Sharon Zukin Lectures 19th and 23rd July

Professor Sharon Zukin is presenting two lectures as part of her visit to the Centre for Cultural Research, UWS.

19 July, 3pm, CCR Seminar Series, Building EA Lecture Room G-19, Parramatta Campus - abstract below

23 July, 5pm, Public Lecture, Riverside Theatres, Parramattta - see attached



“Authentic Public Spaces: Between Consumption and Democracy”



ABSTRACT: Contrasting a small, local park with the globally known site of a terrorist attack, this presentation examines how the idea of the public is constituted, institutionalized, and “emplaced” in different types of urban public spaces. Union Square Park is located two miles north of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. After September 11, 2001, these two spaces became gathering places for mourning and commemoration—but in dramatically different ways. Each site is publicly owned and managed by a hybrid form of public-private partnership; each claims to serve the public but interprets that mission in ways that advance the private interests of specific stakeholders and a neoliberal ideology. Yet differences between USQ and the WTC site suggest a spectrum extending from “benevolent” to “authoritarian” privatization of public space, with benevolence expressed in uses of space for political dissent and marketplace transactions and authoritarianism expressed in restrictions on use and nationalistic rhetoric.



SPEAKER: Sharon Zukin, the Broeklundian Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and Graduate School of the City University of New York, is one of the world’s foremost observers and theorists of the contemporary city. Professor Zukin is the author of several books, including Loft Living (1982), Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (1991), The Culture of Cities(1995) and Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (2004). Broadly, her work examines the cultural economy of the contemporary city, including themes such as culture-led urban regeneration; spaces of consumption; urban development, art and real estate; and the transformation of urban life and form under globalisation. Professor Zukin recently won the Lynd Award for career achievement in urban sociology.




On: Thursday, 19 July 2007 Time: 3.00pm Venue: UWS Parramatta Campus, Building EA Lecture Room G-19
RSVP: Essential to Ania Ajiri, a.ajiri@uws.edu.au