Visual Perception of Cities Centers Between Globalization and Nationalisation

Abstract

Over the past few decades, cities’ identities have been subjected to dramatic global influences, the rapid modernization have transformed and internationalized cultures, and planning ideologies which affected the spatial development and consequence, the urban visual identity. However, within the need of homogeneity, and the “call to difference”, globalization / nationalism discourse is becoming the difficult dialectical synthesis of national identity and modernity. whereas architecture does not operate only on the local level, but also on the global through the work and creations of celebrity architects among other factors, thus, those architects or architects who seek to have such status through iconic designs tend to have global rather than local perspectives. As a result, architecture is increasingly becoming a message of global abstract culture rather than being cultural element of stability for the local. The aim of this paper is to look at the visual identity of urban in new capital cities and how they change under the impact of globalization, city centers of Dubai, Brasilia, Doha, and New Capital Cairo have been chosen as cases to be studied because they have been significantly shaped particularly with regard to contemporary planning policies, reflecting the needs and modern outlook of contemporary architecture. Moreover, this research paper focuses on the problems of urban/architecture visual identity and the trends of its expression by urban/architectural tools, examines the formation of identity as a construct and indirect form of architecture, the phenomena of globalization and pastiche of local styles, and analyzes the discourses of identity between globalization and nationalism.