What is it about?

This paper explores the recent calls for more attention to the popular responses to place-naming practices. by addressing the issue of users of urban street place names. It also highlights the need to introduce the theory of ‘the politics of practicality’ in place- and street-name studies. We seek to explain if Timişoarians are (un)happy with the new ‘martyr city-text’ and how social justice and the contextualisation of the conflict as a case of the practical and the ideological are interrelated.

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Why is it important?

This paper is developing and challenging previous work on place and street naming in geography by considering, beyond the understanding that conflicts over naming are symbolic or ideological, that ordinary citizens use, connect with, and depend upon street names in practical terms: they internalise and react differently to the costs of rewriting the city-text.

Perspectives

I hope this article will make local actors better think on the consequences of changing names.

Dr Remus Cretan
west university of Timisoara

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This page is a summary of: Popular responses to city-text changes: street naming and the politics of practicality in a post-socialist martyr city, Area, November 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/area.12241.
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