DOCTORAL DISSERTATION Niche City: Manufacturing a Service Industry Presence in the Postindustrial Economy

北卡罗莱纳州高点（High Point）一家高级家具陈列室的门上优雅地刻着“巴黎-纽约-伦敦-高点”。在一些观察家看来，这些城市可能是按重要性由高到低排列的。然而，在家具界，这个名单上的城市的重要性无疑是上升的。通常情况下，利用其过去的象征、经济和物质资源，以及创造这些资源的其他时候，高点的领导者们在面对来自更大、更富有的同行的全球竞争时，已经确保并保持了他们市中心的利基资本投资——国际家居市场。他们通过从美学上重新塑造整个市中心，以适应这个非常特殊的利基市场的利益。这一战略在当前全球经济结构调整模式中是独一无二的，体现了该项目所称的“利基城市”的城市形式。在这项关于生态位城市的性质和出现的研究中，我将使用案例研究的方法来调查这种转变是如何发生的，假设这种转变对居民的影响，并探讨这些发现对其他类似情况下的城市的影响。该项目将采用两种数据来源：定性和地理。我将对High Point的70多位重要政治、经济和社会人物进行采访，并辅以跟踪市中心房地产投资变化的地理数据。这种方法将有助于解决城市社会学家、城市地理学家、政治经济学家和城市研究学者感兴趣的几个问题：小城市中象征性景观的作用、城市居民宜居性和游客可用性之间的平衡、城市与全球化的代理、城市利基专业化作为吸引资本进入中心城市的一种方式的前景。这项研究将为审查大城市的结构调整和通过经济激励方法研究增长提供一个反例，突出一个利用独特方法实现市中心盈利的小城市。在分析一个被一些评论家称为“真正后现代”的地方时，本论文将分析领导人如何为资本的目的塑造城市景观，这个话题在很大程度上被降级为理论，并以被动语态讨论发生在城市中的事情。这项研究的广泛影响将通过在学术和专业期刊上发表的文章和在涉及全球化、经济转型、象征性景观、游客经济、空间与地点的研究等几个学科的会议上的演讲，以及在当地政治和媒体机构的演讲，以及在公共小组讨论和当地大学的棕色袋子午餐上的演讲来传播。

The elegant etching on the door of a fine furniture showroom in High Point, North Carolina reads "Paris-New York-London-High Point." To some observers these cities might be seen to be listed in a descending order of importance. However, in the furniture world, the order of importance of the cities on this list indubitably ascends. Often times drawing upon the symbolic, economic, and physical resources of its past, and other times creating such resources, the leaders of High Point have secured and maintained their downtown's niche capital investment--the International Home Furnishings Market--in the face of global competition from larger, wealthier peers. They have done so by aesthetically refashioning the entire downtown to suit the interests of this very specific niche. This strategy, which is unique to the current moment in global patterns of economic restructuring, exemplifies an urban form that this project terms "niche city." In this research on the nature and emergence of niche cities, I will use a case study approach to investigate how this transformation occurred, postulate the implications that this transformation has for residents, and explore the implications of these findings for other cities in similar circumstances. This project will employ two sources of data: qualitative and geographic. I will conduct interviews of over 70 key political, economic, and social figures in High Point and will supplement these with geographic data tracking changes in downtown real estate investment. This methodology will help to address several issues of interest to urban sociologists, urban geographers, political economists and urban studies scholars: the role of symbolic landscapes in small cities, the balance between a city's livability for residents and usability for visitors, the agency of cities vis-a-vis globalization, and the prospect of urban niche specialization as a way to attract capital to the center-city. This research will provide a counter-case to examinations of restructuring in large cities and to studies of growth by way of economic incentives, highlighting a small city that has utilized a unique approach to downtown profitability. In analyzing a place that some commentators have called "truly postmodern," this dissertation will analyze how leaders sculpt urban landscapes for the purposes of capital, a topic that has been largely relegated to theory and discussed in the passive tense as something that happens to cities. The broader impacts of this research will through dissemination of findings in published articles in scholarly and professional journals and in presentations at conferences of several disciplines involved in the study of globalization, economic transformation, symbolic landscapes, visitor economies, and inquiries of space versus place as well as in presentations to local political and media outlets as well as in public panel discussions and brown bag lunches at local universities.