Paper short abstract:

This paper is about how different types of places are constructed as emblematic of a city’s decline and shrinkage, based on class and place-based temporal framings of change, and how these representations inform competing place-making strategies, in the context of deindustrialisation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is about how different types of places are constructed as emblematic of a city’s decline and shrinkage, based on class and place-based temporal framings of urban change, and how these representations inform competing place-making strategies, in the context of economic and demographic decline caused by deindustrialisation. It explores which of these emblematic places are considered worth destroying, transforming or rehabilitating, for being (or not) considered as heritage. It draws on an extensive body of scholarship on post-industrial communities, which investigates how the economic, social and spatial changes caused by deindustrialisation have led to an in-depth restructuration of the working-class. Arguing for a broader scope for the analysis of deindustrialisation, I recontextualise it in the more comprehensive conceptual framework of urban shrinkage, taking the analysis to different places, urban experiences and social classes. The analysis draws on ethnographic material collected in two French medium-sized shrinking cities, Dieppe and Nevers, where industrial sites are neither considered as part of heritage nor meaningless, and subjected to different strategies and aspirations than places considered worth rehabilitating for touristic purposes. While both working and middle class residents share a common narrative of the “lost grandeur” of Dieppe, the places emphasised in this narrative differ depending on class, eventually leading to different understandings of processes of decline. Then, I analyse how these class and place based temporal framings influence competing place-making practices and diverging aspirations for the future development of place.