Cultural Landscapes and Identity

This chapter looks at Blackpool's efforts to regenerate itself, combining innovation and the search for new markets with an appeal to tradition, identity and the heritage of the recent past', as it begins to implement a heritage strategy. It seeks inscription as a World Heritage Site, trades on the industrial archaeology of the holiday industry and tries to generate alternative income streams for regeneration following the decision not to grant the casino licence. Definitions of the recent past' are likely to be arbitrary, but a sensible cut-off date for present purposes is probably the end of World War I, although the growing vogue for some kinds of inter-war building might be identified with a growing cultural acceptability that betokens the development of a historical or nostalgic perspective and undermines the notion of the recent'. The heritage of the seaside holiday industry carries a significant perceived legitimacy deficit, especially when the forms in which it manifests are low-key and easily disparaged.