globalising melbourne

Forgot to post a mention of the recent news concerning the ongoing transformation of major Australian media company, PBL, into a global gaming business. PBL has divested its separate gaming assets (the centrepiece of which is Melbourne's Crown Entertainment Complex, aka 'the casino'). Now, as part of a joint venture, they're opened a Crown in Macau and are also on their way to building a Crown Casino on the Las Vegas strip (not an entertainment complex this time - why deny it in Las Vegas after all). For Whitebait it is a nice reminder of the fact that globalisation is not simply some force out there that affects a peripheral city like Melbourne; rather, globalisation is itself a condition produced (however unevenly) in/as part of/from the local.

(If for some reason you don't have a TV player or a life or anything better to do you can download an article I wrote in the late 1990s about Crown in Melbourne).

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Was reminded to post on this after seeing this quote:

Las Vegas enables you not only to gaze upon spectacle but also to sleep in its bed and have sex with it.

-William L Fox, In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle (2005)