Playful heritage: excavating Ancient Greece in New York City

This article examines how concepts of ‘play’ can be used within studies of cultural heritage to build an alternative to the dominant use of consumer-orientated models within current scholarship. Using the example of how the traditions, motifs and history of Ancient Greece have been reused within New York, from the nineteenth century to the present day this work demonstrates that this is a heritage that has been ‘played with’ by successive generations as a means of establishing identity within the metropolis. Whilst the ideals of Athenian democracy and classical learning inspired the formation of the early American republic, these associations were brought into wider usage in New York with the arrival of significant Greek immigration into the city during the twentieth century. This provided a new opportunity of a playful use of Ancient Greek heritage as this émigré community built new identities and became established in the metropolis. The Greek American enclave of Astoria, located in the borough of Queens, will be the focus of this study as the site where this playful use of heritage has taken place, undertaken both by members of the Greek American community and also by individuals and groups responding to their presence.     

Space of Creative Industries: A Case Study of Spatial Characteristics of Creative Clusters in Shanghai

The rapid rise of creative or cultural industries not only contributes to regional economic growth, but also to a revised spatial model of urban structure, helping in the redevelopment of old town spaces. However, the spatial characteristics of creative clusters, especially at the micro-city level, are not fully understood. This study attempts to characterize the spatiality of creative clusters on the basis of a literature review and empirical study of Shanghai. By using Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial analysis and interviews, this paper examines the spatial features of creative clusters in Shanghai and their connection with urban historical, social, cultural and political aspects. It finds that creative clusters are primarily distributed in particular locations of Shanghai, namely in the inner-city, old industrial districts, places close to universities, Central Business Districts (CBDs), and entertainment and tourist zones. The old colonial zones in Shanghai play an important role in fostering the agglomeration of creative industries because of the special image of these spaces, in particular due to the abundant workshop spaces remaining from the industrial heritage. Great intimacy between creative industries and urban spaces becomes apparent in the case of Shanghai, demonstrating that the creative economy has become an important instrument in regenerating cities. Moreover, a differentiation in space among various categories of creative clusters in Shanghai was also noticed in this study.     

Washing urban water: diplomacy in environmental art in the Bronx,New York City

Lillian Ball's art project WATERWASH creates a new ecological imaginary in the South Bronx. Building on a tradition of ‘maintenance art’, the work exhibits the power of soil, plants and microorganisms to clean water – in effect maintaining urban water. An overarching goal of WATERWASH is to educate local people about the metabolism of urban water, causes of river pollution, and to familiarize them with the capacity of soil and plants to respond to that problem. As part of its creation, the project provided diverse groups of people with opportunities to participate, including a group of Bronx youth who assisted in planting the wetland. Several of these apprentices will be involved in future monitoring of the effectiveness of the wetland in mitigating parking lot runoff. I use Isabelle Stengers' notion of ‘diplomacy’ to interrogate the efforts of the artist in negotiating and creating an occasion in which people with divergent interests can both recognize and maintain the relationships of care that sustain them. In effect, this effort extends the feminist discourse of maintenance work to include that undertaken by the ‘other-than-human’.     

Water for the City,Ruins for the Country: Archaeology of the New York City Watershed

Two New York City institutions, the Board of Water Supply (BWS) and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), have shaped rural regions far outside city boundaries. The BWS depopulated places selected for reservoir construction. Residents were evicted and towns were demolished then submerged. Those who remained struggled to reorganize their lives amid the landscape clearance. Once the reservoirs were complete, the DEP replaced the BWS as the institution in charge of ensuring the city’s water supply. The DEP Police patrols around the reservoirs and enforces land-use regulations. Archaeological survey of city-owned watershed lands reveals a scarred landscape of ongoing colonial conflict.     

Commodification and Creative Destruction in the Australian Rural Landscape: The Case of Bridgetown,Western Australia

This paper examines the destructive tendencies associated with the commodification of rurality in some of Australia’s more scenic and accessible rural areas. While development based on the consumption of idealised rural landscapes and cultures can contribute to the accumulation of capital in rural areas, it can also result in the destruction of those aspects which consumers find attractive. These attributes include traditional farming landscapes, picturesque country towns, scenic rural environments, and perceptions of congenial and cohesive local communities. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the processes that lead to the degradation of these attributes. The discussion is set within the context of the ‘commodification of rurality’ and ‘creative destruction’ perspectives, and uses the case of Bridgetown in the south‐west of Western Australia to illustrate how an almost unfettered pattern of development is leading to the gradual destruction of the countryside ideal.     

Archaeology, the Activist Community, and the Redistribution of Power in New York City

Two New York City projects, one world renown, the other struggling for recognition, exemplify the various ways in which the public defines its engagement with its archaeological past. At African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan and at Duffield Street in Brooklyn, the public battled with local, state, and federal entities in an effort to preserve the resources. As different as the sites are in context, scope and circumstances, public reactions and activism bind them together.     

City, region, and in between: New York City's water supply and the insights of regional history

Urban historians have greatly expanded their geographical purview in recent years, incorporating suburbs and hinterlands into their analysis of social and environmental change. Urban environmental historians and suburban historians have played a critical role in the regionalization of urban history over the last decade. This case study of the development of New York City’s water supply reveals the benefits of taking a regional approach to urban history. From the New York Public Library to Central Park’s Great Lawn to neighborhood parks, the New York City landscape bears the traces of the continuous development of the city’s water network. Expansion of the water system in rural hinterlands enabled municipal officials to put urban reservoirs to new uses, creating some of the city’s most beloved public spaces. The rehabilitation of urban infrastructure underscores the intimate linkages between rural development and the urban built environment.     

Redundancy, Third-Party Government, and Consumer Choice: HIV/AIDS Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

This article addresses two questions: (a)Why were so many new nonprofit organizations in New York City created to “fight AIDS?” and (b) What are some consequences of this phenomenon? Drawing on redundancy theory as a partial explanation, it also considers the role of racial and ethnic politics and the impact of government contracting on the formation and growth of community-based organizations. For clients, the effect has been paradoxical: financial support of a large number of organizations led to a complex and fragmented delivery system offering some clients a range of choices but decreasing access for those less able to navigate a complex system.     

Spatial Autocorrelation and the Classic Maya Collapse: One Technique, One Conclusion

A pair of articles appearing recently in this journal (Whitley & Clark, Journal of Archaeological Science12, 377-395, 1985; Kvamme, Journal of Archaeological Science17, 197-207, 1990) apply spatial autocorrelation analysis to the distribution of terminal long-count dates from southern Lowland Classic Maya monuments. The authors employ similar techniques yet arrive at contradictory conclusions regarding the presence of geographical patterning in the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization in this region. Kvamme's contention, however, that Whitley & Clark conducted an inappropriate analysis and arrived at an erroneous conclusion is unsubstantiated. Both articles present appropriate analyses and report results which support the presence of spatial patterning in the Lowland Maya dates.