Post-industrial cities market themselves through renaissance narratives stitched from selective history

Evidence

In the early 1990s Birmingham, the second largest city in the United Kingdom, reinvented itself. Formerly the metal-bashing heart of manufacturing Britain and renowned for both its civic culture and brutal postwar redevelopment around a shopping market and traffic roundabouts, the city was traumatized by each of the postwar depressions. Like many another postindustrial metropolis across the globe it attempted to foster the creation of a new site of mass consumption for the present and future, rationalized by a narrative of renaissance that was based on the tapestry of historical tales of the past. Mass consumption focused on new shopping malls, a theater district, an international conference center and associated hotels and new sports developments to host international events. The story line that stitched this tapestry together was in some ways more interesting. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2248