects conducted largely in America and one in the UK, which seek to assess the impacts of `amenities' on urban growth. The thesis is that the consumer is the all-powerful figure who can generate a level of economic growth for a place and it is therefore important to understand this consumer in more detail, in order that places know how to meet consumer demand. The volume as a whole considers policy to be a straightforward and one-way set of discourses in which, providing the amenities are present, the consumer will continue obediently to demand commodities. How these policies are understood, ignored and resisted by different groups in the public sphere is not up for consideration, which limits the insights offered. * Urban Studies *

The City as an Entertainment Machine details the impacts of opera, used bookstores, brew pubs, bicycle events, Starbucks' coffee shops, gay residents, and other factors on changes in jobs, population, inventions, and more. It is the first study to assemble and analyze such amenities for national samples of cities (and counties). It interprets these processes by showing how they add new insights from economics, sociology, political science, public policy, and geography. Considerable evidence is presented about how consumption, amenities, and culture drive urban policy by encouraging people to move to or from different cities and regions.