Abstract
The listed Barbican Estate is a modernist estate on the edge of London’s historic core, the City, that contains in situ Roman/medieval city wall sections and a listed church. It is an historic place with a specific identity. Those that live and work in the Barbican strongly identify with it, but it is revealed by others as an ugly, impenetrable behemoth.
This dichotomous response/feeling towards a specific urban place is seen with a variety of urban places. Often poorer communities living in older areas derive a similar sense of identity from them, but because they’re less well defined or have become run down or damaged during conflict, they are decried by others as fit only for redevelopment, ultimately leading to the loss of the community, its heritage and identity in all but the most superficial sense. In this globalizing world is there no space for the idiosyncrasies of actual communities’ heritage, only for a kind of neutral Disneyfied heritage? Do places like the Barbican only survive because of a wealthy, self-assured community that can protect itself? Can we learn anything from this place that can be applied to protecting other urban communities and their heritage? This chapter examines these questions.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Caroline Humby-Teck Trust for funding towards this research, and to Sarah McCarthy for help with the Barbican interviews.
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Sandes, C.A. (2015). Identity and Heritage in the Global City: The Barbican Estate and Robin Hood Gardens, London, UK. In: Biehl, P., Comer, D., Prescott, C., Soderland, H. (eds) Identity and Heritage. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09689-6_4
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