ancient cities

870 Urban Entertainment Destination
sophisticated creation and staging of guest-
centered experiences that not only entertained
but also significantly engaged visitors. Second,
city politicians and planners readily embraced the
notion that the urban entertainment destination
represented a shortcut to revitalizing downtown
urban centers that had become tired and blighted.
As such, they were successors to the festival marketplaces
that briefly flourished in the 1970s and
1980s before financially faltering. Not only was it
expected that the urban entertainment destination
would lure middle-class Americans back to
the central city from whence they had fled for the
safety and cheap housing of the suburbs in the
1950s and 1960s, but these projects were also
touted as an effective means of reinvigorating
small businesses in economically depressed neighborhoods.
Third, media and entertainment companies
signed on as major development partners,
convinced that branded developments such as
Universal City Walk (Los Angeles) and the Sony
Center (Berlin) could be the locus of powerful
synergies between urban commerce, television
and motion pictures, and global brands. Not only
did this offer media corporations a means for
linking their leisure and consumption products to
the geographic spaces where they are produced
and consumed, but, additionally, cities themselves
could become branded commodities in their own
right. As one Urban Land article in 1997 proclaimed,
the city was becoming nothing less than
a stage where “Disney Meets Dior.”
As cities became more uniform, generic, and
mundane in their streetscapes, shopping facilities,
and tourist attractions, middle-class consumers
demanded new, more inventive, and sensational
urban experiences. At the same time, they expressed
a deeply rooted reluctance to take risks, especially
those associated with the lower social classes. That
is to say, the proliferation of entertainment districts
in North America addressed a desire to sample
diversity without risking contact with genuine difference.
For day visitors, urban entertainment destinations
seemed to offer the perfect solution to this
thorny social contradiction. Numerous exotic and
cosmopolitan landscapes and experiences (or, at
least a faux version) were on offer, encased in a
protective tourist bubble. These simulated urban
environments were thus suffused with what can be
called a “safe” or “riskless” risk.
Recent Patterns of Decline and Growth
After a much-hyped start, the construction of
urban entertainment destinations has stalled, at
least in North America and Europe. There are several
reasons for this. First, the urban entertainment
destination has turned out to be a difficult concept
for institutional lenders to grasp. In particular,
projects wherein the proportion represented by
entertainment outweighs that devoted to retail are
viewed as too risky and cannot obtain sufficient
financing. It doesn’t help that such developments
carry with them significantly higher costs than
traditional retail developments, even though they
have the potential to generate significantly higher
per square foot sales and revenues. Second, there
has been a growing awareness that urban entertainment
projects that seem exciting in Las Vegas
and Orlando are more prone to fail in the heartland.
In particular, themed restaurants (Planet
Hollywood, Rainforest Cafe) and shops (Disney
Store) lose their luster when located in regional
cities and suburban malls. Furthermore, the market
for urban entertainment venues has quickly
become saturated. For example, megaplex cinemas
have only prospered by cannibalizing existing theaters
of an older vintage, often within the same
ownership chain. Third, the “creative city” model
of urban growth and prosperity has effectively
displaced the urban entertainment approach in
urban planning and political circles. Most closely
associated with the work of Richard Florida, the
former eschews the development of large entertainment
projects in favor of bohemian neighborhoods
that are densely packed with juice bars,
small avant-garde galleries, jazz and blues clubs,
gay and lesbian bookstores, and the like. These are
celebrated not just for their inherent aesthetic
value but, more significantly, as attractors for
knowledge workers, especially from the microchip
industry, who allegedly choose urban communities
that are edgy, diverse, and tolerant. According to
Florida, “creatives” don’t like the themed and
branded entertainment megaprojects associated
with the fantasy city, which they actively avoid.
Urban entertainment destinations are no more
popular with most academic researchers and social
critics. Solutions for revitalizing urban centers that
feature shopping and entertainment have been
castigated for increasing, rather than reducing,