Reimaging the Pariah City: Urban Development in Belfast & Detroit (Urban and Regional Planning and Development)

This book examines the pressure that politicians, policy makers and planners are under in Detroit and Belfast to put 'image building' at the centre of urban development. The book also considers the consequences of such pressures. The heightened importance of image generally nowadays, in the formulation of development agendas, is discussed before a focus on two worst case scenarios: Detroit as the 'natural' selection by Hollywood for the urban nightmare "Robocop" films and Belfast which is frequently bracketed together with Beirut by the international media. Image mobilization through physical planning, which in Detroit dates back to the Renaissance Centre of Henry Ford in the early seventies and which in Belfast dates from the revival of the city centre in the eighties, is set in the context of the wider economic and political environment in both divided regions.