Yidan Gao
announced that Kuala Lumpur ranked on the top 10 best shopping cities on CCN ’ s travelling website CNNgo .
This identity is also recurrent in the city marketing materials produced by corporates . For instance , Expedia ’ s video guide
Figure 4 : a samba dancer filmed with a sexualised camera angle ( River Media , 2002 )
( Expedia , 2015 ) foregrounds Kuala Lumpur ’ s modernity and consumption choices as its prominent appeals by repetitively emphasising the diversity of shopping locales and the consumption choices , rather than the diversity of people and culture .
Therefore , through the marketing materials , Kuala Lumpur conveys its aesthetic openness merely to the transnational elites who favour a modern and fashionable lifestyle , inviting them to come and shop , rather than inviting transnational labours to come and build the city . Moreover ,
75 in the video , the represented people are primarily customers , which reaffirms the specific audience that the city is open to . To sum up , the openness in a neoliberal cosmopolis is tied to open markets and an intention to selectively attract customers with buying power . However , the repacking of the city aiming at transnational elites sanitises the symbolic urban space , which can result in social exclusion of difference .
Secondly , Georgiou ( 2017 , p651 ) argues that neoliberal cosmopolitan city ’ s ‘ ethic is