External forces always shape the social construction of ‘the local’. In this article we offer a framework for understanding how external players and strategies reconfigure the social and symbolic character of local culture for new investments and new populations. We aim not only to propose a theory of urban cultural processing by nonlocals—what we call ‘urban cultural terraforming’—but to identify pressure points for local groups to make claims on or even commandeer reshaping local culture. Using two cases, casino development in a deindustrialized city and state-designated cultural districts, we illustrate how ‘cultural terraformers’ use identifiable strategies (e.g. colonization of local sentiment, re-creating partnerships and respatializing) to change local culture, and how groups struggle to avoid marginalization.

中文翻译：

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世界（文化）战争：将城市重建定义为“土地改造”

外部力量总是塑造“本土”的社会建构。在本文中，我们提供了一个框架，用于理解外部参与者和策略如何为新投资和新人口重新配置当地文化的社会和象征特征。我们的目标不仅是提出一种非本地人的城市文化加工理论（即我们所说的“城市文化地球化”），而且还旨在确定当地群体提出主张甚至强行重塑当地文化的压力点。通过两个案例，即去工业化城市和国家指定文化区的赌场开发，我们说明了“文化改造者”如何使用可识别的策略（例如殖民当地情绪、重建伙伴关系和重新空间化）来改变当地文化，以及群体如何挣扎以避免被边缘化。