Document Type

Article

Publication Date

August 2009

Publication Title

MU-DOT: the Magazine for Urban Documentation, Opinion and Theory

Issue Number

2

First Page

44

Last Page

63

Disciplines

Place and Environment | Urban, Community and Regional Planning | Urban Studies | Urban Studies and Planning

Abstract

I examine here how glamour is manifested in different places and among different peoples across Los Angeles, each with different histories, cultures and aesthetics. After initially defining the concept with reference to traditional understandings using the social and spatial history of Hollywood, I develop three ideal-typical categories of glamour (glitz as glamour, status as glamour, and grit as glamour) as heuristics for looking at the many diverse ‘glamours’ to be found in Los Angeles today: from the film industry to finance, the allure of haute cuisine to the chrome of Latino car culture, the manufactured spectacle of absurdist architecture to the hippest loft conversion. I focus not only on how these different glamours play with cultural identities and the urban landscape, but how they are integrally tied to the production of capital and scenes of consumption.

Comments

This article was published in MU-DOT: the Magazine for Urban Documentation, Opinion and Theory, issue 2, 2009 and can also be found online at this link.

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