Iconic Architecture and Middle-Class Politics of Memory in a Deindustrialized City

Abstract

Deindustrialized cities often struggle with developing a new economic base and place-based identity while also honouring the memory of the industrial past. In this process, local governments have used cultural branding and iconic architecture to present their city as a tourist destination and attractive location for capital investment. Such regeneration strategies have been critiqued as elite projects, divorced from a local sense of place and the everyday realities of residents experiencing ‘industrial ruination’. Yet, this need not always be the case. Focusing on one example of iconic architecture – the spectacular remaking of the railway station of Heerlen, a Dutch former coal-mining town – this article argues that middle-class memories of industrial Heerlen informed both the genesis of this project and its polarized reception by residents. The article demonstrates the linkages between historical and contemporary class divisions, resulting in a complex politics of memory at play within regeneration strategies.

Railway and Tourism: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Most of the papers have focused their research solely on the economic and social dimensions. In particularly, the social dimension was focused on the role of the community in a process of enhancement of the railway heritage of a destination [59]. On the contrary, research on the environmental dimensions is not still very thorough.…”

“…Recovery activities aimed at railway heritage were highly inhomogeneous in various European countries. Among the main factors were a lack of financial resources, location of the tourist destination, a diversity of ideological vision, neglect of the heritage of the area and the absence of civic pride [56][57][58][59][60]. Dragan et al highlighted in their study a dilemma over the recovery of some Polish railways.…”

“…The social dimension of sustainability has been explored in some studies. Hoekstra [59] pointed out that it was necessary to investigate how the community perceived its railway heritage and decide whether to preserve it or to change it, for example with new buildings to provide a new local identity. Furthermore, the poorest social classes of local communities, affected by the deindustrialization of territory, as has happened in the Netherlands, could find social redemption in a territorial railway regeneration project, rebuilding cohesion and local pride.…”

Putting the ‘i’ in icon: An autophotographic study of iconicity

“…Analyses around how people attach to their immediate environment frequently use imprecise concepts such as identity, belonging or place attachment (e.g. Lees, 2001;Hoekstra, 2020).…”

“…This relates to the potential of icons to become symbols of memory and nostalgia (Bartmanski, 2011) where, detached from their time of construction and the symbolism then, they are connected to personal and individual memories and come to represent them. As such, icons have the potential to construct localised forms of collective memory that connect people to a place (Hoekstra, 2020). Memory, understood here as the past made meaningful in the present, is central to the functioning of groups and collectives.…”