LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DEL SISTEMA

COMMUNITY CULTURAL AND SUBCULTURAL WEALTH *

As I will discuss shortly, the generated use-value within urban spaces described by Logan and Molotch aligns with Yosso’s description and model of community cultural wealth, and extends to a discussion of transgressive and unruly community subcultural wealth within spaces of urban cultural practice.

While some scholars prefer the term “scene” when referring to music cultures,45 _{I am in} agreement with Paul Hodkinson’s insistence on “the continued value of the notion of subculture as an analytical tool to conceptualize groupings,” such as those that I discuss.46 _{I use the term}

44 _{See e.g. Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, 16 November 1972,}

1037 UNTS 151 (entered into force 17 December 1975); Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the

Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 20 October 2005, 2440 UNTS 311 (entered into force 18 March 2007);

Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 17 October 2003, 2368 UNTS 3 (entered into

force 20 April 2006) [2003 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention]; Declaration on the Principles of

Tolerance (adopted 16 November 1995 by UNESCO, 28th Mtg (1995); Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, GA Res 25, UNESCOR, 31st Sess, Annex 1, UN Doc 31C (2001) Doc 31CGA Res 25, Annex I, 41 ILM

57 (adopted on 2 November 2001); Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City (2011), online: UCLG

Committee on Social, Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights <www.uclg-cisdp.org/en/right-to-the-

city/world-charter-agenda>; European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, 2000, online:

UCLG Committee on Social, Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights <www.uclg-cisdp.org/en/right-

to-the-city/european-charter> [European City Charter]; Montreal City Charter, supra note 24; Vaughan Accord, online: <www.vaughan.ca/council/vaughan_accord>.

* _{© Sara Ross. Parts of Section IV were previously published in: Sara Ross, “Protecting Urban Spaces of Intangible}

Cultural Heritage and Nighttime Community Subcultural Wealth: A Comparison of International and National Strategies, The Agent of Change Principle, and Creative Placekeeping” (2017) 7:1 Western Journal of Legal Studies, art #5.

45 _{See e.g. Richard A Peterson & Andy Bennett, “Introducing Music Scenes” in Andy Bennett & Richard A}

Peterson, eds, Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004); Silver, Clark & Yanez, supra note 22.

46 _{Paul Hodkinson, “Translocal Connections in the Goth Scene” in Andy Bennett & Richard A Peterson, eds, Music}

Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004) 131 at n 1. See also Paul

Hodkinson, Goth: Identity, Style, and Subculture (Oxford: Berg, 2002). Hodkinson’s research focuses on goth subculture and he suggests that the term “subculture” may be used “to emphasize the relatively substantive, bounded

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“subculture” rather than “scene” in order to better represent the importance of these iterations of culture that are often disregarded in contrast to relationally dominant or more conventional iterations of culture. “Scene” can carry with it a dismissive tone in comparison to “(sub)culture”, and I seek to avoid this. Examples of subcultures could include many possibilities: the afterhours electronic dance music (“EDM”) subcultural community, Do-It-Yourself (“DIY”) music

communities like the Queercore community in Toronto, the B-boy/B-girl dance subculture, skateboard or parkour communities, graffiti and street art subcultural communities, steampunk subcultural communities, drum-n-bass (“DnB”) and junglist music communities, and so on.

As noted, Yosso’s expanded framework for cultural capital, breaks down the faulty boundaries of traditional Bourdieusean cultural capital, welcomes alternative, marginalized, and unruly cultural capital into the framework, and facilitates recognizing new forms of community cultural wealth.47 Unequal treatment of diverse iterations of culture and cultural capital runs in tandem with a relationally lower valuation of the use-value of particular spaces, along with their associated cultural practices, members, and community cultural wealth. When a potentially high exchange-value is engaged, or when particular elements of cultural capital are undervalued and result in a perceived lower aggregate cultural capital value for certain iterations of culture, this process tends to disproportionately affect unruly spaces and unruly practices that generate noise and other side effects of unconventional or alternative day/night use patterns that tend to be form taken by certain elective groupings, something which contrasts with an emphasis on fluidity and multiplicity” that appears in the work of other scholars such as, for example, Andy Bennett (“Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship between Youth, Style, and Musical Taste” (1999) 33:3 Sociology 599) and David Muggleton (“The Post-Subculturalist” in Steve Redhead, Derek Wnne & Justin O’Connor, eds, The Club Cultures

Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) 185.

47 _{Yosso, supra note 27 at 69, 70. Aspirational capital, familial capital, social capital, navigational capital, resistant}

capital, and linguistic capital are six forms of unacknowledged and unrecognized cultural capital that Yosso identifies as comprising community cultural wealth. Of course this is not a complete list, but these six forms of cultural capital contribute to the community cultural wealth that comprises cultural capital (see ibid at 78). See also Alexander’s development of the concept of cultural collective efficacy to justify progressive and critical place-based lawmaking where “participation in neighborhood-based musical, artistic, and other cultural endeavors can be an important source of collective efficacy” (supra note 22 at 808-10, 829-30).

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associated with undervalued or deficit-valued cultural capital.48 _{In this way, faulty valuation of} elements of cultural capital that could fit into Yosso’s expanded framework results in the

inequitable valuation of certain iterations of culture and community cultural, which works to the detriment of relationally vulnerable groups in the city space.

While Logan and Molotch deploy the notion of use-value largely in relation to inhabited spaces, it is similarly useful in addressing non-residential spaces of occupation, use, and

identification that carry a high community cultural or subcultural wealth as well as the intangible cultural heritage of a community or group.49 _{When applying Logan and Molotch’s framework of} use-value and exchange-value to this context, acknowledging the use-value that these spaces carry is crucial in order to preserve, protect, and promote important spaces of culture in the city. Yet, in decisions pertaining to urban redevelopment and preservation strategies that affect or target a city’s cultural and subcultural spaces, the meaningfulness of a space—or what holds great cultural community wealth, use-value, or bears a group or community’s intangible cultural heritage—can, as Logan and Molotch identify, often play second fiddle to the commercial viability or exchange-value of a space.50 This clash in valuation is especially pertinent where a space that is used and created by communities and individuals can carry both a use-value as well as an exchange-value. Here, exchange-values risk overshadowing non-commodified use-value, and the exchange-value merits of a future redeveloped space frequently overshadow the use- value of an existing community space.

48 _{See Cooper, supra note 9 at 7, 12-14, 24. See also Mariana Valverde’s incisive discussion of the hegemonic}

narrative of conventional spacetime patterns of urban property ownership and the “attempt to stuff the social chronotope of the domesticity of the ‘married with children’ cultural chronotope into the legal chronotope of ‘single- family detached’ (Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19-22).

49 _{See generally Logan & Molotch, supra note 1 and also ibid at 49.}

50 _{See also Alexander, supra note 22, who argues for the importance of valuing neighbourhoods and community}

spaces for what they have and the value they carry for a community versus their perceived deficiencies and what the might be seen to lack (at 807).

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Spaces like these, however, are crucial to the development, sustenance, and practice of culture(s) and subculture(s) in the city. A sense of belonging and community is generated by attending and participating within spaces, venues, and even businesses like stores that cater to repeat attendees with shared cultural reference points, preferences, and tastes.51 Spaces and venues, regardless of any tangible, built heritage merit to the physical space, can nonetheless serve as a “community center”. Here, for example, small businesses or leisure spaces can provide vital de facto social and cultural space for communities as well as cultures and subcultures to gather outside of their home and even their neighbourhood.52 _{As historic preservation scholars} James Michael Buckley and Donna Graves note, “[S]ome of the most critical elements in any social or cultural community are private places of business that provide goods and services and create important gathering spaces outside of home and workplace.”53 _{Groups and individuals} spend time in these “third realms” that carry great importance to them and are where the fabric of culture, life, and leisure is woven. Spaces and venues thus play a key role as safe spaces and as a nucleus for the development and flourishing of friendships, relationships, and community

connections.54

Safeguarding these spaces speaks to the kind of cultural and neighbourhood vibrancy espoused by nascent frameworks for city-based human rights charters (discussed later in this section)—such as the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City, the European

51 _{Katherine N Rankin, Kuni Kamizake & Heather McLean (“Toronto’s Changing Neighborhoods: Gentrification of}

Shopping Streets” in Sharon Zukin, Philip Kasinitz & Xiangming Chen, eds, Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday

Diversity from New York to Shanghai (New York: Routledge, 2016) 140 at 154, 159) demonstrate this in their

interaction with shopkeepers in a study of Toronto’s Bloordale and Mount Dennis neighbourhoods. See also Alexander, supra note 22 at 829-30; Dolores Hayes, Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997).

52 _{Rankin, Kamizake & McLean, supra note 51 at 161, 165-66.}

53 _{James Michael Buckley & Donna Graves, “Tangible Benefits from Intangible Resources: Using Social and}

Cultural History to Plan Neighborhood Futures” (2016) 82:2 Journal of the American Planning Association 152 at 160.

54 _{See e.g. Benjamin Boles, “Fight for Your Right to Party”, NOWToronto (15 May 2014), online:}

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Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City (“European City Charter”), and, in Canada, Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (“Montreal City Charter”)—that seek to safeguard culture, cultural spaces, and the right to the city and culture in the city.55 Further, for local grassroots spaces of music in the city, not only do these spaces serve as a community gathering place of high intangible cultural importance and high use-value, but they also provide the infrastructure that is needed for the survival of music scenes and (sub)cultures in cities.56

But where the use of these spaces can occur during periods of the night or day that do not conform to traditional or dominant day/night use and life patterns, this use has a tendency to be viewed as disruptive, stigmatized, unimportant and may clash with the use of neighbouring spaces—leading to nuisance complaints that engage local by-laws.57 These uses may also be invisible during, for example, daytime hours, which contributes to the lack of acknowledgment of the use-value of a space and to the inability of the relationally vulnerable users of the space to maintain use-access to the space, especially where relationally vulnerable groups are often disadvantaged in nuisance clashes—such as groups or individuals with a weaker property claim to the space in question, less cultural capital, or less socioeconomic clout in asserting their views.58

Subcultures, for example, display and generate an iteration of culture in the city and can often inhabit spaces of subcultural practice at the margins of society—often within derelict or neglected spaces of the city.59 Such communities can find themselves in a position of relational

55 _{Rankin, Kamizaki & McLean, supra note 51 at 161, 165; Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City,}

supra note 44; European City Charter, supra note 44. For Montreal, Quebec, the Montreal City Charter, supra note

24.

56 _{Holly C Kruse, “Local Independent Music Scenes and the Implications of the Internet” in Ola Johansson &}

Thomas L Bell, eds, Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) 206 at 210.

57 _{See Cooper, supra note 9 at 7, 12-14, 24. See also Valverde, Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19-22.}

58 _{See Cooper, supra note 9 at 7, 12-14, 24. See also Valverde, Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19-22; Valverde,}

Everyday, supra note 8 at 48-77.

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vulnerability in their claims to and use of spaces and properties—especially where municipal legal frameworks can have a differential, negative effect on the subcultural groups using these spaces.60 Vulnerability is generated when their interests clash, compete, or must be compared with more dominant, accepted, or visible cultural iterations that can be coded as less disruptive in their use of spaces and properties in the city. The claims to space by relationally vulnerable groups and individuals, including youth-based subcultures, tend towards the use of space— sometimes itself unconventional—in unconventional ways and/or at unconventional times in contrast to dominant societal day/night use patterns and norms.61 _{These spaces of subcultural} practice can often be impermanent in nature as “subcultures are usually located at one remove from property ownership [and] territorialise their places rather than own them.”62

While these occupants of a space may or may not go unnoticed by those who only use the space according to more conventional or dominant day/night use patterns, when the space is observed for the effects potential changes might have on occupants, the physical invisibility of unconventional spatiotemporal occupants can lead to a lack of accounting for their presence as well as a failure to, or difficulty in, engaging with them. Whether this is due to an unknowing, thoughtless, or purposeful oversight, the alternative or unconventional space/time coding of their occupation exacerbates the tendency of municipal governance structures to stifle unruly spaces and association within these spaces, which has a negative effect on the spontaneous organic development and flourishing of subcultural communities that inhabit these spaces.63

60 _{Paul Chatterton & Robert Hollands, Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power}

(London, UK: Routledge, 2003) at 204; Habitat III Issue Paper #6, “Urban Rules” supra note 14 at 2. See also Alexander, supra note 22 at 823-25.

61 _{Hae, supra note 7 at 40. Talbot, supra note __ at 132-33. See also Cooper, supra note 9 at 24.}

62 _{Ken Gelder, Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (London, UK: Routledge, 2007) at 3; Hae, supra}

note 7 at 6.

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As described in 2009 by current MP and former Toronto City Councillor Adam Vaughan regarding the City of Toronto’s desire to stabilize certain districts and shift them away from characterization as nighttime spaces of culture, “We find that the quickest way to get rid of a nightclub is to approve a condo on site that displaces the nightclub [...] therefore you can start to stabilise the district.”64 _{In a 2013 review of nightlife and entertainment in downtown Toronto,} produced for the Office of the Chief Planner of the City of Toronto, an assessment of the district affected by this strategy (the Toronto Entertainment District, or “TED”) noted that

If the success of [the above] strategy can be measured in the limit of the growth of nightclubs, then it has been wildly successful. As of 2013, not only had the growth of this industry ceased in the TED, but it had dramatically reversed—there were only thirty nightclubs left, while the lofty ascents of both residential and office

populations remained unaffected. It is clear, then, that “stabilizing” the district has a particular meaning that does not necessarily apply evenly to all types of

development.65

While the use-value of even the more mainstream nightclubs—that still tend towards noisy, youth-oriented, marginal and/or unconventional use and occupation patterns—may be high for the subcultural transgressive groups in question, chances are that these same spaces and use patterns will not carry a high exchange-value if examined within urban legal frameworks governing development and redevelopment city projects.66 This weakness in exchange-value is seen to lead to differential or negative effects of municipal legal frameworks on the subcultural groups using these spaces.67

Looking, for example, at the nighttime space and linked subcultures and subcultural practices, youth represent one group that is particularly engaged in generating and sustaining

64 _{The quotation in the text is an example of purposeful stifling of unruly venues in Toronto, see e.g. Sebastien}

Darchen & Diane-Gabriel Tremblay, “The Local Governance of Culture-led Regeneration Projects: A Comparison between Montreal and Toronto” (2013) 6:2 Urban Research & Practice 140 at 150.

65 _{Anna Wynveen et al, “Not Zoned for Dancing: A Comprehensive Review of Entertainment in Downtown}

Toronto” (Toronto: Office of the Chief Planner, 2014) at 25.

66 _{Chatterton & Hollands, supra note 60 at 208.}

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these types of subcultural sites both through leisure-based consumption and production as well as through the entrepreneurial and employment component of nighttime cultural production and consumption practices.68 This subsection of society becomes disproportionately affected when nighttime cultural production and consumption practices are regulated by urban law—such as, for example, noise emission standards and by-laws—in a manner more stymying than what similar production and practices would receive during traditionally identified daytime use hours.69

Whether, on the one hand, individuals are involved in the entrepreneurial end as subcultural event promoters, employees, or, on the other hand, purely involved on the consumption end through the input of significant time and leisure interests into a particular subcultural scene, space, and facilitation of these often music-centered events, regard for the individuals involved in the scene, their practices, and the safeguarding of their associated spaces is not something that is on the radar of most urban redevelopment processes and policies, such as noise by-law enforcement, zoning by-law amendment proposals, height and density plan

hearings and approvals, and so on. As Miranda Campbell explains, the “surge in youth cultural production represents a significant employment trend that has yet to be grappled with at the policy level.”70 _{In addition, youth are not traditionally targeted for their opinions in city redesign} projects that affect their unowned spaces of cultural production and consumption that they

68 _{See e.g. Miranda Campbell, Out of the Basement: Youth Cultural Production in Practice and Policy (Montreal:}

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013) at 3; Chatterton & Hollands, supra note 60 at 5, 71, 88-89, 209-10; Hae,

supra note 7 at 40; EY, “Creating Growth”, supra note 24 at 5-6.

69 _{Habitat III, Issue Paper #6, “Urban Rules”, supra note 14 at 2; Toronto Municipal Code, c 591, Noise, made under}

City of Toronto Act, 2006, SO 2006, c 11, Schedule A; Toronto Music Advisory Council’s (TMAC) “Noise Bylaw

Recommendations” (August 2015), online: <www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2015/ma/bgrd/backgroundfile-

84014.pdf>; Andreas Kalogiannides, “Can the City of Toronto Reconcile its Noise by-law Review with Creation of a ‘Music City’?” (29 June 2015) torontomusiclaw.com (blog), online:

<www.kalogiannideslaw.com/torontomusiclaw>. See also Mariana Valverde’s discussion of the political and social exclusions that occur through processes of local law and its imposition of hegemonic spatiotemporal narratives of “’the’ life-course” (Chronotopes, supra note 10 at 19-22).

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occupy, use, and/or inhabit. This lack of consultation is exacerbated by the difficulty of

contacting the groups and individuals who occupy a space during unconventional and irregular times.71

Spaces of subcultural practice, however, are important for the cultural flourishing of subcultural groups in a city, where disregard of these groups forms part of a larger disrespect of equitable access to city space for alternative ways of knowing, living, and alternative cultural practices. Subcultures, countercultures, and their related spaces are a relevant layer of

pluriculturalism within which subaltern cosmopolitan contact zones (discussed further later in this section) may flourish in the city, especially where cosmopolitan legality “is a subaltern legality targeting the uncivil and the strange civil society.”72

In pioneering the notion of subcultural geographies, where a subcultural group “creates its own geography, a set of places or sites … through which it gains cohesion and identity,” Ken