Rich history: race, space and the sanitisation of colonial heritage

As recent antiracist protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing made clear, urban space is the product of much longer histories of slavery and colonialism. Demonstrations worldwide have pointed to statues, street names and other visible markers that continue to glorify these histories. The whiteness of urban space is not only expressed in the celebration of colonial legacies but also reinforced by processes of gentrification. Occasionally, these two processes can mutually reinforce each other such as in an upmarket residential development, now known as Royal Arsenal Riverside, in Woolwich, South-East London. Instead of confronting history in an explicit manner, colonial heritage in the Royal Arsenal has been sanitised and commodified into a desirable but contextless aesthetic.