From Coney Island to Las Vegas in the Urban Imaginary

Abstract

A discursive analysis of cultural images, social practices, and space adds a new level of social critique to the usual explanations of urban growth and decline. Instead of focusing on either "objective" or "subjective" factors, a discursive analysis assumes a coherence between social and spatial arrangements that is derived in and through cultural meanings attached to specific places and has a material effect on their growth and decline. Both the conscious manipulation and slow accretion of images are important, as they are diffused by mass media and interpreted by ordinary men and women. Taking the decline of Coney Island and growth of Las Vegas as examples, a discursive analysis emphasizes how these public spaces of amusement represent low-class and high-class spaces, racialized spaces, and different eras of capitalism-culminating in a national rejection of urban populism for freewheeling speculation and privatization.