Putting Culture on the Map: Media Discourse and the Urban Growth Machine in Koreatown, Los Angeles

Abstract

In today’s postindustrial economy, the extent to which cities and neighborhoods can develop and promote their cultural assets has become a key strategy for maintaining competitiveness by attracting tourism, investment, and job and population growth. These cultural modes of urban development fit the logic of the urban growth machine, in that they foster ideologies of place to encourage investment and enhance the profitability of the local economic base. This article examines the often-neglected role of the local newspaper in this process by focusing on how the Los Angeles Times represents one neighborhood—Koreatown, Los Angeles—over an approximately forty-year period. Through critical discourse analysis, this article unpacks four discursive frames used by the local newspaper and analyzes how these frames commodify cultural communities for consumption by the urban elite.