Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Inspiration
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- One Introduction: Cities and public space
- Two Vancouver: (Re)presenting urban space
- Three Vancouver: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Four Lowell: (Re)presenting urban space
- Five Lowell: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Six Manchester: (Re)presenting urban space
- Seven Manchester: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Eight Venturing beyond Lefebvre: Producing differential space
- Nine Conclusions: Differential space implications
- References
- Primary data sources
- Index
Five - Lowell: Producing urban public space and city transformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Inspiration
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- One Introduction: Cities and public space
- Two Vancouver: (Re)presenting urban space
- Three Vancouver: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Four Lowell: (Re)presenting urban space
- Five Lowell: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Six Manchester: (Re)presenting urban space
- Seven Manchester: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Eight Venturing beyond Lefebvre: Producing differential space
- Nine Conclusions: Differential space implications
- References
- Primary data sources
- Index
Summary
… countries in the throes of rapid development blithely destroy historic spaces – houses, palaces, military and civil structures. If advantage or profit is to be found in it, then the old is swept away … Where the destruction has not been complete, ‘renovation’ becomes the order of the day, or imitation or replication or neo this or neo that. In any case what had been annihilated in the earlier frenzy now becomes an object of adoration. (Lefebvre 1991: 360)
‘So I get there and they’re telling me all about the design and they said we’ve only got one problem. I said what's that? We don't own the land. I said, you don't own the land and you’re designing a park. And they said, we have money to acquire it. So they were spending money on design. Shortly after it [the parking lot] was appraised at $535,000, we had the money to make the purchase and they had $2 million to build it [the park]. So it was a pretty sad looking parking lot. I said, well how are you doing to get the land. And the staff said, that's your job.’ (Aucella 2012a)
Introduction
A welter of frenzies of destruction was wreaked on Lowell for several decades until the 1970s. Coincidentally, just when Lefebvre's The Production of Space was published in the first French edition, the mood changed to one of historic adoration in Lowell. A pinnacle of this adoration was the designation of the LNHP. It is the quality of Lowell’s downtown urban public spaces which in large measure provide for the social relations which make the park work successfully in multifarious ways. It was the fusion over three decades of a city based civic ethos with state and federal public spiritedness that facilitated the enhancement of existing and the production of new urban public space in Lowell. The purpose of this chapter is not so much to recount the history of the national park, that has been accomplished several times and there are several published accounts of its emergence (Gall 1991; Ryan 1991; Stanton 2006). The story of Lowell's post-industrial revitalisation continues to fascinate researchers and recently useful contributions have been made by Weible (2011) and Minchin (2013). Undoubtedly, the most comprehensive history of the national park to date is the NPS sponsored Marion (2014a).
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- Information
- Exploring the Production of Urban SpaceDifferential Space in Three Post-Industrial Cities, pp. 143 - 184Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2016