Global Downtowns / / ed. by Gary McDonogh, Marina Peterson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn Press eBook Package Complete Collection
• MitwirkendeR: Brash, Julian,; Christens, Brian D.,; Cunningham Bissell, William,; Hill, Matthew J.,; Hing- Yuk Wong, Cindy,; Hourani, Najib,; Kanna, Ahmed,; Lloyd, Richard,; Magrinyà, Francesc,; Maza, Gaspar,; McDonogh, Gary W.,; Peterson, Marina,; Ren, Xuefei,; Rotenberg, Robert,; Weinstein, Liza,
• HerausgeberIn: McDonogh, Gary,; Peterson, Marina,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: The City in the Twenty-First Century
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (368 p.) :; 13 illus.
• Other title: Frontmatter --; CONTENTS --; Introduction: Globalizing Downtown --; PART I. Imagination --; 1. Toward a Genealogy of Downtowns --; 2. From Peking to Beijing: Production of Centrality in the Global Age --; 3. Simulations of Barcelona: Urban Projects in Port Spaces (1981- 2002) --; 4. Urbanist Ideology and the Production of Space in the United Arab Emirates: An Anthropological Critique --; PART II. Consumption --; 5. Reaching for Dubai: Nashville Dreams of a Twenty- First- Century Skyline --; 6. From National Utopia to Elite Enclave: "Economic Realities" and Resistance in the Reconstruction of Beirut --; 7. When the Film Festival Comes to (Down)Town: Transnational Circuits, Tourism, and the Urban Economy of Images --; 8. The Future of the Past: World Heritage, National Identity, and Urban Centrality in Late Socialist Cuba --; PART III. Conflict --; 9. Utopia/Dystopia: Art and Downtown Development in Los Angeles --; 10. "Slum- Free Mumbai" and Other Entrepreneurial Strategies in the Making of Mumbai's Global Downtown --; 11. Downtown as Brand, Downtown as Land: Urban Elites and Neoliberal Development in Contemporary New York City --; 12. Beside Downtown: Global Chinatowns --; NOTES --; Bibliography --; Contributors --; Index --; Acknowledgments
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780812208054; 9783110413458; 9783110413618; 9783110459548
• DOI: 10.9783/9780812208054
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: ed. by Gary McDonogh, Marina Peterson.

Global Downtowns reconsiders one of the defining features of urban life-the energy and exuberance that characterize downtown areas-within a framework of contemporary globalization and change. It analyzes the iconic centers of global cities through individual case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States, considering issues of function, population, imagery, and growth. Contributors to the volume use ethnographic and cultural analysis to identify downtowns as products of the activities of planners, power elites, and consumers and as zones of conflict and competition. Whether claiming space on a world stage through architecture, media events, or historical tourism or facing the claims of different social groups for a place at the center, downtowns embody the heritage of the modern city and its future.Essays draw on extensive fieldwork and archival study in Beijing, Barcelona, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dar es Salaam, Dubai, Nashville, Lima, Philadelphia, Mumbai, Havana, Beirut, and Paris, among other cities. They examine the visions of planners and developers, cultural producers, governments, theoreticians, immigrants, and outcasts. Through these perspectives, the book explores questions of space and place, consumption, mediation, and images as well as the processes by which urban elites learn from each other as well as contest local hegemony.Global Downtowns raises important questions for those who work with issues of urban centrality in governance, planning, investment, preservation, and social reform. The volume insists that however important the narratives of individual spaces-theories of American downtowns, images of global souks, or diasporic formations of ethnic enclaves as interconnected nodes-they also must be situated within a larger, dynamic framework of downtowns as centers of modern urban imagination.