Urban Regeneration/Heritage Tourism Endeavours: The Case of Salt, Jordan ‘Local Actors, International Donors, and the State’

This paper focuses on several urban regeneration/heritage tourism projects in Jordan funded and orchestrated by international donor agencies in the 1990s. The research attempts to understand the mechanisms, rationales, internal and external forces, actors, experts, and power networks that privileged a particular discourse on urban generation based on a particular case study (Historic Old Salt Development Project). Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters enabled the researcher to situate the Historic Old Salt Development Project as part of the overall strategy to upgrade the tourism sector and not out of a conscious motivation of urban regeneration and heritage management. The practice of urban regeneration/heritage management in Salt is tied to sporadic agents of power that generate shock treatments and very modest outcomes in the form of architectural cosmetics rather than an institutionalised practice.