FROM CONEY ISLAND TO LAS-VEGAS IN THE URBAN IMAGINARY - DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF GROWTH AND DECLINE

A discursive analysis of cultural images, social practices, and space adds a new level of social critique to the usual explanations of urban growth and decline. Instead of focusing on either ''objective'' or '' subjective'' factors, a discursive analysis assumes a coherence betwee n social and spatial arrangements that is derived in and through cultu ral meanings attached to specific places and has a material effect on their growth and decline. Both the conscious manipulation and slow acc retion of images are important, as they are diffused by mass media and interpreted by ordinary men and women. Taking the decline of Coney Is land and growth of Las Vegas as examples, a discursive analysis emphas izes how these public spaces of amusement represent low-class and high -class spaces, racialized spaces, and different eras of capitalism-cul minating in a national rejection of urban populism for freewheeling sp eculation and privatization.