Urban Planning and Cultural Identity (RTPI Library Series) - Softcover

Neill, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415259150 ISBN 13: 9780415259156

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

Urban Planning and Cultural Identity reviews the intense spatiality of conflict over identity construction in three cities where culture and place identity are not just post-modernist playthings but touch on the raw sensibilities of who people define themselves to be. Berlin as the reborn German capital has put 'coming to terms with' the Holocaust and the memory of the GDR full square at the centre of urban planning. Detroit raises questions about the impotence and complicity of planners in the face of the most extreme metropolitan spatial apartheid in the United States and where African-American identity now seems set on a separatist course. In Belfast, in the clash of Irish nationalist and Ulster unionist traditions, place can take on intense emotional meanings in relation to which planners as 'mediators of space' can seem ill equipped.

The book, drawing on extensive interview sources in the case study cities, poses a question of broad relevance. Can planners fashion a role in using environmental concerns such as Local Agenda 21 as a vehicle of building a sense of common citizenship in which cultural difference can embed itself?

About this title

About the Author:

William JV Neill is Director of the Postgraduate Planning Programme at the Queen's University of Belfast. He obtained his Masters in Planning from the University of Michigan and PhD from the University of Nottingham. His most resent research has focused on regional development issues, urban planning and city marketing.

Review:

The book's subject matter is timely when the ODPM is urging planners to be aware of diversity and cultural difference - RTPINEWS

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0415259150
• ISBN 13: 9780415259156
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272