TY - JOUR
T1 - Urban redevelopment as soft memory-work in Montgomery, Alabama
AU - Inwood, Joshua
AU - Alderman, Derek H.
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. Their insights pushed us to engage with a complex story and we thank them for their efforts. We also wish to thank the editors of the journal for their insights and help in making this a stronger paper. Admissions are our own. While not directly funded through our National Science Foundation Grant, this work began over coffee in the Union Prevail coffee shop in downtown Montgomery while working on another project funded through the NSF.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Urban Affairs Association.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Scholars are increasingly studying memory-work as an essential place-defining force within cities, but few scholars have analyzed urban redevelopers as agents of memory-work. Using the Montgomery Builds effort to redevelop the Kress Building as a “memory moment,” we argue for a broader reading of memory-work that recognizes the broad spectrum of social actors, interests, and tensions involved in not only doing justice to the legacies of racialized pasts but also appropriating them in the service of urban capital. Central to our argument is a recognition that urban spaces are not just the product of the labor of remembering and preserving, but that these spaces have an affective and material place and impact within people’s lives and connections with the past. In so doing, we articulate how memory works through the remaking of space and place and argue for a broader definition of memory-work, a recognition of the harder and softer socio-political forms they can take in cities, and the way ostensibly painful memories are folded back into urban redevelopment visions in ways that facilitate but also complicate development and racial reconciliation.
AB - Scholars are increasingly studying memory-work as an essential place-defining force within cities, but few scholars have analyzed urban redevelopers as agents of memory-work. Using the Montgomery Builds effort to redevelop the Kress Building as a “memory moment,” we argue for a broader reading of memory-work that recognizes the broad spectrum of social actors, interests, and tensions involved in not only doing justice to the legacies of racialized pasts but also appropriating them in the service of urban capital. Central to our argument is a recognition that urban spaces are not just the product of the labor of remembering and preserving, but that these spaces have an affective and material place and impact within people’s lives and connections with the past. In so doing, we articulate how memory works through the remaking of space and place and argue for a broader definition of memory-work, a recognition of the harder and softer socio-political forms they can take in cities, and the way ostensibly painful memories are folded back into urban redevelopment visions in ways that facilitate but also complicate development and racial reconciliation.
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U2 - 10.1080/07352166.2020.1718507
DO - 10.1080/07352166.2020.1718507
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85081740482
SN - 0735-2166
VL - 43
SP - 1153
EP - 1172
JO - Journal of Urban Affairs
JF - Journal of Urban Affairs
IS - 8
ER -