Synopses & Reviews
Limits to Culture outlines the cultural turn in urban policy from the 1980s to the 2000s, in which new art museums and cultural or heritage quarters lent a creative mask to urban redevelopment. Malcolm Miles challenges the notions of a creative class and a creative city, aligning them to gentrification, while exploring the history of cultural urban policy and its relationship to the real culture of dissent. As Miles shows, in the 1960s, creativity was identified with revolt, yet beginning in the 1980s it was subsumed by consumerism, as evidenced in the 1990s culture of cool. But in the wake of the 2008 crash, the money has run out and the illusory creative city has given way to urban clearances, ripe for a new kind of artistic regeneration.
Synopsis
Between the slum clearances of the early twentieth century and debates about the post-Olympic city, the drive to 'regenerate' London has intensified. Yet today, with a focus on increasing land values, regeneration schemes purporting to foster diverse and creative new neighbourhoods typically displace precisely the qualities, activities and communities they claim to support. In Remaking London Ben Campkin provides a lucid and stimulating historical account of urban regeneration, exploring how decline and renewal have been imagined and realised at different scales. Focussing on present-day regeneration areas that have been key to the capital's modern identity, Campkin explores how these places have been stigmatised through identification with material degradation, and spatial and social disorder. Drawing on diverse sources - including journalism, photography, cinema, theatre, architectural design, advertising and television - he illuminates how ideas of decline drive urban change.
Richly illustrated and engagingly written, Remaking London is both a compelling account of contested sites from the capital's recent history and a powerful critique of the contradictions of contemporary regeneration.
Synopsis
Contemporary urban regeneration seeks to encourage diverse, creative new neighborhoods that are rich in economic potential. Yet the end result frequently displaces precisely those qualities, activities and communities it claims to engender. Are people best served by a preoccupation with regeneration as economic growth? In Remaking London Ben Campkin provides a lucid and wide-ranging critique of contemporary regeneration. Focusing on present-day regeneration areas in London that are key to the capital's modern identity, including the site of the 2012 Olympics, the result is both a compelling account of contested sites within the capital's recent history and a powerful critique of modern methods of urban regeneration.
Synopsis
Contemporary urban regeneration seeks to encourage diverse, creative new neighborhoods that are rich in economic potential. Yet the end result frequently displaces precisely those qualities, activities and communities it claims to engender. Are people best served by a preoccupation with regeneration as economic growth? In Remaking London Ben Campkin provides a lucid and wide-ranging critique of contemporary regeneration. Focusing on present-day regeneration areas in London that are key to the capital's modern identity, including the site of the 2012 Olympics, the result is both a compelling account of contested sites within the capital's recent history and a powerful critique of modern methods of urban regeneration.
About the Author
Ben Campkin is Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory and Senior Lecturer in the Bartlett School of Architecture. He is co-editor (with Rosie Cox) of Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (I.B.Tauris, 2007).
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Introduction
1 Cultural Turns: a de-industrialised estate
2 Creative Clashes: aesthetics and gentrification
3 Colliding Values: civic hope and capitalandrsquo;s bind
4 New Cool: Englandandrsquo;s new art museums
5 Cultural Codes: art museums and the social order
6 New Air: urban spaces and democratic deficits
7 Refusals: art and dissent in a period of neoliberalism
8 Limits to Culture: art after Occupy
Notes
Index