Entrepreneurial Assemblages from off the Map: (Trans) National Designs for Tangier

Abstract

Poststructuralist perspectives need to be reconciled with political economic readings of urban globalization. One approach complements the other: the enactment of distantiated circuits and the territorialization of fl ows occur within existing geographies of uneven development while contingently reproducing or reshaping such spatial conditions of possibility. We argue that broadening the realm of critical urbanism is particularly relevant for researching peripheral entrepreneurialisms and their inherent (im) mobilities, conspicuous ambition paired with unavoidable constraints. This paper focuses on Tanger City Center, a landmark redevelopment controversial for its exclusionary designs and troubled inception. Adopting mobile methods with relational perspectives, we retrace the translocal negotiation of this symptomatic assemblage. However, we show that its territorialization cannot be understood apart from the statesponsored remaking of Tangier into an expansive yet also unequal and fragmented city-region. Furthermore, underneath globalist discourse, the assemblage evinces circumscribed (trans)national agency at the planning stage, while subsequent frictions and disruptions punctuate the construction rhythm. Alongside its theoretical thrust, the paper contributes to: (a) the advancement of explicitly urban interpretations of globalization of the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Morocco's emerging neoliberal geographies under King Mohammed VI; and (b) the diversifi cation of narratives of globalization-led urban change by theorizing entrepreneurial predicaments from off the map of global city imaginations.

Modelling urban futures

“…The modelling of Liverpool Waters has been accompanied by the association of the development to other places. The attempted creation of visual connections between cities is by now a familiar strategy in the context of urban development (Cook and Ward 2012;Kanai and Kutz 2013); in this case a desire to forge such connections has led to the construction and dissemination of models that abstract and unify the city (Lefebvre 1991), rendering more plausible the fleeting visual similarities between Liverpool and other 'global waterfront cities'. Other spatial tropes are also deployed to emphasise transformation; given the controversies centring on the city's threatened World Heritage Site status, foregrounding the out-of-keeping high-rise massings of the tall buildings may seem counter-intuitive, but from my analysis Peel-emboldened in the planning process due to their extensive regional landholdings and strategic vision for capitalising thereon (Dembski 2014;Harrison 2013)-have emphasised a 'tall building aesthetic' that increases transnational resonance (Grubbauer 2013;Jones 2009;Sklair 2005Sklair , 2006 and gives a mandate for a dramatic, thoroughgoing development (investment pending).…”

“…These accounts overlook the wide range of political moves that the deployment of models makes more possible. More critical social scientific analyses of modelling (Kanai and Kutz 2013;Moon 2003;Scott 1998;Yaneva 2009) have sought to engage this starting point by framing modelling as a somewhat 'deceptive craft' (Janke 1978, 52) that-no matter how technically sophisticated, detailed or fine-grained-always requires foregrounding some aspects of the world and the backgrounding of others.…”

Entrepreneurship and the city

“…Not all public-private partnerships have industrial applied knowledge in sight. Many seek cost reductions in building urban infrastructure, for example, in urban renewal (see MacLeod, 2002;also, Weber, 2002), in the planning of new urban areas (see Datta, 2015), and in the development of new industrial complexes (see Kanai & Kutz, 2011;Kanai & Kutz, 2013). My use of the term speculative to define these types of projects is merely to differentiate them from productive projects.…”

On the Peripheries of Planetary Urbanization: Globalizing Manaus and its Expanding Impact

“…Writings on entrepreneurial cities discuss the heightened interplace competitiveness in the context of reconfigured territorial states and the emergence of market-centric regimes of urban governance, topics that are further analyzed by the literature on urban globalization and neoliberal urbanism. (Brenner and Theodore, 2002;Kanai and Kutz, 2013;Moulaert et al, 2003;Roy and Ong, 2011). Other studies of networked and mobile urbanism help us to understand how selectively articulated networked infrastructures and mobility practices enact flows and transfers across privileged nodes while creating tunneling effects to bypass peripheral territories (Graham and Marvin, 2001;McCann and Ward, 2011).…”