According to John Hannigan, professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, the golden age of urban entertainment was from 1895 to 1925. Then, cities went on the decline until developers and leisure merchants revived many inner cities with malls and festive market places in the 1980s. The new urban landscape of the 90s is "fantasy city," an infrastructure consisting of megaplex cinemas, big box stores, themed restaurants, record and video superstores, simulation theatres, and virtual reality arcades
.While many consumers — especially tourists and suburbanites — salute these environments, others see them as destructive of local communities and further evidence of the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Hannigan pinpoints fantasy city's appeal in its seductive technology, its new sources of cultural capital, its creation of an environment of riskless risks, and its affective ambiance. Here everything is entertainment whether shopping, eating out, or attending a sports event. Hannigan concludes with an assessment of the MacDonaldization of the marketplace and a look at the boom of themed entertainment (based on the Disney models) in the Far East.