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<\/a><\/p>\nLocal shopping streets are the public face of urban communities, but they are also contested spaces of globalization and gentrification.\u00a0 They are the first places where most city dwellers see faces, hear languages, and find products from different parts of the world, all of which may spur feelings from strangeness to acceptance that the neighborhood is changing.\u00a0 Clearly, these streets are not just places to shop; they are social spaces where local identity is formed, in an increasingly global framework.<\/p>\n
Yet with more people shopping online, and many products made technologically obsolete by digital formats and changing consumer tastes, small shops, restaurants, and caf\u00e9s that are traditional spaces of local sociability have disappeared.\u00a0 New cultures and lifestyles spawn yoga studios, espresso bars and \u201cethnic\u201d food stores.\u00a0 What does all of this mean for the urban experience? \u00a0What does it mean for the city\u2019s social, cultural, and economic diversity?\u00a0 Are local shopping streets, and cities, becoming more alike\u2014or do they remain both distinctive and different?<\/p>\n
Global Cities, Local Streets: Spaces of Everyday Diversity<\/i> aims to create a community of readers and researchers around the world who are interested in these questions.\u00a0 The book and website use text and images to explore the experience of local shopping street across spaces and times.\u00a0 On this website, users can learn more about the 12 shopping streets in the book, from New York to Shanghai, by way of Toronto, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Tokyo, and upload their own writing, maps, photos, and links.\u00a0 By sharing their materials, users will create a digital archive that shows changes in their local shopping streets, the local and global forces that are reshaping them, and the people who keep them alive.<\/p>\n
Click on the Research Project tab on the toolbar to learn more about the transnational research teams that created the book, and click on any tab to see more about each city.<\/p>\n