Place as social identity: an analysis of the spatial enactments of community loss and activism within the built environment surrounding Grenfell Tower

ABSTRACT

This article is based on analysis of narrative interviews with individuals active in local community work in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. It explores how the public spaces and buildings around the tower were claimed and shared by the community, first for emergency support and then for collective mourning, remembrance, worship, and activism. Applying the social psychology of community participation, the article elaborates place identity as a form of social identity and shows how participation functions to organise shared representations of local conditions and facilitate empowerment for social change. Further, the article posits that, in contexts of urban super-diversity, the shared use of local spaces, including faith spaces, generates new forms of belonging-in-multiculture that can become the basis for community development and collective struggle against racialised marginalisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Grenfell
• place identity
• social identity
• community participation
• community development
• multiculture

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.