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Heritage Protection as Progressive Urbanism? Modernist Social Housing in England

Lookup NU author(s): Professor John PendleburyORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Heritage protection can sometimes disrupt the remaking and reimaging of cities by prioritising and protecting alternatives based on non-market values of architectural and historical significance. In England, the “post-war listing” programme has positioned state heritage protection as an unlikely advocate and defender (sometimes of last resort) of the diminishing material and symbolic legacy of the architecture of the welfare state and its socialist values from the 1950s and 1960s. In this paper, we explore what might be at stake ideologically, materially, and symbolically in the protection of post-war architectural heritage in England. While post-war listing has creating scope for alternatives, its subaltern role (in and against the state) has been limited in various ways by state strategies of market-based regeneration that erode and marginalise social housing and welfarist rights to the city. Although heritage protection has been only a minor irritant in the politics of regeneration, the paper explores what might be at stake for the Left in engaging more explicitly with heritage building protection and the selectivity of heritage value.


Publication metadata

Author(s): While A, Pendlebury J

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Antipode

Year: 2025

Volume: 57

Issue: 2

Pages: 734-757

Print publication date: 01/03/2025

Online publication date: 08/01/2025

Acceptance date: 03/12/2024

Date deposited: 09/01/2025

ISSN (electronic): 1467-8330

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.13127

DOI: 10.1111/anti.13127


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
British Academy small grant (grant number SG-36230)

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