Summary of the article by Mommaas and Poel (1989): Changes in Economy, Politics and Lifestyles: an essay on the restructuring of urban leisure.
This article needs to be read for the course Leisure and Urban Development.
Summary: Changes in Economy, Politics and Lifestyles: an essay on the
restructuring of urban leisure – H. Mommaas and H. van der Poel (1989)
Introduction
During the 1980s Dutch cities are going through a new phase of development.
Partly stimulated by the aspiration to transform inner-city regions into ‘recreation
reserves’, developing (often in public-private partnerships) all kinds of projects
promoting the inner city as a leisure resource. At the same time public spending
on social programmes has been decreasing (e.g. libraries, local community
centres). It looks that major shift are taking place in the political and economic
context of city development, leading to new social and spatial segregation and
new private and public cultures. In this leisure plays an important role, because
lifestyles are identified by leisure tastes and activities, as well as leisure forms a
major focus for planning and investment in modern process of revitalization.
Setting the stage: the modernization of the city
In the post war period the economy saw a new era of industrialization, which led
to economic growth. The state also became heavily involved in subsidizing all
kinds of social programmes (e.g. sports, media), which was part of a deliberate
policy aiming at modernization of the Dutch economy and society. This formed
the transformation from a community-based into an individual or family-based
organization, which is the ‘disconnection of people from spatial forms’.
Within this complex modernizing process, and with the clear split between public
and private sectors, urban leisure played a minor role. However there were 2
exceptions:
1. Urban leisure played a role in the debates and programmes relating to the
moral education of the urban working class, who were considered to be ill-
equipped in cultural terms to enter the age of modernity. Programs were
developed to re-educate these so-called ‘anti-social’.
2. Urban leisure played a big role within debates and programmes concerning
urban youth, which centred on themes like commercial leisure, pop music
and sexuality.
The economic crisis of the late 1970s: leisure for the unemployed
Since the mid-1970s large cities faces urban problems: unemployment rates
increased within traditional working-class inner city regions, as well within
working-class suburbs, and subsequently the demand on public services
increased, which together implied financial losses for local governments. In the
second stage unemployment spread also to other groups, the more intellectuals,
due to a decrease in public expenditure.
There were two different kind of responses to this unemployment, which over
time had an important influence on the reproduction of urban leisure.
‘Culture of stylistic resistance’: response by the group of ‘intellectual’
students. They regarded their time during unemployment as ’making a
virtue out of necessity’. Small-scale manufacturing activities were
developed. They breached with conventional boundaries between
male/female, work/leisure. They promoted a form of resistance against
frozen identities (e.g. gay community). They lived mostly in the inner-city.
Those people actively made the best of their position as unemployed.
‘Culture of derivative consumption’: those were predominantly the less
educated, male, working-class youth from different ethnic backgrounds.
They were typified as the ‘lost generation’, which ran the risk of losing
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