ancient cities

city visitors are free to wander about at their own
speed and draw their own conclusions. Furthermore,
the postmodern tourist possesses a significant
capacity to escape from the close surveillance and
control that characterize such space and to deviate
from a dominant corporate script. By strategically
adopting an ironic stance, posttourists are empowered
and able to actively seek their own experiences.
Indeed, Richard Florida’s creative class, the
target of numerous contemporary urban revitalization
plans, is said to reject themed environments
such as megamalls, sports stadiums, and flagship
museums in favor of more diverse, bohemian settings
such as neighborhood art galleries, performance
spaces and theaters, small jazz and music
clubs and “cool” cafés.
John Hannigan
See also Gottdiener, Mark; Las Vegas, Nevada; Society of
the Spectacle; Tourism; Urban Entertainment
Destination
Further Readings
Boyer, M. Christine. 1992. “Cities for Sale:
Merchandising History at South Street Seaport.”
Pp. 181–204 in Variations on a Theme Park: The
New American City and the End of Public Space,
edited by Michael Sorkin. New York: Hill and Wang.
Bryman, Alan and Alan Beardsworth. 1999. “Late
Modernity and the Dynamics of Quasification: The
Case of the Themed Restaurant.” The Sociological
Review 47:228–57.
Chang, T. S. 2000. “Theming Cities, Taming Places:
Insights from Singapore.” Geografska Annaler: Series
B, Human Geography 82:35–54.
Clavé, S. Anton. 2007. The Global Theme Park Industry.
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK: CABI.
Davis, Susan G. 1995. “Touch the Magic.” Pp. 204–17
in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature,
edited by William Cronon. New York: W. W. Norton.
Frenkel, Stephen and Judy Walton. 2000. “Bavarian
Leavenworth and the Symbolic Economy of a Theme
Town.” Geographical Review 90: 559–84.
Gottdiener, Mark. 2001. The Theming of America:
American Dreams, Media Fantasies, and Themed
Environments. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Grazian, David. 2003. Blue Chicago: The Search for
Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Tiebout Hypothesis
809
Hannigan, John A. 1998. Fantasy City: Pleasure and
Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis. London & New
York: Routledge.
———. 2007. “Casino Cities.” Geography Compass
1:959–75.
Judd, Dennis R. 2003. “Visitors and the Spatial Ecology of
the City.” Pp. 23–38 in Regulating People, Markets
and City Space, edited by Lily M. Hoffman, Susan
Fainstein, and Dennis R. Judd. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Lukas, Scott A., ed. 2007. The Themed Space: Locating
Culture, Nation, and Self. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
Shaw, G. and A. M. Williams. 2004. Tourism and
Tourism Spaces. London: Sage.
Sorkin, Michael. 2006/07. “The End(s) of Urban
Design.” Harvard Design Magazine 25:5–18.
Ti e b o u T hy p o T h e s i s
A 1956 article by Charles Tiebout proposed a
two-part hypothesis about a system of local governments.
The first part is that households decide
where to live based in part on communities’
service-tax packages. The second part is that community
selection results in efficient levels of local
public services, in the sense that each household
ends up with the service-tax package it prefers.
Interest in the first part of the Tiebout Hypothesis
was magnified by Wallace Oates’s 1969 article,
which provided strong empirical evidence that
public service levels and property tax rates are
reflected, or capitalized, in housing prices. This
finding supports the view that people care about
the service-tax package in their community.
Since then, a large empirical literature has confirmed
the existence of capitalization. Moreover, a
large conceptual literature has explored the nature
of federal systems, with many local governments
and mobile households. The consensus is that
capitalization reflects household bids for entry into
communities with different fiscal characteristics. In
addition, this literature concludes that higher-
income households are likely to win the competition
for entry into the most desirable communities,
a phenomenon known as sorting.
The second part of the Tiebout Hypothesis has
attracted attention because it provides an alternative
to the view that voters have an incentive to
understate their preferences for public services