The politics of Nostalgia in urban redevelopment projects: The case of Antwerp-Dam

Abstract

In academic writing, nostalgia, the sense of loss in the face of change and a related yearning for the past, has mostly been cast as regressive and generating conservative emotions instead of forward-looking solutions (Bonnett 2010). In the analysis of urban redevelopment programmes and the deep transformations they often intend in deindustrialized (or deindustrializing) and ethnically diverse urban areas, attention to proliferating nostalgic sentiments has mostly been blamed of further endorsing exclusionary urbanisms. Scholars, for instance, point out that nostalgic emotions support regressive ethnocentric and xenophobic political agendas. White working-class urban residents often express narratives of loss of local community, of neglect and of general neighbourhood decline (Blokland 2009 ; Schuermans et al. 2015). The exploitation of these nostalgic emotions by ethnocentric political fractions “trap people in the past” (Watson and Wells 2005). They offer them the false promise of a return to a mythical national and white past (Amin 2002 ; De Decker et al. 2005).