Glasgow's Italian Centres : narrative, identity, regeneration

Edwards, Sarah; Charley, Jonathan, ed. (2018) Glasgow's Italian Centres : narrative, identity, regeneration. In: The Routledge Research Companion on Architecture, Literature and the City. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 306-326. ISBN 9781315613154

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Abstract

This essay is the first interdisciplinary account of literary and non-fictional responses to the Italian Centre – a mixed-use development in Glasgow City Centre - since its inception and completion in the 1980s and 1990s. The essay argues that this early and important example of Glasgow City Council’s regeneration of the Merchant City district became a contested terrain for historic and emerging ideas about civic and national identity, cosmopolitanism and social inclusion. By examining a range of little-studied narratives – novels, architectural reviews, city marketing, interviews with the architect, visual narratives and autobiographies - I consider how these narratives promote or critique the ‘culture-led regeneration’ that the Centre embodied.