The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The value of direct monopoly rents works in degrees along a spectrum. If you sell a famous landmark, you’ll probably get a hefty chunk of change. Sell a house that is next to a nice park, and you will also see an increase in the price of the property, which is derived from your direct monopoly rent of being one of the few houses next to the park.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
This shift from origins to style means that authenticity itself “becomes a tool of power.”
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The role of culture in urban development has always been understood as a reserve of political power whether that be as a means of distraction and subjugation or a rallying cry for liberation.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The City Authentic renders neighborhoods and entire municipalities into brands consumable through not just purchasing or renting real estate but through the conspicuous sharing of artifacts and symbols on social media.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The second kind is constructive authenticity. It answers the question, Have I witnessed what I expected? We experience constructive authenticity when expectations set by media and advertising are fulfilled.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Byrne is pointing to a change in the American landscape where postindustrial work can be done anywhere, and so places like Virgil must invent completely new reasons for people to stay. As you may have already guessed, small towns will turn to services, mass consumption, and cultural amenities as a new source of both tax revenue and a reason for exi
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Where to put the price tag or, to put it in a more academic way, where value is stored is one of the central quandaries in the City Authentic, a term I use not only to title this book but to describe a set of policies, practices, and ideas that leverage our modern desires for meaning and belonging to drive economic development.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
But then the City Authentic came to town and everything—from the buildings to the city government’s website—was reoriented to grab outsiders’ attention through the conspicuous deployment of authenticity peddling.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The best brand managers are “curators of content” that are constantly hosting, producing, and managing cool stuff “instead of relying on industry-produced statistics or imagined audiences.”53 The result is a seamless web of brands and culture that is difficult to separate into clearly authentic and contrived categories.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Being regarded as authentic is a function of others’ evaluation of your performance. But if everything is in upheaval, then those others doing the evaluating have few points of reference. Because the network society is global in character, identity is constantly being contested and threatened from all sides. The freedom of the paranoid, just like t
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