Using history in the streetscape to affirm geopolitics of memory

In the Polish city of Kraków, successive regimes have (re)named the streetscape to advance their influence and ideologies. This paper examines changes in street names under three different governmental powers - Nazi, Soviet and Polish - on five maps of the city centre (from 1934, 1943, 1964, 1985 and 1996). The work extends the current literature on toponymy by providing a temporal analysis of the street name changes to one bounded area over time, which demonstrates how a politics of memory is inculcated into streetscapes to reaffirm political control. By reference to one space, I show how the name changes proffer an intriguing insight into how two foreign regimes viewed their occupations and, in addition, how all three sought to strengthen their influence by using names that reinforced past examples of their power and alleged cultural superiority in the landscape.