Eat, Drink and be Civil

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Eat, Drink and be Civil

• Emma Felton

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A City in Transition Brisbane

• Shift from provincial town to emerging global
  city
• Political and social legacies which contradict
  its new image and presentation
• Research recognized the importance of the
  material and discursive city

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Legacies

• Historically low public expenditure on education,
  art, cultural resourcing.
• British migrants encouraged over other
  ethnicities.
• Agrarian development favoured over urban
  development.
• Ultra-conservative, authoritarian State
  governments for many decades.
• Climate of anti-intellectualism

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Brisbane

• Australia was born urban and quickly grew
  suburban
• (Graeme Davison 1994)
• Urbanism kept at bay in Brisbane for most of 20th
  century.
• Shift from suburban to urban, denser modes of
  living requires different techniques and
  competencies.

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Changes over a decade

• Influx of migration, large and diverse population
  increase
• Large expenditure of public and cultural
  infrastructure
• Largest increase in jobs of all capital cities
  since 1990.

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Changes over a decade

• Increase in Education expenditure in line with
  other States.
• Enhanced and increased public spaces eg parks
  and boardwalks
• Boost to cultural and arts infrastructure

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New ways of being in the city

• Growth in city space offers new modes of
  engagement, identification and ways of being in
  the city.
• Enhanced opportunities for sociability.
• Encounters with difference

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'The city is a place of our meeting with the
other. Barthes 1982
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Sociability and the City

• Maffesolis (1997) concept of tribes based on
  shared affinities and lifestyles, mostly grounded
  in the city.
• Central cohesive element of tribes is emotion -
  based upon the affective, life affirming impulse
  of being togetherness

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City Space is social space

• Social relations are constructed spatially.
  Spatial relations are structured socially
• (Watson 2005)

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The Café and Sociability

• Café a part of an ontology of the city
• Early coffee houses marked by a diversity of
  patrons from all walks of life, except women
• Gender implications in contemporary cafe

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Civility and the cafe

• Role of public and semi-public space enables
  modes of civil interaction
• Habermass concept public sphere based on
  reasoned exchange and open and inclusive
  character
• Conversation aimed at dialogical egalitarian

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• I spend a lot of time dining in the Valleys
  restaurants and going to the clubs and pubs in
  the area. I have quite a few friends and family
  also living in the area
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• It is close to areas such as the Valley where
  myself and friends shop, socialise and relax.
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• Most of my friends live in the area.

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An unfinished story

• Brisbane has a buoyant economy and small
  population
• Population growth and urban development will
  continue to shape the city as different to its
  provincial past