ABSTRACT: What is culture? What is the culture of the city? The premise of this study is that the construction of an official rationality of culture, as a concept that underlies culture-led urban regeneration and place-marketing, is often limiting and exclusionary. The official concept of culture often overlooks the important political nuances and complexities that are involved in the representation and appropriation of cultural identities. It also neglects the value of the symbols and practices that are produced in the everyday life of the city, which may provide a real inclusionary, socially relevant understanding of identity and difference in the city. The study explains the need to prompt urban practitioners and theorists to begin to deconstruct prevailing interpretations of urban culture so that we may begin engaging with alternative interpretations of identities, cultures and difference to more authentically reflect the fluid meanings produced in the realm of urban everyday life. Beginning with a brief glimpse into the various meanings constructed for culture over time, the study then proceeds to analyse the official documented discourse on culture constructed for the city of Johannesburg. These ideas are then distilled into four critical themes acting as a conceptual framework relating to the interpretation of culture in the city. These four themes lead to an exploration of the space of everyday life as an alterative source of the multiple shifting meanings and identities being formed daily in the everyday life of the city. This study extends an invitation to urban theorists and practitioners to embark upon the task of critically deconstructing the realities and political complexities of prevailing interpretations of culture in the city that underlies urban regeneration. In this way the study aims to stimulate the development of alternative rationalities in urban planning about the nuances and representations of social life, identities and difference in the city, urging a 9 critical review and critique of urban decision making and its consequences for the everyday social experience of the city. This research concludes by suggesting that the concept of culture be deprivileged in the context of urban regeneration and that a new direction in practising urban regeneration and place-marketing be explored in the spaces of everyday life.

Submitted by Ines Vasconcelos Proença (ines.v.proenca@gmail.com) on 2016-02-18T06:27:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Mestrado_13Abril2015.pdf: 21540205 bytes, checksum: e2ab0e17609c53769d3ed1e169f9b923 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rafael Aguiar (rafael.aguiar@fgv.br) on 2016-03-03T13:26:36Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Mestrado_13Abril2015.pdf: 21540205 bytes, checksum: e2ab0e17609c53769d3ed1e169f9b923 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Almeida (maria.socorro@fgv.br) on 2016-03-04T13:25:59Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Mestrado_13Abril2015.pdf: 21540205 bytes, checksum: e2ab0e17609c53769d3ed1e169f9b923 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-04T13:26:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Mestrado_13Abril2015.pdf: 21540205 bytes, checksum: e2ab0e17609c53769d3ed1e169f9b923 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-13 / This research focus on the capacity of cultural investment, in the context of urban regeneration, to accomplish the rhetorical of social revitalization and the extent to which it offers socially sustainable solutions to local community. To that purpose, the work is directed towards the meanings and practices of Culture-led Urban Regeneration (CLUR) in the inner-city and it is suggested measuring its impact on subjective social dimensions over residents. One of the study’s main concerns is the degree to which CLUR might really address the expectations that policy makers have as an integrated and sustainable 'tool' to approach declined urban areas. To realize these goals, the Lisbon neighbourhood of Mouraria will be used as a case study and as a means of testing our research hypothesis. Measuring the subjective social impacts of urban regeneration in the neighbourhood, from the residents perspective, becomes the study’s central focus. And, equally relevant, there was a concern of improving measuring instruments capable of assessing the subjective social impact of culture-led urban regeneration projects. This dissertation refers to the European and Portuguese experiences, looking to draft these policies genealogy, to discuss the rhetoric behind and to uncloak how residents of declined areas perceive such change in their place. / Este trabalho centra-se na capacidade do investimento em cultura, em contexto de regeneração urbana, em atender a retórica da revitalização social e em que medida oferece soluções socialmente sustentáveis para os moradores. Para o efeito, centra-se sobre os significados e práticas do culture-led urban regeneration (CLUR) na cidade-histórica e é proposta sua medição quanto a impactos sociais subjetivos na comunidade local. Uma das principais preocupações do estudo é o grau em que o CLUR pode realmente cumprir as expectativas que os decisores políticos têm dele como 'ferramenta' de abordagem integrada e sustentável na transformação de espaços urbanos degradados. Para dar conta de tais objetivos vai se destacar o caso do bairro lisboeta da Mouraria como estudo de caso e local de teste das hipóteses apresentadas na pesquisa. Medir os impactos sociais subjetivos da intervenção sócio-urbana no bairro, na óptica de seus moradores, formam o eixo central do estudo. E, igualmente relevante, procurou-se avançar na produção de instrumentos de medição capazes de aferir o impacto social subjetivo de intervenções urbanas de base cultural. Com os procedimentos adotados na pesquisa, a dissertação reporta-se à experiência europeia e portuguesa procurando traçar a genealogia destas políticas, discutir as retóricas que as justificam e desvendar como os moradores da zona intervencionada percepcionam tais transformações do seu lugar.

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