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According to Lefebvre's analysis, urbanisation is not only an expansion of urban footprint but, in a broader sense, the radical socio-spatial transformation of society. The cultural setting and its physical manifestation creating distinctive identities within a city are transformed by rapid urbanisation and gentrification. The effects will be analysed in three terms of simultaneous sociocultural-spatial changes; cultural displacement, physical transformation of neighbourhoods, and change in cultural identities. The paper intends to hypothesise whether cultural displacement and altering cultural identities by gentrification and rapid urbanisation will signify gentrified homogenised cities in the future. The paper investigates aspects of multiculturalism and inter-culturalism to mitigate the challenges in sustaining multicultural places in cities. It tries to find the complementary approach of both to generate harmonious multicultural diversities and socio-economic sustainability, keeping the cultural identities intact. One of the examples of rapid urbanisation and gentrification challenging multicultural aspects and altering cultural identities lies in the core of the cultural capital of India, Kolkata in Tangra, Chinatown. The cultural identity of India's only existing Chinatown is changing from 2 to 3 storey live-work based multicultural communities to 30 floors high-rise homogenous gentrified enclaves displacing the diverse cultural communities from the core of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional Arab Islamic urbanism has been ignored for decades, and Arab architects have been unwilling to revive traditional features and they are complying with the new urbanism movement. Since the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the style of big Arab cities has become substantially westernized, historic Arab cities transformed from traditional to modern Western urbanism led to a loss of Islamic cultural identity, many factors led to the transformation of the urban structure of these cities including social, economic, legislative and functional which leads to loss of local identity by introducing new architectural and urban forms. This paper will focus the scope of study on old Islamic Cairo, Khedivate Cairo and The New Administrative Capital (NAC) and will analyze the transformation happened to the urban structure using the comparative analysis methodology to reach the research aim and know why the conventional urbanism of Arab Islamic cities has been ignored? And also to show how other Arabic cities like Doha in Qatar and Masdar in UAE tried to overcome the same problem by using the contemporary interpretation trend. • Transformation of traditional urbanism to modern Western urbanism • the concept of identity and the indicators of that can show the urban identity of the city • Comparative analysis of old Islamic Cairo, Khedival Cairo and The New Administrative Capital (NAC) • The impact of Western Transformation of the society on architectural and urban forms. • Contemporary interpretation trend as a solution to preserve Arab cities local identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulacrascapes, namely "shanzhai architectures" or "copycat architectures", ubiquitous in many Chinese cities are reshaping urban spaces culturally, politically and economically. However, previous studies tend to overlook the intricate power relations behind them. To analyze the phenomenon of simulacrascape in the Chinese context, a theoretical framework of post-socialist narrative comprised of economic function, local identity and cultural authenticity is introduced to bridge political-economic and cultural-political approaches. Following the paradigm of architectural anthropology, abundant qualitative data have been collected to unravel the spatial dynamics of simulacrascapes through deconstructing and comparing two typical cases in Shijiazhuang, one of hotspots of simulacrascape in China. It is found that landscape entrepreneurs, local governments (urban policy makers), consumers, media and the public have formed a "simulacra coalition" that drives the spatial production of simulacrascapes. Economic functions embedded in simulacrascapes work as neoliberal urbanism, which determines how local people perceive cultural authenticity; meanwhile, the cultural authenticity becomes an experience-centered cognition reshaped by local identity socially and culturally. This paper argues that the spatial production of simulacrascapes is not merely a kind of neoliberal urbanism but also a process of cultural indigenization in post-socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]