A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
New buildings and public spaces constructed in London today are typified by claims about an architectural capacity to transform both the physical fabric and mental conceptions of the city. However, beyond marketing hype, what kind of social processes and aesthetic qualities are being restructured and re-codified? And how does London's emerging spatial form relate to the consolidation of the capital's well-recognised political and economic role as a centre of international investment? Here, I return to some remarks made by Henri Lefebvre in The Survival of Capitalism about ‘neo-modern’ ideologies of economic growth and urban development. By comparing the urban ideologies of late-Victorian and early 21st-century London, I argue that what appears to be driving contemporary development is—in spite of the high-tech ‘second nature’ of global capitalism—an unreconstructed mode of urban rent-seeking.
New buildings and public spaces constructed in London today are typified by claims about an architectural capacity to transform both the physical fabric and mental conceptions of the city. However, beyond marketing hype, what kind of social processes and aesthetic qualities are being restructured and re-codified? And how does London's emerging spatial form relate to the consolidation of the capital's well-recognised political and economic role as a centre of international investment? Here, I return to some remarks made by Henri Lefebvre in The Survival of Capitalism about ‘neo-modern’ ideologies of economic growth and urban development. By comparing the urban ideologies of late-Victorian and early 21st-century London, I argue that what appears to be driving contemporary development is—in spite of the high-tech ‘second nature’ of global capitalism—an unreconstructed mode of urban rent-seeking.
Looking backward
Moreno, Louis (author)
City ; 16 ; 345-354
2012-06-01
10 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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