Atmospheres as an actor in urban transformations: Perspectives on the use of urban heritage in the transformation of Vestbyen, Vejle and Nordvest, Copenhagen

This paper is based on participation in the initial phase of two urban transformations aiming for a transformation of continuum - a continuum of the lived narratives, cultural-historical origins and the atmospheric of the place. With a desired focus on the transformation of each area based on the understanding of the existing urban areas as contexts through which we seek to understand each other, society and ourselves.

In the paper, I base this discussion on the two Danish urban transformation projects of former working-class neighbourhoods, Vestbyen in Vejle and Nordvest in Copenhagen. In each project, we presented the urban heritage of each area as both starting point and end marker to create a continuum through the transformation. We introduced the urban heritage as an actor in the transformation of the two areas as a grip to ensure an active and rooted use of the past, present and future of the given area – urban heritage as time. Through this paper actors is used and understood as elements playing a decisive role in the transformation – based on Bruno Latours ANT (Latour 2005).

In each of the transformation projects, we methodologically used the concept of atmospheres (Böhme 1998, 2017, Thibaud 2011) to create a dynamic and participatory understanding of the urban heritage through the transformation. The concept of atmospheres formed the basis for an urban heritage-based transformation-approach of the two existing urban areas and a base for a continuum of the area. In the paper, I discuss how we used the concept of atmospheres as a decisive non-human actor changing how to think of urban heritage through the urban transformation - how we used urban heritage as a process by which new perspectives on the urban areas came into existence before and under each transformation.