Making the City: Transformative Processes in (Post)Industrial Urban Spaces

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98940-064-1
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, Band 12, 236 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 440 g

Reihe: CHAT - Chemnitzer Anglistik/Amerikanistik Today

The Industrial Revolution, which began around 1770 in England, marked a period of profound cultural and economic change, especially for urban populations. By the mid-19th century, industrialisation had spread across Europe and North America, transforming cities such as Manchester, Lódz, Mulhouse, Tampere, or Pittsburgh into symbols of rapid development. While this era fostered hope and progress, it also brought challenges like long working hours and ecological shifts. The decline of key industries, such as steel, later created new difficulties for urban spaces navigating post-industrial realities. The edited volume Making the City: Transformative Processes in (Post)Industrial Urban Spaces builds on the conference held in June 2023 at Chemnitz University of Technology. The essays explore industrial heritage and its lasting effects on urban and rural spaces, addressing themes such as postcolonial perspectives, community ownership, or grassroots initiatives. These approaches contrast with investor-driven urban development and provide alternative models of “making the city.” Organised around two themes – “(post)industrialisation” and its representations – the volume highlights how the past continually informs the present. From preserving industrial heritage and adapting urban policies to reinterpreting city life in urban studies, literature, art, and music, the collection offers a multifaceted look at the processes that shape cities and their identities in the post-industrial era.
Cecile Sandten holds the Chair of English Literatures at Chemnitz University of Technology. She has published widely on theoretical approaches to the concept of palimpsestic spaces and literary experiences of urban space, with a special focus on postcolonial literatures (e.g. Canada, India, or South Africa).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cecile Sandten
Introduction – Making the City: Transformative Processes in (Post)Industrial Urban Spaces 1
Jürgen Kabus and Barbara Waske
From “European Manchester” to “Tales of Transformation”: The Chemnitz Industrial Museum’s Special Exhibition in the 2025 European Capital of Culture 11
Cecile Sandten
Sooty City 19
PART I: (POST)INDUSTRIALISATION, POLITICS, ARCHITECTURE, AND TOWN MAKING
Matevž Šlabnik
Industrialising the Residential Space. A Historical and Contemporary Perspective of the Town-Making Activities by the Idrija Mercury Mine 25
Jochen Kibel
Cigarettes and Colonialism – Entangled City-Making and the Multiple Spatialities of Urban Pasts 45
Andrea B. Farabegoli
Forlì – From the City of the Duce to the Twentieth-Century City: Developing for a New Self-Image 65
Sara Khalil Elmorsy and Hellen Aziz
Adaptive Reuse of Two Historical Industrial Sites in Germany 91
Daniela Zupan
On Empty Gifts and Exclusionary Care: Examining the Politics of City-Making in Contemporary Hungary 117
PART II: LITERATURE, ART, AND MUSIC: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN (POST)INDUSTRIAL CONTEXTS
Cecile Sandten
“Exposing dark silvery images of a lost world”: Autopoetic Placemaking and (Post)Industrial Transformation in Robert Gibb’s Pittsburgh Poems 139
Bettina Lockemann
A Closer Walk: Urban Renewal in New Orleans 161
Airin Tegelman and Hanne Juntunen
Urban Animals: Articulations of the Post-Industrial City in British Post-Punk and Mainstream Music 189
David Gledhill
Manchester: A City for Artists? Fostering Grass Roots Visual Arts Production in the Post-Industrial City 211
Notes on Contributors 227

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sandten, Cecile