Paper short abstract:

By discussing two examples of postindustrial cities in Croatia, the authors aim at analysing the ways in which postindustrial communities narrate their industrial pasts, address the industrial fallouts and imagine the potentials of postindustrial urban life.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the ruptures of postindustrial cities that are a result of industrial decline. It has two goals. At one hand, it aims to outline common challenges of postindustrial transformations and point out their shared features. On the other hand, it wishes to address the exceptions from commonalities established in the studies of postindustrial cities and thus determine the significance of context-based interpretations of postindustrial space and life.

The paper urges the discussion at a more general level on how postindustrial cities tackle social challenges primarily related to ecological fallouts, unemployment, public health issues and quality of life in deindustrialised or semi-industrialised surroundings. It examines the role of industrial nostalgia in the remaking of postindustrial present. The focus is on the everyday life of postindustrial communities, but also on the envisaging and reimagining of communal urban futures.

The authors analyse how the communities narrate the effects of deindustrialisation and engage in imagining the postindustrial urban futures. They tackle the people’s affective relation towards the legacies of industrial modernisation, practices through which they make sense of their postindustrial setting, as well as their perceptions of the risks and potentials related to the dead ends of the industrial past.

The authors draw their insights from the two urban case studies in Croatia: the town of Sisak and the town of Bakar. By juxtaposing two different postindustrial urban contexts, the paper will challenge the concepts of industrial identity and industrial nostalgia as discussed in recent studies of postindustrial state.