From Collective Memory to Collective Imagination: Time, Place, and Urban Redevelopment

Abstract

This article is about a place that does not exist, yet. It is about residents' perceptions of redevelopment plans involving the reconstruction of a defunct neighborhood firehouse. Interviews revealed the residents' "collective imagination" as they actively envisioned potential future outcomes for a firehouse-turned-community center. When asked about the needs of the community, interviewees discussed the current conditions of their neighborhood (the present), its history (the past), and how they would like to see it change (the future). This corresponds well with George Herbert Mead's ideas about temporality. I argue that connecting the identity of a place to a sociological understanding of time (especially Mead's) is a necessary step for gaining a better understanding of the subjective side of urbanization and ultimately creating a better vernacular knowledge base for urban redevelopment plans.

Creating transregional collective nostalgia: the organising role of Catholic parishes among Louisiana migrants in Great Migration-era Los Angeles

“…families, religious communities, or a generation of people with shared experiences) collectively shape what is remembered (Davis 1979;Milligan 2003;Zerubavel 1996, 289). Collective nostalgia (one form of collective memory) is a significant emotional mechanism evoked when moving from one place to another, repairing discontinuity by re-linking positive memories of a selectively remembered past (or expectations of future interactions) to the lost place (Borer 2010;Mazumdar et al 2000;Milligan 1998Milligan , 2003Ocejo 2011;Snyder 1991;Wilson 2005). It is tied to symbolic and physical features of mnemonic places through the interactional past, which is a constantly reinterpreted collection of memories and experiences linked to place through repeated interactions (Milligan 1998;Ocejo 2011;Wolf 2002).…”

“…Collective nostalgia about a homeland is experienced intergenerationally when latergeneration migrants adopt a group's biography as part of their own past via the older generation's collective memory, storytelling, and sharing practices ('ways of being') and/or a sense of belonging (Borer 2010;Boyd 2008;cf. Davis 1979;Glick Schiller 2004, 1010;Maghbouleh 2010;Wilson 2005;Wolf 2002;Zerubavel 1996Zerubavel , 1997.…”

The social construction of a music Mecca

“…Indeed, my ethnographic interviews (unstructured interviewing) with these fans indicate that they superimpose their romantic imaginings on the city-particularly the French Quarter-with only slight modifications with each visit. Thus there is a layered, temporal dimension to their re-imaginings, with a central core which remains intact (Borer 2010;Mead 1932 1963, it is usually credited to Dvorak/arr. Colyer.…”

The Relationship of Place Re-Making and Watershed Group Participation in Appalachia

“…Further, our findings indicate that social activities, such as participating in stream cleanups, contribute to a notion of place creation that is part of a positive and shared place narrative. Borer (2010) suggests that members of a stigmatized community have the ability to change the community's image by sharing positive place narratives with each other as well as with the outside world. In Borer's estimation, a neighborhood's ''collective imagining is .…”