Cultural dimensions and dilemmas of revitalization of postindustrial areas and facilities. From industrial culture to cultural industries in selected places in Upper Silesia

Abstract

The topic of revitalization operates within the framework of two opposing positions – defenders and critics of its results – whose antagonism makes it difficult to formulate a balanced and impartial opinion on its effects. The article is an attempt to confront them. The complexity and ambiguity of revitalization is demonstrated by the concept of culture-led regeneration (CLR), in which culture is understood in a standard way: selective and normative. CLR is shown here on the example of post-industrial areas and facilities in Upper Silesia, which were subjected to economic instrumentalization, aestheticization and marketing management, replacing industrial culture with cultural industries. On the one hand, CLR leads to the modernization of degraded objects and spaces, improvement of living conditions, protection of the remains of traditional industrial culture (material and immaterial), but on the other hand, to the irreversible loss of its authentic character as a result of its commercialization, museification and theatricalization. An illustrative case study for CLR is the Nikiszowiec workers’ estate in Katowice. With the progressing deindustrialization and then CLR processes, the original life world of indigenous inhabitants (Lebenswelt) was colonized by institutions and mechanisms of a social system alien to it. Gentrification increased the standard of living and safety in the estate, enriched its infrastructure and the scope of public services (also in the area of cultural institutions and events), but at the same time contributed to socio-spatial segregation and the displacement of former residents by new, more wealthy users (including representatives of the so-called creative class) and the transformation of Nikiszowiec into an eclectic creation, which is a combination of – mythologized in marketing materials as a place of special aura – a mannerist openair museum (tourist attraction) and an object of a prosaic market game.