Images of industry in the postindustrial city: Raymond mason and birmingham

Cultural Geographies (formerly Ecumene)

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 46-68

  Hall, Tim ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MASON. R.; POST-INDUSTRIALISM; URBAN DESIGN; URBAN RENEWAL;

UK, ENGLAND, WEST MIDLANDS, BIRMINGHAM;

EID: 0030770928     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/147447409700400104     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Raymond Mason, interview with Richard Cork for BBC Radio 3, broadcast Apr. 1985. Transcript reproduced in J. Farrington and E. Silber, Raymond Mason: sculptures and drawings (London, Lund Humphries in association with Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1989), pp. 33-8.
2. See P. LAoftman, tale of two cities: Birmingham the convention and unequal city. The International Convention Centre and disadvantaged groups (Birmingham, Birmingham Polytechnic, Built Environment Development Centre, Research Paper No. 6, 1990); D. Lister, ‘The transformation of a city: Birmingham’, in U. Owen and M. Fisher, eds, Whose cities? (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1991; P. Loftman and B. Nevin, Urban regeneration and social equity (Birmingham, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of Central England, Research Paper No. 8, 1992).
3. For examples see S. Cosgrove and D. Campbell, ‘Behind the wee smiles’, New Statesman and Society 1 (28), pp. 10-13; D. Harvey, ‘Flexible accumulation through urbanisation: reflections on “postmodernism” in the American city’, Antipode 19 (1987), pp. 260-86; J. Cusick, ‘Refuseniks attack facsimile city’, Independent, 31 Dec. 1991, p. 5; J. M. Jacobs, ‘Cultures of the past and urban transformation: the Spitalfields market redevelopment in East London’, in K. Anderson and F. Gale eds, Inventing places: studies in cultural geography (Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1992); R. Woodward, ‘One place two stories: two interpretations of Spitalfields in the debate over its redevelopment’, in G. Kearns and C. Philo, eds, Selling places: the city as cultural capital past and present (Oxford, Pergamon, 1993); R. Mgadzah, ‘A growl from Tiger Bay’, Independent, 8 Mar. 1995, p. 22.
4. R. Shields, Places on the margin: alternative geographies of modernity (London, Routledge, 1991), p. 278.
5. A. Charlesworth, ‘Contesting places of memory: the case of Auschwitz’ Society and Space: Environment and Planning D 12 (1994), pp. 579-93; M. Heffernan, ‘For ever England: the Western Front and the politics of remembrance in Britain’, Ecumene 2 (1995), pp. 293-323; N. C. Johnson, ‘Scripting heroic histories: celebrating the centenary of the 1798 rebellion in Ireland’, Trans Inst. Br. Geogr. 19 (1994), pp. 78-93; ‘Cast in stone: monuments, geography and nationalism’, Society and Space, Environment and Planning D 13 (1995), pp. 51-66; ‘The renaissance of nationalism’, in R. J. Johnston, P. J. Taylor, and M. J. Watts, eds, Geographies of global change: remapping the world in the late twentieth century (Oxford, Blackwell, 1995); S. A. Radcliffe, ‘Imaginative geographies, postcolonialism, and national identities: contemporary discourses of the nation in Ecuador’, Ecumene 3 (1996), pp. 23-42.
6. For example the debates about the loss of working-class culture and environment in the case of the Spitalfields redevelopment. See Jacobs, ‘Cultures of the past’.
7. Mason, in Farrington and Silber, Raymond Mason, p. 33.
8. R. Mason, interviewed by P. Weideger, ‘Larger-than-life tribute to Brum's golden age’, Independent, 5 June 1991, p. 14.
9. Birmingham City Council, Dept of Planning and Architecture, Birmingham Unitary Development Plan, Draft for Committee.
10. See J. Mawson and A. Taylor, The West Midlands in crisis: an economic profile (Birmingham: CURS/INGLOV, University of Birmingham, 1983).
11. For details see T. R. Hall, ‘Urban regeneration and cultural geography: the International Convention Centre Birmingham’ PhD thesis, School of Geography, University of Birmingham, 1994.
12. See F. Bianchinni and H. Schwengal, ‘Re-imagining the city’, in S. Corner and J. Harvey eds, Enterprise and heritage: cross-currents of national culture (London, Routledge, 1991); J. T. Bailey, Marketing cities in the 1980s and beyond: new patterns, new pressures, new promises (Cleveland, American Economic Development Council, 1989); and A. D. Fretter, ‘Place marketing: a local authority perspective’, in Kearns and Philo, Selling places.
13. See Loftman, Atale, Lister, ‘The transformation’, and D. Nicholson-Lord, ‘Gleaming heart in decaying body: Birmingham’, Independent, 30 June 1994, p. 5.
14. J. R. Short, ‘Yuppies, yuffies and the new urban order’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (n.s.) 14 (1989), pp. 173-88.
15. Cosgrove and Campbell, ‘Behind the wee smiles’.
16. Giddens has considered the physical or symbolic enclosure and disclosure of aspects of the environment fundamental to the identities of places; see Giddens, The constitution of society (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984), p. 130.
17. J. Eyles and W. Peace, ‘Signs and symbols in Hamilton: an iconography of Steeltown’, Geografiska Annaler 72B (1990), pp. 73-88.
18. B. Martin, A sociology of contemporary cultural change (Oxford, Blackwell, 1981); and D. Ley, ‘Styles of the times: liberal and neo-conservative landscapes of inner Vancouver
19. M. Wiener, English culture and the decline of the industrial spirit 1850-1980 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1981); Shields, Places.
20. J. R. Short, L. M. Benton, W. N. Luce, and J. Walton, ‘Reconstructing the image of an industrial city’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83 (1993), pp. 207-24; see also e.g. S. Watson, ‘Gilding the smokestacks: the new symbolic representations of deindustrialised regions’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9 (1991), pp. 59-70.
21. See Bianchinni, and Schwengal, ‘Re-imagining’; Bailey, Marketing cities; Fretter, ‘Place marketing’.
22. See N. C. Johnson, ‘The renaissance’.
23. See e.g. D. Morley and K. Robins, Spaces of identity: global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries (London, Routledge, 1995).
24. Though see Said, Culture.
25. D. Harvey, The condition of postmodernity (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989), p. 296.
26. J. Leland, Itinerary, cited in G. Cherry, Birmingham: a study in geography, history and planning (Chichester, Wiley, 1994), p. 22; W. Camden, Britannia, quoted in Cherry, Birmingham, p. 22; W. Hutton, A history of Birmingham (1872, repr. East Ardsley, Wakefield, E. P. Publishing, 1976), quoted in Cherry, Birmingham, p. 35. See also C. Gill, History of Birmingham I: manor and borough to 1865 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952).
27. ‘From 1609, copper pennies were issued by the Royal mint, with copper ha'pennies and farthings following in 1665. the coming of these new forms of coinage gave an opportunity to unscrupulous metal workers to imitate them. Many of these deceivers were found in the Midlands, leading the poet Dryden to pen the lines “ ‘Twas coined by stealth, like groats at Birmingham” ‘; C. Chinn, Birmingham: the great working city (Birmingham, Birmingham City Council, 1994), p. 6.
28. Quoted in D. Lister, ‘The transformation’, p. 53.
29. S. Timmins, ‘The industrial history of Birmingham’, in Timmins, ed., Birmingham and the Midland hardware district, quoted in Chinn, Birmingham, p. 10; and Aris Gazette, quoted in Cherry, Birmingham, p. 36.
30. Hutton, An history, quoted in C. Upton, A history of Birmingham (Chichester, Philmore, 1993), pp. 31-2.
31. See T. Hall, ‘The second industrial revolution: cultural reconstructions of industrial regions’, Landscape Research 20 (1995), pp. 112-23. See also Bissett's evocation of the national and international celebration of the industrialist and the site of Boulton's manufactory and house at Soho: ‘Soho - where GENIUS and ARTS preside - EUROPA'S wonder and BRITANNIA'S pride’; J. Bisset, A poetic survey around Birmingham (Birmingham, Swinney & Hawkins, 1800).
32. R. K. Dent, The making of Birmingham, quoted in Chinn, Birmingham, p. 11.
33. S. Daniels, Fields of vision: landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993), p. 49.
34. Wiener, English culture.
35. A. Howkins, ‘The discovery of rural England’, in Colls and Dodd, Englishness, p. 64.
36. D. Horne, God is an Englishman (Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1969) Wiener, English culture.
37. B. Short, ed., The English rural community: image and analysis (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 2.
38. Wiener, English culture, pp. 41-2.
39. Hobsbawm, Industry and empire, p. 34.
40. Hutton, An history, p. 63, quoted in Cherry, Birmingham, p. 35.
41. de Tocqueville (1835) uncredited source, quoted in Cherry, Birmingham, p. 41. See also Chinn, Birmingham, pp. 19-51.
42. Cherry, Birmingham, p. 62.
43. See Wiener, English culture; Chambers, Border dialogues; and Shields, Places.
44. A. Briggs, Victorian cities (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990), pp. 186-7.
45. The city became commonly known as the ‘city as of a thousand trades’.
46. Briggs, Victorian cities, pp. 187-93.
47. Cherry, Birmingham, p. 2.
48. For extended discussions of the Victorian transformation of Birmingham through the radical ‘civic gospel’, see Briggs, Victorian cities, pp. 184-240; Cherry, Birmingham, pp. 75-83; and Upton, A history, pp. 150-8.
49. Cherry, Birmingham, pp. 64-5. See also B. M. D. Smith, ‘Industry and trade, 1880-1960’, in W. B. Stephens, ed., A history of the county of Warwick, VII: The city of Birmingham (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1964); Chinn, Birmingham.
50. See B. Pugh, Solid citizens: statues in Birmingham (Birmingham, Westwood Press, 1983); and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Public art in Birmingham (Birmingham, Birmingham City Council/Museums and Art Gallery, 1993).
51. Eyles and Peace, ‘Signs and symbols’, pp. 82-5.
52. Wiener, English culture, p. 129.
53. Chambers, Border dialogues; P. Fussell, Abroad: British literary travelling between the wars (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 151. Though see W. D. Rubinstein, Capitalism, culture and decline in Britain 1750-1990 (London, Routledge, 1993).
54. Mawson and Taylor, The West Midlands, p. 15. See also K. Spencer, A. Taylor, B. Smith, J. Mawson, N. Flynn, and R. Batley, Crisis in the industrial heartland: a study of the West Midlands (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986).
55. ‘Red Robbo’ was a name coined for the left-wing union representative at British Leyland, Derek Robinson. He was central to many of the disputes between the workers and management at British Leyland at the time. He came to epitomize the radical union leader supposedly at the root of many of the problems affecting British industry during the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
56. N. Hastilow, ‘Proud day for nation's most progressive city’, Birmingham Post (12 June 1991).
57. BBC 2, ‘Midlands report: from cars to conventions’, 4 Apr. 1991.
58. Williams, Culture and society, pp. 13-19.
59. See e.g. E. Laurier, ‘ “Tackintosh”: Glasgow's supplementary gloss’, in Kearns and Philo, Selling places.
60. See Pugh, Solid citizens.
61. Daniels, Fields of v,ision p. 49.
62. Weideger, ‘Larger than life’.