Making the Casino Public: Architecture, Space, and the Paradoxes of Atlantic City

Event Details

Bryant Simon is an Associate Professor of History at Temple University.

The following summary excerpt from the paper provides an overview of the talk:

"In the book I’m currently finishing on Atlantic City, I argue that no matter what new
urbanist scholars would have us believe that public space in America is something of
a myth, an illusion really. Only when public spaces are walled off, like they were
during Atlantic City’s heyday, do they, I contend, attract the middle-class crowds.
That’s why, I suggest, Atlantic City fell into decline in the 1960s – it couldn’t exclude
anymore. And over the last two and half decades, the crowds have come back as city
leaders have once again created a wall-off public. So Atlantic City’s history is the
history of this making and remaking of the public, of a succession of undemocratic
public. These public spaces, it is worth noting in this case, were manufactured to
provide fantasy, this is after all a resort town. And architecture – as I want to show
now -- both shapes and reflects this on-going and enduring process of making public
middle-class fantasies."