Slum clearance as an instrument of sanitary reform: The flawed vision of Edinburgh's first slum clearance scheme

Smith, Patricia J.

doi:10.1080/02665439408725786

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The crude death rate around this time in Edinburgh was the highest in Scotland. 16 Demolitions had claimed two-thirds of the ancient buildings in Edinburgh, many of which were reconstructed under the temporary guise of the Exhibition. 17 The Glasgow International Exhibition opened in the spring of 1888, featuring a vast temporary structure 'in the Moorish style' along the River Kelvin in Kelvingrove Park.…”

Section: Edinburgh 1886 and Glasgow 1888mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Throughout the nineteenth century the success of 'Romantic historical treatment' had been achieved, as Wilson Smith points out, through the landmark "boulders": Palace, Kirk, and Castle. 33 As the seat of Scotland's royal heritage and its national religious body, Edinburgh's cityscape -unfurling down the spine of the High Street into the Canongate -made for a fine mnemonic model on which images of Scotland's past could be projected. In Edinburgh in 1908, Saughton Park was the location of the new Scottish National Exhibition.…”

Section: -1911mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural Memory and Nationalism at Scotland’s International Exhibitions: 1886–1938

Lamont

2023

Studies on National Movements

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This paper explores the ways in which Scotland portrayed itself during the run of International Exhibitions in Edinburgh (1886, 1890, 1908) and Glasgow (1888, 1901, 1911, 1938). It will be shown that Scotland, as a fundamental component of the British Empire, served to increase visions of Britishness in these Exhibitions (or World’s Fairs) by hosting a number of colonial exhibits and focussing, for the most part, on modern technological advances in machinery and engineering. While all of these Scottish exhibits did self-reflect on history and Scottish nationhood (via literature, art, and architecture), this paper will show that the novelty of doing this, in sharp contrast with the pomp and exuberance of the imperial display, reduced Scottishness to yet another exotic ‘other’. Following the ‘Old London’ featured in 1884, Edinburgh and – later – Glasgow featured ‘old towns’ which offered visitors an impression of their lost cityscapes, dislocated from their original place and built among the many other temporary pavilions. In the twentieth century, both cities featured human displays: a nefarious turn in Exhibition culture across Europe which curated people from colonial lands on a level with their material culture. Scotland, as part of the British Empire, boasted Senegalese and West Africans as part of their popular attractions. Following this, Glasgow followed London in displaying the people of the Scottish Highlands as part of a pastiche village named ‘An Clahan’: a crystallising moment in Scotland’s disorienting self-portrayal in these British imperial contexts. In working through these case studies, this paper will consider scholarship from the fields of history and memory studies.

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Section: Edinburgh 1886 and Glasgow 1888mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: -1911mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Memory and Nationalism at Scotland’s International Exhibitions: 1886–1938

Lamont

2023

Studies on National Movements

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“…Articles from this period deal with the implementation of urban renewal programs in various cities such as St. Louis's prize-winning Pruitt-Igoe housing development 48 (which later came to symbolize the failures of the International Style), 49 Sheffield's renowned Park Hill project, 50 or Chicago's urban renewal program, which was the subject of an opinion piece by Nathaniel Owings, a co-founder of the architectural practice SOM. 51 (1920s-1930s) Proposals for slum clearance and model housing New York (Adams, 1936;Boyd, 1925;Moses, 1942), Britain (Pevsner, 1943;Reiss, 1936), Edinburgh (Smith, 1989(Smith, , 1994, London (Collcutt, 1921;Evans, 1984;Yelling, 1982Yelling, , 1986, Nottingham (Smith et al, 1986), Singapore (Williams, 1937) National scale (Abercrombie, 1935;Yelling, 1988), Liverpool (Keay, 1935(Keay, , 1938, London (Fry, 1937;Knight, 1936;Parker, 1999) 30 USA: creation of Public Works Administration, FHA and USHA; NYCHA National scale (Aronovici, 1934;Bauer, 1938;Moses, 1945), New York (Broun and Muschenheim, 1935) 31 UK: 1947 Town Planning Act National scale (Childs and Whittle, 1956;King, 1956), Leeds (Benson, 1959) Liverpool (Bradbury, 1952), Sheffield (Womersley, 1955) 32 USA: 1949 Urban Redevelopment Act-concept and implementation…”

Section: The Historical Discourse On Slums In the Global Northmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating Slums in Hegemonic Urban Discourse: A Historiography of English-Language Architecture and Planning Journals

Mazarro

2022

Journal of Urban History

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Over recent years, the political critique of the characterization of slums has progressively developed within hegemonic urban planning discourse. In planning history, however, the emergence of slums remains associated with the narrative and geographies of underdevelopment in the context of modernization theory. To deconstruct this narrative and thus contribute to the decolonization of planning discourse, this paper undertakes a historiographic analysis of English-language journal publications dealing with different forms of subaltern urbanism. I show how the concept of “slums” has progressively broadened in meaning to encompass an ever-larger array of derogatory concepts, and that the term “slum” is limited to certain geographical hotspots, thereby contributing to geopolitical biases and knowledge gaps. Through the content analysis of publications, I am able to outline a historical periodization of hegemonic planning themes and proposals addressing slums in diverse geographies, along with critical views on their underlying perspectives.

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Lost Alternatives to Council Housing? An Examination of Stirling's Alternative Housing Initiatives, c. 1906–1939

Smyth¹,

Robertson²

2017

J Scottish Historical Studies

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This article aims to examine possible alternatives to the first wave of council-house building in Scotland. Alternative approaches to deal with Scotland's housing problem are considered and the reasons for their failure to compete with council housing are considered. The Burgh of Stirling has been chosen because its politics suggest that it may have been less enthusiastic about building council houses and more amenable to exploring alternative solutions. Three ‘alternatives’ are discussed. The first was the Homesteads experiment, which, immediately prior to the First World War, successfully built a small number of houses with adjacent land on which the occupants grew food for themselves. The second experiment was a limited project by the Town Council, devised just before 1914, of demolition and widening a single street in the old town, which sought to encourage private companies to build replacement tenements. The third undertaking was the Thistle Trust, which sought to preserve the medieval dwellings huddled around Stirling Castle.

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Slum clearance as an instrument of sanitary reform: The flawed vision of Edinburgh's first slum clearance scheme

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Cultural Memory and Nationalism at Scotland’s International Exhibitions: 1886–1938

Cultural Memory and Nationalism at Scotland’s International Exhibitions: 1886–1938

Situating Slums in Hegemonic Urban Discourse: A Historiography of English-Language Architecture and Planning Journals

Lost Alternatives to Council Housing? An Examination of Stirling's Alternative Housing Initiatives, c. 1906–1939

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