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2009, Antipode
Abstract: This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.
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2007, Master thesis - also published as a book on VDM-Verlag
2016
Since the early 1990’s heritage-led regeneration has progressively become an important strategy for the revitalisation of urban areas. This revitalisation though, albeit its positive financial outcome, is not without side-effects, especially when carried out by commercial developers in the established socio-economic system. This paper explores how heritage-led regeneration fits in the 21st century plans for the physical, social and economic restructuring of post-industrial historic megacities, like London. Drawing from the King’s Cross case, a contemporary project with high heritage significance described as the biggest European inner city redevelopment, the paper will highlight the gains and losses of the process, in terms of heritage preservation and resilience of historic, spatial and social values. The analysis of the background, decision-making process and product of the King’s Cross scheme will inform the study’s conclusion. Finally, it will be argued that historic considerations play a subordinate role in the formation of heritage-led regeneration strategy. Its impact is intertwined with the priorities of the established political and economic system, which control predicaments between financial growth and social sustainability. This study complements previous findings and contributes additional evidence on the evolving discourse on the nuanced effects of urban regeneration while informing future practice on similar cases.
2009, Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City
2010, Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies
Anthony Minghella’s 2006 film Breaking and Entering frames two views of London focusing on King’s Cross station, one of the city’s key transportation hubs and, like many such centres, a complex site of marginality. To its main protagonist, the architect/urban designer Will Francis (Jude Law), it is a site to be transformed into a model (in several senses) of what London—and the practice of urban design—have to offer the “new” Europe. The viewpoint of the young Kosovan refugee Miro Simiç (Rafi Gavron) is quite different. He sees King’s Cross from the rooftops, which he clambers as a petty burglar by night to break into local offices. His acts of parkour (defined by its practitioners as “the art of displacement”) are central to the film. Miro, the teenaged character, exists in a space of displacement: displaced from his native Sarajevo, and from the streets of London by his status as refugee and thief. The film contrasts these two viewpoints—one which forms space, and one displaced—by citing real and imagined city-building projects in London, and placing them in relationship to the bodies of Will and Miro.
2006, Transactions of The Institute of British Geographers
This paper presents a comprehensive study of large-scale, master-planned urban developments in Asia and Europe. Increasing in numbers all over the world since the 1980's, these urban mega-projects—here referred to as Grands Projets—have become major drivers of urban intensification. Set forth to actuate urban renewal or to augment city expansion, Grands Projets have become spatial manifestations of cities' larger economic and political agendas. In their development process, they have triggered a change in the urban condition beyond the very boundaries of their sites. As such, they offer a productive means of investigating current urban trends in a globally connected form of concentrated urbanisation. This research, based at the ETH-Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore, examines eight case studies in Asia and Europe through five analytical frames: a project's conception, design, implementation, operation and implications. This approach addresses various spatial and temporal scales within different theoretical and material practices, allowing a comprehensive discussion of Grands Projets within and across varying socio-political contexts. This paper sheds light on the specific urban conditions of Grands Projets despite their global development trends, transnational owners or financing alliances and internationally regulated planning practices. Often dependent on exceptional regulations outside statutory planning procedures, they are subject to context-specific challenges, project-specific briefs and unique configurations of actors and stakeholders, all of which have created different manifestations of Grands Projets in space. This analytical framework, as presented in this paper, will form the basis of a larger comparative endeavour to be completed at a later stage in our work.
2018, Geoforum
Commensality, the act of eating together, is an important human ritual that benefits beyond the biological need for food and it is well established amongst food studies scholars. At the same time, novel forms of social eating are emerging in urban contexts, especially mediated by new technologies. Yet, ICT-mediated urban food sharing and the moments of commensality they generate have received limited attention to date. In response, this paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with three urban food sharing initiatives in London - a city which exhibits an active and dynamic urban food sharing ecosystem, to explore the experiences of commensality that are produced. By employing qualitative methods of enquiry, I illustrate how these initiatives go beyond the food offered by engaging with the material and affective elements of cooking and eating together and how they attempt to nurture collective spaces of encounter. Social isolation and loneliness emerge within this research as central drivers for participating in food sharing initiatives. The paper concludes that these collective spaces and the affective qualities that they generate are particularly vital in urban contexts in times of austerity, as these initiatives have capacity to embrace social differences and to facilitate the circulation of ideas and practices of care and hospitality. They operate as provisional bridging mechanisms between people, communities, projects and services, providing the connective tissue in ways which are hard to measure through simple quantitative measures and, as a result, are rarely articulated.
An important though often overlooked part of the London 2012 Olympic Games' Stratford site are the numerous fences that have surrounded it. As an archaeologist excavating inside these fences in 2007-8, I began to think about how enclosure affected perceptions of the project, how it could be interpreted archaeologically, and how this might question the Games' legitimacy.
The provision of subsidised workspace for small enterprises has been a public sector concern in many developed economies since the 1960s. In recent years, the focus of economic development initiatives has shifted away from supply side initiatives, such as fiscal incentives and the direct provision of premises, towards a consideration of the collective provision of infrastructure and services, in order to meet demands of businesses and workers in cities where there is already strong demand and growth. As well as this shift from supply- to demand-side initiatives, there has been a change in the political ideological approach to land and property development, away from public sector direct provision and funding, to place greater onus on the private sector to deliver development, infrastructure and services. The introduction of ‘affordable workspace’ planning policies by local authorities in London from the early 2000s is part of this shift – building on more established key worker and affordable housing policies. This paper evaluates the success of affordable workspace planning policies in thirteen mixed use schemes in London, from the perspectives of developers and workspace providers, who are responsible for delivering and managing the affordable workspace. First, it finds that the perspective of the developer, in particular whether it sees affordable workspace policy as (a) an opportunity, (b) a ‘tool’ to secure planning permission or (c) a burden, is mostly influenced by the way in which the affordable workspace emerged within the proposal. Developers’ perspectives and the success of their partnerships with workspace providers are critical to the successful delivery of affordable workspace within the scheme. Second, the findings show that ‘affordable workspace’ is difficult to define and deliver, with different interpretations used by delivery partners and the ability of workspace providers to deliver affordability depends critically on their organisational model. Finally, the research shows that although there are clear benefits of the policy for artists and small, creative industry businesses, it is not benefiting low-value manufacturers or small family-run retail and service businesses, nor is it generally benefiting start-ups. The implications of policy outcomes for economic development are considered; overall the beneficial impacts are limited. The research concludes that the predominant model of affordable workspace policy being promoted in London will fail to meet the aspirations of policy makers, with the limited success of policy further compounded by the global recession of the late-2000s. Alternative or complementary strategies are discussed.
This paper examines the concept of governance and new government structures emerging in local authority policy-making and implementation as a result of government reforms through a case study of the Elephant and Castle regeneration initiative. It explores how new forms of partnership and participatory approaches to urban governance are applied in practice. The final sections provide some reflections on the policy implications of the role and value of these governance approaches as well as on democratic principles.
2018
At the heart of this proof of evidence is an evaluation of the regeneration benefits and disbenefits of the First Development Site (FDS) proposals for the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) Land. In my evidence I will describe, explain and analyse how the FDS proposals are likely to impact on the Aylesbury Estate and contribute to the well-being of Estate residents in Sites 1b and 1c, in the interests of the residents and in the wider public interest. In order to do this I will provide an explanation and discussion of four complex concepts: ‘gentrification’, ‘community’, ‘regeneration' and ‘mixed communities’. I argue that the objectors favour the status quo and the Council and its partner Notting Hill Housing Trust favour change through estate regeneration. Each strategy, whether it be the status quo or change, brings benefits and disbenefits. So a major issue for this Public Inquiry is, what is the range of benefits and disbenefits and on whom do these benefits and disbenefits fall in the short, medium and long-term. Karl Marx said famously that all that is solid melts into air. By this he meant that under conditions of capitalism, changes especially in things we regard as permanent, are inevitable and relentless. However, for the Aylesbury Estate, do nothing is not a viable option.
2018
At the heart of this proof of evidence is an evaluation of the regeneration benefits and disbenefits of the First Development Site (FDS) proposals for the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) Land. In my evidence I will describe, explain and analyse how the FDS proposals are likely to impact on the Aylesbury Estate and contribute to the well-being of Estate residents in Sites 1b and 1c, in the interests of the residents and in the wider public interest. In order to do this I will provide an explanation and discussion of four complex concepts: ‘gentrification’, ‘community’, ‘regeneration' and ‘mixed communities’. Gentrification, due to its conceptual weaknesses, struggles to encompass the complexities of the FDS proposals. Mixed communities-led regeneration is supported by independent academic research for the benefits it can bring. Despite this, it is regarded by some objectors and academics as de facto gentrification. That position is not tenable and objectors have to explain how the disbenefits of the FDS scheme outweigh the obvious and substantial benefits in the short, medium and long term. The policy and practice of mixed communities are not perfect and do not offer utopian solutions in the case of the Estate. It is evident though, that this approach in the present socio-economic climate, has the capacity to deliver genuine improvements to troubled estates, the Aylesbury included. I conclude that the FDS proposals will bring genuine aspirational regeneration to the Estate. The FDS proposals are likely to bring significant sustainable improvements in the conditions of Aylesbury residents suffering from aspects of deprivation, often multiple in nature. Others to benefit will be incoming residents who find a home in the FDS, especially an affordable one, and those who find employment during the long construction phase and after completion. Nevertheless, a long term view must be taken regarding: safeguarding, delivery and resourcing of this estate regeneration programme. Finally, I conclude that under section 226, the Council must show that the FDS proposal for the CPO Land promotes or improves one or more of the: social, economic or environmental well-being of the area. This is right and proper because the FDS scheme impinges on tenants’ and leaseholders’ property rights. There are undoubtedly and unfortunately some disbenefits associated with the CPO proposals. However, drawing on the evidence presented in this proof, I am convinced that the regeneration benefits of the FDS scheme for the CPO Land are substantial, guaranteed to be delivered and far outweigh the disbenefits. I look forward to the CPO being confirmed so that the benefits can be achieved, to improve the lives, livelihoods and life chances of Aylesbury Estate residents.
2020, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Conventional approaches to local economic development are failing to address deepening polarisation both within and between city regions across advanced capitalist economies. At the same time, austerity urbanism, particularly in the UK, presents challenges for urban authorities facing reduced budgets to meet increased demands on public services. Municipalities are beginning to experiment with creative responses to these crises, such as taking more interventionist and entrepreneurial roles in developing local economies, generating alternative sources of revenue or financialising existing assets. Rooted in a Polanyian perspective and building on the concepts of the entrepreneurial state and grounded city, we identify an embryonic alternative approach-what we call 'entrepreneurial municipalism'-as a policy pathway towards resolving enduring socioeconomic problems where neoliberal urban-entrepreneurial strategies have failed. We situate entrepreneurial municipalism as one strand in an assemblage of new municipal-ist interventions, between radical urban social movements and more neoliberal strategies such as financialised municipal entrepreneurialism. Drawing on original research on the Liverpool City Region, we explore how local authorities are working with social enterprises to harness place-based assets in ways which de-commodify land, labour and capital and re-embed markets back into society. Finally, we draw upon Polanyi as our guide to disentangle differences in approach amongst divergent forms of municipalist statecraft and to critically evaluate entrepreneurial municipalism as a possible trajectory towards the grounded city.
2014
Local authorities should consider rewarding people who volunteer their time to clean up and maintain their local parks, allotments and cemeteries with council tax rebates. Our report highlights the importance of parks and other urban green spaces to the social and economic wellbeing of the country. Providing free outdoor space for exercise, socialising and relaxation, parks can benefit both physical and mental health. However, on average local authority spending on open spaces was cut by 10.5% between 2010/11 and 2012/13 and there is no ring-fence protecting the budget spent on maintaining green spaces. Combined with the increasing demand for housing and other urban development there is a risk that the UK’s parks will deteriorate or become spaces that are the preserve of the wealthy. The paper suggests a wide range of proposals to improve local green spaces including the idea of a full or partial council tax rebate for local residents who join civil or community groups and volunteer to maintain and improve nearby green spaces. The rebate could be worth as much as £1,500 a year, the average amount of council tax paid by people across the country. Local authorities could set the discount rate themselves, basing it on hours spent volunteering or setting a minimum number of hours necessary for volunteers to qualify for the rebate. This would not only provide a solution to the declining number of park rangers but would encourage people of all ages, backgrounds and income groups to become actively engaged in their local communities. The report suggests a number of other innovative ways to protect and improve the UK’s urban green spaces at a time of squeezed local authority budgets.
1995, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
2020, Progress in Human Geography
Forthcoming in Progress in Human Geography. Please do not cite until final version is published. New municipalism is a nascent global social movement aiming to democratically transform the local state and economy-but what, precisely, is so new about it? I situate new municipalism in its geographical, political-economic and historical contexts, by comparison with earlier waves of municipal socialism and international municipalism; arguing that it re-politicises traditions of transnationalism, based not on post-political policy mobilities but on urban solidarities in contesting austerity urbanism and platform capitalism. This article identifies three new municipalisms-platform, autonomist, managed-whose characteristics, contradictions, interconnections and potentials are explored in terms of state-space restructuring, urban-capitalist crisis and cycles of contention.
2003, Urban Studies
2012, Finisterra Revista Portuguesa De Geografia
Infrastructure shapes the city, and this is especially true for social infrastructure. At the same time, social infrastructure is much more vulnerable than other more physical forms of infrastructure. How can we make social infrastructure more visible, and more protected, if necessary? Co-authors: Elton Chan, Ana Villareal-Anzaldo, unnamed.
2007
This research compares the urban morphology and house forms of three areas in the London Borough of Islington. It assesses their level of poverty and compares them with Charles Booth’s survey of the London poor at the end of the 19th Century. The objective of the research is to identify and analyse the similarities and differences in the urban and housing characteristics of poverty areas between Booth’s and modern times, with the aim of understanding the spatial distribution of poverty in present day Islington. The analysis gives an insight into the underlying spatial elements and issues that characterise the distribution of poverty in these areas and how these issues are related to the different housing forms found within the areas. More specifically, it addresses the question of whether there is any meaningful relationship between the localised distribution of poverty and any specific spatial or housing element. The analysis is contextualised within the socio-economic framework of the study areas provided by Neighbourhood Statistics (www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk) through 2001 Census and other surveys’ data. The methodology focuses on devising system to summarise and analyse poverty data at the street block level and highlights the need for such summaries in order to relate these social data to the urban environment. The analysis shows that a number of spatial, architectural, market, and policy factors interact to shape the distribution of poverty and identifies them in order to evaluate their relationship to people’s ability to create wealth. The research concludes that, although much of the spatial distribution of poverty is dictated by the intervention of the Welfare State as well as being driven by the private market, this is also related to: a) a particular spatial property of the built environment, known as choice1 in space syntax2 theory, and, b) specific characteristics of housing forms: the frontages of the built form and the space-use division of the public realm.
2016
The output of a full-day charrette convened to help inform thinking around the next iteration of the London Plan in the run up to a new Mayor.
The possibilities for mapping gentrification using the capabilities of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the historic data of property land use and ownership changes are explored by constructing GIS and then analysing and mapping the change patterns in the Meatpacking District from 1840 to 2003. In contrast to previous studies, this analysis was conducted by using historic information, with narrower definition of gentrification only as the pattern of land use change from particular businesses such as, meatpacking to other activities for instance, galleries, five star restaurants, offices, or luxury apartments. It was found that, the Meatpacking District is a definite gentrified neighbourhood, and GIS is an appropriate tool for gentrification research, particularly, once wealth information is available.
Cities and towns are living organisms; they are born, they live, they age and they die. As conglomerations of socio economic advancement, at times parts of cities fail to live up the potential they have to improve the course of human life. In addressing this decay and deterioration of cities, the challenge appears greater than restoring and rebuilding the physical fabric of cities. Inherently there arises a need to design processes that would provide a new local economic base to replace the one that has failed, to restore hope to communities, within environmentally responsible or sustainable approaches. Urban regeneration is often themed around Community, Culture, Retail, Public spaces, Tourism, Housing, Heritage, and Public Art as anchor activities (drivers). The regeneration strategies ought to take cognizance of the apparent stakeholders, drivers, investment, ecological implications, local, national and global interests, collaboration and partnerships. The concept of sustainable urban regeneration introduces a variation from classical regeneration through establishing social and environmental justice, being in harmony with natural systems, public/community participation processes and upgrading the quality of life.
2014, Abe Journal European Architecture Beyond Europe
Inner-urban streets can become more liveable, performing a more sustainable role in the public realm, through a better understanding of users and design for occupation at all hours of night and day. This research aims to investigate qualities of mixed-use streets in dense urban areas at all hours, with respect to diverse user experiences and the effects of design processes aimed at making quality street environments in urban regeneration. An analysis of European and international practice and theory provides the context for this investigation of two case study streets, in transport hub districts of Frankfurt and London. These two case examples of densely occupied and contested streets are used to test the limitations of the idea of the street as a shared public realm.
2013, ABE Journal
2017, Geoforum
A B S T R A C T This article examines the social and material politics of coal, focusing on mobilizations against opencast mining in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Contested spaces and practices elicited by coal extraction provide important openings through which to understand how 'hydrocarbon modernity' is experienced and entangled with different processes of neoliberal capitalism. We investigate resistance against coal at Ffos-y-Fran in South Wales and the IndoMet project in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, exploring how assemblages of protest have challenged the material effects, discursive practices and regimes of accumulation attendant within the coal industry. In both countries, campaigns seeking to 'end coal' have built dynamic geographical alliances, and as collective challenges to mining activities have unfolded, we consider how movements targeting specific sites of extraction have sought to disrupt the industry's 'dis-embedding' of coal from the landscape. Drawing on accounts of how hydrocarbon politics shape societies, the approach we present draws attention to changing linkages between economic, environmental and social advocacy while illuminating the varied ways in which coal mining can compound and perpetuate inequality.
The article exposes attacks on infrastructures of social reproduction as a prime gentrification strategy, but also as an effective focal point for community resistance. We exemplify this through the conflict over Ancoats Dispensary, a Victorian hospital at the heart of one of the UK's most deprived communities in East Manchester, which faced demolition following the 2000 New Islington Regeneration Plan. Using ethnographic and archival data we show how 200 years of community struggles for healthcare became catalytic for establishing Ancoats' working class identity and how Ancoats Dispensary became the spatial/material and symbolic infrastructure for community continuity. The building's socially embedded history became key for articulating anti-gentrification struggles as its planned demolition was seen as a symbolic demolition of the community itself. Local citizens formed the Ancoats Dispensary Trust and utilised tactics from historical struggles and entrepreneurial strategies to envision an alternative future in the defence of social reproduction infrastructures.
Submitted to International Journal of Law in the Built Environment
2012, Antipode
This paper applies an anarchist approach to ongoing debates on the politics, nature and function of territory. Recent work in geography has problematised dominant modes of territory, but has stopped short of a systematic critique of how statist spatial imaginations and practices reproduce and perpetuate the dominance of both capitalism and authority in society. In this paper, I deploy anarchist thought and practice to argue that territory must be viewed as a processual and contested product of social relations. This is linked to the notion of prefiguration; a distinctive concept in anarchist thought and practice embedding envisioned future modes of social organisation into the present. Using examples from fieldwork with anarchist-inspired groups, I explore anarchist prefigurative politics as a means to re-imagine how practices of territorialisation and bordering might be deployed as part of a broader project of social transformation.
London’s skyline is changing significantly with a new generation of iconic buildings, of which the Swiss-Re Tower is the most well known. Despite the fact that many of these buildings are located in the City (London’s financial heart), little attention has been paid to the relationship between the transformation of London’s skyline and the recent institutional reconfiguration of the Corporation of London, the authority that runs the City. Focusing empirically on the City’s iconic architecture, and foregrounding a period of institutional crisis for the Corporation (1970–1990), the paper: first, departs from the standard analysis of iconic buildings as signifiers of economic success, and sketches a framework for examining the role of iconic architecture during moments of crisis and, second, offers a new approach to understanding the City’s iconic commissions: not as signifiers of London’s international economic power, but as symptoms of changes in the institutions and élites that promote the City’s new urbanity. The article details how the internationalisation of London’s economy after the 1970s challenged the Corporation’s insular character. The Corporation’s resistance to the ‘invasion’ of foreign companies, people and architectural styles in the City in the midst of a rapid expansion of London’s economy and growing inter-urban competition, led to open threats from the government for the abolition of the Corporation. Responding to these threats, the Corporation reinvented itself with an institutional reform and re-branded its identity in the early 2000s as an outward-looking institution, open to London’s new transnational élites. The 2002 Unitary Development Plan that introduced a new architectural language in the City corresponds to the same need to construct a new imaginary identity for a re-branded Corporation. Towering over the City’s traditional signifiers, the City’s new buildings constitute an ode to the Corporation’s new identity and a visual coup d’état against its time-old heritage-oriented planning.
2010, Antipode
Abstract: Recent left academic work on the consequences of economic restructuring and local labour market change in old industrial cities has been important in emphasising the role of local context and contingency in the shaping of labour market outcomes. However, in such accounts agency is often limited to capital and state actors, albeit working across scales from the local upwards. There is little sense of agency for individuals and communities in the midst of economic restructuring. Instead, they are usually treated as passive victims of deeper underlying processes. In this paper, our purpose is to highlight the autonomy and agency of workers, people and communities in old industrial cities. Rather than starting from the perspective of capital, our starting point is to emphasise how those experiencing economic change forge strategies and practices for “getting by”. This leads us to call for a re-theorisation of labour agency, drawing upon the Autonomous Marxist tradition and the more recent work of Cindi Katz, in order to offer fresh insight into the agency of labour and the prospect for recovering a class politics based upon lived experience over reified abstractions.