In Jonathan Wynn’s Music/City, he describes the movement of a cities cultural identity of material production to the present goal of maximizing consumption offerings. As the trend of festivilization will continue to grow, this idea aligns naturally with our in-class discussion of the city as an entertainment machine. City officials are placing an emphasis on music festivals in hopes of transforming local economies. As a result, festival sites are being constructed at a pace that outweighs demand, costing over $15 billion.
Because cities have transitioned to offering as much consumption as possible, there has certainly been a rise in the individual consumer. The consumer now has more freedom to partake in music festivals as well as indulge themselves in the host cities food market. In addition, Wynn mentions that the continued privatization of urban spaces has led to numerous theaters, bars, and restaurants. Gentrified neighborhoods soon became home to new businesses and urban development (Wynn, 25). Furthermore, the idea of festivilization presents new roles for city officials as well. Recently, city officials have placed a greater importance on the construction of festival sites surpassing education and healthcare facilities. As a result, policymakers are finding new ways to use public spaces in order to maximize consumption.
Due to the increase in the amount of music festivals many Americans of all backgrounds come together and share public spaces, which reminded me of Anderson’s cosmopolitan canopy. Anderson writes, “the cosmopolitan canopy becomes ever more significant as a setting in which people of diverse backgrounds come together, mingle with strangers…” (Anderson, 29). In many ways, festival sites offer many of the same characteristics. Specifically, Wynn’s example of the Newport music festival takes a community which is known for their majority white elite population and throws “beatniks” and college students into this environment. Surprisingly, over time the Newport festival was greatly accepted by the local residents. Hence, these festivals resemble some qualities of the cosmopolitan canopy as diverse groups of people of all ages come together to share a common music experience.
Lastly, what stood out to me in this reading and what I believe is worth noting is the relationship between locals and tourist populations that travel for music festivals. Wynn notes that while the Newport residents encourage the annual music festival it certainly took time for them to adjust to the music genres that were popular at the time. The Newport community highlights that cosmopolitan canopies do not arise overnight, they develop over time and I’m sure we will see a lot more in the near future as festivals become ubiquitous. It is also important to note that cities attempt to attract more youthful residents as they find ways to rebrand their cities. However, in doing so, they may be affecting a city’s originality and historical value. The effort to rebrand and make communities more appealing causes a potential disconnect between city officials and policymakers as both groups may differ in long term interests for their city’s.
While doing this reading, I was also reminded of the cosmopolitan canopy, and how certain aspects of Anderson’s work are seen in the production of musical festivals. Further, I thought the same thing when discussing how the Bowdoin community operates as a cosmopolitan canopy. However, while in theory it may seem that these places are representative of a cosmopolitan canopy, in that they bring diverse groups of strangers together to interact with one another, I think it is equally important to note that many things also constrain these communities from operating as cosmopolitan canopy’s.
One important thing that you raised was in your discussion question was the relationship between locals and tourist who frequent these festivals. In doing so, it seems as if there is a disconnect between the people who occupy the space for 12 months of the year, and the people who are there just during the festival days. Further, it is likely that there is a disconnect between city officials and the locals. While city officials promote music festivals as opportunities for economic growth, there are also many underlying consequences for people who don’t want festivals within their communities. To me, it seems as if the voices of community members are outnumbered by the city officials who transform the city into an entertainment machine, spurring economic growth therein. I think this tension can ultimately lead to many problems within these spaces, and sometimes do more harm than good.
I agree that in the attempt for cities to “rebrand” and attract a more youthful crowd, they oftentimes risk losing their historic and cultural authenticity. This therefore has the ability to create high tensions and animosities between generations and prohibit the space from operating as a cosmopolitan canopy. I can offer a personal example of this in how my own town, a suburban space highly renowned for their public school system, spent tax money on constructing a new athletic facility for the younger generations of students. While the town has transformed into a family town over the past two decades, there are still older generations of people who vehemently oppose to the town’s multiple renovations because they feel they are losing their identity within the space. While these renovations are not festivals, the principle behind their function highly correlates to the inability of these spaces to act as a cosmopolitan canopy. I like how this expert question forces readers to think about how events in their own personal lives are affecting the greater residency of that space.
I think the discussion of placemaking in the tourist city is an interesting one as I have lived in tourist cities for most of my life. I lived in Bar Harbor, Maine for a few years and currently reside in Newport, Rhode Island, both very popular destinations for summer tourists. Newport is a very historic city but the downtown has become pretty built up with hotels and restaurants that definitely cater to the tourists rather than locals. With that said, the local community of Newport is very strong and I think that that may have to do with the fact that Newport is such a tourist destination. It seems that in a place that may not overtly cater directly to locals, it is up to the locals to exert their local identity over a space so that they may be comfortable in their home city.
Echoing the sentiments of Elizabeth, I have also lived in two places, although both extremely different, that are tourist attractions. Growing up in New York City, which is an all-year-round tourist attraction, and then moving to Yarmouth, Maine, a summertime destination, I have seen the ways that locals use placemaking strategies to exert their ownership over space. In the neighborhood where I grew up in New York City, locals engaged in certain practices that characterized the culture of the area, such as walking around without interacting with those who walked by and refusing to travel to the areas of the city with higher tourist populations. These practices are exclusionary in nature to tourists who do not have the same stakes in the place. Furthermore, in Yarmouth, there is a Clam Festival every year in which tourists come from all over to engage in the festival’s activities. Locals, however, engage in certain practices that establish their identity as the true stakeholders in the community, which involve small actions that exert a certain superiority over tourists who come in. Throughout all of these experiences and reflections, I find it interesting to look at the ways in which placemaking strategies by locals can be seen as exclusionary in an attempt to maintain a certain local culture in the face of tourism. It is interesting also to look at placemaking as a form of resistance.
I agree with your discussion regarding cities being hubs of consumption. I believe that because cities have become larger, and our capitalist society dominates the media, public, and government, the individual consumer is able to be targeted by music festivals. I also agree that music festivals can be temporary creations of space and place. Music festivals have the ability to attract specific types of people that can share the same ethnicities, interests, or culture in general. I have gone to a music festival one time in my life and I can recall the shared sense of identity that makes it different than a solo music concert.