Avoiding the mistakes of the past

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2949802
AutoresSaffron Woodcraft (0000-0002-3479-5329, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume2020
Fascículo86
Páginas69-83
Data de publicação2020-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFocaal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0920-1297 • E-ISSN: 1558-5263
EditoraBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/fcl.2020.860106
OpenAlexW3009225317
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas48

A powerful dystopian imaginary dominates political and cultural representations of Britain's postwar tower blocks, which continue to be linked to social dysfunction and alienation despite extensive empirical research that challenges such claims. This article asks what contested declarations of failure "do" by examining how "tower block failure" is discursively deployed by placemaking professionals-planners, architects, housing managers, regeneration practitioners-engaged in the construction of a "model" mixed-tenure neighborhood in London's Olympic Park. Examining how the aesthetic figure of the "failed" high-rise housing estate is configured in relation to the normative models of citizenship and community that infuse social and spatial policy, I argue "failure" is entangled with a speculative, future-oriented economy of risk management, which refracts wider questions about the nonobvious forms that power takes in the neoliberal city

Aesthetics · Alienation · Citizenship · Dystopia · Economic growth · Economics · Gentrification · Ivory tower · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Real estate · Securitization · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Urban Planning and Governance