City planning, urban imaginary, and the branded space: Untangling the role of city plans in shaping Dallas's urban imaginaries

Drawing on notions of the symbolic economy and urban imaginary as an inherent dimension of the neoliberal public sphere, this paper examines historicized city plans and their visions, and develops a framework for un-derstanding the role of city plans in shaping urban imaginaries and branded spaces. The paper claims that future city visions, fundamental to plan-making, help legitimize the power elites' growth agendas and ambitions to invest in both symbolic and material flagship place-making projects heavily bolstered and publicized by the media. The study examines this claim in the American context, selecting Dallas, Texas as a unique entrepre-neurial city overly concerned with its public image characterized by a long-standing legacy of place promotion and plan-making. Using archival research and semi-structured interviews with key informants, this paper finds that city plans' visions, subservient to the civic elites' cultural tastes, have been instrumental in rallying public support to materialize place-making projects in accord with the city's larger preoccupation with "world-class" status showcased and widely promoted by media outlets. This study concludes by reflecting on the subtle yet tangible link between plan-making and urban imaginaries, an overt tendency of ever more commodified urban spaces, and the paradox it poses to city planning.