ABSTRACT
The line 'Where the Past is still Alive' is quoted from the 2000 Shopping and Culture guide on Haga in Göteborg. Since the 1860s, local investigations repeatedly exposed Haga as the most miserable of areas regarding dwelling conditions. One of the most influential was a 1932 municipal investigation which concerned the conditions of the buildings, marking out the existing built environment as completely undesirable. In Göteborg a municipal urban renewal programme began in 1958 when the question of the initiation of a half-commercial slum-clearance company was raised. The company, co-owned by the city of Göteborg and some 50 shareholding private business companies, worked out a municipal programme for urban renewal. The attempt to inscribe 'social time' in conservation was accomplished through the ascription of values and meanings which before had only infrequently appeared in the classifications of historical values. One such realisation of 'social time' is the emphasising of the worker as a vehicle of meanings and values.
