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On not being Dubai: infrastructures of urban cultural policy in Istanbul & Beirut

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  • Centner, Ryan

Abstract

This paper compares how Istanbul and Beirut both attempt to underline their cultural and developmental uniqueness today in contrast to a metonymic menace — Dubai, standing in for spectacular yet supposedly culture-less Gulf cities. Even amid their own speculative construction frenzies that threaten local heritage, Turkish and Lebanese city-shapers assert theirs are “real” cities because they have “civilization” and “history.” By addressing their own efforts to build, defend, or oppose physical infrastructures related to local urban culture, Istanbullus and Beirutis rely on and reassert strategic, phatic discourses that frequently reference Gulf cities as counterpoint. Analysis focuses on how each city crafts a distinctive urban profile via civilizational appeals to historic senses of culture, inflecting infrastructural developments related to bridging (Istanbul) and bordering (Beirut). Historical truisms are deployed with marked flexibility to showcase these cities as “not Dubai.” This study offers lessons on the particular worlding of Middle Eastern cities and the role of discourses in the material-symbolic infrastructure of implicit urban cultural policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Centner, Ryan, 2020. "On not being Dubai: infrastructures of urban cultural policy in Istanbul & Beirut," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105050, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:105050
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105050/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Istanbul; Beirut; Dubai; infrastructure; discourse; heritage; development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

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    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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