ABSTRACT
Implying a link between seemingly ubiquitous cultural quarters and consumption, Sharon Zukin writes that 'every well-designed downtown has a mixed-use shopping center and a nearby artists' quarter' (Zukin, 1995: 22). Where manufacturing industries have been replaced by service economies or ports have been modernized, cultural development re-utilizes redundant buildings and sites while raising a city's profile in a globally competitive market for investment. But if cultural quarters reinvent a city's image, what is their effect on its human as well as economic geography? Is the aestheticization of space in a cultural quarter a new colonialism in which the needs of a city's own diverse publics are as disregarded as were those of indigenous peoples when Europeans drew lines on the maps of other continents?
