The Representation of Place: Urban Planning and Protest in France and Great Britain, 1950-1980(Routledge Revivals)

This title was first published in 2003. The period after 1945 witnessed a revolution in urban planning, with local and national governments taking radical and innovative approaches to mass housing following the ravages of the second world war. As well as attempting to provide new homes following the devastation of five years of total war, there was also a determination to raise the living standards of the inner city working classes living in the archaic terraces and tenements of the proceeding age. The post war city was to be bright and modern, designed as much by sociologists as architects, but in the ideological rush to create modern housing projects, the people who were to inhabit them were often left out of the decision making processes. This work considers how myth, collective memory and history interact in the construction of place-based identities in the city, and how such identities become crucial stakes in determining the future of particular areas, neighbourhoods and districts. By analysing examples of public protest against urban planning projects, the author looks at how dominant discourses promoted by urban elites have been challenged by groups with little experience of participating in urban governance. It is argued that the relationship between words and places - the naming and categorising of places- is crucial to the understanding of these conflicts.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Foreword; Introduction: Context and aims; The opacity of place; Places past and future; Place-based conflicts; Methodology and sources; Changing attitudes to the built environment: urban planning in France and Great Britain: French and British urban organization and structure; Targeting the 'slums'; Discovering the social dimension; Conclusions; The courées of Roubaix: constructing a consensus: Roubaix: the social, political and economic contexts; The courées: these doors that led to despair; Alma-Gare: 'Ce que doit disparaitre'! Alma-Gare: 'Maintenant je reste ici': Alma-Gare: the breakdown of consensus; Constructing the quartier: 'Notre force est d'être ensemble'; 'On reste': APU actions and strategies; 'Cela fera du bien pour les autres qui viendront après'; A key event: the production of the carte-affiche; Responses to the APU challenge; A postscript to Alma-Gare; The Gorbals: from No Mean City to Glasgow's miracle; Glasgow: the social, political and economic contexts; The myth of the 'old Gorbals'; The miracle of the 'new Gorbals'; From hell and back again: (re)constructing the Gorbals: The miracle: seeds of doubt; 'Heavy breathing' and the breakdown of consensus; (Re)constructing the Gorbals; Two key events; A postscript to the 'Dampies'; Remembering community: the 'good people of the Gorbals'; Conclusions: Comparative conclusions; Local initiatives and global forces; The city as history, history as the city; Bibliography and references; General; Index.

Review :
'... an important addition to the field of comparative study of the problems of 'slum clearance' and community activism.' Planning Practice and Research