Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on sustainability of post-industrial cities, on how sustainability and the post-industrial are both mobilized and put to work as strategies of urban governance. I invite you to find out how they shape and are shaped by politics and practices of and in three European cities.

Paper long abstract:

During my fieldwork in Almada (PRT), Essen (GER) and Malmö (SWE), I encountered different ways industrial pasts and current sustainability efforts are intertwined. Once and again I heard the story of rising like the bird phoenix to old glory and prosperity through sustainability. I came across claims of special transformation competencies gained through massive structural changes of de-industrialization and how they were marketed. But I also found out about the volatility and limited durability of relations to industrial pasts due to political rivalry, changing governments and financial crisis.

So, how are industrial pasts put to work in current sustainability effort? How are post-industrial cities made, unmade and transformed?

I will introduce different answers to these questions for three post-industrial cities with histories in shipbuilding, steel production and coal mining that all were faced with massive job, tax and (self-) image losses. I will address how the rules of post-industrial city making are influenced and changed, and present different roles industrial pasts play in shaping and imagining the future and making the current governable.