The Location of Culture: The Urban Culturalist Perspective

Abstract

The majority of research in urban sociology tends to favor the study of urbanization, the development and growth of cities, over urbanism, the way of life in cities. Here, I identify a strand of urban sociology that explicitly focuses on the latter and introduce a theoretical framework for investigating culturally significant urban places. The urban culturalist perspective consists of six domains of research:1) images and representations of the city; 2) urban community and civic culture; 3) place‐based myths, narratives, and collective memories; 4) sentiment and meaning of and for places; 5) urban identities and lifestyles; and 6) interaction places and practices. These distinct but related domains collectively provide a framework for addressing culture‐place relationships in cities by offering a clear window into the ways that pepole use places as part of their cultural repertoires and how those repertoires can affect a city's social and physical environment.