“Saving” Coney Island: The construction of heritage value

Abstract

This paper examines a historic preservation controversy that surrounded redevelopment efforts in Coney Island during the late 2000s. This longstanding amusement district in Brooklyn, New York inspired widespread agreement about its importance as a heritage destination. The apparent agreement, however, belied profound differences over the aspects of the neighborhood that contributed to its iconic stature and about how they should relate to plans for the area's redevelopment. Because heritage value is not an inherent attribute of the built environment, these divergent cultural claims raise questions about how this value comes about. The literature on heritage finds answers to these questions in processes of community formation. This explanation, however, offers limited insight into the classification of Coney Island features as objects of heritage. I make sense of the valorization of these features in terms of experiential qualities that cast an anachronistic glow over Coney Island and that inspired in preservation advocates a sense of the neighborhood's heritage. By looking beyond community dynamics and examining alternative ways in which heritage value arises, my research contributes to our understanding of the contentiousness that surrounds the redevelopment of historic places. It also poses a challenge to preservation efforts that assume the centrality of communities to heritage value claims, bypassing the anterior question of how people experience and understand places of heritage in the first place.

Valuing Urban Heritage Through Participatory Heritage Websites: Citizen Perceptions of Historic Urban Landscapes

“…Of course, these attributes are strongly connected to the first category of the built environment, as culture always takes place in specific buildings or public spaces. The presence of culture and leisure on the websites underscores the finding from earlier research that former recreational spaces can be part of the collective memory of a neighborhood (Madgin, Bradley, & Hastings, 2016; Rivero, 2017). It has been observed in those studies that the disappearance of such spaces often evokes a sense of loss.…”

“…A growing concern with more democratic forms of heritage valuing can be observed, following on from the insight that what is defined as heritage is not intrinsic to the heritage artifact but, rather, is constructed through present-day decisions that are generally made by heritage experts (Rivero, 2017;Smith, 2006;Stephenson, 2008). These expert-driven decision-making processes have been criticized for being too top-down, thereby neglecting the views of citizens and communities (Schofield, 2014;Van der Auwera, Vandesande, & Van Balen, 2015).…”

“…Furthermore, my study answers the call for more research on people’s digital engagement with heritage within and outside institutional structures (King, Stark, & Cooke, 2016). This research objective ties into the existing literature that considers the everyday ways in which people engage with local heritage as meaningful constructions of heritage value (Atkinson, 2007; Taylor, 2016; Jones, 2017; Rivero, 2017).…”

Planning Local Uniqueness: Drawing the Line between Development and Loss

“…SCI members believed Coney Island’s uniqueness was self-evident and required little elucidation (Rivero 2017b). Pushed, however, for an explanation, they emphasized a set of representations and experiential dimensions that assumed significance in light of the extensive development and pervasive gentrification that they observed throughout the city and that they believed threatened to engulf the neighborhood.…”

“…These included: its pioneering role in fostering a culture of collective recreation; the originality of its early amusements and attractions; the size and diversity of its crowds; and its unconventionality (e.g., its freak-shows, fanciful architecture, and local characters). The types of experiences revolved around three qualities: authenticity, diversity, and liminality or transgressiveness (Rivero 2017b). 4 Authenticity referred to encounters with expressions of individuality, both personal and artistic; diversity denoted an active interaction with a variety of people and things in diverse contexts; and transgressiveness conveyed a sense of being in a carnivalesque world apart that operated according to its own rules.…”