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John Hannigan, Fantasy City: Pleasure and
Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis Reviewed by Fantasy City is one of several recent books (including Mark Gottdiener’s The Theming of America, Dennis Judd and Susan Fainstein’s The Tourist City, and Sharon Zukin’s Landscapes of Power) that look at the development of themed environments in American cities. Like these other books, Hannigan examines how themed environments fit into the economic development strategies of local government and how they have transformed urban space and urban life. But Fantasy City really is several books in one, traversing a wider range of historical and comparative material, tempting the reader with the promise of a broader perspective on the commodification of pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis than is available in most other sources. In the introduction, Hannigan catalogues six characteristics of “urban entertainment destination” (UED) projects which comprise the “Fantasy City” of the postmodern metropolis: development conforms to a scripted theme drawn from sports, history, or popular entertainment; it is aggressively branded for commercial packaging and resale (this includes everything from imposing pre-existing consumer brands on the urban landscape to naming rights for entertainment facilities); it operates day and night in the same spirit as Las Vegas casinos; it combines standard modules of entertainment developments (themed restaurants such as Rainforest Cafe and Hard Rock Cafe, IMAX theaters, book and record megastores); it is physically, economically, and culturally isolated from surrounding neighborhoods; and it is postmodern in the sense that it is constructed around technologies of simulation, virutual reality, and the thrill of the spectacle. Hannigan tells us that UED projects are part of a new urban economy rooted in tourism, sports, culture, and entertainment. Part I (“Going out and staying in”) examines the rise of urban entertainment, the impact of suburbanization and crime in the post-World War Two era, and the return of urban entertainment to the city center in the last quarter of the century. Chapter One examines the rise of urban entertainment at the turn of the century and takes a critical look at the “democratization of leisure” during the early decades of the 20th Century. Hannigan relies upon primary sources (newspaper and magazine articles from the turn of the century) as well as historical studies of the development of public amusement and urban leisure. Urban leisure spaces were from the very beginning segregated spaces (segregated by social class as well as race, although less attention is given to gender segregation): early movie theaters struggled with the thorny issue of regulating the working class and immigrant groups just as amusement parks would struggle with the thorny issue of regulating minority groups. Examples from across the country (Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland, Olympic Park in Irvington Park, N.J., Riverside Park in Chicago) document both the rise of urban amusement parks as well as their decline, which Hannigan traces to the pre-World War II period. In the last decades of the 20th Century developers and planners realized that downtowns could not survive with just office buildings and department stores, and turned to flagship destinations such as convention centers, aquariums, sports facilities, and redeveloped waterfronts and entertainment districts. Faneuil Hall Marketplace (in Boston) and Harborplace (in Baltimore) were the first such urban entertainment destination projects, copied by cities across the country, and in the 1980s and 1990s downtown development moved into more commercialized entertainment with the appearance of themed restaurant and retail stores. Part II (“Landscapes of Pleasure”) focuses on simulation and the culture of consumption, and the development of themed environments. There is a conscious bow to the earlier work of Sharon Zukin (Landscapes of Power) and extensive reference to recent work in cultural theory, with discussions of the postmodern consumer, authentic reproduction, common cultural capital and the passportization of experience, riskless risk, and the like. Chapter 5 gives us a summary of work by George Ritzer (the McDonaldization of the market place) and Mark Gottdiener (the theming of America) while describing the history of shopping malls (Southdale in Edina, Minnesota, the West Edmonton Mall), themed restaurants (Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Rainforest Cafe), and other urban entertainment destinations. While the exploration of these urban entertainment destinations follows from the framework Hannigan presents us in Chapter 4, little new material is presented here, as he relies heavily on arguments from earlier books (a three-page summary of Ritzer, for example) and upon summaries of information gleaned from magazine articles and trade publications. Part III (“Entertaining Developments”) focuses on economic development initiatives, public private partnerships, the emergence of the gambling economy, and themed entertainment in the Asian Pacific Rim. “Calling the Shots: Public Private Partnerships Fantasy City” discusses the processes of land acquisition and condemnation, infrastructure improvements, financing, and development of political acceptance in the development of themed environments, as well as professional sports as entertainment (with sections titled chasing sports franchises and justifications of economic subsidies for the franchises. These chapters provide a concise summary of important issues in each area along with still more examples of UED projects both here and abroad, and the examples are effective in encouraging the reader to think in a broader and comparative perspective: what are some of the commonalities among gaming activities, theme parks, sports stadiums, shopping malls, and other entertainment venues? Why do cities choose these developments, and what is done by both private interests as well as public officials to facilitate them? While we might think of shopping malls, themed entertainment, and the like as a particular development of European and American culture, it is interesting to read of similar developments in Asian countries in a chapter titled “Land of the Rising Fun”. As noted earlier, Fantasy City reads as several books in one. Part I presents a state of the art summary of the origins, decline, and rebirth of urban amusement (although the focus is entirely upon the United States), addressing important issues brought forward by other scholars. There is a nice mix of original sources as well as discussions of standard works in the area. Other sections of the book seem less complete and less successful. Chapter 4 gives us a summary of writings in cultural theory that relate to urban entertainment, Chapter 5 gives us a summary of themed restaurants, stores, and the like. But the examples are familiar by now--City Walk at Universal Studio, Disneyworld, Sea World, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and the like--and not much new that is presented. Much of the material in Part III suffers from another problem: Chapters 8 and 9 read like extended summaries of newspaper and magazine articles, and indeed a look at the references shows that all but a handful of the citations are from newspapers, magazines, and trade publications; Chapter 6 is constructed largely from materials from a seminar on urban entertain developments sponsored by the Land Institute with examples from various trade publications. Here the tone of the book changes greatly, taking on the self-congratulatory discussions common to trade magazines: which developer has produced a greater number of successes, which casinos bring in the largest amount of revenue, and the like. One problem is these sources often provide only partial information, and that information is quickly dated. Throughout the book Hannigan offers us example after example to illustrate each chapter, but this breadth of material sacrifices depth and accuracy: in Chapter 3 we are told that Rouse replicated his success with Fanueil Hall Marketplace in Harborplace (Baltimore) and other cities, including the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwuakee. However, Grand Avenue Mall never achieved the goal of anchoring downtown redevelopment, and now is plagued by vacancies (with the state discussing special financing options to bail out the remaining anchor). In Chapter 9 we read about Indian gaming and learn that “other hotbeds of tribal casinos are in Wisconsin and Minnesota” and that a Chippewa casino in downtown Duluth is unusual because of it’s urban location. Yet there is a Chippewa casino in downtown Milwaukee, and other Indian casinos are located within the city boundaries of Green Bay and within the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Readers will not learn of these developments from the book, and many might feel that Hannigan should have been asked to look deeper into the many different examples presented. While some chapters are up-to-date, the coverage is very uneven across the book. The redevelopment of Navy Pier in Chicago, for example, the major UED project in that city in the last half the 1990s is not mentioned; the information on Indian gaming in Wisconsin and Minnesota dates from 1991, and the two most successful examples of Indian casinos in these states are never mentioned. While the term “postmodern city” is by now commonplace among urban scholars, some readers may be confused by Hannigan’s reference to the “postmodern metropolis.” There is little continuity with the work of Edward Soja and the self-proclaimed Los Angeles School, instead the reference is to Baudrillard and cultural analysis. While the book is largely successful in describing the effects of UED projects on cultural life and social interaction, the analysis is less successful in painting a broader picture of how these developments affect the development of the modern metropolis; indeed, in later sections of the book the reader encounters examples of UED projects in central cities, in the suburbs, and within the suburban region with little discussion of how or why these locations might make a difference (new sports stadiums have been built in cities and in suburbs with very different effects on the surrounding communities). Because the postmodern projects of Soja and Baudrillard are so different, many of the examples Hannigan reside somewhere outside of recent theoretical work (perhaps in an edge city somewhere, that peculiar construction which defies Max Weber’s basic definition of the city). My copy of the book is peppered with notes trying to organize the examples in each chapter as to whether they discuss urban (downtown), suburban, or other destinations within the metropolitan region. It is likely that the author overlooked something important here: the examples seem to exist in hyperspace precisely because a framework for a more comprehensive analysis is not given. The strength of this volume may be found in the thematic focus on the historical and contemporary development of public entertainment, and the breadth of examples cited. Hannigan provides readers with a broad overview of this area of study, and offers scholars a valuable starting point for literature in specific areas ranging from gaming enterprise to sports franchising. I will use this book as a general reference when I need a general survey of literature in the area, to prepare notes for course lectures, and the like. But I would venture that persons who have read however briefly in any one of the individual subject areas covered will find that they are familiar with the arguments presented and studies cited; indeed, the breadth of the volume means that individual topics suffer from a lack of more detailed discussion. And while Hannigan presents an extensive survey of studies in each area, important work is sometimes left out (to give just one quick example, the section on Native American gaming enterprise does not mention Stephen Cornell’s edited volume What Can Tribes Do: Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development, a standard reference in this area). Fantasy City received favorable newspaper reviews upon publication in 1999, and some reviewers praised the book for its critical look at urban development. For a variety of reasons, I do not find the same critical gaze when surveying the book as a whole. In part this is because of the method and sources used in the middle and end of the book: these sections string together summaries of articles from business magazines and trade publications (which by their very nature are rarely critical). New shopping malls in southeast Asia which feature Nike outlets, for example, are mentioned in passing, without reference to the fascinating issues raised: is there not some irony in having Nike outlets in the very countries where the labor policies of this and other global corporations have come under question? Themed restaurants such as Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and the Rainforest Cafe are briefly described, but there is little discussion of their meaning (other than the obvious fact that they are part of the theming and consuming of contemporary life). In addition to simply summarizing what others have written about these and other urban entertainment destinations, I would like to have seen some harder questions approached: is the developmet of themed entertainment just a temporary development? If themed restaurants require public subsidiaries and spin-offs to survive, is it feasible to stake economic development on such a narrow group of establishents? What impact does the appearance of the restaurant and retail chains have on other local businesses? Will the proliferation of themed stores and restaurants result in overexpansion--and what will be the consequences of this overexpansion? It recently was announced that Planet Hollywood has filed for bankruptcy, suggesting that the hyper-expansion of the franchise into markets across the globe could not be supported by consumer demand. One must wonder which of the various entertainment franchises–Hard Rock Café, Ranforest Café, IMAX–will be next. Indeed, while it is commonplace to note that the expansion of the new urban economy is dependent upon leisure and cultural pursuits, there has been little discussion of how this reflects the recent prosperity of middle and upper class groups in the United States (and across much of the world), and even less discussion of how a downturn in national or global economies might affect these developments. The recent precipitous decline of economic fortunes in Southeast Asia is a good example. In the conclusion to the book, Hannigan summarizes an article from the New York Times Book Review which suggested ways to distinguish between gentrification and revitalization: does it recreate wealth in the community; does it recreate the possibility of safe, random encounters; and does it allow post-industrial downtowns to retain their distinctive character. He suggests that these same questions be applied to the emerging Fantasy City and concludes that pleasure and profit in the post modern metropolis does not measure up on any of the three criteria. Other readers may feel that this signifies both the good and the bad of the book: we are grateful for the summary of this and other scholarly work in the field, but Hannigan could have created a more original contribution by presenting his own analysis and measures to study and evaluate urban entertainment destinations which comprise Fantasy City.
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