Nostalgic ecomodernism: Planning visions and enduring racial coastal formations

Abstract

Though Charleston is known as “The City Where History Lives” and the South Carolina Lowcountry is famous for its meticulous historical preservation, in recent years, futuristic depictions of current and projected coastal sea-level rise have dominated public discourse. This article examines the aesthetics of renderings of prospective green infrastructure projects in public proposals for mitigating the impacts of storm surge and sea-level rise in the region and their role in preserving white power structures. Rather than comparing Lowcountry plans with other contemporary coastal projects, I place these evocative images in conversation with the segregationist planning documents and historical preservation efforts that have shaped Charleston's contemporary urban form over time. By situating these futuristic renderings within longstanding white property regimes in the regions, I argue that such representations mask the historic racial power structures they ultimately undergird. I propose “nostalgic ecomodernism” as a helpful term to hold the aspirations and temporal tensions materialized in these projects and illuminate patterns extending to other geographies. In the resulting plans, driven by an ecomodern vision of a future uncoupled from nature, an imperative to secure the future by re-establishing an exclusionary past obscures present racial injustices in the city and how they are amplified by water management formed in the afterlife of slavery. I conclude by gesturing towards local projects nurturing Black ecologies that suggest methods of managing shifting coastlines without reifying past moments or buttressing historic racial power structures.