As I may have alluded to in my previous two posts well over 12 months ago now, I blame a large part of the current decline and malaise the town seems to find itself locked into on the push for modernity in the 1960s and 1970s - where a large amount of the town's history and civic pride was removed and destroyed as the town surged forward with progressive plans.
In my opinion, one of main problems of the town now is the clear lack of any sense of belonging and any sense of identity. Unfortunately for a Lutonian like myself, Luton is struggling to find a role for itself in post recession Great Britain of 2011. Is the town willing to look for its own identity and locality or is it happy to vanish and absorb characteristics as though it were merely a suburb of London? It would be naive to suggest that this in itself is the sole reason for the town's apparent identity crisis. Certainly, no identity would be down to the town not demolishing the Carnegie library and the Corn Exchange for example. As Massey (1996) stated, "no sense of place is constructed out of introverted, inward-looking history, based on delving into the past for internalized origins, translating the name from the Domesday Book."
However, aside from character and aesthetics, old buildings do provide a picture into the past and in many cases allow a town to identity with it's history, which contribute's significantly to anyone's identity. Aren't we as individuals moulded by what happened in the past? It is hard to argue otherwise that town's also need that historical input into their culture, geographic boundaries and identities.
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| St Mary's Church, Luton |
Any adequate explanation of the current problems will have to look at the wider geography of the area surrounding Luton. Given Luton's proximity to the new town's which were built post war, such as the Garden City project and Stevenage and Hatfield, Luton was competing against town's which were offering modernity and a then futuristic model of how life and urban living should be. Luton, a town where people have been found to have settled in the area almost 250,000 years ago had to compete in order to survive. Perhaps then it is no surprise then that so many buildings were replaced as possible as the town sought to reidentify itself in order to compete.
With the evergrowing population and business attraction that Milton Keynes seems to offer, it is no surprise that yet again Luton seems to be mimicking it's nearby neighbours.
It would be nice for once, that rather than copy it's rival town's, Luton did something progressive and unqiue. Perhaps then the town may find itself in a position to look after itself and reverse it's decline.
