ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some foundational issues concerning the
contemporary urban life and urban forms that are exemplary of the post-
industrial or post-Fordist city. These terms themselves presume some cultural
and historical specificity. They point to cities that have in some fundamental
way been established or crucially shaped by the impact of modern indus-
trialism and have gone through some almost equally far-reaching change in
the recent past involving de-industrialisation through the emergence of new
technologies or the relocation of production.1 These processes are familiar,
indeed, the constant dismantling and remaking of the industrial city are seen
as essential parts of capitalist industrialisation. But what really concerns us
here is the remaindered industrial city and its transformation through neglect,
gentrification and the rediscovery of the past through conservation, as well
as its restyling and regeneration through the importation of new functions and
new investment monies. In accounts of de-industrialisation the coterminous
reshaping of architecture and urban space tends to be treated as illustrative
of larger processes rather than as having their own dynamics and even their
own distinctive role to play in affirming or disaffirming the notion of the
‘post-industrial city’. The questions that we are interested in focus on these
dynamics and centre on the representation of change and the political
imperatives of preservation.
