ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores and conceptualizes how urban spaces are designed, planned and experienced in relation to the politics of collective and personal memory. It analyses and theoretically discusses different cases in which contested national, ethnic and cultural sentiments that shape memories and practices of belonging, clash in shaping urban spaces. The book examines the conflicts over planning procedures, which engage the contradictory memories that exist at both the national and local levels of planning. It presents a critical analysis of the built heritage in the city of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The nexus between memory and identity as mediated through the built landscape is a central theme in the book, especially in relation to nationalism. Marianne Rodenstein focuses on the rebuilding of the old city of Frankfurt am Main, which was destroyed during the Second World War.
