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The design of cities, monuments, and other urban features has been intertwined with nation building, politics, and the construction of identity since antiquity. Cities have always been an important medium through which the powerful communicate ideology and aspirations to domestic and foreign audiences (Vale 2008). Arguably, rapid urbanization, industrialization, the development of planning as a scientific discipline, and the creation of new states, particularly following the decline of European colonization, intensified this role over the last two centuries. Ruling elites designated particular cities or monuments to be concrete symbols of the state or nation, a process that strategically and selectively showcases dominant narratives while silencing others.

This process continues today, and as the geographies of the state change, urban geographies change with them. In important ways, patterns in the Global North and …