A study on industrial heritage and building reuse in redevelopment processes - A case study on the industrial heritage and redevelopment of Västerbro

Sammanfattning

There is a trend in urban planning to redevelop industrial areas within cities into new modern residential districts. Considering sustainability goals and heritage conservation, many of these areas are often redeveloped through partial material reuse or full adaptive reuse of buildings. The thesis aims to uncover the actors, networks and processes in the redevelopment and planning processes to understand how cultural heritage is constructed and negotiated in relation to the reuse of buildings in a redevelopment project. This will be done through the analysis of planning documents and strategies, as well as antiquarian investigations on the industrial heritage in the case of Västerbro in Lund, Sweden. By analysing these processes and documents through ANT, assemblage theory, critical heritage studies and relational geography, I found that the extensive network of actors is incredibly complex and constantly changing as new relationships and actors emerge during the redevelopment process but lastly stabilises in the last binding planning documents. The heritage process has an intrinsic social dimension that makes it inherently political, but also personal, while representing the contemporary needs of society. In the case of Västerbro, the image of heritage was completely restructured during the planning process due to the complex web of relations, actors, emerging networks and assemblages that constantly restructured the value and 'make-up' of the industrial heritage. The material reuse of the historic buildings played a major role in the reconstruction of what could constitute heritage values in Västerbro. There were extensive plans for adaptive reuse for many of the industrial heritage buildings, which were eventually reduced to accommodate new developments in the area. In the end, the main reuse of industrial heritage was the reuse of an industrial chimney and the material reuse of bricks to make ornamental pieces for Västerbro which represents its history.