Engineering a Global City

Abstract

This research concerns the Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor project. Part of the project is a construction of a future intelligent city named Cyberjaya. This is a utopian city. The dream encompasses constructing working and living spaces for information communication technology professionals and experts from all over the world. Based on an ethnographic approach, this article seeks to explore what happens when utopian ideas are implemented. That is, rather than testing whether or not the dream has become true, the authors investigate the “materiality” of dreamwork in the development of a “planned city.” They show that the utopian globalized information communication technology city is built on the principles of zoning, sterility, and security. These principles are at the core of engineering a global community of knowledge workers. The authors argue that the ordering of this particular version of utopia—discursively anchored in a specific hybridization of (hyper)modernity, Malaysian culture, and Islam—has resulted in a proliferation of “non-places” that inhibit binding associations and thus prevent the development of a sense of “belonging.”

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