Show Down in Center City

Abstract

This article details the city of Philadelphia’s plans to celebrate the American Bicentennial and its heritage as the nation’s birthplace, while debuting a revitalized downtown. The author characterizes the celebration as an example of marginally successful local boosterism. However, in tying the public spectacle to the reconstruction of Philadelphia’s “Center City”, civic leaders did more than just promote their own brand of heritage tourism. In attempting to refashion the civic space of the city and reconstitute local citizenship, Philadelphia officials inadvertently precipitated a strong and highly visible public reaction against the substance of redevelopment lasting from 1974 until the early 1980s. The vendors war and the struggles that followed the show down in Center City succeeded in symbolically and substantively transforming the political culture of the city, moving to center stage issues of spatial discrimination, access to public space, and citizenship that had long been ignored by city government and remained latent in the rhetoric of local protest movements.