Revalorizing colonial era architecture and townscape legacies: memory, identity and place-making in Irish towns

Within place-making, heritage is framed not only by professional priorities, but by wider societal values. In contentious political contexts, this is manifested in the way in which townscape is represented in the collected memories that underpin identity conflicts. This paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of these relationships in post-colonial contexts through discourse analysis of interviews in three small towns in Ireland. The paper concludes that although a cultural ambivalence to colonial architectural legacies remains, attitudes have become predominantly inclusive. This shift is substantially underpinned by local collected memories connected with place identity, and has implications for place-making processes.

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