Paper short abstract:

Taking Jerusalem and Istanbul as case studies, in this paper I examine how struggles over urban heritage shape projects of social change against neoliberal urbanism.

Paper long abstract:

Taking Jerusalem and Istanbul as case studies, in this paper I argue - along the lines of an essay I am developing with Michael Herzfeld - that struggles over urban heritage are particularly important to the unfolding of projects of social change against neoliberal urbanism and other forms of discriminatory spatial planning. These struggles often originate in civic campaigns and coalitions of local actors and citizens claiming their rights to public space, or rather, their common rights to a space and a heritage that the public has allowed to get privatized and alienated from its makers and users. What is striking is that these campaigns are directed against projects of so-called urban regeneration which themselves claim to be about preserving heritage. Heritage thus emerges as an important site of globalized urbanism. The recent Gezi Park protests in Istanbul are a paradigmatic example of this dynamics - as is Jerusalem, in spite of its exceptional status. Nowadays heritage is mobilized by both state and capital, and by social movements in their attempts to control the form of the urban: what counts as urban heritage and public good is thus a crucial question.