Abstract
This article is about re-making the material fabric of the city and the role that space plays in this. There are many ways of understanding the remaking of the city, including a range of often diverse ‘alternative’ initiatives which are enacted by neighbourhood, voluntary and civil society groups. We address the construction of ‘alternative’ urban low carbon spaces and whether these result in transformation of or continuity with dominant ways of thinking about remaking the city. Drawing on examples in Greater Manchester, UK, the article argues that, often despite the intention to promote forms of localist values and strategies as alternatives to dominant accounts of remaking the city, the hand of dominant and particularly state interests is critical in shaping ‘alternative’ spaces and strategies. This tension – between dominant and alternative – is illustrated through a five-fold typology of the role of space in alternative strategies of remaking the city.
Highlights
We live in an era where there are widespread efforts to purposively make new cities and to remake existing cities
In terms of the constitution of relational space, these initiatives are frequently initiated by localisation movements or groups, key ecologically motivated individuals, and volunteers. They are usually organised as cooperative models, where the cooperative forms the crux of the initiative and often incorporating work with specialist community energy charities or companies, architects, archaeologists, mechanical engineers, bore hole contractors and so on as appropriate to the individual project
In terms of what is materially being remade, this requires a step prior to materially focused action where there is work to raise awareness and consciousness of climate change and carbon emissions as both a reference point and a means of generating momentum to address what can be done about it. For many of these initiatives this means a practical focus on buildings and the activities that go on inside buildings through ‘retrofitting’ insulation and the installation of new energy generation technologies and to experiment with and illustrate new ways of organising retrofit among community groups that diverges from dominant, conventional approaches
Summary
We live in an era where there are widespread efforts to purposively make new cities and to remake existing cities. Though there are various manifestations of both eco-cities (Joss and Molella, 2013) and strategies to retrofit existing cities (May et al, 2013) there are common principles that characterise the dominant strand of both responses Most notably, these are techno-economic responses where lower carbon energy, water, waste and transportation technologies are configured in relation to a city and presented in terms of their cost and contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, presented as bounded spaces and within which there is often a non-active role for people (Hodson and Marvin, 2010; Joss and Molella, 2013).
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