Geographies of Attachment and Despair: Evoking the Ambivalence of Place(ment) through Poetic Analysis of Urban Decline

Abstract

Scholarly attention to urban decline too often effaces the lived experience of those who inhabit these stigmatized and demoralizing landscapes. This article addresses this gap by using narrative-based poetic analysis to critically interpret residents’ accounts of calling a declining city home. Building on an initial thematic analysis of a broader selection of community discourse, this focused, arts-based engagement constructs a deeper, more evocative portrait of urban decline from four participant interviews, highlighting the ambivalence and pathos of “belonging” to a place in decline. Through the assemblage of what have emerged as four individually discrete haiku “suites,” this article interrogates and attempts to critically empathize with what it means to be in a place of decline. In addition, this article outlines a methodological approach more compatible with critical social-scientific research than is commonly considered.

对于城市衰败的学术观注，过于经常抹除居住在这些受污名化且颓败的地景中的人们的生活经验。本文透过运用基于叙事的诗歌分析，批判性地诠释居民对于将一个衰败中的城市称之为家的记述，以此应对上述阙如。根据对于广泛的社区论述选择的原初主题分析，此一以艺术为基础的聚焦参与，从四位参与者的访谈中，建立一个更为深刻、更能唤起记忆的城市没落之描绘，强调“归属于”一个衰落中的地方的矛盾情绪与感伤。透过凑组浮现为四个各自分离的三行俳句诗“套组”，本文探讨并企图批判性地强调身处于衰败中的地方意义为何。此外，本文概述一个较一般所认为的更相容于批判社会科学研究的方法论取径。

La atención académica a la declinación urbana muy a menudo oculta la experiencia vivida de quienes habitan estos paisajes estigmatizados y desmoralizados. Este artículo aboca esta brecha usando análisis poético de base narrativa para interpretar críticamente los recuentos de los residentes al designar como hogar a una ciudad en decadencia. A partir de un análisis temático inicial de una más amplia selección del discurso comunitario, este compromiso específico, basado en las artes, construye un retrato más profundo y más evocativo del debilitamiento urbano a partir de las entrevistas a cuatro participantes, destacando la ambivalencia y pathos de “pertenencia” a un lugar en decadencia. Además, este artículo esquematiza un enfoque metodológico que es más compatible con la investigación socio-científica crítica de lo que comúnmente se pudiere considerar.

Key Words:

• critical landscape studies
• deindustrialization
• narrative analysis
• poetic analysis
• urban decline

• 批判地景研究
• 去工业化
• 叙事分析
• 诗歌分析
• 城市衰败

• estudios críticos del paisaje
• desindustrialización
• análisis narrativo
• análisis poético
• decadencia urbana

Notes

1. In interviews, I frequently used the term Rust Belt to gauge reactions from participants. Very few, it turned out, identified with the term either positively or negatively. As a result, we can conclude a large variability exists among communities located within this supposedly vernacular region.

2. Pennsylvania State code classifies as cities only settlements with at least 10,000 residents. Sunbury’s population recently fell below this threshold in the 2010 census (Pennsylvania Municipal League 2014)

3. A recent account that traverses this triad of traits is Vance’s (2016) Hillbilly Elegy. Although Vance mistakenly attributed much of this suffering to a decline in cultural values, which he described as maladaptive to political-economic and geographic shifts, Vance’s social closeness to this type of deurbanizing landscape (he was born and raised in a similar city in southeastern Ohio and regularly visits his many friends and family members) allow him insights typically unavailable to externally situated researchers.

4. For interviews where the researcher makes a substantial conversational contribution, it might be desirable to construct a more interactive montage, consisting of multiple narratives or poems in multiple voices, to account for the interactional nature of the encounter (e.g., see Leavy 2010).

5. These narratives are published on my research Web site at www.cnsteacy.org.

6. Interestingly, planner and geographer Robert Lake (2016) recently embarked on a project elevating poetical imagination in the renewed effort to achieve radically democratic futures in the urban sphere.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chad N. Steacy

CHAD N. STEACY is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography and member of the Coweeta Listening Project at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include urban decline, critical race theory, discourses of environmental and climate change, critical landscape studies, and qualitative methodologies.