Place identity has been a recurring theme in Innovation Circle and its two predecessor INTERREG projects, NOORD21 and PIPE. Discussion of identity as a possible theme promoted an exchange of emails amongst some IC members. In thinking about a new proposal to INTERREG, a question had been posed. It was “How can architecture and design make a difference in smaller cities and rural areas, and have an impact on regional identity, branding and marketing and eventually prevent emigration from the Baltic Sea Region periphery?”
Ilona Navickiene was quick to respond. She introduced the notion of “located forms of identity” from an international development report. She argued that local identity could and should be a way of increasing local control over external economic forces. She suggested that trying to influence identity through architecture and buildings risks being a top-down process, Instead of building design being a way to forge an identity, you need to understand the identity and use that to design your buildings. Thus the process should be very participatory and bottom-up.
Bjorn-Frode Moen responded by arguing that in today’s world young people leave the rural areas for the big cities. He pointed out that some see the city as offering them a chance to “disappear”. This viewpoint repeats a long-running story in sociology which sees the heterogeneity of urban areas as offering anonymity, away from the closer control that goes with small town living, where people are known and there is less tolerance of difference.
Alf Johansen added that there can be different identities in a place or a person, and that identity can change over time. He pointed to the way that the EU is building a sense of a European identity. Furthermore he said that it was important to connect the places on the periphery, such as those in the IC, to a global identity: “remote areas need to be influenced by global culture to survive.”
Some of the issues were reviewed in a book based on the NOORD21 project, which I wrote with colleagues at Heriot-WattUniversity. Place Identity, Participation and Planning was published by Routledge in 2005. In it we argued that place identity is indeed being changed by globalisation, but also by the practices of everyday life, such as wider commuting patterns. Narratives of place are contested – in particular there was evidence that young people did want to embrace an international, metropolitan culture which meant that they saw their home town as rather boring and lacking in things to do. We also pointed to the risk that in seeking to counter the tendency of globalization to “make everywhere look the same”, there was a tendency to create an equally standardised “heritage” townscape of “historical” street furniture, “traditional” shop fronts and museums.
The essence of branding is to create consistency. What makes the brand is that it has qualities that are expressed through all aspects of the product, including, for example, its design, production and marketing. This consistency is more difficult to achieve with a town or even with buildings. However, we do know that iconic buildings can themselves help project an image of a place, even if they do not create a whole brand.
It is also important to recognise that global forces are not creating a standardised rural Europe – rather the reverse, the trend seems to be towards more rural diversity. Some places are being re-made – or are re-making themselves – more than others. Rural areas accessible to urban centres have tended to grow, but the remote rural areas have serious demographic problems, and the most negative rural population trends have been in the new member states. However, in general rural areas seem less successful at job creation than cities. This is the main problem.
Perhaps the key point is the one that Ilona is making – whose identity is it? Can a democratic process lead to a shared sense of identity and help empower people in places that are at risk of being marginalised by the economics of agglomeration and urban growth? Or is the process of design for identity one that is dominated by investors, professionals and local politicians? Is a strategy based on celebrating local identity – or re-making that identity - able to deliver the economic opportunities that rural areas need?
So what do you think? Should the basis of a place’s identity be built on its past and by the people who live there? Or should the aim be to connect the local experience and heritage to the world? Is a Japanese garden in Alytus an alien plant or a way of enhancing the quality of Alytus as a place to live?
