Generationing cultural quarters: the temporal embeddedness of relational places

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cultural quarters concentrate and embed cultural and artistic activities, services, and networks in place, yet they are neither singular nor discrete entities. Within cities, cultural quarters exist in multiple temporal and spatial relations. Building on our existing work on the political,organizational,social,ephemeral, andspatial forms of embeddedness of cultural quarters (POSES Star Framework), this paper focuses on temporal embeddedness. It argues that a temporally-sensitive analysis of cultural quarter embeddedness, and the transposition of developmental psychology notions of generationing and birth order, can advance urban geographical understandings of the interdependencies of sites of cultural production and consumption within cities. A comparative study of four proximate German cultural quarters in former industrial sites in West Leipzig – Baumwollspinnerei, Tapetenwerk, Westwerk, and Kunstkraftwerk – illustrates how generationing showcases cultural quarters as relational places.