After the Riots: what makes a city?
Michael Owens | 17 October 2011 The riots affected many places that have been the focus for urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal. It’s a bitter pill for those of us in the business to swallow, but our efforts may have contributed to the problem rather than helped create the solution. Despite all the ‘New Deals’, engaged stakeholders, and ‘empowered’ communities, a significant proportion of our communities were prepared to...
The Mayor who set his sights low
Karl Sharro | 27 February 2010 Boris Johnson has made a virtue of opposing the construction of towers in London. One of his first appointees was former Westminster Council leader Simon Milton, a fierce critic of towers, who was named chief advisor on planning days after Boris took office. The hype that surrounded this appointment and Boris’ anti-tower policy claimed that under Ken Livingstone London was on its way to becoming...
FILM: Slumdog Millionaire
‘Slumdog Millionaire’ directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, 2008 Reviewed by Siddharth Rajan | 8 February 2009 Danny Boyle has created a masterpiece in “Slumdog Millionaire”. With some great technical work and a rather unique storyline (based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup), Danny has created what some are suggesting the best movie of 2008 worldwide. The movie is set up in the slums of Mumbai. It...
Estates: An Intimate History
‘Estates: An Intimate History’ by Lynsey Hanley; Granta Books, 2007. 256pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | 26 February 2007 There used to be a sign on an estate I’d walk through in Hackney on my way home that read ‘No mind games’. I don’t know how long it had been there, so subtle and unassuming, but soon enough it was back to ‘No ball games’. Some pre-Banksy surrealist prankster had managed in their own small way to...
Camouflage
Camouflage by Neil Leach; MIT Press, 2006. 289pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 1 July 2006 After the Alan Sokal affair, cultural studies writers have been nervous of transgressing the boundaries between pretentious quackery and insightfulness. Reviewers too, tread cautiously for fear of humiliation. This is a pity, because such intellectual caution tends to obscure the rare occasions when a cultural studies’ book hits the nail on the...
Cities
‘Cities’ by John Reader; William Heinemann, 2004. 358pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 13 January 2006 I thoroughly enjoyed this book although at times I was quite confused by the author’s critique. Funnily enough, this, for me, made it an even more enjoyable exercise, absorbing the engaging facts and entertaining stories while trying to work out what the author really thought about it all. This is an intellectual...
The Anxious City
‘The Anxious City: British Urbanism in the late 20th Century’ by Richard J Williams; Routledge, 2004. 281pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 28 April 2005 This is a very well researched, incredibly detailed and thoroughly insightful critique of the apprehensive period in which we live represented in a critique of a number of British cities. Through a series of case studies of cities across the UK, Richard J Williams, lecturer...
The Art of Travel
‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain De Botton; Penguin, 2003. 272pp Reviewed by Elisabetta Gasparoni-Abraham | 25 October 2003 This fascinating book, written by Alain De Botton, examines the diverse motives that moved great men of the past – like Charles Baudelaire and Edward Hopper, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humbolt and William Wordsworth – to venture to new shores. He does this by juxtaposing their great...
Cities for a Small Country
‘Cities for a Small Country: The Future of Cities’ by Anne Power and Richard Rogers; Faber and Faber, 2000. 314pp Review by Austin Williams | 11 January 2001 In his introduction Will Hutton kicks off the argument that more socially balanced neighbourhoods ‘have to be constructed and designed’. There then follows 300 pages of morally charged argument about how to do it and why. ‘Social mix’ figures...
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