THE ROLE OF ARTS AND CULTURE IN MODERN CITIES: Making Art Work in Toronto and New York

Cities throughout the world currently are exploring ways that arts and culture can serve as an economic engine, build name recognition and become a source of civic pride through a mix of policy, branding, and economic development. I examine the relationship between cultural policy and the increased presence of arts and culture on the economic development agenda in Toronto and New York during the decade of the 2000s. I hypothesize that New York is more driven by economic motivations, and that Toronto’s interest lies in the brand building aspect of arts and culture in city building. This dissertation is a comparative case study that investigates the increased presence of arts and culture in the economic development toolkits of Toronto and New York over the decade. Archival and historical data, in addition to interviews with elite actors provide a rich cache with which to answer the thesis question. Through the use of agenda setting theory, I find ways that arts and culture have been integrated into policymaking and urban planning for economic development in each city. I observe that Toronto and New York are building and facilitating cultural districts, attracting and retaining creative workers, and articulating economic arguments for arts and culture in order to generate revenues and secure government and private support. Each city underwent a shock during the early part of the decade. For Toronto, it was the endogenous shock of amalgamation, and for New York the exogenous shock of 9/11. In both cities, arts and culture were employed as a part of the economic development toolkit to revitalize decaying areas, attract residents and tourists, and distinguish themselves from other cities. I find that each urban center used arts and culture extensively to create a cultural city in the case of Toronto, and to recreate a cultural city in the case of New York. Policy recommendations include utilizing research and strategic planning, building relationships and stakeholder partnerships across policy domains and sectors, and focusing both on public good and economic benefit when integrating arts and culture into economic development intervention

Attributing scientific and technical progress: the case of holography

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science

Planning for a city of culture : creative urbanism in Toronto and New York

xiii, 246 p.: ill.; 24 c