Imagining the good life in Stoke-on-Trent: Connecting memories, nostalgia and utopia

Kate Burningham and Sue Venn
The Sociological Review | August 2025

Summary

In the context of environmental, social and economic crises, Levitas calls on sociologists to engage with imagined futures and explore desires for better ways of living. At the local level, enabling communities to collectively envision the futures they want is a key aspect of democratic and sustainable regeneration. However, imagining positive futures can be particularly difficult for residents of post-industrial cities—places where good work and future opportunities are scarce, infrastructure has deteriorated, and once tight-knit communities have become fragmented.

This article examines how emerging ideas about a ‘good life’ in the future can be shaped through both nostalgic reflections on the past and critiques of present-day realities. While recent scholarship has begun to reconsider nostalgia as not only backward-looking but also potentially positive and future-oriented, there remains limited empirical research on how nostalgia might influence utopian visions in post-industrial contexts.

Drawing on focus groups with white residents of Stoke-on-Trent we show how the past, and conditions of the present, shaped imagined futures in three ways: invoking a nostalgic longing for recreation of an idealised industrial past; rejecting the past to create an entirely different future; and critically engaging with the past to identify valued elements of a better future.

We suggest that facilitating discussion of present and past local life can provide the basis for engaging residents in constructing collective, historically grounded utopian visions for their city, a crucial step in moves towards a future which might enable living well within environmental limits.

Further Reading