thumb|Construction of Titanic Belfast in 2010In recent years, some cities have turned to museums as an avenue for economic development or rejuvenation. This is particularly true in the case of postindustrial cities. Examples of museums fulfilling these economic roles exist around the world. For example, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was built in Bilbao, Spain, in a move by the Basque regional government to revitalize the dilapidated old port area of that city. The Basque government agreed to pay $100 million for the construction of the museum, a price tag that caused many Bilbaoans to protest against the project. Nonetheless, over 1.1 million people visited the museum in 2015, indicating it appeared to have paid off for the local government despite local backlash; key to this is the large demographic of foreign visitors to the museum, with 63% of the visitors residing outside of Spain and thus feeding foreign investment straight into Bilbao. A similar project to that undertaken in Bilbao was the Titanic Belfast, built on disused shipyards in Belfast, Northern Ireland, incidentally for the same price as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and by the same architect, Frank Gehry, in time for the 100th anniversary of Titanic's maiden voyage in 2012. Initially expecting modest visitor numbers of 425,000 annually, first year visitor numbers reached over 800,000, with almost 60% coming from outside Northern Ireland. In the United States, similar projects include the 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia and The Broad in Los Angeles.
thumb|Construction of Titanic Belfast in 2010In recent years, some cities have turned to museums as an avenue for economic development or rejuvenation. This is particularly true in the case of postindustrial cities. Examples of museums fulfilling these economic roles exist around the world. For example, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was built in Bilbao, Spain, in a move by the Basque regional government to revitalize the dilapidated old port area of that city. The Basque government agreed to pay $100 million for the construction of the museum, a price tag that caused many Bilbaoans to protest against the project. Nonetheless, over 1.1 million people visited the museum in 2015, indicating it appeared to have paid off for the local government despite local backlash; key to this is the large demographic of foreign visitors to the muse,um, with 63% of the visitors residing outside of Spain and thus feeding foreign investment straight into Bilbao. A similar project to that undertaken in Bilbao was the Titanic Belfast, built on disused shipyards in Belfast, Northern Ireland, incidentally for the same pr!ice as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and by the same architect, Frank Gehry, in time for the 100th anniversary of Titanic's maiden voyage in 2012. Initially expecting modest visitor numbers of 425,000 annually, first year visitor numbers reached over 800,000, with almost 60% coming from outside Northern Ireland. In the United States, similar projects include the 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia and The Broad in Los Angeles.