The city benefits from Imagined Communities by enhanced neighborhood identity, providing a platform for funneling resources, investment, businesses and tourism into neighborhoods. From a marketing standpoint, Imagined Communities puts the city in the spotlight as an innovator in education and technology, with public relations and branding opportunities surrounding the high-profile partners who will assist in implementing the realized community visions, affording commercial tie-ins and increased political capital.
We live in a world of multiple and shifting identities, with steep divides among populations in literacies, education, resources and connections, contextualized in a challenging and paradigm-shifting economy. Technology and reactions against globalization have facilitated a shift in which local environments and groups are rising in import and prominence, where once-unified cities can become fractured with individual neighborhoods gaining significance and local identities becoming defined even block by block.
In this environment, cities are challenged to market themselves in an entrepreneurial fashion distinct from that of the state or nation, promoting their own, unique attractions to draw investors, businesses, residents, and tourists, and to provide resources and solutions for the social challenges they face. These challenges include: uneven distribution of resources; ignored populations, especially that of inner-city youth; diminished means to increase social connections across groups to foster opportunities for residents and local businesses; fragmented city identity; and, decreased attributes for the city to use in marketing itself to attract tourism, new business investment and stakeholders.
The questions posed to the modern city are:
- How do you develop a cohesive and attractive city identity?
- How do you build neighborhood identity with equity that includes augmented resources for local businesses as well as increasing the value and potential of the youth, preparing them for entry into the community as contributing and job-seeking adults?
- How do you then unite neighborhoods to build a city where people see a shared sense of social responsibility?
Imagined Communities addresses these challenges on multiple levels, enriching the way people see, and interact with, their local neighborhoods. From this sense of rootedness, they connect with other neighborhoods, sharing resources, finding tutors and mentors, and partnering with skilled professionals and corporations to bring their imagined community to reality. By taking innovative technology and applying it to both social and marketing outcomes, children, adults, and neighborhoods are enabled to enhance their communities and their lives. From this increased pride of place the city reaps benefits of stimulated local investment, development and tourism, as cities pull together and grow their communities and their people in positive ways.
The first step is with the children. As addressed in detail in previous sections, Imagined Communities stimulates youth development on cognitive and social levels, broadening the cognitive maps by which they navigate their world, thus opening them to possibilities that they otherwise would not have been able to recognize. Social marginalization prevents children from leveraging their creativity and knowledge outside narrow boundaries. As Bloustein says, it prevents them from “formulating their dreams” (p. 198) because of an ingrained social understanding they have of their own place in society.
Additionally, Imagined Communities provides hands-on skills in line with President Obama’s call for increased Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education to prepare our young people for success in an economy that demands innovation, problem-solving, and entrepreneurship. By focusing on the use of technology to develop digital narratives, document neighborhoods, and acquire 3D design proficiencies, the students will have the chance to develop the 21st century tools fundamental to successful design and engineering concepts. Imagined Communities provides young people with the opportunity to grapple with real world problems made relevant by anchoring them in their community and using the media literacy they see around them every day. These skills are foundational to everything from developing physical structures to public policy, and include the ability to discern patterns, structure problems, identify constraints, and find solutions, as opposed to rote skills that are increasingly outsourced. Design is a complex, decision-based activity. Students will learn and apply scaling, proportion, algebra, geometry, critical analysis, digital literacy, design and building, as well as stimulate their creativity and sense of agency and accomplishment. Because the project is situated within the broader community, youth will learn to become involved contributors, gaining confidence and means to expand beyond present, conceived boundaries. As the President stated: “America’s young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity –- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves.”
A recent report from The Economist shows black unemployment to be almost double that of whites and greater than that of Latinos, with unemployed blacks remaining out of work longer than either of the two other groups. One reason cited is that many jobs are located outside of black neighborhoods, making access to them difficult. Blacks may also have more limited access to jobs due to the insular nature of their social or family connections; Granovetter demonstrated that most jobs come from the people who are outside an individual’s immediate circle of friends and acquaintances. Called weak ties in network theory, these are individuals that connect one network to other networks so new information can move from network to network. Our closest connections, the strong ties, will most likely have the same information we do. The ability to connect with many, diverse individuals whose own connections, in turn, extend networks far afield, is the only way to gain broader access and knowledge of resources. Imagined Communities addresses these challenges by:
- Creating connections between communities outside of the close and familiar
- Creating opportunities to strengthen local, small businesses
