Dubaification in practice: an inter-scalar analysis of Belgrade Waterfront

摘要

This new abstract is precisely 150 words: Large-scale real estate development projects are increasingly often facilitated by transnational flows of capital investment and development expertise. While such projects clearly contain elements that closely correspond to classic notions of urban entrepreneurialism, the drivers and strategies behind them are rather different due to the close involvement of national level state actors, real estate developers and capital investors respectively. Against this backdrop, this paper discusses the case of Belgrade Waterfront, a large-scale mixed-use real estate development project in Serbia, developed by a company from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is illustrated how the foreign developer and the Serbian government are realizing the project by selectively applying a number of "Dubai-principles" to urban development. Based on extensive qualitative research, including interviews in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Belgrade, it is argued that the experimental purposes of this transnational project are best understood through a combined lens of geopolitical and geoeconomic processes.