The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Culture

Walter Firey's work remains the touchstone of cultural ecology. However, his conception of culture consigned it to a totally subjective realm, rendering its explanatory power retrospective, hypothetical, and largely circular. This article take slocal culture to be part of the objective world, directly visible in such artifacts as statues, street names, or bumper stickers. Experts can and do claim to understand these artifacts, and their claims, rather than mass sentiments, are what count in establishing their meaning. If we take this view, we can begin to build a plausible account of the durability of local American urban cultures, of the strong images that seem to be attributed to our "shock cities," and of the resistance some places show to land conversion and redevelopment. Such a conception of local culture makes it, not a residual left over after economic analysis has its say, but an integral element in an ecological approach which increasingly draws implicitly or explicitly on social as well as economic differences in explaining our urban society.