Nostalgia and Urban Change: The Roles of Selective Remembering and Forgetting in Transforming Post-Socialist Cities

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel assesses the roles of nostalgia and forgetting in the changing urban landscapes of post-socialist cities. Specifically, it looks at how state and private-sector actors have harnessed key aspects of collective nostalgia and selective forgetting in order to reap political or economic benefits. Nostalgia and forgetting are commonly perceived to be historically-focused activities. Yet, many new urban initiatives draw heavily upon aspects of the past in their marketing. Architecture, urban planning, and public monuments thus put ideas of future change, nostalgia, and forgetting into dialogue with one another and by doing so alter existing place meanings.

The version of the past presented by the state, however, is not the only one that manifests in city spaces. Place meanings may be impacted by new urban initiatives, but they are also performed through civilian activities, ranging from daily employment commutes to large-scale civic protests. Civilians thus bring to city spaces their own place meanings, including nostalgias of the past and dreams for the future—at times coinciding and at others contradicting with the various state-sponsored narratives that surround them. A broader network of civilian actors is therefore imposing their own landscapes of meaning onto city spaces in a performative manner. The co-existence, competition, and overlapping of state vs. public vs. private sector city narratives and place meanings relates directly to the successful (or not) life of a city. Papers on Georgia, Estonia, and Russia explore these complexities of nostalgia and forgetting in post-socialist urban space.

Sub Unit

• Geography/Urban Studies

Chair

• David Sichinava, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State U(Georgia) / Caucasus Research Resource Center--Georgia (Georgia)

Papers

• Ida-Virumaa: Searching for the Forgotten - Marie-Alice L'Heureux, U of Kansas

• Scaling Russian Cities: Rooftops, Monuments, and Acrobats - Maria N Corrigan, Emerson College

• Reviving the Legacy of a Stalinist-era Resort Town: The Redevelopment of Tskaltubo, Georgia - David Sichinava, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State U(Georgia) / Caucasus Research Resource Center--Georgia (Georgia); Suzanne Harris-Brandts, MIT

Discussant

• Olena V Leipnik, Sam Houston State U