Daher...
vention in the form of architectural cosmetics affecting the historic urban tissue of the city without a serious attempt to
address the establishment of heritage tools, systems, or sustainable institutional practices at the municipal level of these
towns that insure the continuity of urban regeneration and community involvement in the long run.^4
Furthermore, these projects lead to the circulation of different forms of urban and heritage projects and of a prototypi-
cal tourist experience within the region. Gradually, not only are local differences between these cities disintegrating, but
the urban experience also is being confined to consuming the same manufactured version of heritage and to gazing at
the same urban furniture detail, lamp fixture, or floor pattern.
THE CHALLENGE OF C ONSERVING THE REGION’S HERITAGE OF MODERNITY
One of the problems facing heritage conservation in the region is the absence of a critical definition of its cultural heri-
tage which would incorporate marginalized realities such as the region’s heritage of Modernity. The middle of the 20th
century in the region centered on a critical and informed public opinion in different walks of life and actually produced
an architecture that was dynamic, avant-garde, and progressive. An interesting local version of “Modern” architecture
emerged between the 1940s and the 1970s, signifying a society that was open to different positive cultural changes and
progressive transformation. Beirut was the heart of the region’s Modernity. Whether it was the Hotel St. Georges, the
Shams Building, the Pan American Building, or the various cinemas and cafés on Hamra Street, the buildings of that
era signified an enlightened architectural practice that is local and global, yet critical and exceptional. Examples from
Damascus and ‘Amman included the National Museum in Damascus, several buildings belonging to the University of
Damascus, and finally, the Insurance Building, the Intercontinental Hotel, and the Youth Sport City in Amman.
Unfortunately, the region’s growing consumer-based and uncritical public lacks a genuine appreciation of its heritage of
Modernity due in certain cases to being unconscious of its value and significance, and in other cases, to the dominance
of the “dollar” on people’s value systems. This is leading to the destruction and disfiguring of the valuable heritage that
once represented a true testimonial to the region’s temporal depth and critical public sphere.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In the midst of intense neoliberal urban restructuring, there is a need for research that goes beyond the classical analysis
of the traditional Arab city, and that focuses instead on current urban transformations, the flow of global capital, and
its effect on the realities of cities, urban structures, and polity, the metropolitization processes from below addressing
issues of historic cities’ core conservation and regeneration, sustainable and environmentally conscious urban growth,
the migration and circulation of humans and capital, the formation of slums, and the details of social life vis à vis lines
of inclusion and exclusion.
- Rami Daher, “Tourism: Heritage and Urban Transformations in Jordan and Lebanon: Emerging Actors and Global-
Local Juxtapositions,” in Rami Daher, ed., Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change and Transformation (England:
Channel View Publications, 2007), pp. 263-307.