Mediating the Decline of Industrial Cities

Knowledge Production, Heritage-Making and Urban Transformation in Postwar Europe
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-86728-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 330 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge Advances in Urban History

This volume reflects the latest historiographical discussion about the decline, transformation, heritagization and re-invention of industrial cities in Europe during the late 20th century.

It argues that the notion of “mediation” as it has been used in the history of technology helps to shed new light on the processes of understanding changes of industrial cities before, during and after the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. The contributors investigate how different actor groups, such as scientists, union members, journalists, politicians, artists, and historians, mediated the understanding of decline, the anticipated future, and the heritage of industrial cities. The authors look at a wide range of European cities during different phases of decline and transformation.

The book is aimed at scholars of urban history and industrial history, as well as contemporary European history, the history of technology, and deindustrialization studies. The contributions also resonate with discussion in neighboring fields such as urban studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology and digital history.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brull, Christoph

Brüll, Christoph

de Maele, Jens van

Haumann, Sebastian

Krebs, Stefan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Mediating the Transformation and Decline of Industrial Cities  Part 1: Mediating the Understanding of Industrial Decline  1. “It’ll all be over with this place in two years”: Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work and Place on Late-1960s Tyneside 2. Mediating Knowledge in a European (Semi-)Periphery: Youth, Labour and Urban Research in Romania in the 1960s and 1970s 3. Being Unemployed: Deindustrialisation as an Issue in the Periodicals Published by Initiatives for the Unemployed in the Ruhr during the 1980s 4. Photography Mediating Change: The Role of Images During the Decline of Luxembourg’s Industrial South 5. Interpreting, Mediating and Coping with Deindustrialisation: Churches as Urban Actors in Manchester from the Late 1960s to the 1980s  Part 2: Mediating Urban Transformations  6. “We Swallow the Dirt”: Popular and Governmental Perceptions of Metallurgical Air Pollution in Luxembourg During the Trente Glorieuses  7. How the Working Class in the Longwy Region Dealt with the Restructuring of the Steel Industry 8. Memory, Heritage and the Post-Steel City: Mediating the Transformation of Sheffield Since 1990 9. The Classic Slum?: Heritage Discourses, Ideologies of Transition and the Remaking of Post-Industrial Salford (1985–2021)  Part 3: Mediating Industrial-Heritage  10. Working-Class Memories and Legacies of Deindustrialisation through Cultural Creation in Asturias, Spain 11. The Origins of Memory Construction through Film in the Context of Deindustrialisation in French Lorraine 12. Digital unter Tage – (Data) Mining Life Stories and Social Culture in the Ruhr Area

Über Autor(innen)

Christoph Brüll is Assistant Professor for Contemporary History at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH). His research interests include the history of cross-border cooperation in Western Europe. He is the co-editor of Föderalisierung, Strukturwandel, Erwartungshorizonte [Federalisation, Structural Change, Expectations] (2023).

Sebastian Haumann is Professor for Economic, Social and Environmental History at Paris Lodron University Salzburg. His research interests include the history of raw materials and new methods in the field of Citizen Science. He is the co-editor of Concepts of Urban-Environmental History (2020).

Stefan Krebs is Assistant Professor for Contemporary History at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH). His research interests include the industrial history of Luxembourg and the history of repair and maintenance. He is the co-editor of The Persistence of Technology (2021) and Deindustrialisierung: Zum sozio-ökonomischen Wandel westeuropäischer Industriegesellschaften seit den 1970er Jahren [Deindustrialization: The Socio-economic Transformation of Western European Industrial Societies Since the 1970s] (forthcoming).

Jens van de Maele is a postdoctoral member of the research unit Modernity and Society 1800-2000 at KU Leuven. His research interests include architectural history (with a focus on office buildings) and urban environmental history. He is the author of Architectures of Bureaucracy (2025) and editor of Behind Office Doors (2026).