Cultural Re-Mapping of Post-Industrial Cities on a Sub-City Level

A spatial opposite to the development of city-regions as a driving force behind competitiveness seems to be increasingly defined on the level of city neighborhoods that as urban quarters of cultural life appear to independently attract both public and private investment alike. Moreover, in this shift from city to an urban environment on a livable scale the whole map of social relations that used to define what makes a city up begins to change in the direction of city as a plug-in into its everyday experience. How seductively city comes across becomes defined on a block by block basis as a sports arena is no longer seen as an investment that will vouchsafe for its anchoring function as a draw factor for businesses, individuals and media. A deliberative and fickle environment of real-time search engines, instant blog and comment publishing, and buzz, attention and interest economy brings about a reorganization of imperatives that make it necessary to have cultural appeal as an indispensable component of it-cities that not so much instrumentalize cultural and public institutions, such as museums, libraries and community centers, but have the latter re-map cities into hot and not zones that gain and lose appeal in the eyes of investors, officials and consumers on the sole basis of their cultural capital.