Urban Cultural Studies (VAss.Mag.phil. Judith Laister)

The relationship between city dwellers and their urban living space is fundamentally defined by ideas, fictions or imaginations of what "city" could and should be for each one. In times of economic and sociocultural changes of power the production, distribution and adoption of images of the urban receive a special meaning, because collective images lose in significance, new ones have to be constructed and argued in public. A significant example for such a paradigm shift shows the process of deindustrializiation with its decline of the production sector in favour of the service sector. As empirical field stays the "steel-city" Linz/Donau. Since 1985 it pursues a new model as a cultural and technological city. The themes of investigation are on the one hand the politico-cultural and marketing strategies of the city-management construing a postindustrial image and on the other hand the question how the city dwellers deal with the new situation.