Pop City

Pop City examines the use of Korean television dramas and K-pop music to promote urban and rural places in South Korea. Building on the phenomenon of Korean pop culture, Youjeong Oh argues that pop culture-featured place selling mediates two separate domains: political decentralization and the globalization of Korean popular culture. The local election system introduced in the mid 90s has stimulated strong desires among city mayors and county and district governors to develop and promote their areas. Riding on the Korean Wave—the overseas popularity of Korean entertainment, also called Hallyu—Korean cities have actively used K-dramas and K-pop idols in advertisements designed to attract foreign tourists to their regions. Hallyu, meanwhile, has turned the Korean entertainment industry into a speculative field into which numerous players venture by attracting cities as sponsors. By analyzing the process of culture-featured place marketing, Pop City shows that urban spaces are produced and sold just like TV dramas and pop idols by promoting spectacular images rather than substantial physical and cultural qualities. Popular culture-associated urban promotion also uses the emotional engagement of its users in advertising urban space, just as pop culture draws on fans’ and audiences’ affective commitments to sell its products. Oh demonstrates how the speculative, image-based, and consumer-exploitive nature of popular culture shapes the commodification of urban space and ultimately argues that pop culture–mediated place promotion entails the domination of urban space by capital in more sophisticated and fetishized ways.

The Second Edition has been rewritten to provide additional coverage of topics such as urban development and third world cities as well as social issues including homelessness, jobs/housing mismatch and transportation disadvantages. It has also been updated with 1990 Census data.

In one volume Counties USA provides statistical, descriptive, and contact information for the more than 3,100 counties and county equivalents in the United States. The new edition provides updated contact information, population figures, and other data gathered from a variety of sources since the last edition was published.

"With an appendix containing a full analysis of the debts of the United States, the several states, municipalities etc. Also statements of street railway and traction companies, industrial corporations, etc." (statement omitted on later vols.).

Focusing on the strategic position of towns in rural development, this book explores how they act as hotspots for knowledge creation, diffusion for vital business life and innovation, and social networks and community bonds. By doing so, towns - even the smallest - can cope with processes of socio-economic decline and promote a geographically balanced income distribution and sustainable production structure. The contributors to this volume examine how to take advantage of the great potential offered by urban areas in the rural world to favour competitiveness and encourage economic activity. Taking a European perspective, the authors identify the main socio-economic advantages generated by urbanized population settlements that small and medium-sized rural towns can provide. Although much attention is currently focused on the efficient use of scarce natural resources and land, they argue that towns have an increasingly important economic and social role to play in rural areas.