ancient cities

806 Themed Environments
Theming has also found its way into the health
care sector. As Brian Lonsway discovered, in the
late 1990s, the Disney Institute in Florida began to
train health professionals in a new service approach
that emulates the thematic model of the entertainment
industry. Disney itself brought this model to
Celebration Health, the hospital in its town in central
Florida. Thus, Seaside Imaging, the hospital’s
medical imaging center has been rebranded as “A
Day at the Beach.” Housed in a building designed
to resemble a sand castle, the center offers a theatrical
patient experience that includes a boardwalk
floor, barium drinks served with paper umbrellas,
Adirondack chairs in the waiting room, and
Hawaiian shirts in lieu of gowns.
It is generally acknowledged that themed environments
are not unique to the present era. In his
seminal work, The Theming of America, Mark
Gottdiener traces theming back as far as classical
Athens, Rome, and Beijing. Traditional and ancient
cities, he notes, were completely organized by cosmological
and religious meanings whose purposes
were to enhance fertility, to celebrate empire, to
glorify rulers and gods, to achieve harmony with
nature, and to promote good fortune. In medieval
Europe, the symbolic content of city spaces pertained
to the Catholic cathedral and, in some
cases, Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
With the growth of the modern industrial city in
the nineteenth century, functionalism removed the
symbolic canopy from most urban spaces. By the
turn of the century, a new vision of planning and
architecture had begun to emerge, celebrating
progress and technological efficiency while downplaying
thematic representations of leisure, fantasy,
and traditional cultures. As the century
proceeded, however, fantasy-themed environments
began to emerge in concert with the new consumer
society. Progenitors of contemporary themed environments
include turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century
amusement parks such as Coney Island’s Luna
Park and Dreamland, expositions and world fairs,
and roadside diners, restaurants, and motels.
According to Gottdiener, themed development
has come into its own since World War II due to
an important shift in marketing to segmentation
and its reliance on themes. That is, marketers in
the United States went from appealing to a largely
homogenous population to targeting a more diverse
demographic arrayed according to consumer types
based on income, education, stage in the life
course, family status, urban–suburban location,
ethnicity, race, and preferred lifestyle. This shift to
market segmentation permitted advertisers to construct
and exploit a much wider range of thematic
motifs that tapped into consumer fantasies.
Another important contributing factor has been
described as the de-differentiation of consumption—a
general trend whereby the forms of consumption
associated with each other become
interlocked and increasingly difficult to identify
separately. This is embodied in the eroding distinctions
between casinos, hotels, restaurants, shopping,
and theme parks in Las Vegas. Most recently,
John Hannigan identified the emergence of the
casino city as a global model of urban development
and consumer culture. Casino cities thrive at
the intersection of three complementary commercial
spheres: the luxury goods and services industry,
the corporate gaming (gambling) sector, and
the international tourist trade. In aggressively
themed environments such as the new generation
of casino-hotels in Macau, the lines between shopping
and entertainment are deliberately blurred in
the interests of hyperconsumption.
Gottdiener argues that the increasing use of
theming is a corporate strategy for coping with an
escalating competition for consumer dollars during
the present period of highly mobile shoppers,
alternate consumption locations, and increasingly
diverse lifestyle choices. Along with branding, this
is seen as a way of cutting through a marketplace
that is saturated with signs and symbols.
Furthermore, themed environments are conceived
in the context of increasing spatial competition.
Whereas initially this was among individual retail
destinations such as shopping malls, it has now
been extended to a global competition between
cities and regions.
Theming and Branding
Some discussions of theming link it with the allied
concept of branding. Within this context, theming
is treated as a method of sharpening brand awareness
and strengthening its core identity and value.
Thus, Australian (Aussie) and Irish-themed bars
and pubs, ubiquitous in entertainment districts
across the globe, enhance not only the brand of the
local establishment but also that of the brewery