Reforging the Steel City: Symbolism and Space in Postindustrial Pittsburgh

Neumann, Tracy

doi:10.1177/0096144218759026

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(10 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…45 To fully comprehend the melancholic condition with regard to neighborhood change in Hörde, it is helpful to ask why the working-class residents never protested against their exclusion from the narrative and politics of the "New Dortmund." While in other cities with comparable neighborhoodbased urban rebranding strategies workers revolted against their marginalization and thus gave vent to their indignation and anger, 46 nothing comparable happened in Dortmund. Instead, feelings of sadness, frustration, and the manifold ambivalences have mostly remained under wraps -a fertile ground for feelings of melancholy.…”

Section: Emotional Complexities: Neighborhood Melancholy In Dortmund-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

Frank

2021

cultural geographies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since 2000, the City of Dortmund has pursued an ambitious flagship project in the district of Hoerde. On the enormous site of a former steel plant, and in the middle of an impoverished working class district, a large new upper-middle class residential area (Phoenix) has been developed around an artificial lake. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that the project has generated mixed feelings among longtime working class dwellers in the old part of Hoerde. Widespread enthusiasm about new lakeside living is interwoven with emotions of sadness and loss, reflecting a neighborhood transformation which unmistakably demonstrates their social, cultural, and political marginalization – feelings that were not allowed to become part of the jubilant official discourse which has marketed the Phoenix project as a shining example of the City’s successful post-industrial structural change. Ever since its announcement, the project has been blamed for triggering gentrification processes – despite the fact that there are still no empirical signs of rising rents or displacement. I argue that the concept of gentrification has been taken up so readily because it is popular, polyvalent, polemical, and critical, enabling citizens to find a language to denounce the blatant social inequalities and power imbalances that competitive urbanism has fostered in Dortmund. However, I also claim that the core of the prevailing sadness – the loss of the familiar neighborhood which could not be grieved over – remains under the radar of standard gentrification discourse. The article thus proposes neighborhood melancholy as a concept to account for the unclear, subconscious, and deeply ambivalent ways in which long-established residents experience their neighborhood’s transformation, expressed within the rubric of gentrification.

show abstract

Section: Emotional Complexities: Neighborhood Melancholy In Dortmund-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

Frank

2021

cultural geographies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Like the decline of coastal towns, deindustrialization has been an ongoing process throughout neoliberalism (Strangleman and Rhodes, 2014) across North America and Western Europe (Clark and Gibbs, 2020; Emery, 2018; Mckenzie, 2017; Neumann, 2018; Sassen, 1990). Placed within the context of global neoliberal capitalism, we can discern the similarities in experience across deindustrialized locales including a sense of loss (Walkerdine, 2010), the evisceration of economic stability and security (Linkon, 2013), lost pride (Mckenzie, 2015) and an identity (Strangleman, 2017).…”

Section: Deindustrializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘There is nothing there’: Deindustrialization and loss in a coastal town

Telford

2021

Competition & Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Based on 52 qualitative interviews with working-class individuals, this paper explores the social and economic decline of a coastal locale referred to as High Town in Teesside in the North East of England. First, the paper outlines how the locality expanded as a popular seaside resort under capitalism’s post-war period. It then assesses how the seaside existed together with industrial work, offering stable employment opportunities, economic security and a sense of community. Next, the article documents the shift to neoliberalism in the 1980s, specifically the decline of High Town’s seaside resort, the deindustrialization process and therefore the 2015 closure of High Town’s steelworks. It explicates how this exacerbated the locale’s economic decline through the loss of industrial work’s ‘job for life’, its diminishing popularity as a coastal area and the further deterioration of the town centre. The paper concludes by suggesting that High Town has lost its raison d’être under neoliberalism and faces difficulties in revival.

show abstract

“…First, it continues to be a point of reference that subsequent researchers have been able to identify when explaining the provenance of their own work. In recent times it has been acknowledged as a forerunner, inter alia, by studies of emotional geographies (Nogué & Vela ; Sousa & Rocha ), public policy (Doyle ; Rusko ), reimaging cities (Neumann ), advertising (Botschen et al ; Martin & Capelli ), heritage (Krakover ; Adamo et al ) and, in particular, tourism and event management (Richards ; Ardyan & Susanti ; Warren & Dinnie ). While that list of examples is itself far from comprehensive, the enormous range of topics covered by that selection is enough to point to its accessibility and relevance to the prevailing trajectory of city branding research.…”

Section: Convergencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accentuating the Positive: City Branding, Narrative and Practice

Gold

2019

Tijd voor Econ & Soc Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This commentary on the contribution made by Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2005) examines the antecedents to which it responded, the key ideas that it offered at the time of publication, and assesses its lasting impact. There are three main sections. The first reflects upon the informal and improvised approaches that characterised place promotion, marketing and branding in the final decades of the twentieth century. The second surveys Kavaratzis and Ashworth's critical reflections on the existing theory and practice of city branding. The third section discusses their role in contributing a benchmark in scholarly discourse that reflected convergences with management science and policy relevance, but recognises that it was implicated in a broader meta-narrative shaped by neoliberalist approaches and values.

show abstract

Reforging the Steel City: Symbolism and Space in Postindustrial Pittsburgh

Cited by 12 publications

References 8 publications

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

‘There is nothing there’: Deindustrialization and loss in a coastal town

Accentuating the Positive: City Branding, Narrative and Practice

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About