Urban culture: The basis for sustainable multiculturalism

Abstract

In the intricate network of cultural meanings - a network that spreads over society, an inevitable fact is that cities in Vojvodina bear numerous characteristics of urban life, with very specific qualities of regional cultural-genetic meanings. By preserving and developing new forms of urbanity in a highly multicultural environment, the urban centers of Vojvodina can become examples of how urban culture appears as a prerequisite for sustainable urban development. Urban culture comes to existence as a combination of circumstances in which the central figure on the city scene is the citizen. Therefore, it can be concluded that without the existence of civil society, there can be no urban culture either. Furthermore, one of the fundamental characteristics of sustainable urban development and the very essence of urbanity is multiculturalism. This paper has as its aim to discuss the problems which arise with the question of urban culture as the sum of contents formed in the specific conditions of great population density and its greatest possible heterogeneity. In this discussion, the starting point is that the understanding of urban culture as an isolated segment of culture in its broadest sense is not possible. The contextual planes on which each and every urban-cultural phenomenon is to be observed (including the plane which has to do with the towns of Vojvodina, and which this paper especially deals with) include: (a) the images and meanings of 'historical multiculturalism', (b) urban cultures in the context of national cultures, (c) the creation of a cultural environment and, in connection with it, the creation of urbanity, in relation to the ruling and administrative components in the redistribution of socio-spatial meanings, (d) urban culture as the participation of citizens in the public life of the city, (e) mass culture with an urban mark and (f) the urban-cultural identity of a community as a prerequisite for sustainable urban development.

Keywords

• urban culture
• city
• participation
• national
• urban identity
• mass society