In The Cities We Lost, I argued that the port cities of Eastern Mediterranean possessed a vanished cosmopolitanism that enriched the entire Middle East region, because they imparted to their diverse ethnic and religious groups the skills of coexistence, cultural flexibility and negotiation. The cultured and historical communities living in these melting pots mutually enriched each other through cross-pollination.The end of the cosmopolitan period and its replacement by stifling, monocultural nationalisms resulted in these cities being subsumed into the new nation-states that replaced the Ottoman Empire. As a result, they lost their unique ethnic blends and the region as a whole became poorer. Today, we are on the threshold of a new cosmopolitan age, but one much crueler than the 19th centurys. We are riding a globalising technological revolution that is fostering greater inequality and resentment while ushering in no-holds-barred neoliberalism. ........ As technology spreads, it fuels extreme wealth alongside Dickensian poverty, and nowhere illustrates this more dramatically than the worlds megacities. Logically, Eastern Mediterraneans once-cosmopolitan ports might re-emerge as hotspots of opportunity and privilege. But in the age of winner-take-all globalisation, rather than a string of self-reinforcing hubs, Istanbul is the only city booming, and largely through catering to new elites. aljazeera/indepth/opinion/2014/04/istanbul-coming-neo-cosmopolitan-20144312445133382.html
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 08:12:47 +0000