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"It is important to mention that the idealized diasporic visions of Yerevan as a home city also play a critical role in the emergence of such development projects. For example, every year the Los Angeles based not-for-profit organization, Hayastan All Armenian Fund, solicits millions of dollars of diaspora donation for developments inside Armenia. In a video from the organization’s 2013 telethon, Northern Avenue buildings represent a new Armenia while groups of Armenian youth run between these buildings expressing with joy their hope and optimism."
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"From Soviet housing blocks to upmarket mixed-use developments of the new Armenian government, state formulated narratives of modernity, globality, citizenship and nationhood continue finding ever changing forms in Yerevan’s built environment. With the increasing fetishization of “development equals progress” mentality, what is unfolding today is the flattening of cultural imaginations as well as the possible futures of Yerevan as a richly diverse and complex metropolis of multiple histories that could house all Armenians regardless of their social and economic status."
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"From Soviet housing blocks to upmarket mixed-use developments of the new Armenian government, state formulated narratives of modernity, globality, citizenship and nationhood continue finding ever changing forms in Yerevan’s built environment. With the increasing fetishization of “development equals progress” mentality, what is unfolding today is the flattening of cultural imaginations as well as the possible futures of Yerevan as a richly diverse and complex metropolis of multiple histories that could house all Armenians regardless of their social and economic status."
