Monumentalization, Infrastructure, and the Postindustrial Imaginary

Keywords: Infrastructure, Heritage, Post-Industrial, Urban, Barcelona, Manchester
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 27

Abstract

The conservation of industrial buildings and structures has been a matter of debate since the 1960s in deindustrializing cities of the Global North. Though initially driven by arguments of cultural and historic value, this discussion has been revivified through ecological arguments favoring adaptive reuse. Historic urban infrastructure fits, sometimes uneasily, within the category of industrial heritage, especially when protections impact the use and modification of historic structures or their surrounding landscapes. In this paper I consider two cases where historic industrial structures have been monumentalized within contemporary urban redevelopment, and how demolition or reuse have raised political controversy. The first case is the railway viaducts and industrial canals of Manchester, England in the Castlefield Urban Heritage Park and contestations around the construction of a new railway viaduct. The second is the widespread practice in Barcelona, Spain of demolishing mills, factories, and power plants to make way for redevelopment, while leaving smokestacks around the city as postindustrial monuments. In the cases of viaducts and smokestacks, industrial (infra)structures were offered protections and required maintenance as elements of the revalorization of former industrial districts and beacons of collective memory, monumentalized and aestheticized as landscape features. I argue that these two cases illustrate how industrial and infrastructural heritage practices raise new questions around use values, exchange values, and symbolic values in postindustrial redevelopment. Furthermore, I emphasize that the study of urban infrastructures must take into consideration shifting debates around the treatment of infrastructure as cultural heritage.