Urban heritage ‘space’ under neoliberal development: a tale of a Jordanian plaza

Abstract

What happens when urban heritage spaces within developing countries, such as Jordan, are subject to touristic development funded by international bodies, such as the World Bank? This question is explored theoretically and practically by considering a popular local plaza in the secondary Jordanian city of Jerash that has been subject to three tourism development projects funded by the World Bank. The study, which incorporates and critiques the discourse of neoliberalism within urban heritage development studies, seeks to analyse the World Bank projects and, more specifically, how they have defined, approached and produced outcomes in the Jerash plaza and its context. In so doing, the study triangulates the analysis with accounts by local respondents that identify major drawbacks in the World Bank approach, particularly its emphasis on conventional ‘readings’ of urban space that highlight universal values and histories, while neglecting and marginalising local values and understandings. The triangulation offers attentive ‘readings’ of the plaza as a place understood and experienced by a people. The challenge is to break with the neoliberal paradigm that dominates urban heritage development programmes (and their associated West–East dualisms and top-down approaches) by presenting local sociocultural and economic contexts as assets to enrich development projects, rather than obstacles to be ‘fixed’ and ‘fitted’ for tourism.

Keywords:

• urban heritage development
• neoliberalism
• local context
• secondary cities
• Jordan

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful for the peoples of Jerash. Their cooperation inspired us to conduct this study and their insights enriched our understanding of the plaza. Special thanks to Hisham Al Banna, Enad Marashdeh and Nezar Alshaer for their help during the fieldwork time. Architect Shireen Athamneh helped us to prepare the map presented in this study; for that we are grateful. We thank the anonymous referees who helped us to organise our thoughts and develop our work. We deeply appreciate Dr Glenn Corbett’s generous contribution of proof reading the article and clarifying its language.