Owning memories: a tale of two cities

In 1894 Queen Victoria opened the Salford Docks, now known as Salford Quays, home of MediaCityUK. At the time, Salford Docks were considered a masterpiece of engineering, allowing Manchester to circumvent the route through Liverpool and have access to international trade. The area was an ambitious hub for commerce, industrial activity and job prospects. Although more than 100 years have passed, Salford Quays is again under the spotlight and has the ambition to be a contemporary contender in the cultural industries market – this time focussing, through MediacityUK, on moving the media industry away from London. In order to attract such a prestigious focus, the developers have responded by building waterside apartments, luxury housing and speedy infrastructure and by promoting a successful professional lifestyle, with cultural and cutting-edge designer events. However, the local community seems to be more than ever alienated from this process, the sense of cultural collective memory being diluted. Throughout this paper, we are considering issues relating both to the historical significance of Salford Quays as well as to its cultural legacy within the local community. In order to do so, we are addressing the following research questions: How can the past be brought to into the present to support a sense of identity cohesion? Can Salford shake off the image of a derelict area and become the innovative creative quarter, through the (living) memories of its community? We will argue that the re- invention of Salford Quays as a new cutting-edge creative quarter happens at the expense of the historical memory of the place. In this way, local people and local memories do not become an integral part of the regeneration strategy, but are almost erased from the whole process

A mathematical and computational review of Hartree-Fock SCF methods in Quantum Chemistry

We present here a review of the fundamental topics of Hartree-Fock theory in Quantum Chemistry. From the molecular Hamiltonian, using and discussing the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, we arrive to the Hartree and Hartree-Fock equations for the electronic problem. Special emphasis is placed in the most relevant mathematical aspects of the theoretical derivation of the final equations, as well as in the results regarding the existence and uniqueness of their solutions. All Hartree-Fock versions with different spin restrictions are systematically extracted from the general case, thus providing a unifying framework. Then, the discretization of the one-electron orbitals space is reviewed and the Roothaan-Hall formalism introduced. This leads to a exposition of the basic underlying concepts related to the construction and selection of Gaussian basis sets, focusing in algorithmic efficiency issues. Finally, we close the review with a section in which the most relevant modern developments (specially those related to the design of linear-scaling methods) are commented and linked to the issues discussed. The whole work is intentionally introductory and rather self-contained, so that it may be useful for non experts that aim to use quantum chemical methods in interdisciplinary applications. Moreover, much material that is found scattered in the literature has been put together here to facilitate comprehension and to serve as a handy reference.Comment: 64 pages, 3 figures, tMPH2e.cls style file, doublesp, mathbbol and subeqn package

Territories of discourse: Salford’s communities in a changing landscape

The relationship of history and memory is always rather problematic. This is due primarily to the dissonance that may exist between an approved authoritative historic discourse and a more social, emotional and collective one. The contemporary meanings of (and the discourses attached to) historical sites and buildings are often depending on the new and different uses they have for their local communities, rather than by their acknowledged historical value. This paper will look at how iconic historical sites and buildings can be re-valued, rehabilitated and re-used for the educational and social benefits of local communities and how much the local communities effectively drive these processes of rehabilitation and reuse. Specifically we will be focusing on a set of historical sites and building in Salford, United Kingdom, that is to say: Ordsall Hall (a Tudor manor house, currently transformed into a museum); the Weaste Cemetery (Salford’s first municipal cemetery, dating back to the 19th century and nowadays important not only for its commemorative function but also for being a historical and ecological resource) and the Salford Lads Club (a recreational club of the early 20th century, which still is at the centre of the social and sporting life of its local community). These are key, historic sites of the Salford area: although they all share a strong history/memory connection, they are very much different in the ways their history is transmitted, celebrated, attended or in some cases, even ignored by the local community. Throughout this paper we will address the following questions: what is the social meaning of the aforementioned iconic heritage sites and buildings? To what extent they have been re-valued and re-habilitated as ‘historic sites’ by their local community? And how much of their historical meaning is truly valued and preserved by locals, in comparison to their social one? We will argue that these historical sites and buildings are not (primarily) acknowledged by their local community for their historical discourse: they are rather valued for their contemporary social and cultural relevance, which almost narrows the gap between the past and the present and allows their creative re-use and rehabilitation, through a domestication of the past

Territories of discourse: Salford’s communities in a changing landscape

The relationship of history and memory is always rather problematic. This is due primarily to the dissonance that may exist between an approved authoritative historic discourse and a more social, emotional and collective one. The contemporary meanings of (and the discourses attached to) historical sites and buildings are often depending on the new and different uses they have for their local communities, rather than by their acknowledged historical value.This paper will look at how iconic historical sites and buildings can be re-valued, rehabilitated and re-used for the educational and social benefits of local communities and how much the local communities effectively drive these processes of rehabilitation and reuse. Specifically we will be focusing on a set of historical sites and building in Salford, United Kingdom, that is to say: Ordsall Hall (a Tudor manor house, currently transformed into a museum); the Weaste Cemetery (Salford’s first municipal cemetery, dating back to the 19th century and nowadays important not only for its commemorative function but also for being a historical and ecological resource) and the Salford Lads Club (a recreational club of the early 20th century, which still is at the centre of the social and sporting life of its local community). These are key, historic sites of the Salford area: although they all share a strong history/memory connection, they are very much different in the ways their history is transmitted, celebrated, attended or in some cases, even ignored by the local community. Throughout this paper we will address the following questions: what is the social meaning of the aforementioned iconic heritage sites and buildings? To what extent they have been re-valued and re-habilitated as ‘historic sites’ by their local community? And how much of their historical meaning is truly valued and preserved by locals, in comparison to their social one? We will argue that these historical sites and buildings are not (primarily) acknowledged by their local community for their historical discourse: they are rather valued for their contemporary social and cultural relevance, which almost narrows the gap between the past and the present and allows their creative re-use and rehabilitation, through a domestication of the past.</p