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This article presents an overview of Second World War bomb damage to British towns and cities and a systematic evaluation of the relationship between damage, revisioning, replanning, and actual reconstruction in a sample of cities--Bath, Birmingham, and Hull. Two were severely affected by aerial bombing as port/industrial targets, and the third for propaganda purposes as a historical city. Two had extensive plans produced by eminent consultants (both involving Patrick Abercrombie) but the city managers of the third did not support "big plans." Birmingham, without a specific plan, rebuilt extensively and relatively quickly. Hull's plan was disliked locally and virtually vanished. Bath was repaired rather than rebuilt. These contrasting experiences have shaped the contemporary city via subsequent generations of replanning (not all of which was implemented) and, in Birmingham's case, the demolition of major reconstruction investments after relatively short lifespans. The article demonstrates the difficulty of conceptualising a generic approach to post-catastrophe reconstruction and the problems of such large-scale change over a short period for the longer-term effective functioning of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at successive attempts to create new spatial imaginaries around three estuary-based city regions in England: the London-Thames Gateway, the Atlantic Gateway/Mersey Belt (Manchester and Liverpool), and Hull and the Humber ports. We develop a framework of analysis for new planning and regeneration spaces that takes forward debates on relational and territorial geographies, spatial imaginaries and the creation of new regional identities as governance objects. Specifically, we adopt a long-term and comparative perspective that allows an examination of how successive efforts at regional building are both path-dependent and context-specific, as new approaches reflect emerging ideas about how best to construct successful regions in a changing global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry's visit to the North in 1541 has been seen as, alternatively, a powerful response to the ongoing threat to order in the years after the Pilgrimage of Grace or a move in diplomatic relationships with Scotland and France. This paper suggests the level of immediate threat of disorder in the North was low and that the role of the journey in relations with Scotland was more its consequence than its cause. Rather it finds the significance of the visit in a potential renegotiation of the position of the North within the wider realm, a question opened by political and constitutional changes since 1530, a negotiation which the King himself overthrew. Instead of accommodation, Henry sought to emphasise the extent of his defeat of the Pilgrims and the Percy interest, and to humiliate utterly all but the most clearly loyal elements, especially in York itself. Yet the memory of his triumph, if triumph it was, was poisoned for Henry by his failure to meet James of Scotland and by the collapse of his marriage to Catherine Howard; and it passed remarkably quickly from the collective memory of the North, overlain by a developing sense of relations with the Tudors, as with their predecessors, as supportive of a distinctive northern identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although place-marketing and image-enhancement are increasingly common elements of Western urban policy, when applied to specific locales, these abstract theories have to negotiate local conditions and contexts. This paper discusses the ways attempts to place-market the city of Hull, England, prompted debates surrounding questions of place, memory and heritage. Despite being Britain's leading fishing port in the 20th century, Hull's place-marketing strategy elided this past in favour of a sanitised vision of a modern, post-industrial city. These debates crystallised around a 1999 planning inquiry over the proposed redevelopment of the erstwhile fishing dock. While the proposals contained some reference to the dock's role as a site of place-memory, this was deemed insufficient by local protest groups and politicians who argued for a more appropriate memorial to Hull's fishing community. Eventually, the redevelopment proposals were accepted, but not before attendant debates exposed both the depth of local sentiments over place-memories and fishing heritage, and also the difficulties of negotiating inclusive and plural heritage landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]