The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Joe Kerr
The Power of Place—the power of ordinary urban
landscapes to nurture citizens’ public memory, to
encompass shared time in the form of shared territory—remains
untapped for most working people’s
neighborhoods in most cities, and for most ethnic
history and women’s history. The sense of civic identity
that shared history can convey is missing. And
even bitter experiences and fights communities have
lost need to be remembered—so as not to diminish
their importance.
Dolores Hayden
The Power of Place
Engulfed and enframed by a set of new constraints
forged in contemporary times, these fragments from
the past appear denigrated by nostalgic sentiments
that fuel their preservation or reconstruction, while
our collective memory of public places seems undermined
by historicist reconstructions. When juxtaposed
against the contemporary city of disruption
and disarray, the detached appearance of these
historically detailed compositions becomes even more
exaggerated and attenuated.
Christine Boyer
The City of Collective Memory
4 The Uncompleted Monument: London,
War, and the Architecture of Remembrance