The City Lights and Christmas Spirit

On the Social Production of Festive Space

Abstract

The polemics surrounding the outdoor Christmas decoration of Sofia at the end of last year placed in the focus of public attention the role of urban design, urban decoration in particular, not only for the shaping of the city’s visual environment but also for the production of festive space. Inspired by Ivaylo Ditchev’s reflections on the city as a stage and the holiday as a media, this case study examines the tensions and conflicts emerging in the process of social production of festive space, brought about by a variety of factors and considerations – aesthetical, political, financial, environmental, commercial, and others – and seeks the projections of these conflicts in the virtual space of the social media, as that is where they have received the widest publicity. The analysis calls into question the initial research hypothesis that the city’s outdoor Christmas decoration is implicated in the political battles for urban space as public space, in other words – for the “right to the city”.

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