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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
Space is never produced in the sense that a kilogram of sugar or a yard of cloth is produced … Does it then come into being after the fashion of a superstructure? Again, no. It would be more accurate to say that it is at once a precondition and a result of social superstructures. The state and each of its constituent institutions call for spaces – but spaces which they can organize according to their specific requirements. (Lefebvre 1991: 85)
‘I grew up in the city, have lived in Lowell all my life. I’ve actually never lived anywhere but Lowell. If you had told me at seventeen that I was never going to leave Lowell, I would have been thoroughly depressed. I did not envision this as a place that I would stay, much less make a living in. It was a place that in my mind that didn't have a whole lot going for it; didn't have jobs, there was nothing to do at night. We left town to go and do something at that age in my late teens or early 20s, you get out of the city. If you had people my age that wanted to get out [in the 1970s], where was its future?’ (Cook 2012)
Introduction
For Lefebvre, the state and its constituent institutions call for urban spaces but they do not act alone or with impunity in the production of space, and their specific requirements are often contested. This was certainly the case in Lowell as the city entered a critical phase of postindustrial reimagining and transformation in the late 1960s. If we are to take seriously Lefebvre's invocation to scrutinise the histories of the production of urban space, then of course the context in which the concept of the Lowell National Historical Park (LNHP) emerges in the 1970s becomes a critical historical moment requiring investigation. I argue in this chapter that this history was not an inevitable linear procession but rather involved a series of precursor projects and initiatives involving struggles of different spatial coalitions with greater or lesser support from the public sector.
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