Dereliction, decay, and the problem of de-industrialisation in Britain, c.1968-77
Dereliction, decay, and the problem of de-industrialisation in Britain, c.1968-77
De-industrialization and the rise of the service sector have formed the basis of recent attempts to develop a new metanarrative of economic change in twentieth-century Britain. Their effects have been taken as writ through labour market statistics or aggregate measures of gross domestic product. However, by focusing on particular micro-economic spaces, a different story emerges. Using the inner areas of Liverpool as a case-study, this article shows how the city's social and economic problems were underwritten by the decline of the service sector, located around the port. By reading the effects of social and economic change through accounts of the physical environment, it demonstrates how urban decay and dereliction provided material resonance to Liverpool's economic decline. The city's landscape of urban decay and dereliction encompassed the infrastructure of everyday life – housing, roads and even trees – as well as that of economic activity, including the docks and warehouses. Taken together, this article shows how this landscape of urban decay and dereliction came to be constituted as an agent within Liverpool's continued economic decline in the 1970s rather than simply being a reflection of it
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Andrews, Aaron
9aa7f803-f0c1-4845-9a8a-8eeff166d08a
1 May 2020
Andrews, Aaron
9aa7f803-f0c1-4845-9a8a-8eeff166d08a
Andrews, Aaron
(2020)
Dereliction, decay, and the problem of de-industrialisation in Britain, c.1968-77.
Urban History, 47 (2), .
(doi:10.1017/S0963926819000245).
Abstract
De-industrialization and the rise of the service sector have formed the basis of recent attempts to develop a new metanarrative of economic change in twentieth-century Britain. Their effects have been taken as writ through labour market statistics or aggregate measures of gross domestic product. However, by focusing on particular micro-economic spaces, a different story emerges. Using the inner areas of Liverpool as a case-study, this article shows how the city's social and economic problems were underwritten by the decline of the service sector, located around the port. By reading the effects of social and economic change through accounts of the physical environment, it demonstrates how urban decay and dereliction provided material resonance to Liverpool's economic decline. The city's landscape of urban decay and dereliction encompassed the infrastructure of everyday life – housing, roads and even trees – as well as that of economic activity, including the docks and warehouses. Taken together, this article shows how this landscape of urban decay and dereliction came to be constituted as an agent within Liverpool's continued economic decline in the 1970s rather than simply being a reflection of it
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e-pub ahead of print date: 30 May 2019
Published date: 1 May 2020
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Local EPrints ID: 468863
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/468863
ISSN: 0963-9268
PURE UUID: 37f9b2ad-8f1c-4c0f-af2b-615abc986322
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Date deposited: 30 Aug 2022 16:55
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 17:50
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