The Politics of Nostalgia in Urban Redevelopment Projects: The Case of Antwerp-Dam

In this chapter Bruno Meeus, Tim Devos and Seppe De Blust examine the multiple and contradictory ways in which ‘nostalgia’ is mobilized by different involved actors in the redevelopment of a former slaughterhouse area in the Antwerp neighbourhood ‘den Dam’. In this Antwerp neighbourhood, a particular local alliance of mainly middle-class newcomers and working-class ‘old-timers’ has started to enforce a more socially just redevelopment of the area by appealing to the mobilizing powers of nostalgia for, and the authenticity of, a particular ‘urban village community’. Being part of this alliance themselves, the authors report on the activities and discern important fields of tension in which the cross-class alliance itself is based on a shared nostalgia for an ‘urban village community’.