Though they have taken a variety of forms and served numerous functions, urban squares have been integral elements in the urban fabric since antiquity. This paper explores how squares are key spaces in which a host of historic continuities persist but also registers how they are also sites of dynamic change. Our account draws out these contrasting attributes by focusing on the more than 300-year-old St Ann's Square in central Manchester, UK. We examine four areas that demonstrate these continuities and transformations over the centuries. First, we investigate the durable and changing material composition of the square. Second, we look at how St Ann's has long served as a site for commemoration, containing successively installed, diverse memorials that change in meaning. Third, we analyse the fluctuating and reiterative movements and events that take place in the square. Fourth, we track how the retail mix within the square has shifted and endured over the centuries. We conclude by considering how our discussion can inform wider approaches to historical research. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

This paper explores the neglected topic of subterranean tourism and seeks to distinguish the particular factors that continue to lure tourists to underground attractions. Through a literature review and research of numerous sites, we identify three key themes through which underground tourism has remained alluring, namely an enduring desire to visit formerly inaccessible or forbidden spaces, the vivid depictions of subterranean worlds stoked by literature and film, and desires to enter realms of sensory alterity. We subsequently detail our tours to four very different human-fashioned underground sites: Margate's mysterious Shell Grotto, West Wycombe's scandal-plagued 18th century Hellfire Caves, Charing Cross disused Jubilee Line tube station, and Drakeford Nuclear Bunker. Each example exemplifies the general themes we have identified and yet every site has its own peculiarities and allurements, as we discuss in our conclusion.

This paper explores the theatrical potential of the street, drawing on oral history interviews compiled in Leith in the 1980s that focus on the town's old Kirkgate, in the 1920s. After exploring selective theories about the theatre of the street, the methodological and political virtues of oral history are investigated. Subsequently, empirical material illustrates the prevalence of two groups of street performers to whom interviewees repeatedly referred: first, the old Kirkgate's everyday dramatis personae, eccentric shopkeepers, and characters; second, occasional traders, orators, entertainers, and musicians. I suggest that such rich working-class stories transcend dispassionate academic analysis and official narratives of the city and can enhance a sense of place and belonging. I assess how theories of theatricality might account for the everyday carnivalesque that I argue, typified the 1920s street under discussion, before considering how this may help us to reconsider contemporary streets as potential venues for theatrical pleasures.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the heritage value and importance to place identity of overlooked material elements and heritage objects in the built environment. Design/methodology/approach The discussion is exemplified by clinker bricks, initially unwanted products of 19th century manufacture created in overheated kilns, which were revalued and deployed between 1880 and 1914 by arts and crafts enthusiasts. Findings The authors contend that they contribute to heritage in three ways: firstly, by adding irregularity, sensory diversity, idiosyncrasy and individuality; secondly, by testifying to local connections with sites of supply, geology and artisanal expertise; thirdly, by potentially inspiring new forms of creativity in material making and building. The authors conclude by highlighting how these brick walls are currently being incorporated into local conservation plans. Research limitations/implications The work solely focuses on the bricks used in one London suburb. However, this allows a suitable focus to be adopted for the study. Practical implications This paper argues that the clinker brick walls serve as an exemplary case through which place managers and marketers might focus more substantively on overlooked aspects of the material environment of places, discerning overlooked features that can significantly add to developing a sense of place. Social implications This paper endeavours to enrich social and cultural relationships with place by seeking to foster more attuned approaches to noticing that which is commonly overlooked and subsequently enquiring about its provenance, origins and qualities. The paper provides examples of the incorporation of the clinker brick walls into local conservation and heritage plans. Originality/value There is little written about mundane and everyday materialities that, the authors argue, are so integral to a sense of place. The authors bring forth ideas about aesthetics, materiality, place and the everyday to investigate a hitherto neglected realm of study.

This article explores the memorials at Runnymede, Surrey, to analyse the multiple expressions of Englishness, and the diverse ways in which England's political imaginary extends far beyond the borders of England itself. Whereas much comment on Englishness since the Brexit referendum of 2016 has characterised it as an inwardlooking, parochial and even inherently racist, our analysis shows how it has been constructed as highly connected with other parts of the world, notably through how Magna Carta has been incorporated into national and supra-national narratives beyond England. Our analysis discloses how Runnymede's memorials, forms that exemplify the increasingly diverse forms of material commemoration that are proliferating and decentring traditional designs, express shifting, competing meanings of England and divergent links to other people and places: the Empire and Commonwealth, the so-called English-speaking peoples and the Anglosphere, and multicultural Britain's connections with the wider world. Besides these symbolic encodings, through autoethnographic and cultural analysis, we investigate the affective and sensory impact of each memorial in an already symbolically and affectively charged landscape.

Many former manufacturing locations have become sites of regeneration, dominated by the service economy. However, resulting developments are often criticized for homogenizing places. Focusing on Pomona Island, a current regeneration site in Greater Manchester, UK, this paper reveals how a range of specific place-based affordances have successively emerged over time, through periods of leisure, industrialization, dereliction, regeneration, planning (re)assignations and property development. The paper considers the main affordances - possibilities for action offered by the environment - of Pomona. We identify the key meta-affordance of islandness, and subsequently, the historical, recreational, sensory, and ecological affordances of the site. These, we argue, have stimulated a plenitude of creative forms and practices that highlight the value of such sites for city-dwellers and propose fertile resources for thinking about more progressive forms of urban regeneration. We contend that more attention should be paid to the potential that inheres in the multiple affordances of such interstitial spaces for urban planning and place management.

This paper explores how mighty earth processes, aquatic agencies and human practical, political, religious, technological, commercial and environmental interventions have shaped and reshaped a now obscure Scottish holy well and the carse landscape to which it belongs. More specifically, I detail the historic pagan rituals, vigilant religious policing, romantic redesign and extensive terraforming that have informed the changing uses and symbolic associations of these watery realms, demonstrating how they testify to ceaselessly changing human-water relations. I explore how an awareness of particular historical events garnered from diverse texts can be supplemented with affective and sensory engagements with the non-human agencies, vestiges and absences of place. Together, they foster intimations and speculative imaginaries that conjure up speculative watery histories and conjectural futures.

This paper explores the experiences of three Bangladeshi migrant workers who are the sole inhabitants and custodians of a former Maldivian island resort. We show how they currently remain in a state of indeterminate standby as the future of the resort remains uncertain, put in this state of limbo by the capacity of the resort's owners to exploit their disposability and manipulability. We investigate the rich material and sensory qualities of the island, and investigate the everyday practices that characterize how the men live and work there. First, we illustrate how the island remains haunted by the workers and tourists who formerly inhabited this space, since much of the resort infrastructure remains. Second, we explore how the buildings and things on the island are unevenly intact, in a state of partial ruination. Third, we discuss how the inexpert daily maintenance practices undertaken by the three men focus on certain areas but neglect others. Finally, we emphasize that despite their uncertain future, the men endeavour to create a stable, convivial and pleasurable island home. Este articulo explora las experiencias de tres trabajadores migrantes de Bangladesh que son los unicos habitantes y cuidadores de un antiguo resort turistico en una isla de las Maldivas. Mostramos como actualmente permanecen en un estado de espera indeterminado mientras el futuro del complejo sigue siendo incierto, puesto en este estado de limbo por la capacidad de los propietarios del complejo de explotar su disponibilidad y su capacidad de ser modificado. Investigamos las ricas cualidades materiales y sensoriales de la isla, e investigamos las practicas cotidianas que caracterizan como viven y trabajan los hombres alli. Primero, ilustramos como la isla sigue siendo acosada por los trabajadores y turistas que habitaban este espacio, ya que gran parte de la infraestructura turistica permanece. En segundo lugar, exploramos como los edificios y otras cosas en la isla estan intactos de manera desigual, en un estado de ruina parcial. En tercer lugar, analizamos como las inexpertas practicas de mantenimiento diario llevadas a cabo por los tres hombres se centran en ciertas areas, pero descuidan otras. Finalmente, destacamos que, a pesar de su futuro incierto, los hombres se esfuerzan por crear un hogar isleno estable, agradable y placentero. Cet article se penche sur les experiences de trois employes migrants originaires du Bangladesh qui sont les seuls habitants et gardiens d'une ancienne ile-hotel aux Maldives. Nous presentons leur situation actuelle, en attente indeterminee, due a l'avenir incertain du complexe touristique, places dans cet etat aleatoire par le pouvoir d'exploiter leur disponibilite et leur manipulabilite que possedent les proprietaires des lieux. Nous etudions les riches qualites concretes et sensorielles de l'ile, et recherchons les pratiques quotidiennes qui caracterisent la facon dont ces hommes y vivent et y travaillent. Premierement, nous montrons comment ce lieu reste peuple par les employes et les clients qui l'ont occupe auparavant, puisque la grande majorite de son infrastructure est encore la. Deuxiemement, nous examinons le fait que les batiments et les objets installes sur l'ile sont conserves de maniere inegale, partiellement en etat de ruine. Troisiemement, nous soulevons la question des pratiques d'entretien journalier sans expertise des trois hommes qui se concentrent sur certaines choses, mais en negligent d'autres. Pour finir, nous clarifions que, malgre leur avenir incertain, ces hommes s'efforcent de faire de l'ile un endroit de vie stable, convivial et agreable.

This paper seeks to explore the particular characteristics of British A-roads by focusing upon a motoring journey from Slough to Torquay. This trip was undertaken as part of an extended motoring adventure by two Indian tourists in 1955, and exactly the same route was followed in 2023 by the authors. Informed by the interviews and records of the tourists, we scrutinized the infrastructure of the A-roads along which we travelled, as well as the roadside features and the wider landscape beyond. In becoming sensorially and affectively attuned to the distinctive qualities of these roads by the memories of the tourists and our own impressions, we underline how motoring opens up diverse experiences of mobility and roadscape according to the motivations and purpose of journeys, the particular landscape traversed through, the attunements of the car's inhabitants, and the infrastructural and formal characteristics of the road. Further, we emphasize how the details we identify disclose how roads and motoring are saturated with recollections of other people, our own prior journeys by car and mediatized memories. Above all, we argue, the material signifiers of past function and experience that are encountered offer powerful evidence that roadscapes are ever-changing, dynamic realms, culturally and historically shaped in myriad ways.

Existing literature has suffered from an overemphasis on the meanings that circulate around tourist consumers' interpretation and experience. A range of concepts have been deployed to claim that tourist motivations and meanings can be sought through a quest for authenticity, liminality, cultural difference, and post-tourist irony, amongst others. In challenging these assumptions, this chapter conversely contends that tourism is as much about feeling as meaning, concerned with seeking a temporary shift in emotional, affective, and sensory alterity. The chapter considers that a particularly productive approach to considering such affective transformations is provided by the notion of tourist atmosphere. Accordingly, the chapter focuses on the divergent ways in which tourist atmospheres are designed. It explores how the skilful design of distinctive affective and sensory qualities is deployed to fashion predictable, familiar tourist atmospheres, and subsequently examines how in other tourist contexts such atmospheres are more loosely regulated. Second, it emphasises that tourists are co-producers of atmospheres, rarely passive consumers of spectacles and tours. Third, the chapter examines how tourist atmospheres are also unpredictable, in that they may be shaped by anticipations triggered by the marketing of destinations, as well as by media reports about the risks of terrorism, disease, and violence.

This article explores community responses to 'Golden Head', a guerrilla artwork that was installed covertly in a Melbourne park in early 2020 by unknown persons. Focusing on local residents' reactions to this mysterious, unsanctioned statue, we document an ongoing array of playful speculations, creative responses and imaginative interactions that unfolded both in situ and via social media. We argue that in eliciting an outpouring of jokes, memes, stories, photographs and other creative rejoinders, this enigmatic object has strengthened and renewed a collective sense of place. We also consider Golden Head's reception in light of recent challenges to the legitimacy of many traditional memorial statues, and as a response to the increasingly over-regulated city. We conclude that this outpouring of imaginative local reactions to Golden Head constitutes a playful form of collective place-making that implicitly critiques the grandiose ambitions of official statues and affirms the oft-neglected ludic potential of urban space.

Much geographical literature concerning home focuses on its emotional potency. This paper explores how football supporters consider their club's stadium as a 'home'. However, this sense of homeliness can evaporate when clubs relocate to new stadia, rupturing matchday routines and feelings of belonging. This is exemplified by the relocation of Manchester City Football Club from their former home ground Maine Road to the Etihad Stadium in 2003, leaving many longstanding supporters disoriented and bereft. We explore how in response, the club have sought to make the Etihad feel more homely through three key approaches: foregrounding continuities through generating nostalgia and heritage, acknowledging fan cultures and promoting interactivity. More broadly, the paper contributes to expansive and relational understandings of home, demonstrating how feelings of homeliness can extend beyond a single site as football fans move through the spaces surrounding a football stadium.

This paper contributes to recent debates about memorials and the persistence of outmoded forms that commemorate figures associated with slavery and colonial depredations. The focus is on John Batman, often considered to be the founder of Melbourne, and a subject that has been commemorated in numerous forms. We explore the ways in which reified understandings of Batman were consolidated by these memorials. We argue that they provided a basis for the rampant settler colonialism that was initiated by his arrival in what became Melbourne. While the power of the Batman myth has endured for many years, we show how more recently it has been challenged by a range of art-inspired memorials that provide oppositional and alternative meanings and forms. We especially focus on the potency of counter-memorials, forms that directly address these older modes of commemoration, and anti-memorials, inventive installations that seek to dissolve singular meanings and continue the work of decentring outmoded commemorative forms and narratives.

This paper considers how a color-conscious approach to place might be explored. After focusing on the symbolic and affective qualities, of color, attention shifts to the persistent chromophobia that continues to influence western approaches to designing places and the distribution of the sensible. I investigate how contemporary design is shaped by heritage concerns, increased colored illumination and commodified color. The paper concludes with four innovative color designs that challenge our perceptual, affective and cultural engagements with place. I look at a vernacular creative practice, an architectural example, a playful interior environment and an artistic installation.

This paper focuses on the extraordinary 245-metre-long Pergola on Hampstead Heath, designed by renowned landscape architect Thomas Mawson between 1905 and 1925, and funded by William Lever, Lord Leverhulme, owner of the property. The paper focuses on the Pergola's potential as an exemplar for considering more creative, sensory and sociable provision for urban pedestrians After detailing its origins and key features, the discussion explores the shifting uses of the Pergola over the past hundred years as it has changed from private realm to public space, yet these changes have accentuated its enduring landscape architectural qualities as a structure for pleasurable walking. The paper particularly focuses how the structure has been adopted as a contemporary site for walking and as a venue for numerous photographic and filmic practices. I conclude by suggesting that these virtues might inform more assiduous pedestrians provision following the rise in walking during the COVID-19 pandemic.