Abstract
In this chapter Bruno Meeus, Tim Devos and Seppe De Blust examine the multiple and contradictory ways in which ‘nostalgia’ is mobilized by different involved actors in the redevelopment of a former slaughterhouse area in the Antwerp neighbourhood ‘den Dam’. In this Antwerp neighbourhood, a particular local alliance of mainly middle-class newcomers and working-class ‘old-timers’ has started to enforce a more socially just redevelopment of the area by appealing to the mobilizing powers of nostalgia for, and the authenticity of, a particular ‘urban village community’. Being part of this alliance themselves, the authors report on the activities and discern important fields of tension in which the cross-class alliance itself is based on a shared nostalgia for an ‘urban village community’.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the multicultural city: Living with Diversity. Environment and Planning A, 34(6), 959–980.
Amin, A. (2005). Local community on trial. Economy and Society, 34(4), 612–633.
Amin, A. (2013). Telescopic urbanism and the poor. City, 17(4), 476–492.
Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224.
Atkinson, D. (2007). Kitsch geographies and the everyday spaces of social memory. Environment and Planning A, 39(3), 521–540.
Barnes, K., Waitt, G. R., Gill, N. J., & Gibson, C. R. (2006). Community and nostalgia in urban revitalisation: A critique of urban village and creative class strategies as remedies for social ‘problems’. Australian Geographer, 37(3), 335–354.
Block, F. (2003). Karl Polanyi and the writing of ‘The Great Transformation’. Theory and Society, 32(3), 275–306.
Blokland, T. (2009). Celebrating local histories and defining neighbourhood communities: Place making in a gentrified neighbourhood. Urban Studies, 46(8), 1593–1610.
Blommaert, J. (2011). Interview Jan Blommaert. In De Standaard 16 April 2011.
Blommaert, J. (2014). Infrastructures of superdiversity: Conviviality and language in an Antwerp neighborhood. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 431–451.
Blommaert, J. & Varis, P. (2015). Enoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 139.
Bonnett, A. (2010). Radicalism, antiracism, and nostalgia: The burden of loss in the search for convivial culture. Environment and Planning A, 42(10), 2351–2369.
Bonnett, A., & Alexander, C. (2013). Mobile nostalgias: Connecting visions of the urban past, present and future amongst ex-residents. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(3), 391–402.
Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. London: Basic Books.
Brown-Saracino, J. (2007). Virtuous marginality: Social preservationists and the selection of the old timer. Theory and Society, 36(5), 437–468.
De Bie, M., Oosterlynck, S., & De Blust, S. (2012). Participatie, ontwerp en toe-eigening in een democratische stadsvernieuwing. In E. Vervloesem, B. D. Meulder, & A. Loeckx (Eds.), Stadsvernieuwingsprojecten in Vlaanderen 2002–2011. Een eigenzinnige praktijk in Europees perspectief (pp. 29–33). ASP Editions: Brussels.
De Decker, P., Kesteloot, C., De Maesschalck, F., & Vranken, J. (2005). Revitalizing the city in an anti‐urban context: Extreme right and the rise of urban policies in Flanders, Belgium. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(1), 152–171.
De Decker, P., Van den Broeck, P., & Loopmans, M. (2012). Van bewonersgerichte stadsvernieuwing naar stadsontwikkeling: 30 jaar beleid voor de stad. In D. Holemans (Ed.), Mensen maken de stad (pp. 37–47). Antwerpen: EPO.
De Standaard. (2010, May 8). Een mens die niet verandert is een saai mens. http://www.standaard.be/cnt/6c2pu6pi. Accessed 24 Nov 2015.
De Standaard. (2011, March 5). Zoektocht naar sociologisch fenomeen ‘bakfietsouder’. http://www.standaard.be/cnt/l2375hm6?word=bakfiets. Accessed 24 Nov 2015.
Douglas, G. C. C. (2012). The edge of the island. Cultural ideology and neighbourhood identity at the gentrification frontier. Urban Studies, 49(16), 3579–3594.
Fraser, N. (2013). A triple movement? Parsing the politics of crisis after Polanyi. New Left Review, 81, 119–132.
Gazet van Antwerpen. (n.d.). Dossier wijken: Den Dam
Het Laatste Nieuws. (2011, November 29). Bakfietsvlaming, frietrevolutie en vlinderakkoord strijden om ‘Woord van het jaar 2011’. http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland/article/detail/1355244/2011/11/29/Bakfietsvlaming-frietrevolutie-en-vlinderakkoord-strijden-om-Woord-van-het-jaar-2011.dhtml. Accessed 24 Nov 2015.
Het Nieuwsblad. (2013, March 12). NV-A-schepen haalt uit naar actiecomités. http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20130311_00500290. Accessed 24 Nov 2015.
Jarvis, H., & Bonnett, A. (2013). Progressive Nostalgia in novel living arrangements: A counterpoint to neo-traditional New Urbanism? Urban Studies, 50(11), 2349–2370.
Kasinitz, P., & Hillyard, D. (1995). The old-timers’ tale. The politics of nostalgia on the waterfront. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 24(2), 139–164.
Legg, S. (2005). Contesting and surviving memory: Space, nation, and nostalgia in Les Lieux de Mémoire. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23(4), 481–504.
Loopmans, M. (2007). From SIF to city fund: A new direction for urban policy in Flanders, Belgium. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 22(2), 215–225.
Loopmans, M., De Decker, P., & Kesteloot, C. (2010). Social mix and passive revolution. A neo-Gramscian analysis of the social mix rhetoric in Flanders. Belgium. Housing Studies, 25(2), 181–200.
May, J. (1996). Globalization and the politics of place: Place and identity in an Inner London Neighbourhood. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 21(1), 194–215.
Novy, J., & Colomb, C. (2013). Struggling for the right to the (creative) city in Berlin and Hamburg: New urban social movements, new ‘spaces of hope’? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(5), 1816–1838.
Ocejo, R. E. (2011). The early gentrifier: Weaving a nostalgia narrative on the lower east side. City & Community, 10(3), 285–310.
Purdue, D. (2001). Neighbourhood governance: Leadership, trust and social capital. Urban Studies, 38(12), 2211–2224.
Schuermans, N., Meeus, B., & De Decker, P. (2015). Geographies of whiteness and wealth: White, middle class discourses on segregation and social mix in Flanders, Belgium. Journal of Urban Affairs, 37(4), 478–495.
Smith, N. (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. London: Routledge.
Van den Broeck, J. (2009). The structure plan: Traditional cooking or nouvel cuisine? In B. Secchi & P. Vigano (Eds.), Antwerp, territory of a new modernity (pp. 233–241). Amsterdam: SUN.
Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024–1054.
Watson, S., & Wells, K. (2005). Spaces of nostalgia: the hollowing out of a London market. Social & Cultural Geography, 6(1), 17–30.
Zerubavel, E. (1996). Social memories: Steps to a sociology of the past. Qualitative Sociology, 19(3), 283–299.
Zukin, S. (2008). Consuming authenticity. From outposts of difference to means of exclusion. Cultural Studies, 22(5), 724–748.
Zukin, S. (2010). Naked City. The death and life of authentic urban places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meeus, B., Devos, T., De Blust, S. (2016). The Politics of Nostalgia in Urban Redevelopment Projects: The Case of Antwerp-Dam. In: Karner, C., Weicht, B. (eds) The Commonalities of Global Crises. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50273-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50273-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50271-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50273-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)