Situating the “Cultural Reach” of Cities in a Multiscalar Field

Abstract

AbstractOn the basis of empirical material from a city bordering Syria and Turkey, this article aims to situate the city’s emerging landscape of culture and arts in the 2000s within the dynamics of neoliberalizing city-making. It provides a political economy of the city’s “cultural reach” by connecting the dynamics of cultural production to value creating processes in and through urban regeneration to understand when, how, and which groups and sites become de- and re-valorized. It highlights the futility of nation state-city, state-civil society binaries in analysing the power geometry of multiscalar actors involved in the work, efficacy and the potency of cultural networks, institutions, and “cultural diplomacy.”