Prestige Projects Research Articles

Symbols of State: Explaining Prestige Projects in the Global South

Abstract Why do governments pursue flashy international development projects despite more basic material needs? I argue that economically questionable “prestige projects” can be politically useful for legitimacy-seeking governments of small states in the Global South. Prestige projects provide these governments with otherwise unavailable symbolic capital as well as a means for seeking international status. Using new data on China’s global development finance since 1949, I document nearly 400 prestige projects and show they are concentrated in developing countries with small economies that increase their support for China’s diplomatic interests. An illustrative case study of Costa Rica’s national stadium shows how host countries use prestige projects to acquire national symbolic capital and pursue status. Evidence from a survey experiment in Papua New Guinea further demonstrates that prestige projects are uniquely associated with the national government and status-seeking motives. The findings contribute to research on the political economy of foreign aid, international development, status-seeking, and Chinese development finance.

Changing the focus in multimedia story production: Experiences from high budget and low budget production settings

Complex multimedia stories have initially emerged as prestige projects from high budget newsrooms such as The New York Times or the Washington Post; over time, both the practical experiences with the format as well as the developed technological affordances made it possible for smaller, more inexperienced newsrooms to produce complex multimedia stories, too. Within two different studies, we analyzed the production processes in both high budget and low budget settings. In this paper, we contrast the findings of both studies with the goal of abstracting indicators of change and implications for future productions. Based on the abstraction, we suggest changing the focus in multimedia storytelling productions from a product-oriented process toward a more process-oriented production; from a focus on hard production factors such as numbers and personnel to more soft factors such as distributed responsibilities and internal workflows; and from a focus of rather incidental communication toward a more managed communication within the production team. We conclude by deriving further implications for future research as well as journalistic practice and education.

Flagship Projects and Socio-Spatial Inequalities. The Case of the Post Refugee Urban Neighbourhood in Kallithea, Attica, Greece

The issue of flagship projects is becoming more and more timely in the contemporary globalized urban context. The overall transformation of a former decayed urban enclave through a well targeted large-scale intervention is found in many cities around the world. Following the narrative of Bilbao, which is considered to be a success story, many cities attempted to imitate the “Bilbao effect”. Taking into account the international experience on the field, this paper tries to analyze a Greek example, delving into the specificities of time and space. The selected case study could be considered as one of the first flagship or prestige projects in Greece and is strongly associated with the concept of “Athenian Riviera”, a metropolitan coastal zone that is currently under urban regeneration. This prestige project is located inside a former refugee enclave that has until today a significant number of old refugee housing complexes, constructed around 1930. The stark contradiction between the iconic building and the derelict neighboring refugee apartments reflects clearly the impact of site-specific urban interventions; they widen the gab between upgraded and degenerated enclaves inside the city. The presence of vulnerable households in the area raises concerns on future gentrification procedures. Field work combined with literature review is being made so as to adumbrate the crucial issues in the area of study. Photographic documentation and cartographic depiction are used as tools so as to illustrate the physiognomy of the area. The ultimate purpose of the paper is to address the issue of socio-spatial inequalities in the era of globalization, where the implementation of place branding strategies puts aside certain social factors, leading to spatial segregation between degraded and upgraded areas.

Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks. Edited by Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng

This wide-ranging volume of essays brings together ten substantial pieces of research on the realm of the ‘artisanal’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Several pieces focus on France, but each is paired with another examination and these pairings take in the Ottoman Empire, India, Spanish-colonial Mexico, China, colonial Virginia, and the goldfields of Australia. The editors have made a strong effort to order the materials in terms of fruitful juxtapositions and parallels; each of five pairs of pieces also has a reflective essay by a further noted scholar (although, as is sometimes the case with such endeavours, some of these are in practice little more than summaries of the preceding substantive pieces). The editors’ Introduction lays out some of the practical and theoretical challenges of engaging with the ‘artisanal’ in a historical and transnational context: the slippery nature, then and now, of the status of craft versus art, of rational reflection versus (imagined) static tradition; and the implicit and explicit Eurocentric biases of narratives around the movement between these conceptions. The essays themselves are the real strength of the collection, and it is pleasing to see them well illustrated, with seventy-six plates overall, most in full colour, allowing for a visual grasp of the objects under discussion. A short review cannot effectively summarize the wide range of topics on display, but there is much here to appreciate. The French chapters are perhaps among the most academically conventional, largely focusing on prestige projects (the language of sovereignty in the gardens of Versailles; interior design in speculative building; the social and cultural aspirations of the early Enlightenment Société des arts), although Valérie Nègre’s contribution on the subversively ‘useless’ writings of an eighteenth-century artisan carpenter is an intriguing sidelight on such approaches (p. 328). A piece on Ottoman urban festivals is particularly lavishly illustrated, and relates the participation of craft guilds in official processions to the methods of representing them in visual records of such events, and to the stylistic shifts of Ottoman art at an East–West crossroads. A piece on Mughal jasmine bowers and artisanal horticulture offers intriguing (though, due to the book’s organization, only implicit) contrasts and parallels with the consideration of Versailles. Dorothy Ko’s chapter on the near-thousand-year history of porcelain production at Jingdezhen, and the incorporation of material production techniques into folkloric stories amongst the different artisanal communities there, is remarkable. Dennis Carr’s piece introduces a particularly striking object, a Mexican eighteenth-century bookcase-desk that is both a metaphorical map of the bringing together of European and Asian decorative techniques, and a literal map of the estate for which it was made. Neil Kamil offers a tour de force over almost fifty pages that takes us from the mention of cane chairs in the journal of a Huguenot exile in 1715 to a global history of the rattan that formed such objects, interwoven with almost dizzying insights into the cultural worlds of exiles, traders, and workers who made, sold, and valued them.

The Bureaucratisation of Architecture in Post-War Italy: SGI under Aldo Samaritani, 1945–73

ABSTRACTIn Italy following the second world war, the Vatican-controlled real-estate developer and contractor Società Generale Immobiliare (SGI) emerged as a major force in the country’s reconstruction process. From its Rome headquarters, the ‘Leviathan’ (as the journalist Antonio Cederna called it) devised, delivered and managed dozens of schemes across the peninsula — from residential and commercial developments to industrial, road transport and water infrastructure. None of this would have been possible without the establishment, immediately after the end of the war, of a centralised administrative system coordinating the work of the company’s 10,000 employees. Making use of the company’s unpublished documents, this article examines the bureaucratisation of SGI’s design and construction processes in the period 1945–73. It looks at the development of the company’s in-house information management system; the criteria it adopted in appointing its architectural staff; the modernisation of the company’s office space in Rome; the predicament of the architects on its payroll; its use of high-profile ‘signature’ architects for prestige projects; and the firm’s later adoption of project management techniques developed in the United States. It also looks at the way that the company exploited national and municipal planning regulations (and the gaps within them) to produce building types and urban configurations not previously seen in Italy. Overall, the article situates SGI’s ‘bureaucratic drift’ in the context of the increasingly corporate and specialised professional world of post-war western architecture.

Prestige Projects Limited: Challenges in Transitioning to New Accounting Policy

ABSTRACT This case provides an experiential learning opportunity to (1) appreciate the role of professional judgment in accounting policy choices, (2) evaluate the effect of accounting decisions on other business functions, and (3) understand the challenges in transitioning to a new accounting policy. Prestige's previous auditors had allowed the use of output-based measure (milestones completed) to compute the percentage-of-completion (POC) for its long-term construction contracts. The newly appointed auditors recommended switching to input-based measures (costs incurred) to compute POC. Students must choose the appropriate financial reporting policy, considering accounting and non-accounting issues. The case addresses an important context because almost one in every eight large 500 companies is engaged in long-term construction contracts (AICPA 2013). Although the case setting is in India, it can be used in any country given its GAAP-agnostic nature. The case is best suited for intermediate accounting courses in which the topic of revenue recognition is addressed.

Russian Women and the End of Soviet Socialism: Everyday Experiences of Economic Change by McKinney Judith (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 376 negative view of the socialist version of informal housing (Schwarzwohnen) which he considers as ‘perhaps the ultimate form of theft’ (p. 47). I might be overly sensitive here due to my own research on that topic but I wonder why someone who occupies an empty, derelict flat and makes it habitable at her/his own expense can’t be considered a grassroots version of ‘urban ingenuity’? Another consequence of Demshuk’s laudatory view of local authorities is that he downplays the involvement of his ‘heroes’ in the state apparatus. The ‘Bowlingtreff’ was a local prestige project which emulated, and perhaps even surpassed, comparable prestige projects of the SED in the capital. Its realization was a participatory dictatorship en miniature, with a governing body ‘Aufbaustab’ and practices of volunteer mobilization which were common in the GDR. After its completion, the SED used the ‘Bowlingtreff’ to gain legitimacy for the party dictatorship with a similar incorporating gesture to the people as its big brother, the ‘Palast der Republik’ in Berlin. Therefore, I consider the modification of Fulbrook’s notion of participatory dictatorship into ‘participation without dictatorship’ (p. 5) unconvincing. Applying the concept of ‘contested dictatorship’ would probably have been better suited. Moreover, the focus on the binary of ‘good’ local vs. ‘bad’ central officials leads to a slight neglect of the deeper problem of scarcity of resources. Overall, this a fascinating multifaceted book which explores an often overlooked aspect of urban informality in late Communism. It successfully uses urban microhistory in order to reveal characteristics of disintegrating late Communism. After the university church and the ‘Bowlingtreff’, I wonder what building comes next. My suggestion would be to focus on the demolished building of Karl-Heine-Str. 30. The subsidized demolition of that beautiful historical building in 2004 was one out of 446 historical buildings taken down in Leipzig between 1990 and 2006. After Communist barbarism and urban ingenuity, a third book on capitalist destruction in post-socialist Leipzig would bring the topic to full circle. Universität Leipzig Udo Grashoff McKinney, Judith. Russian Women and the End of Soviet Socialism: Everyday Experiences of Economic Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020. xii + 285 pp. Illustrations. Notes. References. Index. £59.99; £44.99 (paperback & e-book). This volume makes a welcome and valuable addition to the literature on the everyday experiences of women during the tumultuous period of Gorbachev’s reforms during the late 1980s in the Soviet Union and in the years following REVIEWS 377 the country’s collapse in 1991. Judith McKinney has been a long-term visitor to the Soviet Union, having first gone to the country in 1968 and then returning as an undergraduate spending a semester in Leningrad in 1971. She went back again in the mid-1990s to a much different city and to a vastly changed postSoviet Russia. A decade later, she made the first of a series of visits that allowed her to see the now newly stabilized Russia at first hand. This book emerges from a series of interviews she conducted with thirty women in Iaroslavl´ in 2012 and these are supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in the more ethnically diverse Astrakhan´ in 2010. As with many interview projects (my own included), McKinney draws attention to the fact that her respondents are drawn overwhelmingly from middle-class, educated women, many of whom were mothers of young children and adolescents at the height of the crisis period. Their experiences and testimonies provide individual detail to the findings of related studies. Based on these oral testimonies and with reference to related academic studies, the book provides a fascinating insight into a range of women’s life trajectories resulting from the dramatic economic changes of the lateSoviet and post-Soviet period. The material emerging from the interviews is investigated thematically with some focus on the respondents’ changing domestic circumstances and familial relationships, but mostly, as the sub-title indicates, it looks at women’s working lives in the rapidly and vastly changing economic landscape of the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century — the impact of perestroika in the late 1980s, of ‘wild capitalism’ of the 1990s and...

Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany by Demshuk Andrew (review)

REVIEWS 375 Demshuk, Andrew. Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2020. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95. This is Andrew Demshuk’s second book which is again centred around a building in Leipzig. After using the demolition of the university church as a magnifying glass to explore life the GDR in the 1960s, the new book groups its narrative around the ‘Bowlingtreff’ — an underground bowling alley with restaurants and bars. The title of the book is not ideal, though, as it is not about bowling. ‘Can Leipzig still be saved’ might have been more appropriate. Large parts deal with the precarious situation of the second biggest town of the GDR during the 1980s (while the ‘Bowlingtreff’ makes up only one sixth of the book). Much like everywhere in East Germany, most of the old housing stock was in disrepair. The author paints a vivid, detailed picture of urban dystopia in Leipzig, before he focuses on various initiatives to save the city. In view of plans to demolish many old city quarters and to rebuild them with concrete tenement blocks, city planners, architects and local officials sought to develop hybrid solutions. They tried to save some of the most precious parts of the town and combined them with newly built structures. This ambitious, postmodern and only rudimentarily realized architectural approach is one of the defining traits of what the author calls ‘urban ingenuity’. However, this only vaguely defined notion also entails an organizational element, namely the informal mobilization of resources by local officials. In most cases, these local initiatives were initiated and carried out independent of central state planning, ‘off the book’. The amazing willingness of local architects and bureaucrats to engage in semi-legal building projects is an often overlooked aspect of late Communism. The book offers a number of astonishing examples. In stark contrast to the willful execution of central orders to demolish Leipzig’s university church in 1968, twenty years later local officials tried to work around the centralized system. The ‘Bowlingtreff’ was the most striking example with an unplanned budget of almost 20 million Marks. But there were several semi-legal building projects in Leipzig (including a student club and a swimming hall) and the bowling alley was just the culmination of an already existing informal practice. Andrew Demshuk becomes quite enthusiastic over semi-legal city planning. The building of the Bowlingtreff is depicted as an exciting project that brought not just a postmodern ‘touch of Las Vegas’ (p. 126) to Leipzig, it was allegedly ‘superior to bowling alleys under capitalism’ (p. 96). Without any comparison, such praise can hardly convince a reader like me who grew up in the GDR and learnedtomistrustpropaganda.Moreimportantly,thedownsideofDemshuk’s affirmative discussion of informal local city planning in Leipzig is a rather SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 376 negative view of the socialist version of informal housing (Schwarzwohnen) which he considers as ‘perhaps the ultimate form of theft’ (p. 47). I might be overly sensitive here due to my own research on that topic but I wonder why someone who occupies an empty, derelict flat and makes it habitable at her/his own expense can’t be considered a grassroots version of ‘urban ingenuity’? Another consequence of Demshuk’s laudatory view of local authorities is that he downplays the involvement of his ‘heroes’ in the state apparatus. The ‘Bowlingtreff’ was a local prestige project which emulated, and perhaps even surpassed, comparable prestige projects of the SED in the capital. Its realization was a participatory dictatorship en miniature, with a governing body ‘Aufbaustab’ and practices of volunteer mobilization which were common in the GDR. After its completion, the SED used the ‘Bowlingtreff’ to gain legitimacy for the party dictatorship with a similar incorporating gesture to the people as its big brother, the ‘Palast der Republik’ in Berlin. Therefore, I consider the modification of Fulbrook’s notion of participatory dictatorship into ‘participation without dictatorship’ (p. 5) unconvincing. Applying the concept of ‘contested dictatorship’ would probably have been better suited. Moreover, the focus on the binary of ‘good’ local vs. ‘bad’ central officials leads to a slight neglect of the deeper problem...

Developing analysis approaches for energy walls

The use of diaphragm or bored pile walls as ground heat exchangers as well as embedded retaining structures has gained popularity in recent years. Dual use of structure foundations in this way has the potential to reduce the costs of associated ground source heat pump systems, hence providing opportunities for the take up of renewable heating and cooling in our cities. Such systems have been recently constructed as part of major infrastructure schemes in London and Paris. However, there are no standard analytical analysis approaches to permit routine design of the thermal aspects of these novel planar ground heat exchangers. Hence assessment of energy availability on most practical projects either (i) adapts existing methods from ground heat exchangers of different geometry, which runs the risk of incurring errors; or (ii) resorts to time consuming numerical simulation, often in partnership with a research organisation. Neither approach is sustainable for routine roll out of the technology beyond prestige projects. To start to fill this gap in knowledge, this paper presents the first feasibility assessment of developing specific analytical tools for use with energy walls.

Pivots and Prestige: Venture Capital Contracts with Experimentation

We study venture capital financing with experimentation. An entrepreneur contracts with an investor and has private information about a project, which requires costly experimentation by both parties to succeed. In equilibrium, investors learn about the project from the arrival of exogenous information and from the entrepreneur's contract offers. The optimal contract features vesting and dilution, consistent with empirical evidence. Pivots and prestige projects emerge as signaling devices. Surprisingly, technological progress, which lowers the cost of experimentation or which increases the rate of learning, delays separation of types and worsens adverse selection.

Small horse pulls big cart in the scalar struggles of competing administrations in Anhui Province, China

With its various layers of territorial administration, China provides a picture of the intricacies of scalar practices designed to enhance the competitive position of local governments. In this paper, we examine one arena of scalar competition, a fourth-tier city in Anhui Province that struggles to maintain its authority over its component parts. We focus on contests that play themselves out both vertically and horizontally over prestige projects and territory that can enhance revenue and fill coffers, noting their intensity and complexity. We argue that scalar arrangements in China have at least two distinctive features: they are bound into an all-encompassing system of hierarchical ranks, which covers not only territorial administrations but also all party and state institutions and officials; and the competition they engender is first and foremost related to position within this hierarchy. We discuss the scalar struggles of territorial administrations in terms of flux and fixity, the flux induced by intense competition and the hierarchical fixity sought by the central state. We conclude by arguing that these processes diverge from conventional analyses that explain state reterritorialisation as a response to capital flows.

Comment on “China's Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past, Present, and Future”

Comment on “China's Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past, Present, and Future”

The architecture of the British Mandate in Iraq: nation-building and state creation

This paper seeks to examine and contextualise the architecture and infrastructure projects developed by the British during the occupation of Iraq in the First World War and the Mandate period that immediately followed. Relying heavily on military-political events for its structure and underlying narrative, the paper demonstrates how architecture, planning and ‘development’ were integral to the act of creating the new state and were very much part of the colonisers’ vision to create a nation in their own image. Works were deployed to imbue a sense of collective belonging and national identity through the creation of new town plans, as well as through institutions such as museums and universities. A certain dissonance emerges between the infrastructure and prestige projects, with the latter presenting an imagined and fabricated notion of Iraqi history, blended with a grandiose colonial style imported from India, and designed predominantly by James M. Wilson. The infrastructure projects began with sanitation improvements, road and rail installation, and expansion of the Basra docklands to attract international shipping and for the export of oil. Further building projects undertaken by the Public Works Department included a large number of administrative buildings called serais. Built at strategic locations, they were deployed as multi-functional centres for justice, taxation and land registration as well as places where local devolved empowerment was instigated. Iraqi architecture from this period has been largely overlooked in the emerging global histories of architecture, yet it offers an important view of the quandaries that faced late British colonial architecture in its attempts to respond to, and reflect changing and hostile political conditions.

Influential Factors for E-Government Success in the Middle East

Due to strong budgetary restrictions on the one hand, and increasing citizens' demands on the other, e-government initiatives often represent a combination of prestige projects and financial necessity. However, to transform e-government initiatives from ambitious ideas into fruitful outcomes, several success factors have to be considered that vary from case to case, depending on the structural characteristics of the social, cultural, and political environment. Based on the e-government implementation success framework of and a case study of e-government implementation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, this research extends the view of e-government implementations by focusing on the themes culture and demography and develops critical success factors subordinated to these themes. These include five factors determining the cultural component and four factors determining the demographic component, each of which influence the respective success or failure of large e-government projects.

African urban fantasies: past lessons and emerging realities

This paper responds to Vanessa Watson’s article on the inappropriate urban development plans that are increasingly common in sub-Saharan Africa as governments seek to make their cities “world class”. It describes how the government of Angola has been able to use financing from Chinese credit facilities to build prestige projects that include support for the public-privately developed Kilamba city with 20,000 apartments. The apartments were initially too expensive for most of the population, and the state has had to draw further funds from its housing budget for a subsidized rent-to-purchase scheme to make the units affordable for middle-level civil servants. The author argues that an opportunity is being missed to use today’s income from high-priced natural resources and the current easy access to Chinese credit lines and technical expertise to address the very large backlogs in urban upgrading of basic service infrastructure and housing for the poor. The paper also reflects on a previous post-independence period when a number of African new cities were built, leaving some countries with decades of debt and stagnant development. Can errors from the past offer lessons for future African urban development?

THE IMPACTS OF PRESTIGE PROJECTS ON THE SKYLINE OF ISTANBUL

The concept of prestige projects for cities is related to governments’ politics and visions. Under the effects of globalization, central and local authorities have constructed competitive cities. But these cities also have important historical qualities hence these processes have to be made by a holistic planning vision and conservation strategy. For instance, if a city waterfront skyline has a strong image; new constructions should be designed in harmony with the local topography and urban pattern. This paper is based on mathematical and computer based approaches for evaluating aesthetic qualities of city skylines. Therefore a case study on high rise buildings in the main prestige CBD of Istanbul is done. GIS models of Maslak-Zincirlikuyu axis is made and its past, present and future skylines are extracted by database querying and visual analysis. The skylines derived are finally measured by entropy analyses based on formal aesthetic characteristics.

Building for Education: The School Designs of Sir Basil Spence

Sir Basil Urwin Spence O.M., R.A., began his architectural career in Edinburgh in 1931 and was still designing at his untimely death in 1976. Throughout his life he maintained a strong link with Scotland and remained true to the ethos of his training at Edinburgh College of Art, namely that the practice of architecture was essentially an art and a craft. Never easily pigeon-holed, Spence's oeuvre was eclectic. In turns traditional and innovative, theatrical and intimate, his works always displayed his concerns for artistry, materials, craftsmanship, texture and colour. Best known for prestige projects such as Coventry Cathedral, the Rome Embassy and Sussex University, Spence's school designs, which formed a small, but significant, part of his output during the 1950s, are largely overlooked. This paper explores his particular architectural approach through the wide ranging styles of the eight schools designed in his Edinburgh and London offices.

Expo 58: the catalyst for Belgium's Welfare State Government complex?

This article investigates the role of Expo 58, the first post-war world's fair, in the development of contemporary planning strategies for administrative and cultural complexes in Brussels. It argues that the Belgian government used this Mega Event as a catalyst for the construction of high-prestige buildings situated in a central zone within the capital. It examines the early planning initiatives of the government-commissioned Cité administrative and its connections with Expo 58, thereby highlighting the engagement of the Belgian Welfare State with modern architecture in the planning of prestige projects. This article thus argues for an understanding of the great event and the Cité administrative as part of the post-war government's ‘Exhibitionary Complex’, and using the case of Brussels suggests ways in which the impact of Mega Events could extend beyond their material remains.

Environmental Journalism in the UAE

This paper explores the evolving field of environmental journalism in the UAE’s English-language press as well as the national and international context that underpins it. The development of a more independent press and more eco-friendly policies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a top-down process which is both driven and contained by the ruling families of this absolute monarchy. Environmental journalism forms part of these prestige projects and occupies a privileged, though confined space, something of a golden cage, within the country’s young media landscape. First, a note on terminology. “Environmental journalism” in this paper encompasses the broad spectrum of environment-related news coverage related to sustainability, climate change, conservation and protection. By “Arab countries”, this paper refers to the Arab states of the Arabian peninsula. “Western countries” are those of North America and Europe. Section 1 looks at relevant aspects of environmental journalism in the United States,on the one hand, and in Arab countries on the other. This international context is essential, given that the UAE’s relatively young media culture is heavily influenced by the journalistic cultures imported by its predominantly expatriate media workforce. Furthermore, the way in which the UAE’s rulers are steering the development of journalism in general, and environmental journalism in particular, is tightly connected not only to their domestic interests, but also to foreign policy and the economic strategies of the ruling families. Section 2 examines the specific conditions of environmental journalism in the UAE by considering the country’s current state of press freedom, its media laws and subject-specific challenges. This is followed by a comparative case study in Section 3, in which the coverage of two specific events published by the Khaleej Times and The National is compared. Finally, the conclusion draws together key insights from all sections.

Tanger-Med and Casa-Marina, Prestige Projects in Morocco: New Capitalist Frameworks and Local Context

Tanger-Med and Casa-Marina, Prestige Projects in Morocco: New Capitalist Frameworks and Local Context