COMM320 Media , Culture and the City
brands appear schematic and homogenised to adapt to global consumerist traditions . The place is mediated with advertisements and shop windows . This renders the customers a familiar experience of consumption shared across difference yet without relationality to the place , as it is not distinguishable from other shopping malls in the world ( Georgiou , 2013 ). Apart from that , the place is gentrified and detached from locality and historicity . For these reasons , Kuala Lumpur is represented as a non-place .
In conclusion , this essay has introduced two competing ways in which neoliberal cosmopolitan cities can be represented . In the introduction , it introduces the context of cosmopolitanisms in the global flows and networks , the significance of cosmopolitanism and the representations of cosmopolitan cities . Following the introduction , it reviewed the debates around whether cosmopolitan subjectivity must be elite , from which the concept of vernacular cosmopolitanism was developed . In the first main section , it illustrates that a vernacular cosmopolitan city
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is a bottom-up , practised and prominent morality . It is bottom-up because this cosmopolitanism is adopted for survival . It is also because it involves individual tactics under the hegemonic power , and the bottom-up urban image of a cosmopolis can enhance urban dweller ’ s sense of belonging to the city . Such a city is practised because it is seen from individuals ’ daily lives in the city and the grounded realities . Therefore , it entails particularistic meanings , historicity and social complexities that are bound to the locality . The vernacular cosmopolis ’ morality includes openness to others and contacts with the alterities . The second part introduces that neoliberal cosmopolitan city is a commodified and top-down city . The commodification of the neoliberal cosmopolitan city is reflected from how cosmopolitan openness and its attitudes toward diversity are tied to consumption . Its aesthetic openness is highly selective and it excludes other groups , while it acknowledges and commodifies diversity without commitment to them . The commodified urban image merely creates imageries