Global Downtowns

Contents

CONTENTS Introduction: Globalizing Downtown 1 Gary W. McDonogh and Marina Peterson Part I. Imagination 27 1. Toward a Genealogy of Downtowns 29 Robert Rotenberg 2. From Peking to Beijing: Production of Centrality in the Global Age 48 Xuefei Ren 3. Simulations of Barcelona: Urban Projects in Port Spaces (1981–2002) 65 Francesc Magrinyà and Gaspar Maza 4. Urbanist Ideology and the Production of Space in the United Arab Emirates: An Anthropological Critique 90 Ahmed Kanna vi Contents Part II. Consumption 111 5. Reaching for Dubai: Nashville Dreams of a Twenty-First-Century Skyline 113 Richard Lloyd and Brian D. Christens 6. From National Utopia to Elite Enclave: “Economic Realities” and Resistance in the Reconstruction of Beirut 136 Najib Hourani 7. When the Film Festival Comes to (Down)Town: Transnational Circuits, Tourism, and the Urban Economy of Images 160 William Cunningham Bissell 8. The Future of the Past: World Heritage, National Identity, and Urban Centrality in Late Socialist Cuba 186 Matthew J. Hill Part III. Conflict 207 9. Utopia/Dystopia: Art and Downtown Development in Los Angeles 209 Marina Peterson 10. “Slum-Free Mumbai” and Other Entrepreneurial Strategies in the Making of Mumbai’s Global Downtown 234 Liza Weinstein 11. Downtown as Brand, Downtown as Land: Urban Elites and Neoliberal Development in Contemporary New York City 253 Julian Brash Contents vii 12. Beside Downtown: Global Chinatowns 273 Gary W. McDonogh and Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong Notes 2 97 Bibliography 3 11 List of Contributors 345 Index 3 49 Acknowledgments 359 This page intentionally left blank ...