Place Reinvention: Northern Perspectives

The Politics of Museums. Tourism Encounters and Controversies. Volunteer Tourism in the Global South. Encyclopedia of Leisure and Outdoor Recreation. Museums, Heritage and International Development. Remapping Gender, Place and Mobility. Museums in a time of migration. Cultural Tourism in a Changing World. Social Transformations in Scandinavian Cities. The City in the Experience Economy. Voices from the North. Mainstreaming Landscape through the European Landscape Convention.

Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City. Tourism and Social Identities. The Rise of the Networking Region. Vertebrates and Invertebrates of European Cities: New Regionalism and the European Union. Discrete Optimization in Architecture. Social Perspectives on Mobility. Heritage, Pilgrimage and the Camino to Finisterre. Cultural Tourism in Southern Africa. Landscape Balance and Landscape Assessment. Understanding and Managing Urban Water in Transition. Heritage, Museums and Galleries.

Farming on the Fringe. Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 5. The Sociology of Tourism. Transport and Climate Change. Strategic Environmental Assessment in Action. Tourism, Development and Growth. Urban Transportation Planning in the United States. The Theatre and the State in Singapore. Diversities Old and New. Sustainable Neighbourhoods in Australia. Issues in Cultural Tourism Studies. People, Places and Landscapes. Tourism, Power and Space. Concerning the production sector the perspective has changed significantly in recent years — about what production is, its relation to consumption, to authorities and to place.

Traditional industries are no longer seen as a necessity for every community, nor is mass production seen as a key to industrial success. This has produced a view of towns and cities as sites of consumption more than of production Lash and Urry This theory has recently been discussed by Thrift who argues that sites of consumption also are sites of production, as there are obvious links in-between, in an economy where the consumers take part in the production.

This tight relationship also indicates that production is something going on in most places; it is a function of the existence of social life in places. Thus, towns are still obviously also sites of production. Due to the industrial turn called postFordism, technology has become more flexible and adaptable, and enables smallscale production being profitable Piore and Sabel ; Lash and Urry Companies wherever located can be integrated in huge international production systems. In many places production has changed from being locally based for a local market, to production adapted to global specialization and diversification, and for international markets.

Therefore, in most places the industrial base is in a process of change; traditional industries become technologically more advanced and effective, and do not employ as many people as before. Most of the places discussed in this collection have always been oriented towards an international market as they have a history as fishery villages or mining towns.

Integrated in an extremely open economy, very much depending on natural resources and international markets, the northern regions have always been part of national and international economic systems, and thus have long traditions in adapting to changing economic trends. Several of the places have also experienced industrial restructuring, being transformed from exclusively manufacturing sites to places with diverse industrial platforms. Several of the studies will demonstrate that places in the North still are strongly involved in production industries, however less dominant than before and complemented by a variety of new industries.

In Chapter 2, Karl Benediktsson emphasizes that restructuring in a small Icelandic community is all about jobs, jobs, jobs — and only jobs in the manufacturing sector counts. Being recognized as places in rich areas of natural resources like oil, gas and hydro-electric power, many of the places in the North undergo processes of restructuring that take the form of re-industrialization.

In Kirkenes Chapter 4 , near the Russian border, the town is preparing for an oil era, and an old iron ore mine has been reopened more than ten years after it was closed down and a process of restructuring the local economy started. There is a historic continuity in local economic development that marks certain places, particularly where the economy is based on natural resources of some kind.

The social relations embedded in a place supports some forms of production and resist others. Thus, as old industries are vanishing, the cultural and social capital of people tend to live on. There is therefore a tendency for local production systems to survive, sometimes only culturally or in the form of continuity of businesses, partly in new forms. Oil, gas, minerals, fish, waterfalls and so on produce not only hard currency in a global market, but also a highly materialized and embodied sense of place.

On the other hand, materiality is also changing its meaning. From a production point of view, most places are diversified, multifaceted and complex industrial systems. They are not passive containers even if some of them are competing with other localities and forced to attract capital by offering tax breaks, cheap land and free infrastructure.

However, what these local economies are labelled vary according to local traditions, international trends and political opportunities. Symbolic production of place Place promotion is intimately linked to image communication Gold In The Economies of Signs and Space Lash and Urry develop a new paradigm for understanding how economic development is connected to images. Signs, images and symbols of place are carrying place specific cultural values, and must be understood as cultural expressions. Place marketing involves quite specific interpretations of what are the symbolic attributes of a place, and implies a symbolic communication of these interpretations.

Such symbolic communication is not only directed towards the target group of an external market, it also demonstrates locally how our place should be understood. However, place reinvention, even the most explicit place marketing campaigns as the one in Narvik, is never a promotional campaign only.

The case also exemplifies how the ascription of meaning to the place is regulated by the positioning of the place within extensive symbolic relations of north and south as well as centre and periphery. The symbolic production of place is not only obvious in place promotion and selling of place, also physical regeneration and the construction of flagship projects of particular architectural value can be powerful symbolic representations of place Hubbard In Chapter 3 Kristina Nilsson analyses the relocation of the city centre in Kiruna as an example of an extreme make-over of a town.

Even if the reason is industrial — to get hold of the iron ore in the soil beneath the city centre — the symbolic implications are numerous. Nilsson discusses four different place images that have turned up in the local discourse that demostrate how different actors perceive quite different futures for Kiruna as a place, from a dark mining town to an image of a completely new and modern townscape.

Re-imaging processes then involves physical reconstructions as well as semiotic work cf. In Kirkenes, to attract investors, workforce and tourists, the question of town make-over has been raised, and the semiotics and narratives of the town has already changed — it has become a border town with lots of signs of a cross-border region called Barents Region and Russian co-existence such as street names being spelled in Cyrillic and the Russian language is heard all over. However, more important than semiotic changes, are shifts related to narratives and discourses.

Through symbolic expressions places also communicate their identity Philo and Kearns , an important aspect in their struggle to be attractive. The festival has brought about a revitalization of the coastal Sami culture and in marketing the place as a site for international indigenousness. In this case reinvention of place involves renegotiation of local identities. The film produced a changed image of the place.

The symbolic construction of place is here demonstrated through difference — the film reinvented the place into a more exotic site in sharp contrast to depressing images of a place where the fishing industry is bankrupt and were young people have moved out. Where cultural industries are replacing manufacturing industries, for instance tourism, signs and images of place are decisive. The cultural power to create an image has become more important as traditional institutions have become less relevant mechanisms of expressing identity Zukin Political production of place Politics is territorial but these territories are simultaneously real, imaginary and symbolic Keith and Pile , To enhance the attractiveness of a place pro-growth economic development is defined as the basic strategy.

Places are products of social and industrial activities, but today place development is also a question of choice, and matters for political negotiations, policy making and planning. Thus, place development tends to be on the political agenda. Places are scenes where structural development patterns intersect and trigger off new regimes. And more than before places as such are areas for political interests, negotiations and governance. This also reflects changes in the social composition of the local population with regard to class, gender, race and age. Social stratification is expressed in new ways, for instance through gentrification of working-class areas.

With economic restructuring follows a recomposition of class distinctions and social cleavages; political behaviour changes and new groups may enter positions of power where they are able to impose their preferences, values and perspectives upon a place. New place images may therefore mobilize and legitimate particular sets of actions or policies Jessop , and there is a potential of new conflicts produced by place brands Mommaas Images are social constructions, and as such never neutral.

To produce images, is to enact power. A renewed focus on place development has emerged in a period with major shifts in the political culture, defining new rules of the game for local governments Clark This reorganization of local development issues changed the profile of the policy involved from culture as a matter of art and identity towards culture as business. A particular form of political production of place is illustrated in Chapter 4 by Viken and Nyseth about the border town Kirkenes. One of the narratives told here is the image of a political place, a place for international politics.

Its localization close to the Russian border has in a sense always marked the town as of national political importance. The fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of the border to Russia have, however, made Kirkenes into a political destination. Diplomacy, cross-border cooperation and political meetings are going on all the time and ministers and high-profile politicians are visiting Kirkenes almost on a daily basis these days. Places can be planned, and even moved or relocated as in one of the cases in this book the Kiruna case. This is a highly political issue and a matter of negotiations and governance.

One aspect of this is how local citizens can be involved in promotion strategies directed towards targeted consumer groups in external markets. This question is analysed in Chapter 8 by Olsson and Berglund based on a study of urban planning in the Swedish town Arboga. The authors argue that knowledge on how local citizens actually experience and value the practice of city selling is limited. Traditional methods of citizen participation, like public meetings often do not involve large groups of citizens even if they become affected by place reinvention.

The authors argue that systematic mapping of common interests through survey data analyses in urban planning could complement traditional methods of public participation. Politics is also about the driving forces, which in regard to place reinvention are numerous. Some of them are related to economic crises in the local economy.

One example is the enforced restructuring of three mining towns: Another example of this is demonstrated in Chapter 11 by Pedersen and Viken , where crises in fisheries and agriculture in this coastal Sami area gave rise to an ethnic reinvention process. In several of the towns in Iceland, Pajala in Sweden, and in several of the Norwegian cases, the reasons for problems in the s were blamed on others, the market, the authorities and on globalization of markets.

For instance, the major decline in fish resources in the many fishdependent communities on the coast of Iceland and North Norway is elaborated in several of the case studies in this book. Among the deeper changes are also those related to globalization and increased competition expressed, for instance, through different processes such as global tourism at one end of the spectrum, discussed in Chapter 6, and at the other end the revitalization of local identity could also be linked to another consequence of globalization.

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Drivers can also be political; an intentional and strategic change. Place promotion policies have become a mandatory part of economic development policies in even the most remote communities in the North partly as a consequence of tourism but also to attract new inhabitants from more urban regions of Europe. Narratives are both modes of constructing reality, and a means for conveyance and politics.

Narratives are central in human communication and in the way we present and interpret each other. Czarniawska-Joerges ; Czarniawska Even though narratives demand narrators, there is also a tendency for stories to live their own life reducing its authors to co-authors; they are something that circulates among people giving meaning to events, space and human actions. There are at least three ways in which this book can be said to have applied a narrative approach, using a scheme presented by Czarniawska-Joerges The first is that each chapter represents narratives from the field, narratives about places on the northern rim.

These stories go into the body of knowledge about these places, and into the discourse concerning restructuring, place marketing, identities and so on.

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The second way the narrative approach is revealed is through referring to particular narratives in the field, narratives that people tell and that are important in their lives. The last way narratives can be studied, also demonstrated in this book, is to reveal how stories constitute and influence interpretations of social life which adds to the construction of the place.

There are also other narratives and other forms of narrative analyses 10 Place Reinvention appearing in the chapters. People also tell about their places as such: Somers calls this type public narratives. A third form of narratives — what Somers defines as conceptual narratives — are stories that are inscribing in academic or public discourses. The choice of one type of these narratives is determined by the educational background or the profession people have. Such professional narratives are demonstrated in Chapter 8 by Olsson and Berglund where the small Swedish town of Arboga is described according to its historical and cultural profile with a street pattern from the Middle Ages.

A particular form of narratives is the meta-narratives — grounded in grand theories or ideologies Somers Metanarratives are often inscribed in discourses, for instance academic discussions concerning place, region or cultural economy. In this way narratives about local changes are narratives about adaptations to international or global trends, and how global trends are embedded in local performance and culture. Such narratives are for instance represented in Chapter 4 by Viken and Nyseth in the narrative about the multiculturality of Kirkenes.

Narratives in the form of self-presentations about the urban character of the towns located in this peripheral part of Europe seem to flourish cf. One is about the town as a site of opportunity and excitement. Another narrative has almost an opposite tone — the nightmares narratives addressing challenges related to unemployment, out-migration, economic crises or diminishing fish resources. In several of the chapters in the book such stories are told: In several of the cases one can see the contours of a narrative of victimization cf.

Gilpin — others are blamed for the crises: The focus in this book will be what masterframes and discourses that are taken into use to create new images of the places; how new contested identities are produced and negotiated; whose images they represent and interests they gain; and how the images relate to the places as they traditionally are known. For instance this book contains stories of revitalization of cultural heritage in the construction of particular indigenous coastal Sami identity, another about the awakening of the border-culture between Sweden and Finland.

Uniqueness is often found in history. Aims and Structure of the Book Empirically, the analyses in this book are unfolded along parts of the northern European periphery, in Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The book originates from a series of research projects and networks that have focused on restructuring, renewal and reinvention of place and space.

The idea of the book is to further develop the theories of place reinvention through case studies that illustrate the diversity of the phenomenon but also to develop and question analytical categories that can enhance our understanding of place reinvention. The book is multidisciplinary in the sense that the authors originate from sociology, social anthropology, human geography, political science and planning, but also in the sense that many of the presentations draw on theories crossing different disciplines.

The empirical examples highlight how transformations of place are interwoven in global structures and networks even in remote areas in the northern periphery. This book invites the reader into processes of reinvention that cope with the impacts of, but also add to, global trends through meta-narratives and discourses. A part of our concern is to understand more of the dynamics behind processes of place reinvention that goes deeper than place promotion — focusing on a narrow and commodified understanding of place transformation, removed from its social and cultural structures.

Place reinvention is a much broader concept linking place making to both material and symbolic processes of change, and to the discourses and narratives that are linked to place images. One of our main arguments is that material and symbolic production of place are intimately linked, and not two different processes.

Changes in the mode of production followed by an ongoing restructuring of the local economy may lead to changes in place identities and place images; the symbolic representation of a place. But place reinvention is also guided by traditions, norms and values. And in most places there are different 12 Place Reinvention narratives operating at the same time. Different actors tell different stories about the same place. For places to appear attractive to investors, as well as inhabitants, newcomers and tourists depends on traditional economic systems and market trends, but it is also influenced by discourses and meta-narratives, for instance discourses concerning alternative economies, symbolic aspects of place, and the place branding discourse.

Fishing villages are not only places where people make a living out of fishing — increasingly such places have become integrated in an experience economy, and as a consequence, such places reorient themselves through forms of branding as unique localities for visitors. The following chapters are not divided into distinct sections as they all relate to the two dimensions of place reinvention, although to a varying degree. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 have in common reinvention of industrial towns: The two following chapters 5 and 6 both discuss gendered practices involved in place reinvention.

The local discourse on cultural economy is becoming part of the regional development policy and economic aims are increasingly used in arguments in support of cultural activities. The analysis focuses on the gendered outcomes of that process. The study shows how new place images produce new tourism projects — addressing male tourists. The result has been a considerable upswing for existing and new tourism enterprises.

In Chapters 7 and 8 place marketing approaches are the issue. In Chapter 7 the construction of a new place image of Narvik in Norway is considered. Brochures aiming at appealing to new inhabitants, investors, students and tourists are analysed emphasizing how both the ordinary and unique aspects of the place are communicated. In Chapter 8 Krister Olsson and Elin Berglund look more closely into the growing practice of city marketing from a citizen perspective.

Through illustrations from Arboga the authors show how findings from local citizens survey data can be used to evaluate city marketing practices. In Chapter 9 Gry Paulgaard analyses film as a medium for place image construction. Through an analysis of the film, the author discusses the power of place myths, and how they can be modified. This story is about construction of a proud and strong place attachment. Through this analysis the value of the dichotomy is questioned; people live urban lives in this remote town.

The book closes with Chapter 13 where the authors reflect upon some of the main findings that can be drawn from the case studies. To what extent are places in the European North being reinvented, and what forms does place reinvention assume in this region? What has been reinvented, and how was it done? What dynamics were behind these changes? The multiple forms and dimensions of place reinvention are discussed, concluding with emphasizing the essence of the book: Society and Space, 16, — Image Building and Building Images Rotterdam: Possibilities for Prosperity New York: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century London: Alternative Geographies of Modernity London: State University Press , pp.

Space, Politics, Affect Oxon: Chapter 2 The Industrial Imperative and Second hand Modernity Karl Benediktsson Introduction Are towns in the Nordic periphery heading out of an industrial era and into a future of a different kind? How do their own inhabitants answer that question? Some 35 years have now passed since American sociologist Daniel Bell confidently asserted that the structures of industrial society were giving way to a different kind of societal organization: Numerous others have since presented broadly similar arguments, and ever more intricate labels continue to roll off the academic production lines.

Many people living in the towns of the North are not entirely convinced by the admittedly somewhat grand narratives of postindustrial society, with the corresponding emphasis on immaterial economic activities. Theirs are localities whose existence has always been based largely on the utilization of the material bounties of nature — fish, timber, minerals, etc. No wonder perhaps that many people in these towns harbour deep suspicions towards suggestions about the disappearance of the industrial era.

But yet, times are obviously changing. New technologies have not only reduced the need for industrial labour, but also worked towards a deterritorialization of knowledge processes that are so important in the new economy. A global marketplace has brought in new actors in faraway countries, instigating new relational networks between places, firms and individuals. At a micro level, social and cultural changes have deeply affected gender roles and prevailing ideas about the good life. This chapter looks at a particular instance of adjustment to a new environment.

The fieldwork took place in early The importance of everyday discursive production of local space as an arena of meaningful economic engagement — of place as social context — will be Place Reinvention 16 highlighted in the analysis below, through direct quotations from the fieldwork material.

Among the theories about current socioeconomic changes that were mentioned briefly at the beginning of the chapter, the theory of second modernity is somewhat distinctive. The transition to second modernity has meant that [t]he collective patterns of life, progress and controllability, full employment and exploitation of nature Society is thus characterized rather by fluid networking, mobility and cosmopolitanism than by territorially bounded and cohesive entities cf. In this account, the transition to second modernity is seen as the direct result of the success of, and contradictions inherent in, the first.

A defining characteristic of the move towards second modernity is reflexivity: Quite the opposite — it signifies disenchantment and loss of certainties: Previously taken-for-granted categories of nation-state, family, gender, company and so on, are destabilized. What then about the meaning of locality or local community? In fact, local practices and discourses are something of a blind spot in the otherwise comprehensive theorization of Beck et al. That lacuna seems indeed problematic. In the empirical discussion which follows I attempt to bring to life these practical and local conditions and concerns.

My discussion is centred on questions about how local actors define their situations in local development discourse and how they act on them; how place is animated as a social context through everyday discursive practices. Can we really say that places in the north fit the blueprint of second modernity? The experience of deindustrialization is central in the thesis. That process has also impacted upon localities in the northern periphery, many of which were in fact latecomers to industry.

This certainly applies to the case study locale presented here. But how well are the localities in the north, such as the fishing villages on the Icelandic coast, placed to enjoy the benefits of a new economic situation — of moving into service occupations and cultural activities? And, even if these activities are found to hold some promise, to what extent do the people of the north accept the premises of the new social order — with stress on flexibility and change rather than standardization and stability?

Each is located in its very own fjord as the names imply and each has its own distinct character. In , the municipality was further enlarged to include two fjords to the south and one to the north, adding two smaller towns and some farms. Yet each has its very own history, which is reflected in both social life and in the material fabric. Up until a few years ago, one would have been inclined to describe it as a stagnant place at best, or even as a declining place. Population fluctuated, but was usually between six and seven hundred.

Apart from a few early 20th century buildings, most of the housing was from the midth The Industrial Imperative and Second hand Modernity 19 century, and from the s. The whole village looked rather like one large construction site. New residential houses were being built, some obviously rather cheaply and without much consideration to either design or site. A large storey block of flats had already sprung up.

A new building combining shops and offices, that had been given the name Molinn, had been opened in , with an enlargement already underway two years later. A new school was under construction and also a large sports hall, which was going to contain a fully-fledged indoor football field when completed. Large cement silos on the quay and a newly completed bypass for truck traffic were further signs of the construction frenzy which was taking place here.

Over at the beginning of , according to Statistics Iceland , up from less than just a year before. Most of this remarkable increase, however, consisted of a multinational army of construction workers residing at a large camp just outside town. Most numerous were the Polish workers. Other buildings are of varying age, telling a story of a gradual development.

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The older part of town is spread along the steep side of the fjord, but most of the new housing under construction in was being built on the flats in the valley behind. It was for a long time the leading community not only for this part of the eastern fjords, but for the whole of East Iceland. It is, however, somewhat removed from the two 20 Place Reinvention towns described previously, both geographically and mentally.

The visitor approaches from the west, passing a few farms and then some large fish factories. Continuing into the town proper, the houses are strung along two main streets for some 2 kms, protected from further avalanches by a formidable wall in the steep mountainside above. The hospital and the junior college are located in the eastern part. One does not sense that the past is highly valued. A scatter of shops is found along the seaside street. A few farms are found in the fjords, but these have up until recently been overwhelmingly fishing communities.

In the middle of the 20th century the town was associated with a troika of powerful political personalities, who together shaped its destiny. Besides this, public service employment is important, through the regional hospital now rather inconveniently located here, but not necessarily during earlier times when sea travel was most common and local junior college.

The college is based on an older vocational school, and the town has a certain blue-collar tradition and a rich industrial history, not least in servicing the fishing fleet. Although always The Industrial Imperative and Second hand Modernity 21 a part of the economy, fisheries have been less important than in the other towns. Some small-scale food processing and other industries have existed besides it. It would not be accurate at all to present these towns as if they had not undergone any changes since their early days.

They have certainly not stood still, any more than other Icelandic local communities. Many of the older generation told of the change from a close-knit community where people knew each other well — even rather too well — to a much more fluid society today, where children for instance were no longer active participants in the economy as they used to be. Like the road hugging the coast of the East Fjords, the metaphorical road to industrial development has been a long and winding one. The fjord offered good conditions for a port that could handle very large freight vessels and ample electrical power could be generated within the district.

A smaller industrial plant was planned, but this did not materialize. This would however have destroyed a wetland area of great ecological importance in the highlands. A very divisive battle ensued between environmentalists and those speaking for development of large-scale industry. The proposed hydropower scheme was shelved — but an even bigger one drawn up: And then, in , Norsk Hydro backed out. But in another multinational corporation appeared on this contested ground, namely the US-based Alcoa.

An agreement was signed. Local despondency turned to euphoria and jubilation, that to many other Icelanders reached almost bizarre proportions. Youth paraded through town wearing sporting hats made of aluminium foil, and a local car owner ordered a personalized number plate with the letters ALCOA. I am going to sit and wait. For an aluminium smelter. Then that faded away, and perhaps two-three years passed, and then the discussion began again about something big. I experienced this right from my childhood. And now industry has finally arrived — big time.

It started operating in Most people saw this as a very welcome break from the stagnation allegedly prevailing in the past. They also perceived a changed attitude of other Icelanders towards their own community. It has become a place. When asked whether they had been in favour of the project, and if so why, most replied that they had indeed been positive from the outset, for very simple reasons: I looked at it this way: If this would not have come, the town would have continued to shrink.

The community and the services But with this you get expansion. There are more jobs. You have more jobs to choose from. You do not have to accept whatever job you may be lucky enough to get.

But it was all happening very suddenly. The fish is gone, the smell of fish is gone We have suddenly moved from being a fishing place to industrial labour. The Industrial Imperative and Second hand Modernity 23 One of the major concerns of those who questioned the emphasis on heavy industry is that it would transform the localities into single-industry towns that would inevitably become quite vulnerable to market forces which they can in no way control.

The aluminium industry is of course in many ways almost an epitome of globalization. These corporations keep a close watch on the cost of energy around the world, which is the decisive locational factor for smelters. As for the market for the finished product, price fluctuations have also been significant, and related to the general ups and downs of the large industrial economies.

Few interviewees were overly worried about changing fortunes. Some brushed aside rather lightly the question of potential uncertainties: You simply think that it [the smelter] will never close down! But one must perhaps be careful not to exaggerate the level to which this actually represents a radical change in these resource-based communities. Some focus group participants referred an economic past which certainly was always rather risky and changeable anyway, like this middle-aged man: Of course we are born and raised in an economy dependent upon a single sector — fisheries.

We know that situation well. We know that when the catches fail, there is less money and less activity — we know all of that. The cod has sometimes failed, or the capelin, or the whole lot, and this has alternated with booms, and we have lived with that. Of course, if this factory closes down, then that is not like the cod, which comes back during the next season.

The factory would be gone for good. So that would perhaps be a risk, but this factory would maybe have built up such an environment around itself that we would be better able to cope with losing it. Similar reasoning often came up in the group sessions, where the participants exchanged their views: We have never had anything but a single something to build on. We have never had other things. Well, many small things But all these small things have always lived on the fisheries. We have never known anything else.

And always when the fish is gone, in all villages, when the fish is gone, nothing is left. It does not matter if the place was doing well before. It was for a while one of the richest places in Iceland. This is a fact. And then the fish was gone, and nothing was left. The new industry was thus compared favourably with the fisheries and related industries, where fluctuations of nature — and, to a lesser extent, international markets — were an inevitable source of uncertainty.

But even if the sentiments were thus positive for the most part, it was of course not the case that all inhabitants of these three towns turned out to be in favour of the industrialization project. This propaganda had in his view led local people to neglect other and perhaps more innovative strategies for making a living, waiting instead for the one-off solution. The same person also hinted that his own life had not been entirely pleasant since the debates started: I am of course nearly expelled from this community here for holding these opinions, which I have been trying as best I can to make heard.

Another man had very serious reservations about the nature of jobs associated with the project: This was never my dream, far from it. And this means that if I were a young man here, then I would be looking for another place to live, certainly.

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I am here because I am a village person by nature, not a factory slave. Critics of the project have often pointed out that, as such industrial jobs have traditionally been culturally coded as male, it is likely that the project will exacerbate already-existing gender imbalances. For some time, the male-to-female ratio has been quite skewed in many rural areas and smaller coastal villages of Iceland, but even more so in East Iceland than elsewhere.

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A woman observed that gender imbalance in local economic life was not exactly a new phenomenon, but had been a persistent feature of local culture for a long time: I argue that these coastal villages, they are really very male-centred communities, everything is somehow based on the male viewpoint. One of their advertisements showed a young, smiling woman, with a toddler on her arm. Another prominent question was where the workforce for the plant was going to come from. A local politician scoffed at the suggestion that the new jobs would be filled by international labourers: But, see, this simply is not like that.

Others recognized the staffing of the new plant by foreign labour as a distinct possibility and even likelihood, but saw it not as a problem but simply a healthy development towards a more diverse community. Alongside the industrial processing of material resources, new attitudes, skills and practices geared for the processing of somewhat ethereal symbols and meaning would have to be developed.

During the past few years, despite an overwhelming penchant for energy-hungry industrial developments, the Icelandic central government has, in its regional policy statements, in fact at least frequently referred to ideas of the knowledge economy.

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Some regional and local authorities have taken up the challenge of designing an institutional architecture appropriate to their knowledge needs. The new Knowledge Network was supposed to build on this, not least to broaden the possibilities for local people to undertake tertiary studies at the universities. This initiative had generally been well received. Yet there was some scepticism aired by those who were interviewed in While nobody really suggested that increased tertiary education was a negative thing in itself, there was a pervasive sentiment that the move towards knowledge-based occupations and emphasis on university education had led to a serious devaluation of the forms of knowledge and kinds of jobs that were more commonly found in the coastal towns.

The local politician referred to above forcefully expressed a feeling, which is common in regional towns and rural areas, that urban Iceland has lost its bearings: It is simply a fact that They have no idea! The mollycoddling attitude towards university studies is becoming a societal disease, in my opinion. We live today in a society where we educate five plumbers against five hundred lawyers!

This is pure nonsense! Meanwhile, our country needs thousands of skilled industrial workers. To wrap this up: Again, the local politician stated this clearly: This is very simple, really. I have always thought that it is the economic life which is the basis for everything, and if you really want to analyse and understand a development process, you start by looking at what is happening there. And the economy was indeed limping. People realised that they needed something else — more vigororus, safer, bigger — in order to reverse the trend.

The Industrial Imperative and Second hand Modernity 27 Local development, in other words, is in this vision first and foremost about jobs; preferably industrial jobs that result in a material, tangible output. Apart from the sheer size of the aluminium project, which would provide hundreds of jobs in an instant, there was the expectation of multifarious spin-offs. Into the Post-construction Period I must say — and I have thought quite a lot about this — that I can not at all predict what this community will look like in three to five years.

When this is written, in late , the dust from the construction phase is now gradually settling. Most of the international construction workers have left. At the start of the megaprojects in East Iceland, the Icelandic parliament decided that a social impact monitoring programme should be carried out for six years, from to The completion of the smelter coincided with a drastic cut in fishing quotas and layoffs in some of the larger fisheries firms in the area.

The new, large industrial establishment undoubtedly softened the blow for the communities. Hiring of production workers to the smelter started for real in late Contrary to some predictions, nearly all who applied for these jobs were Icelanders. The impacts on education levels and on the gendering of the local labour markets are among the issues discussed in the monitoring report. It is also pointed out, however, that this has coincided with a general trend towards higher education in the country as a whole.

As described previously, the aluminium company explicitly tried from the start to recruit women. There has been some success in this regard: The new industrial employer has so some extent compensated for contracting employment in the fish processing sector, where women have held many jobs. On the whole, however, the monitoring report found that women had not been involved nearly as much as men during the construction phase, nor indeed do they expect as much as men from the project in terms of local development impacts.

There are also much more critical than men of its environmental impacts. The contours of the post-project communities are thus only beginning to emerge. This in itself was indeed a sudden and very welcome reversal of a persistent trend for these small towns. The temporal duration of those impacts is open to question, however. Longer time is needed for judging whether these places, even if their economies are now more robust than before, have reinvented their images and identities in such a way as to be able to continue to attract new settlers after all available jobs at the ALCOA factory have been filled — and hold on to those who live there currently.

The capital area still exerts a strong influence on all other regions of Iceland. These are, or were until quite recently, closely circumscribed local communities with strong identities. Their response to uncertainty and stagnation was to unite in the drive for getting a large — very large — industrial establishment to settle in their midst. Following success in this regard, they have been rather slow in formulating a convincing image for projecting outwards to people who might want to visit or settle.

Perhaps there has not been that much real reflexivity. It would be more accurate to say that their reinvention strategy is aimed at finally entering the first one. Although large-scale introduction of stern trawlers and the standardization of fish processing in the s has sometimes been characterized as the belated entrance of Icelandic coastal communities into the Fordist economy of first modernity, the reliance on fisheries has continued to mean a large degree of uncertainty and risk.

Among some at least, these changes are viewed with a slight trepidation. But then again, there is not exactly anything new in such radical changes in this context. These are not communities that have existed in some unchanged form since time immemorial: On the contrary, before this last bout of reinvention, the towns had changed their complexions considerably since they were first formed in the late 19th and early 20th century.

As Scott Lash has usefully pointed out, first modernity involves individuals that are reflective, while true reflexivity is the product of second modernity. They are far from secure about themselves or their communities, but on the contrary are very much preoccupied with uncertainty. They are aware of their somewhat marginal position in a risky global environment, while quite correctly pointing out that risk has always been present here.

There are those who do see certain opportunities in tourism and in linking up with other parts of the cultural economy. But the industrial imperative of first modernity is still an irresistible prospect for most local people. To use the formulation of Lash , p. Nordic Council of Ministers. Viewed 6 November at http: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. British Journal of Sociology, 56 4 , — The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Economies of Signs and Space.

Journal of Rural Studies, 15 3 , — Geografiska Annaler, 80 B 1 , 29— Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century. Nilsson Introduction The physical relocation of the iron ore mining town of Kiruna in the very north of Sweden is the starting point in this chapter. In the s the town was depressed from declining mining activities and a decrease in the number of inhabitants. Today, the high global price of iron has driven the mining company to extend the mine underneath the existing town.

This in turn will cause ground deformation and necessitate a relocation of a third part of the town, including the city centre, during the next 30 years. Since the idea was launched in , Kiruna has had widespread media attention and authorities, professionals and tourists visit Kiruna to hear what is going to happen and also to be part of this experience. When Kiruna was established years ago it was designed and achieved the standing as a model town. The current planning process is based on a political vision of a future model town, as a conception of a sustainable city. The various functions in the town are expected to be integrated to obtain good living conditions in an ecological, social and economical manner for all its inhabitants Kiruna The main question in this chapter is to explore the town image of Kiruna.

The relocation and the reinvention are seen in the theoretical perspective of institutionalism and urban regimes. Are the various stakeholders able to pool resources, build institutions and eventually a regime that has the capacity to produce a common vision of the future town — a reinvented Kiruna? Empirical evidence for the chapter is based on activities concerned with the relocation of the town of Kiruna together with earlier documents presenting Kiruna and its development. The analysis forms a part of a larger research project which concerns managing of planning problems with sustainability visions and different stakeholders cooperating in the process.

The investigation is carried out as a single-case study Yin and in an intensive methodological way Danermark et al. This intensive method combines interviews, together with an analysis of documents, records, plans and available statistics. Kiruna provides an extreme case. However, the type of great changes, filled with uncertainties for both planners and the local community, exist in most urban planning situations.

The Kiruna example provides a particularly obvious case that makes it interesting to 34 Place Reinvention illustrate the reinvention of a town caused by great physical changes — a spectacular make-over.

The next section provides the framework for the analysis based on regime and institutional theories. The third part presents the case study focusing on the issues in this chapter — images of Kiruna town. Fourthly, the reinvention of Kiruna is analysed and lastly the governance of the process is discussed. A theoretical perspective on regimes also concentrates on informal groups creating coalitions for carrying out decisions and plans. The concept of urban regime is frequently defined as consisting of three elements Stone In this type of regime you have a purpose for example, a better environment, conserving building heritage, urban aesthetics and new resources.

Another perspective on the activity of planning is through describing the institutions governing the planning processes or other societal changes. North gives a basic definition of institutions as the setting of boundaries of forms of human cooperation. Institutions reduce uncertainty by structuring everyday life, and they provide and limit the number of choices for the individual. The institutions can be formal such as rules for people, or informal boundaries such as conventions and norms for behaviour.

Both institutions and organizations provide a structure for human cooperation. The institutions consist of the basic rules for the game, which are human shaped; North argues that the most important task for societal institutions is to reduce uncertainties by creating a structure for joint efforts between human beings. These authors outline the key qualities of the capacity that can be seen in the institutional relations and qualities of new governance.

Broadening the stakeholder involvement is seen as a means to facilitate the flow of knowledge and helps building up intellectual capital and relationships of trust Place Reinvention by Real Changed Image 35 which can lead to the establishment of consensus. It can also enhance the capacity to act through opening up access to resources and sources of power Healey To be able to identify, analyse and compare the different images of the new Kiruna I have used discourse analysis of written documents and papers as well as some oral descriptions from interviews.

Foucault is one of the founding fathers of discourse analysis. According to him, discourse is a collection of statements governed by rules for the construction and evaluation of statements. Both discursive thinking and discursive practices create a discourse. Hajer , states that a discourse refers to a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, pictures, narratives, statements and so on, that in some way together produce a special version of expectations.

The language is one important part of discourse building and analysis. The discourses in the study are interpreted as various images. Kiruna Relocation Kiruna is a small town, with approximately 20, inhabitants, located in the very north of Sweden at the timberline of the mountain area Kiruna a. The town was established in for the purpose of hosting the workers involved in mining iron ore.

Since then the mining and the number of inhabitants have increased and also fluctuated in response to the demand for iron. The iron mine has for a long time been run by a state-owned company, LKAB Loussvaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag , which is the main industrial platform of Kiruna. Approximately a quarter of the inhabitants in the entire municipality are directly employed by LKAB. This gives the company a powerful position as the municipality is dependent on the prosperous development of LKAB.