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 understanding 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 entrepreneurial 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.

本文将象征经济和城市想象作为新自由主义公共领域的一个固有维度，研究历史化的城市规划及其愿景，并开发了一个框架，以了解城市规划在塑造城市想象和品牌空间方面的作用。该论文声称，未来城市愿景是规划制定的基础，有助于使权力精英的增长议程和雄心合法化，以投资于媒体大力支持和宣传的象征性和物质性旗舰场所建设项目。该研究在美国背景下检验了这一主张，选择德克萨斯州达拉斯作为一个独特的创业城市，过分关注其公共形象，其特点是长期存在的地方推广和规划遗产。使用档案研究和对关键知情人的半结构化访谈，本文发现，城市规划的愿景服从于公民精英的文化品味，在凝聚公众支持以实现地方营造项目方面发挥了重要作用，这与城市对“世界级”地位的更大关注是一致的。媒体转载。本研究最后反思了规划制定与城市想象之间微妙而切实的联系、城市空间日益商品化的明显趋势，以及它对城市规划造成的悖论。