Globalization, Glocalization, and Heritagization: The Evolving Urban Identity of Kuwait City

Abstract

The discovery of oil in the mid-twentieth century marked a profound rupture in Kuwait’s urban trajectory, triggering rapid modernization, demographic expansion, and large-scale urban transformation. From the 1950s onward, Kuwait City emerged as one of the Gulf’s most explicit manifestations of globalization, where imported planning models and Western architectural inspirations reshaped the urban fabric. These transformations, however, also led to the fragmentation of the historic urban core and excluded significant phases of the twentieth-century urban interventions. This study investigates the impact of globalization on the urban identity of Kuwait City and examines how glocalization can pave the way for the process of heritagization as a strategic intervention for repositioning this evolving urban identity. Adopting an exploratory qualitative case study methodology, the research draws primarily on archival documents, planning records, academic literature, and historical sources to trace both material and discursive shifts in Kuwait’s urban identity. The analysis is situated within theoretical debates on globalization, glocalization, and critical heritage studies, revealing how postwar and postoil urban environments have been selectively devalued or omitted from heritage recognition processes. The findings demonstrate that heritagization can counter homogenizing global forces by enabling context-sensitive reinterpretations of Kuwait City’s contemporary urban identity. By foregrounding locally grounded narratives, this study contributes to broader discussions on evolving heritage regimes in rapidly globalizing cities and advocates for more inclusive, interpretive, and locally embedded approaches to urban identity.