Exploring urban transformations: Synchronic discourse analysis in the field of heritage conservation and urban development

Abstract

Historic industrial sites and their buildings present new challenges for heritage conservation as well as for urban development. Their transformation invokes conflicts between different concepts and objectives. This paper investigates whether and how transformation and conflicts can be analysed by a research instrument used in the social sciences: discourse analysis. It is presumed that the concepts and objectives of the various planning agents involved as well as the inherent core statements and values can be understood as discourses. Different discourses — as the term is used in the social sciences — clash with planning practice and trigger conflicts. The authors assume that these conflicts are based on differences in values. A case study examines the transformation since the late 1980s of the former Zollverein coal mine and coking plant in Essen, Germany. The results of this synchronic discourse analysis indicate approaches to an integrated planning practice. A version of this paper was previously published in German: ‘Städtische Transformationen erforschen: Die Diskursanalyse im Bereich Denkmalschutz und Stadtentwicklung’, Forum Stadt, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 319–325 (2012). It was produced in the framework of a DFG research project (2011–2014, MI 788/4-1,2, in collaboration with TU Berlin, Prof. J. Cramer). Copyright is given by Forum Stadt.