The energy of the city: Marshall Berman and New Year's Eve in Sydney more

On New Year’s Eve (NYE) near the Sydney Opera House, a loudspeaker announcement
pierces the anticipatory atmosphere:
Welcome to Sydney’s New Year’s Eve.
Coupled with the same message glaring out from the type of temporary signs usually used for announcing traffic problems, the message is that this site – the open, public space
around the Opera House – is Sydney’s NYE. This space, this event in this spot belongs to the city, it represents the city – this city – in a way that other spaces in Sydney do not. We
are welcome, encouraged to celebrate it – a celebration of the city, as much as NYE – but we are also clearly guests. We can claim no ownership over the space or the event – it is
Sydney’s. Early in the twentieth century, NYE was considered to be evidence of a new urbanism – a contrast to older societies, England especially – evidence of Sydney’s more youthful exuberance. And in the early twenty-first century, NYE continues to assert a sense of quintessential Sydneyness – to a point where, as its guests, our participation serves to affirm an urban identity that has nothing to do with us.