Sharon Zukin is a leading urban sociologist in the study of cities and culture.

Her 1982 Lofi

Living, which examined New York City's SoHo neighborhood, is a landmark study of the
intersection of culture and urban development. In it, she carefully presents the complementary
and contradictory roles artists, tenants, manufacturers, real estate developers,and city officials
play in the transforming of SoHo from a light
manufacturing loft district in the 1960s to a trendy, increasingly upscale residential and commercial
district. In the reading that follows, Zukin again addresses the interplay of various urban actors
around issues of culture, which, she argues, has taken on greater significance in how cities are buit
and how we experience them.
Indeed, culture is the •motor of economic growth" for cities and forms the basis of what Zukin labels
the
"symbolic economy." The symbolic economy is comprised of two parallelproduction systems: the
production of space, in which aesthetic ideals, cultural meanings, and themes are incorporated into
the look and feel of buidings, streets,and parks,and the production of symbols, in which more
abstract cultural representations influence how particular spaces within cities should preferably be
"consumed" or used and by whom. The latter generates a good deal of controversy: as more and
more ostensibly "public' spaces becomeidentified (and officially sanct oned) with part cular, often
commercially generated, themes, we are left to ask "whose culture? whose city?"
We can easily see the symbolic economy at work in urban places such as Boston's Faneuil Hall,
New York's South Street Seaport, or Baltimore's Harborplace. Here, cultural themes - mainly
gestures toward a romanticized, imaginary past of American industrial growth - are enlisted to
define place and, more specifically, what we should do there (shop, eat) and who we should
encounter (other shoppers, tourists). Such places, although carefully orchestrated in design and feel,
are popular because they offer a respite from the homogeneity and bland uniformity of suburban
spaces. Local government officials and business alliances have turned toward manufacturing new
consumption spaces of urban diversity (albeit narrowly defined) or showcasing existing ones -
ethnic neighborhoods, revitalized historic districts, art st enclaves - as a competitive economic
advantage over suburbs and other cities.
Culture, then,is purposefully used by developers and city officials to frame urban space to
attract new residential tenants, to entice high-end shoppers, or court tourists and visitors from
around the globe. But the fusing of culture and spaceis not limited to
governments,corporations,and the real estate industry. The arguably less powerful inhabitants of
the city - the ordinary residents,community associat ons, and block clubs - use cultural
representations, too, to stamp their ident ty on place and to exert their cultural presence in public
spaces. Ethnic festivals and parades mark the city and provide a cultural roadmap to what its
spaces
mean for certain groups and users. Every summer the city of Toronto hosts Caribana,the largest
Caribbean festival in North America The festival celebrates the vibrant ties of this Canadian city's
large immigrant population to the Caribbean. Brilliantly costumed masqueraders and dozens of trucks
carrying live soca,calypso,