Trash, Culture, and Urban Regeneration in Tallinn, Estonia
Francisco Martínez ‘THIS PLACE HAS POTENTIAL’: TRASH, CULTURE, AND URBAN REGENERATION IN TALLINN, ESTONIA abstract The article analyses the use of cultural programmes and trash as tools for urban speculation in Tallinn, Estonia, naturalising an urban strategy that entails extensive spatial revaluation and socioeconomic intervention. Through an anthropological perspective focused on concepts of potential and trash, the analysis shows how the central-north shoreline was mobilised discursively as a wasteland and a zone of unrealised potential to justify capitalist development of the area. The way it was framed, both moving towards completion and as a playground for cultural activities and young people, increased the value and accessibility of the area, but also allowed real estate developers to exploit the synergies generated and make profit from the revaluated plots. Tropes of potential and trash appear thus as discursive tools for urban regeneration, co-related with a formal allocation of resources and official permits. As the case study shows, when an area is classed as having ‘potential’, it becomes defined by the fulfilment of that restrictive conceptualisation, which allows the economy to dictate urban planning and also cultural policy. Keywords: politics of potentiality, urban regeneration, European Capital of Culture, waterfront of Tallinn, temporary uses, wasteland 1 INTRODUCTION to connect the place with an image of moving towards completion while emphasising its What does it mean for a place to have potential? negative associations. I start by investigating Potential for what? And cui prodest (to whose the relations occurring there and then develop profit)? This article examines how discourses of an analysis of the recent discussions and public ‘potential’ and ‘trash’ have created the conditions statements on the topic, arguing that discourses for a speculative regeneration of an industrial of trash and unrealised potential were used to area of the Estonian capital.
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