Sticky Space: Toxicity and Time in a New England City

Abstract

AbstractThis article theorises stickiness in the built environment by narrating the surfaces, histories, and religious temporalities of one clock factory turned strip club building in New Haven, Connecticut. The factory‐club building demonstrates the ways in which sticky relationality counters the smooth nostalgia demanded by heritage preservation and urban revitalisation efforts. From the radium that clung to the bones of the women who painted watches in the clock factory, to the stigma that clings to sex workers, and to the label of blight that clings to neighbourhoods, histories and values accumulate and structure our surroundings. How might sticky spaces gum up the progressive temporalities of capital accumulation? Utilising stickiness as texture and concept, this article is an enquiry into the ways that the built environment helps create, maintain, and contest the boundaries of stigma, toxicity, and time.