Rubble and ruin: Walter Benjamin, post-war urban renewal and the residue of everyday life on LeBreton Flats, Ottawa, Canada (1944–1970)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Taking a cue from Walter Benjamin, this article exposes the wreckage of urban renewal on LeBreton Flats – a mixed industrial and working-class neighbourhood in Ottawa, Canada. Photographic and textual fragments of urban life retrieved from government expropriation files are used to expose the spell of progress embodied in the urban renewal plan for the neighbourhood. This article shows how urban historians can deploy Benjamin's methodological approach to reclaim the memory of everyday life on LeBreton Flats from the realm of official planning documents. This article shows how despite an official narrative of decline scrap-dealers, craft-workers and residents continued to value the Flats and participate in an imaginative urban life.

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