Local History, Public Art and Community in an Urbanizing Suburb

Cultural Geographies (formerly Ecumene)

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 218-236

  Rodriguez, Joseph A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION; CULTURAL IDENTITY; PUBLIC ART;

USA, CALIFORNIA, CONCORD;

EID: 0031926478     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/147447409800500205     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Todos Santos Plaza, Concord California’, Urban Design International 5 (1989), p. 3.1.
2. Contra Costa Times, 13 Jan. 1989.
3. See S. Zukin, The cultures of cities (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1995), ch. 1.
4. Cultural programmes, or the lack of them, in Silicon Valley are discussed in E. M. Rogers and J. K. Larsen, Silicon Valley fever: growth of high-technology culture (New York, Basic Books, 1984), pp. 180-83.
5. San Francisco Chronicle, 30 July 1990; Zukin, Cultures of cities, p. 1.
6. See e.g. K. Norkunas, The politics of public memory: tourism, history, and ethnicity in Monterey, California (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1993).
7. See e.g. C. C. Marcus, C. Francis and C. Meunier, ‘Mixed messages in suburbia: reading the suburban model home’, Places 4 (1990), pp. 4-37. See also C. S. Fisher, ‘Ambivalent communities: how Americans understand their localities’, in A. Wolfe, ed., America at century's end (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), p. 89.
8. R. Deutsche, ‘Uneven development: public art in New York City’, in D. Ghirardo, Out of site: a social criticism of architecture (Seattle, WA, Bay Press, 1991), p. 174.
9. See Zukin, Cultures of cities, p. 2.
10. Zukin in The cultures of cities does analyse (with P. Kasinitz) a rural museum.
11. J. D. Dorst, The written suburb: an American site, an ethnographic dilemma (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), pp. 2-3.
12. Fisher, ‘Ambivalent communities’, pp. 82-84.
13. Zukin, Culture of cities, p. 2.
14. See S. M. Roberts and R. H. Schein, ‘The entrepreneurial city: fabricating urban developing in Syracuse, New York’, Professional G4eogr5apher (1993), pp. 21-33.
15. The term ‘Spanish myth’ refers to the tendency in the West by Anglos and some Hispanics to romanticize the Spanish influence in the region. The myth celebrates Spain's influence while ignoring the history of Mexicans, Indians and other minority groups in the area. For example, the myth celebrates the Spanish missionaries while failing to note clerical abuse of Native Americans. See D. J. Weber, The Spanish frontier in North America (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1992), ch. 12. On public history and ‘myth’, see Norkunas, Politics of public memory.
16. E. M. Andrews, History of Concord: its progress and promise (Concord, CA, Concord Historical Society, 1986), p. 145.
17. National Real Estate and Building Journal (June 1946). For a discussion of large-scale suburban development and the importance of zoning, see M. A. Weiss, The rise of the community builders: the American real estate industry and urban land planning (New York, Columbia University Press, 1987).
18. Concord Transcript, 30 Sept. 1968.
19. On the issue of community in the US, see Fisher, ‘Ambivalent communities’, Iris Marion Young, in Justice and the politics of difference (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1990), asks whether the creation of community necessarily requires the exclusion of outsiders. See also M. Davis, City of quartz: excavating the future of Los Angeles (London, Vintage, 1991); E. McKenzie, Privatopia: homeowner association and the rise of residential private government (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1994) for discussions of fear of crime and ‘outsiders’ as leading to the militarization of the city and the creation of ‘gated communities’.
20. City of Concord Newsletter, Sept. 1968.
21. Contra Costa Times, 7 Aug. 1987; Concord Life (Dec. 1984), pp. 28-29.
22. Contra Costa Times, 5 Dec. 1961.
23. Central Area Plan's Preliminary Economic Study, Concord Planning Dept, Dec. 1970, Concord, CA, p. 1.
24. See n. 22 above.
25. David Lowenthal, in The past is a foreign country (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1985), notes the inevitable similarities of historical shopping districts like Ghirardelli Square, Quincy Market and Covent Garden, which reassure the tourist audience through today's ‘standard display and restoration practices’ (p. 351).
26. See Weber, The Spanish frontier, ch. 12. For the southern California use of the Spanish myth, see Davis, City of quartz, pp. 27-30.
27. Lowenthal, The past is a foreign country, p. 342.
28. For a general discussion of myth, history and tourism, see Norkunas, The politics of public memory; S. P. Benson, S. Brier and R. Rosenzweig, Presenting the past: essays on history and the public (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1986) C. M. Hall, Tourism and politics: policy, power and place (Chichester, UK, Wiley, 1994).
29. Lowenthal, The past is a foreign country, p. 332.
30. See J. R. Borchert, ‘Futures of American cities’, in J. F. Hart, Our changing cities (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 218-250.
31. Contra Costa Times, 28 Oct. 1988. For general criticism of suburban development, see J. H. Kunstler, The geography of nowhere: the rise and decline of America's man-made landscape (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993).
32. ‘The Concord Heritage Gateway: City of Concord begins new era in public art’ (typewritten document, n.d., copy in possession of author), p. 3.
33. For an overview of the controversy, see E. Doss, From spirit poles to flying pigs: public art and cultural democracy in American communities (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), ch. 2.
34. ‘The Concord Heritage Gateway’.
35. Contra Costa Times, 26 Oct. 1989.
36. Contra Costa Times, 11 Mar. 1990.
37. D. Forst, ‘No longer poles apart’, Nation (Apr. 1992), pp. 29-30.
38. ‘Poles apart: public art vs. the public in Concord’, San Francisco Weekly, 13 Dec. 1989.
39. ‘Todos Santos Plaza’.
40. Contra Costa Times, 11 Aug. 1988.
41. Zukin, Cultures of cities, pp. 261-62.
42. Contra Costa Times, 11 Aug. 1988.
43. Oakland Tribune, 15 Sept. 1987.
44. Contra Costa Times, 18 May 1994.
45. Zukin, Cultures of cities, p. 270.