Fostering and planning urban regeneration: the governance of cultural districts in Copenhagen

Policy-makers and urban planners struggle to find the right formula to implement urban regeneration processes based on cultural assets, often focusing on the desired outcomes, but rarely questioning how the policy process can shape them. This paper examines different governance models for the implementation and organization of cultural districts, and evaluates how they can affect their actual realization by investigating three cases in Copenhagen, Denmark. The deindustrialization of Copenhagen left many of the city’s harbour areas disused and in turn provided the opportunity to develop three new cultural districts in the city centre. The paper contributes to the literature on cultural districts by matching specificities and contingencies attached to a particular urban area with the governance model adopted for its development. The paper claims that temporal experimentation has to be included in cultural planning and a mix of bottom-up and top-down approaches is more desirable than both a totally unregulated initiative and a real estate-driven development and a totally unregulated initiative, as it ensures that initiatives remain financially viable and that the creative workers and companies retain a certain control of the area development, and in turn counteracts gentrification.     

The place of children among the Guji of southern Ethiopia: school,work and play

This article explores everyday life among Guji children in southern Ethiopia and the place of children in an intergenerational social order. Based on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji, we show that work, school and play are significant and intertwined social practices. Local knowledge and skills of importance for sustainable livelihood are acquired through children's participation in these different social practices. Oral tradition represents a key element of local knowledge and social practices in everyday life. However, political and social changes, such as settlement policies and the introduction of schools, affect the dynamic interconnectedness of these practices, as well as relations between different generations. These changes also have implications for local knowledge and local livelihoods.     

Why are cultural policy decisions communicated in cool cash?

In this article, we analyze the role of the economic rationale in modern cultural policy decision communication and ask why it remains such an important factor, even though research has argued against it. Based on Luhmann’s system theory, we show how the economic rationale manifests itself in the cultural political communication as parasitic and complementary couplings, and how different communication forms are in play: the indirect, direct, and the both-and form. The point is to construct communicative positions in cultural policy. The positions involve the economic rationale in their own particular way and each of them offers themselves as a communicative platform which the culture politician can optionally step into and out of. The arts system stands out from other systems by not distinguishing itself in one single distinction and coding. In exactly this issue lies the communicative complexity which the communicating cultural politician faces and must handle. As our analysis shows, this complexity is handled by communicating within the economic rationale and coding, with the result that complexity is reduced.     

GEOGRAPHICAL MOBILITY OF DANISH DUAL‐EARNER COUPLES—THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHANGE OF JOB AND CHANGE OF RESIDENCE*

ABSTRACT We analyze the relationship between geographical residence and job mobility for Danish dual‐earner couples. We estimate the probability of moving residence and changing job, taking the interdependence between the events into account. The results point to the importance of addressing the interrelationship between residence and jobs. Furthermore, the change of residence matter more than change of job and women respond relatively more to changes in their husbands’ job region. The findings imply that mobility promoting initiatives must focus on families rather than individuals and recognize that for most families the choice of residence location dominates the choice of job location.     

The taphonomy of fallow deer (Dama dama) skeletons from Denmark and its bearing on the pre-Weichselian occupation of northern Europe by humans

The ecological tolerances of Neandertals, their ability to subsist in the dense forests of full interglacials, and their capacity to colonize northern latitudes are the subject of ongoing debate. The site of Hollerup (northern Denmark) lies at the northern extreme of the Neandertal range. Dated by various techniques to the Eemian interglacial (MIS 5e), this site has yielded the remains of several purportedly butchered fallow deer (Dama dama). Taphonomic reanalysis of the remains from Hollerup and a handful of other Eemian-aged fallow deer skeletons cast doubt on the interpretation that they were humanly modified. We place this revised conclusion into the wider context of human settlement of southern Scandinavia during the Eemian. Other claims of Neandertal presence in the region rest on candidate Middle Paleolithic artifacts, all of which derive from surface contexts. With the fallow deer material removed as a secure indicator of Neandertal settlement of Denmark during the last interglacial, this lithic material must be viewed with renewed skepticism. While ecological and/or topographic factors may have played an important role in preventing Neandertals from penetrating into peninsular Scandinavia, we caution that geological, taphonomic, research-historical, and demographic factors may have significantly distorted our picture of their occupation in this region.     

Cool,funky and creative? The creative class and preferences for leisure and culture

It is a core element in Richard Florida’s popular theory on growth to be able to attract the creative class to a geographical area. But Florida is not very specific on which kind of amenities are important for attracting and keeping the creative class. The purpose of this paper is to analyse which kind of cultural activities the creative class is actually using. Which kind of cultural activities does the creative class use more intensively than other groups in society? This paper presents new empirical results on preferences for leisure and culture. Richard Florida’s theory can be, and has been, criticised – especially on the issue of causality. The analyses presented in this paper show that being part of the creative class has an independent and significant role in explaining preferences for leisure and culture.     

SPATIAL MOBILITY AND COMMUTING: THE CASE OF TWO‐EARNER HOUSEHOLDS*

ABSTRACT We examine the effects of the spatial configuration of workers' residence and workplace location on intraregional residential and job moving decisions of workers belonging to two‐earner households. We hypothesize that two‐earner households' residential mobility depends positively on the commuting distance of both spouses, but negatively on the distance between workplaces. Further, we hypothesize that workers' job mobility depends positively on the worker's commuting distance, negatively on the spouse's commuting distance, and positively on the distance between workplaces. Using data for Denmark, it appears that these hypotheses hold, and that the effects of the spatial configuration are rather large.     

THE WELFARE STATE AND THE MEDIA SYSTEM

This article aims to bridge the gap between media studies and welfare state studies. While media and communications systems are crucial elements in any society, these systems are often not included in studies of the welfare state. Through a discussion of five historical phases in the evolution of Scandinavian societies and media systems, from early democratization in the late 18th century through the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state to the present challenges of globalization, digitization and the fragmentation of social trust, the article discusses the relationships between the two spheres. While Scandinavian communications systems have much in common with those of other Western states, this article argues that they are also products of, and catalysts for, the specific evolution of the Nordic welfare states.     

PRODUCING GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE THROUGH VISUAL METHODS

The tradition of using qualitative interviews in the study of everyday life, place and identity in geography, housing studies and related disciplines is a long and sound one. Recently there has been increasing interest in using visual methods as part of qualitative methodological approaches. Through our own empirical work, this article explores one position in visual methodology, which suggests visual methods as a way of in a sense getting closer to the lived life. Drawing inspiration from qualitative methodology and performative perspectives in geography, this article argues that this position overlooks the ways in which the visual – here photography – can also be seen as performed. Based on the authors' experiences with visual methods in fieldwork in housing areas in greater Copenhagen, and using both informants' and researchers' photographic work, the article shows how a performative perspective on photography can be used in qualitative research in geography.