Book Reviews

摘要

However we decide upon viewing the urban landscape, in a contemporary context, one thing is clear: the idea that a heterogeneous place-the local grocer or the village cafe-is necessarily bound to a particular location, enduring both spatially and temporally, is no longer a given. But not only is the loss of necessity unable to be ignored, it is also accelerating. Without wishing to invoke dystopian phantasies, the most striking symptom of the current global recession is surely less the financial hardship suffered (which, however bad, always lends itself to rational analysis) and more the erasure of the places that have become imbued in our memories and imaginations. The collapse of the 'high street'-an emblematic site of the British imagination, at least-finally forces the public to concede to a delayed nostalgia in the face of this loss. Unlike the disruption of monetary income, the end of place resists all attempts at rationality, confounding our very trust in the materiality of time.