Tale of three (media) cities

In the early years of the twenty-first century, three of the 23 Arab nations – Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – have established media cities in the hope that media and knowledge-based industries will push their economies forward. All three cities are the direct result of government policy and planning. The intention is that a combination of media, business, technology and finance will become inexorably linked and that the resulting synergy will produce thousands of jobs. The cities offer financial benefits to companies located in the special zones created for the cities. As well as generating jobs and leapfrogging their economies into the 21st century, these cities are also meant to be shining symbols of modernity in societies that have tended to look backwards rather than forwards. This paper considers the vision behind these cities, who owns them, the business models employed and their likelihood of success. It also considers the key issue of freedom of expression and the free flow of information in these cities, in the context of societies that traditionally have restricted the flow of information and adopted a different interpretation of freedom of expression, compared with the West’s approach.<br>