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Rubble and ruin: Walter Benjamin, post-war urban renewal and the residue of everyday life on LeBreton Flats, Ottawa, Canada (1944–1970)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2014

ROGER M. PICTON
ROGER M. PICTON*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Trent University, 1600 West Bank Dr., Peterborough, ON, Canada, K9J 7BS
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Abstract

Taking a cue from Walter Benjamin, this article exposes the wreckage of urban renewal on LeBreton Flats – a mixed industrial and working-class neighbourhood in Ottawa, Canada. Photographic and textual fragments of urban life retrieved from government expropriation files are used to expose the spell of progress embodied in the urban renewal plan for the neighbourhood. This article shows how urban historians can deploy Benjamin's methodological approach to reclaim the memory of everyday life on LeBreton Flats from the realm of official planning documents. This article shows how despite an official narrative of decline scrap-dealers, craft-workers and residents continued to value the Flats and participate in an imaginative urban life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 130 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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