Gathering, Place, and Culture: An Interview with Dr. Zachary Jones
Dr. Zachary Jones is a Postdoc Researcher at Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) where he is a member of the HOMEE Research Project and has also taught Urban Design in the first year Architectural Design Studio. His work questions the ways we gather as human beings and the stories we tell ourselves about those gatherings. Perhaps a better way of saying it is by sharing the title of his first book: “Cultural Mega Events: Opportunities and Risks for Heritage Cities.”
Zach (as I’ve always known him) is a friend of many years. We were both Fulbrighters the same year (2013-2014), he in Croatia and me in Bulgaria and were able to meet up that year. We reference that experience extensively in this interview as an example of the kinds of events and geographies he explores in his work. He is an ideal travel companion and tour guide, full of detail and nuance about the world to be explored.
This interview breaks my heart a bit as traveling in the way we investigate it won’t be possible for a while. But I’m still making plans and I hope you are too.
Dana Ray: How did you become interested in questions of place, gathering and history? What is the curiosity that drives you and asking these questions?
Zachary Jones: It derives so much from my own personal experiences as an American growing up in the US and not having an exposure to other places, other cultures, other languages. When that finally did happen through my study abroad in Rome, something really changed and made me sit up and pay attention. Rome felt like a different reality. It was a pretty intense experience, especially for an architect. And then I was very lucky and had the chance to continue to go back to Rome several times to teach there and then Fulbright in Croatia studying the ancient Roman city.
I was always wanting to learn more, explore and understand. And then, within that learning asking questions about how does this work, why does that happen? Who are the people making these decisions? And why and what are they hoping to do or change? Europe became this canvas for me to ask these questions, my never ending adventure where there's always something more to explore.
Dana Ray: I’ll take a moment to observe that you and I both grew up in rural and suburban Pennsylvania. And so while the US does contain diverse stories, our experiences growing up did not.
Zachary Jones.: No, and also reflecting now, I realize I've never actually lived for a serious amount of time in an American city; I've only visited or traveled and stayed with friends. I’ve had a very particular experience in the US. Whereas, in Europe I've mainly been living in urban areas, which has largely informed my outlook and approach to my work.
Dana Ray: Places where there is a constant physical, embodied structures of deep human time.
Zachary Jones: There’s something about physically experiencing such places. When you come from a background where history of a few hundred years is almost unimaginable and then you stand in front of a building that's a few thousand years old, your mind explodes!
I got a bit addicted to that feeling. I wanted to know more. It started from a very personal and passionate place in me. I also transitioned from architecture and design, which I loved, to the planning field. Now it’s more about understanding how and why things operate the way they do. I look at bigger picture questions like connections between culture and society or economics or history. Understanding that there are many different overlaps doesn't mean we always understand all of them properly, but at least gives us the chance to investigate multiple issues at once.
That’s why I ended up choosing to stay and study and do my PhD in Europe because these were the issues I was interested in and I thought okay, part of it is studying is working with great professors on these issues in a strong academic environment. Another part of it is also living it on a daily basis and I chose to be able to have that very personal hands-on experience. My other option was going to a small college town in the US where it may have a fantastic academic reputation, but I would be missing that more personal experience. If it's just always something in a book, or just articles you're reading online, it’s not the same. You need that deeper appreciation.
Dana Ray: Your most recent birthday was during the pandemic, right?
Zachary Jones: Yes.
Dana Ray: I thought of the video of your neighbors singing happy birthday to you from their balconies during quarantine. It seems especially meaningful in the context of your work as a professional and individual in Italy, studying the nuances of place, culture, and human experience.
Zachary Jones: Those types of videos became a bit viral in the US. People thought, “Oh how cute. The Italians are singing.” But for me, it was very different. It was a very personal, lived experience.
For almost two months, every single day, there was music playing in the streets with people singing along or dancing. It was a very powerful moving experience, especially during something like the lockdown which was quite intense here in Milan. I was leaving my house once a week to go buy groceries. And that was it. I didn't see any of my friends and my family. So now these total strangers that I'd only met from a distance or we're following each other on Instagram have become my only human contact in this moment. It was this really wonderful beautiful moment and again, how culture in a particular space and moment in time brought us together in a really beautiful way.
It's completely priceless and it's something I will remember for the rest of my life. Experiences make connections to places very rich and also fascinating to study as an academic. We see these points of connection happen. We can’t control them but what is the potential of them that we can try to harness? When do we need to be careful? What are the consequences you may want to try to avoid?
Dana Ray: I love how inventive human beings are socially and individually and how we can't control these things because human beings are fundamentally uncontrollable. We just agree to certain systems in some ways, but there's other parts of us that will never be controlled. And one of those is our insistence of using the physical structures that exist to make something interesting, like singing happy birthday from the balcony.
No one said, “We're going to put a balcony here so that they will sing happy birthday to Zach Jones on his birthday,” but that's what your street decided to do with their balconies. And I just love, love that marriage of that. And also the question of that, how do we take the potential of the physical infrastructure and narratives.
All of this feels like the perfect segue to talk about your research and your new book, “Cultural Mega Events: Opportunities and Risks for Heritage Cities.”
Zachary Jones: The book really does stem from a lot of these experiences in the world. I completed my PhD two years ago at the Politecnico di Milano, the Polytechnic University here in Milan, in Urban Planning, Design and Policy. My background was originally in architecture. And then following years of living, working, and studying in Italy in Croatia, I came to Milan.
I was very interested in better understanding how historic cities were dealing with the pressures of the contemporary world of globalization of how they navigate holding onto their past without losing it to development or over-tourism or any number of issues.
In Europe, we have the European Capital of Culture events which has been happening now for over 35 years. It's a very expansive program in terms of what cities can do with it. The focus is all on European culture and how in a way each city interprets this, trying to kind of present and using culture in a way to invest in the city and in communities.
I was interested in how heritage cities use these events in different ways. I looked at three case studies: Genoa, Liverpool, and Istanbul. Three different cities, three different countries, three very different in terms of policy in terms of size, types of heritage. I then looked at how they integrated this event with their heritage plans and policies and how that impacted the celebrations of the events.
Mega events like the Capital of Culture which aren’t the Olympics but are still highly impactful are often overlooked in the literature on urban planning. But for many of these cities, they're very important moments for cities to promote themselves and do something totally different.
And in recent years, there are now a number of these very similar events within the Latin American world, within Asia, within Arab nations, so we're seeing globally there's this interest in using culture. It felt like an important phenomenon to study. It's becoming a growing topic, of course, within cultural studies, but I wanted from a more urban planning point of view.
Dana Ray: What is a heritage city? What is your preferred definition or your working definition?
Zachary Jones: As a constraint for my research, I chose only locations with areas of the city recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Because as we talk about anything heritage, that conversation can expand infinitely.
My approach in defining the term in less functional ways was very hands off. I wanted to see how these cities defined it for themselves. Each of these places in some way try to deal with culture, but then some of them are saying, within that, where our culture is really based or connected to our heritage. And then you have places like Liverpool, which has an industrial past and strong links with the transalantic slave trade. It's a very challenging heritage.
So there’s not one definition of heritage. But for my purposes, UNESCO worked because that meant they had existing heritage policies and plans in place to promote or protect “heritage.”
Dana Ray: And dealing specifically with “heritage” in the form of a large event where they take stock of where they’ve come from, who they are, and where they’re going.
Zachary Jones: It's interesting that heritage forms the identity or base of that branding and other times, heritage was seen as being a limiting factor. And so cities like Liverpool chose to ignore or not focus so heavily on “heritage” as in history but to present and position themselves as a new city.
But then of course you get the tension of whose heritage we’re talking about. Does everyone agree or not agree? Who's included? Who's left out of that process? It’s a Pandora's box which is challenging and also rewarding and fascinating because you are talking about what is the identity and meaning of a place. Who does it belong to? What stories are we choosing to tell what stories are we not telling? And then from a planning point of view, we look at governance and how did these decisions come to be made or decided?
Dana Ray: I’m really resonating with these questions as I’m currently living just outside of Washington, DC where we’re both a flash point in this latest chapter of the Civil Rights Revolution and lobbying to become a State, a very literal question of who gets to make decisions for the people who live in an area.
It’s also interesting to me to consider these questions in the context of Bulgaria where I was living in 2013-2014 as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Dobrich. Varna was up for being the Youth Cultural Capital and then just last year Plovdiv was the Capital of Culture (both cities have extensive Roman ruins). This event is a big deal for these places especially as Bulgaria is one of the poorer members of the EU. And it was also that year that I visited you while you were working in Pula, Croatia.
I mention this because while I was there, we got to experience a mini “mega event” that’s acting as a reference point in my mind during this conversation.
Zachary Jones: Yes, so the project I was working on was “Mapping Croatian Culture in the City of Pula.” I can now look back and see how very linked it is to my ongoing work.
What made Pula so interesting to me was how many layers of time and culture were represented. The furthest back we can trace in the archaeological record is then ancient Roman city. Which then at some point nearly disappeared. Then it becomes an Austro-Hungarian city. They build it up into a large port. Then it becomes an Italian city. Then it becomes a Yugoslavian city, and then it becomes a Croatian city. It was so interesting to see and study one place throughout time and space, as it went through periods of expansion and contraction, with so many layers of history and language, what imprints these things left.
And the light festival happened the weekend you were in town! It was a really beautiful special event of them using in a way the city, the heritage spaces, the ancient forum. Pula is very lucky that the main square is still the ancient Roman Forum, which is pretty mind boggling. It's not an archaeological site on the outskirts of the city. It’s still living and breathing! And the festival used every aspect of the architecture and place to create an experience.
Dana Ray: Remember the guys dueling with lightning?
Zachary Jones: So wild. We had no idea what we were getting into.
Dana Ray: And the 3D light projections on the walls of the municipality building!
Zachary Jones: That tech was super new at the time! And then the finale was they lit up all of the cranes in the port with a musical performance. It was a very powerful moment.
Zachary Jones: And then the night ended with us dancing in a group on the pier!
Dana Ray: Yes!
Zachary Jones: And to think that six years later we’re here now still talking about it! It really shows the power of Culture and the Arts and how when it intersects heritage it is really beautiful.
Dana Ray: It was a singular moment and experience that I will always remember. And I will always feel part of the city because of how they included the participants in the light show. We all were given little light rings and became part of the display.
Zachary Jones: It blended the lines between spectator and participant. There are multiple ways to interact, rather than just sitting as an audience member watching. The moment represented themes I’ve been exploring for the last six years in different contexts, and scopes and scales. And will likely continue to deal with throughout my career.
Dana Ray: One of the things I love about that example, and I can see threads of that in your current work too is the layering of history is also the layering of storytelling and who gets to tell the tapestry of that story. And so I'm wondering if both that's part of the beauty of these events, and also a point of tension there. So what are the risks associated with heritage cities and events? What are some of those challenges and risks that are posed by getting everyone together to throw a big party?
Zachary Jones: We can define them as both the tangible and intangible risks or threats.
First: issues of over-tourism. There are many examples of cities where cities have just almost been choked to death by tourism. So whether that's Venice, Barcelona, or Prague, we see locals give up and move out because it's impossible to live there both functionally and in price.
But then also have environmental impact in Venice for example. When you start introducing lots of transport and buses or cruise ships or whatever it is, that's adding lots of pollution and infrastructure stress. The density of tourists versus the density of locals is stunning. And often that's the part that gets left out. Cities often say, “Yes, we need more tourists,” until they eventually have a problem.
And then on the intangible side, how do these changes affect or influence the meaning of space? Or if the meaning of spaces was traditionally tied to the people living there, the practices or traditions? And then those traditions leave with the locals when they move out, what is the remaining meaning of these spaces?
And how does the story get simplified and easily digestible for tourists? As we’ve said, history and heritage are complex; it's not simple and it's not easy. And so often, then there's a translation of the story to make it into a “feel good” story.
Dana Ray: I'm going to change your word choice because translation suggests an identical transformation into a different language system. But we’re talking about fundamentally changing the story. Watering it down and fragmenting the story to make it more “digestible.”
Zachary Jones: That’s a great point. Too often cities or tourism agencies just want to make a good looking brochure, summarizing a place in two or three words, which is by no means comprehensive enough. Whether a city is just a few hundred years old or a few thousand years old, there's so much there that could be said that could be told.
Instabul for example. You have Ottoman culture, obviously, but then you have the Byzantine Empire too. And then you have European Communities living there and Jewish communities throughout history. So how do these intersect? And how do you try to respect and tell all of them? Which of course is a question from the point of view of wanting to value all these stories. There are also people who don't want to value or tell all of these stories!
Conflicts and tensions are inevitable. Just look at the US right now! The process of storytelling is happening in an organic, uncontrolled way. It goes against what we want to think in urban planning which is just create a little focus group, we can sit down in a community room, have a nice conversation and figure all these things out.
Often within these cultural events you can find both approaches. There can be bottom up processes led by NGOs or local groups who are trying to work through very inclusive processes to tell the story of a place. And then there are city decision makers, whether that's the mayor or planning officials or the event management groups, and they have a very clear vision and narrative that they want to communicate. Sometimes these overlap and work together, other times they don’t.
I think it’s good when there is friction. It means the tough points are being brought up and talked about. So at the end of the day, it's still a valuable process, even if everything's not perfect. It’s still a good thing when cities are at least willing to begin these kinds of conversations.
Dana Ray: So what then are the ingredients to a really great gathering that you've noted through your work?
Zachary Jones: Recognizing and using the assets that we have. It can be a Grand Cathedral or even something as simple and common as balconies in your local neighborhoods that allows us to share a wonderful moment together during a quarantine. There's so much potential in certain places that aren’t always recognized.
Sometimes I’m able to offer an interesting perspective because I’m an outsider and it’s not part of my daily life. I want to help cities realize there's not a need to necessarily build some new flashy symbol. It's using the image of the city itself. There's so much potential for reinventing rethinking and using undervalued spaces. I'm always looking to find the spaces that right now we think of as being invaluable, unusable, ugly, uninteresting. Because in my mind, in 20-30 years, those are going to be the next places where everyone's going to want to be or the next big thing
And then it’s to bring in as many people as possible to tell as many stories as you can. I don’t think you can tell too many stories!
We don’t have to brand ourselves like Apple or Amazon with a quick snappy tagline. I want to see us resist creating safe, easily digestible identities. Cities are and should be complex, beautiful, wonderful, challenging difficult spaces. I hope somehow that will be the outcome of even the movements in the USA right now is to sit a bit with the uncomfortable things that maybe we don’t want to think about. Because that's how we learn and that's how we change and improve and grow. I see a beauty in that chaos and in that mess. As well as a lot of tragedy. I don't want to lose those stories, lose those hardships because that's what will propel us forward.
When we look at Europe, we have all of our own issues here. We have a lot of work to do as well.
Dana Ray: Nationalism rages on.
Zachary Jones: Unfortunately, yes. It is not yet defeated. The stories of immigrants are key to understanding the story of European cities going forward. And it's up to places to see that to value it and not be afraid of it. Often, there's a bit of fear. How will people react or what if we’re not perfect? But in some ways, most successful ones are the most honest ones to say, yeah, this is who we are. There's a lot to take in. But that's the beauty of it.
If you have a very easily digestible thing, people come in, they consume, and they leave. That’s feeding into the vicious circle of tourism that we’ve become so accustomed to in the last 20 years. Complex places require more time. We need people to come and interact. Not consume or spectate but participate.
Dana Ray: Not just consume or spectate but participate. Oh, I'm about this. This is so great
And how can we create within our own communities an invitation to participation instead of consumption? Because you're absolutely right—the over-tourized places get run over because we've been sold a postcard of the Eiffel Tower.
What I'm hearing you say is that the places that are honest about their complexity are actually able to present something that is clear and compelling that gets people to engage beyond the spectatorship and the consumption. And to reference Pula again, there was something so clear and delightful and joyful about an experience that didn't address the history per se, but created an inventive and embodied experience of the place. So the event was super clear and simple. But the experience was really complex and beautiful, and drew out all of these notes.
There are beautiful parallels In comparing what I do with individuals to the kind of questions you're asking about place and celebration. And we can do that in a way that makes it understandable that without it being consumerized are placed more in consumption
My hope as someone who helps people put their work into clear succinct statements. I hope that clear and succinct, stops being confused with simplified or oversimplified and that having a clear and succinct narrative does not mean it is less complex. You've just given yourself a base to work from that's rooted in the past, the present and the future.
Zachary Jones: I think that differentiation between the over-simplified and clear and concise is a very important point to make. So thank you for identifying that.
A trend that drives me crazy is the trend now where cities create these large block letters of the name of their city and then for example, Amsterdam, had the big one called I Amsterdam, so it was meant to be a play on words of I am Amsterdam. And they're there's lots of examples of these but this is one that drove me crazy.
Dana Ray: I literally have this picture of me in Kosovo.
Zachary Jones: Kosovo, of all places in the world! But then you see people going to this spot, and rather than taking photos of themselves in the city in the actual historic place they’ve come to visit, they’re focused on these tourist traps It's not even a meaningful symbol! It's just the name! And you came all the way here to take this photo and you're missing out.
Dana Ray: I think it's an example of taking a tactic that was very meaningful in a particular location, and then thinking that it will have the same effect in your location. This one by Milton Glaser is really beautiful.
Overused to the point of cliche, but still an organic symbol. And it works because the designer is from the place he designed for.
Zachary Jones: Of course. And now you see “I heart every city” everywhere. It’s slapping on a brand versus taking the time to really work through what these places mean.
Dana Ray: You heard it here, Team! No more!
Zachary Jones: We've seen enough! We don't need any more bad examples! And we don’t need tourists taking their picture by these things instead of taking time to explore the place itself!
Dana Ray: What are some of the things that you wish tourists would understand and pay attention to when they are present in a place especially during something like a mega event?
Zachary Jones: One thing I always do in every city I visit is get off of the tourist route. Go off and explore! I love to discover a place for myself. I want to ask what is the soul of this city? What makes this place different, special? The answer is in the details. You’ll notice the way that people interact and how they use spaces.
To me I'm always shocked when I go to a city center and I see people eating dinner there, I'm just thinking, “Why would you go here? All the good restaurants are in the ugly parts of town!”
Take the time to get to know the place in your own way. Find a way to participate and not consume. And, and that's not maybe how we're not trained to think that way. There are all of these pressures, whether it's time or money or social media to do as much as we can in as little time as possible. And I would say no, relax, enjoy and discover it.
Dana Ray: One of the reasons I loved Pula is because you were living there that year! You got to show me this place through the lens of someone who was buying their groceries there every day! That kind of relationship isn't possible outside of just showing up somewhere.
Zachary Jones: It isn’t hard to do either! If someone new arrived here in my city of Milan you can go on Facebook you can find English language aperitivo nights where you can meet total strangers and just hang out and talk in English and they are happy to talk to you and that would be a great way to figure out what are the places to be.
There are now plenty of other online resources offering experiences as well. Maybe it's a local grandmother teaching you how to make pasta! It's not just feeding into the big tourism machine; it's local people doing what they've done maybe their whole life or what they are passionate about. I also usually go places where I know someone or have some kind of connection, and that completely transforms it because you really get to know the place.
Dana Ray: I have the best story of how this creates connection. One of the things that I love to do is to go dancing. So when I go to a new city, if I'm going to be there a couple weeks, I try to find out if there's any dancing locally.
In 2014, I lived in Prague for four weeks and so looked up dancing and went to a salsa night. There were hundreds of people at this event crammed into this weird bar. I scouted the room and identified a guy that I thought was the best lead and I asked him to dance with me. I was correct: he was super dreamy. It was amazing! I was so excited that I wrote a letter that very night to Robbie (my now husband) to tell him about dancing with this guy named Jakub, pronounced “Yakub.”
Five years later in 2019, I realized that there is a West Coast Swing pro named Jakub pronounced “Yakub” who is Czech!
Zachary Jones: No! (laughs)
Dana Ray: And I went searching for this email I wrote! I even spelled with the guy's name this letter. And I explained what a great dancer he was.
So when I saw him at a dance event in DC where he was a teacher and I said, “You don't know me. But were you living in Prague in the summer of 2014?” And he said, Yes. “So were you dancing salsa a lot in the Summer of 2014?” Yes. “Are there any other Jakubs also in the salsa scene in Prague in 2014?” He said no. And I was “Then I danced with you five years ago.” He asked me what bar and I told him the one near the opera house. And he was “Oh, yeah, I spent a lot of time there.”
Zachary Jones: Wow. And that’s why it's worth taking the time to get to know people investing in places because you keep these people forever!
Dana Ray: You never lose them!
Zachary Jones: You just never know. That was the perfect example