Stories of suburbia (Bournville, UK): from planning to people tales

In this paper we show that the avoidance or reduction of difference found in the popular history of Bournville was the result of storytellers situated in specific institutional contexts. During the initial development of Bournville a particular (sub)urban future was imagined and mediated by these storytellers, through processes of simplification and choice, which served to reduce the past to an imposed and arbitrary simplicity or organised saga. In this saga the voices of residents are silenced. Our approach is, first, to explore ways of conceptualising the construction of urban history and, second, to construct two different and deliberately conflicting representations of Bournville. The first account provides a critique of the common representation or town planning account of Bournville. In contrast, the second account works through the voices of residents providing an opportunity for them to construct a lived account of Bournville with specific reference to temperance and the consumption of alcohol. Our first story is about the construction of a particular urban space whilst the second is about the ways in which the space was partially 'colonised' by residents. By constructing conflicting accounts of the same place we aim to open the dominant discourses associated with Bournville to complexity and heterogeneity.