Festive Cities: Multi-Dimensional Perspectives

Abstract

Until recently there has been limited attention paid in urban studies to features that relate to sensory, not material features, to consumption not production, pleasure not work, and to episodic rather than permanent characteristics. However festivals, episodic events lasting a few days, do provide such functions. They take people outside their routine behaviours of work, leisure and family, providing joy, excitement and new experiences, sometimes linking to historical traditions. Although such events have always been part of the life of the bigger places, new valuations of their utility have led to an enormous growth in such activities in recent decades, both in numbers within cities, and many other urban places, adding to their vitality and often providing major economic returns. A review of the variety of festivals shows that most fall into six main types, linked to temporal or cyclical, religious, political, tradition-heritage, new cultures and lifestyle functions, although some may overlap the categories and others have morphed from one type to another through time. A multidimensional model of the nature of festivals based on eight components provides a basis for assessing their varied character and reveals their often contradictory nature and conflicted consequences.