Street Naming and Name Preserving in Urbanization: A Cultural Memory Perspective

Abstract

This paper aims to put forward some suggestions to name the streets in the context of urbanization. Cultural memory which can elicit the public’s memory to the past and influence their identity is drawn on. For naming the streets, it is suggested to take into account firstly the issue of contestation of names which may be positively associated with a past memory for one group and may also be negative to another group. Three sources, including the name of the wise men, past classical works, and ancient buildings are suggested for reference. In terms of preserving the street names, such proposals as building complementary billboard signs, compiling street name books, as well as creating multimodal street names map are proposed.