ALTERNATIVE URBANISMS By Dominic Church (full review below)

Edited version (The Architecutural Review, Nov 2011)

On Critical Cities Volume 2

. . .

Let me make this clear right from the start: I recommend you read Critical Cities Volume 2. I predict you will find many of the pieces gathered together within it interesting, informative, passionate, thought-provoking, and ultimately enriching. It is also quite possible that you will find the book infuriating and throw it down in exasperation once or twice, but then let me clarify: I think you should read this book because it will be good for you to do so. I am not suggesting you will find it a feel-good read, fun-packed cover-to-cover. Who said life was about fun anyway, all that hedonism just makes your critical faculties whither away. And critical faculties are what Critical Cities is all about.

Promising “ideas, knowledge and agitation”, the book stems from the second This Is Not A Gateway (TINAG) festival, conceived by Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield and held in and around Hanbury Street in October 2009. The book delivers on this promise, thanks to dedication and grit from the editorial duo Naik and Oldfield and the many committed and well-informed contributors described as “emerging urbanists”. Take note of this denomination, it is important and I will come back to it later.

Describing established “urban forums (regeneration conferences, architecture festivals, and international `city´ conferences)” as little more than “expensive networking opportunities” Naik and Oldfield explain how TINAG seeks to address “a significant failure to represent the views from the street”. Naik and Oldfield's mission is to bring together those they describe as “the critical, the frustrated, the exploited, those subverting and interrogating the status quo and (...) starting to forge alternative ways of living and thinking.” Accordingly, Critical Cities is resolute in seeking to manifest the urban condition from a grass-roots vantage point. At the same time, key points of reference such as Henri Lefebvre's The right to the city and the concept of the Open City as described by Richard Sennett, provide more than adequate theoretical contextualisation to get your teeth into.

In conversation with Stefanie Braun, Anthony Luvera explains how the technique of the assisted self-portrait allowed him to focus on the issue of homelessness without patronising or abusing his subjects. Luvera achieves this by providing the homeless themselves with the means to take control of how their life is represented. The approach and the images that result from it express great respect for the subject, putting photographer, subject and observer on a level footing.

Photographer Gillian McIver provides a residents perspective on “I am here”, an art installation at the Haggerston Estate in Hackney. Here as elsewhere, the top-down approach of urban regeneration comes across as well-meaning and patronising at best, manipulative and callous at worst. How refreshing to read how “I am here” serves no agenda other than the resident's own.

Citing the example of the campaign for living wage for cleaners at the London School of Economics, Ruhana Ali explains how the organising model of empowerment draws strength from the support and protection of the privileged, in this case the comparatively affluent LSE students. This, and her description of the campaign for a living wage for cleaners at HSBC, successful after former cleaners bought shares and attended the AGM to argue their case, provides a new modulation to the top-down versus bottom-up dichotomy.

Joel Cady's work focuses on the design of the fence to the Olympic development site. Marvel at the truly magnificent “demolish.dig.design” logo and the quote from the press release explaining that the site was being “transformed into a blank canvas, ready for the “big build””. Which imagery could possibly better lend itself to TINAG´s portrayal of the Olympics as a quasi-colonial venture, ruthlessly obliterating all that previously existed to recreate a virginal tabula rasa. Own goal, ODA.

In deliberate opposition to the scorched-earth approach thus critiqued, Critical Cities is pointedly true to its east London branding. The social history and heritage of an urban environment that has been multi-ethnic and multi-cultural for centuries runs through the book as through a stick of rock. Particularly rich sections include Joy Gregory's photographic cycle “Sites of Africa” and the interview with David Rosenberg, a passionate and immensely knowledgeable guide to the east end. By way of achieving a balance, the book avoids excessive focus on east London in including many contributions from other locations further afield.

Joanna Erbel explores the transformation of Polish cities since the end of communist rule, whilst Nikola Mihov contributes a thoughtful documentation of the current state of communist-era monuments in Bulgaria. Taking Porto as an example, Ana Pedrosa critiques “top-down hyper design” to promote the notion of a living city, rich in “unplanned, ephemeral, furtive, interstitial, (and) residual spaces”.

Critiquing the idea of a culturally homogeneous, even “pure” society, and exploring the deceptively simple and yet crucial question:” Who does the city belong to today?” Jill Traganou provides a topical elaboration of the ideas Richard Sennett explored in his first book “The Uses of Disorder”. Focussing on the example of Greece and the Balkan countries, Traganou demonstrates how the concept of the nation state, through the notions of territoriality and homogeneity that go with it, designates privileged “authentic” groups within the population, whereas others are marginalised and de-legitimised.

It takes great personal courage and trepidation to venture into the mined terrain of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Jerusalem born Jonathan Rokem demonstrates both in highlighting the ways in which even the terminology of planning itself has become an instrument for political ends in the city’s planning, the apparently innocuous designation “green space” serving as a zoning mechanism for excluding and containing one population and providing opportunities for development by another. Rokem´s piece could hardly be more acutely relevant to the British context. Where there is no differentiation between tools and policies, every aspect of planning (or its apparent absence), even the terminology itself becomes politicised. Witness the new emphasis on nebulous terms such as “the community” or the effective banning of non-words such as that thing-which-is-larger-than-local -but-a-bit-smaller-than-national.

Perhaps you attended and enjoyed the TINAG festival. If so, you will love these and other contributions, relishing the opportunity to return explore topics raised in more detail. However, if you are a design professional, a planner or policy wonk, and you have been professionally involved in any major development work in the course of the last ten years or more, you need not approach this book unless you are willing to probe some of the darker recesses of your conscience.

To fully understand the thrust of the project under way, make sure to read Naik and Oldfield's introductory pieces. In particular, I recommend you read attentively “The Urban Industry and its Post-Critical Condition”. Begin your journey to self-discovery by taking on board that you are part of what Naik and Oldfield term The Urban Industry. Learn how the term derives from Horkheimer and Adorno's notion of the Cultural Industry which, according to the editors helps us understand “how it has been possible for many people in The Urban Industry, including academics, to slide their way into a post-critical milieu.” Embrace the concept, that as part of The Urban Industry, you are “perpetuating the intrinsically political and partisan ideology underlying contemporary business practices and market techniques”, as the editors put it. How wonderfully sinister and devious your chosen career now appears, enough perhaps to make you shift uncomfortably in your designer chair. No?

Thus prodded by Naik and Oldfield, who might not reflect on that slightly dodgy client providing mysterious “don't ask - don't tell” ways and means, the pitch for that frankly unhinged project presenting unheard-of possibilities in that far-off place occasionally in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, the sound and well-intentioned policy advice that ultimately failed to redeem that politician's misguided pet project, the solemn expressions of good intent articulated before local communities soon to be disappointed once again, or that project reviewed rather too enthusiastically for reasons either beyond recall or recalled only too well.

Oh, but you say this is unfair and unduly harsh criticism, you are simply trying to make an honest buck to feed and house your nearest and dearest. Your work is politically neutral, providing an attractive, functional and sustainable design as part of a creative and socially responsible service industry. Nice try, but reading Critical Cities, I fear this won't wash with Naik and Oldfield. You see, as an uncritical and post-political element within The Urban Industry, you are lending your creativity and expertise to its malevolent force. Move over, Leni Riefenstahl.

Perhaps you see the architect as a creative genius operating on an altogether elevated level of consciousness free from base political drivers. You consider yourself too independently-minded to allow your work to be exploited by political or economic forces. You aspire to be a creative genius, true to the integrity of your ideas alone; a latter-day Le Corbusier, your hand hovering above your very own Plan Voisin in god-like authority. Well, some of these “critical, frustrated and exploited” people that Naik and Oldfield refer to have been on the receiving end of this genius and apparently they reckon it's not all its cracked up to be. Of course you are quite different from Corb you say, you have a much more human, community-led vision. Quite possibly, but remember: the way to hell is paved with good intentions - and don't think we didn't spot that copy of The Fountainhead on your bookshelf.

Any degree of professional activity over time must leave one or the other high principle slightly dented, and to survive through good times and bad with your integrity intact is truly harder than getting that camel through the proverbial needle's eye. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then perhaps even a little power – say that of the designer working within the client’s brief - corrupts a little. But wherein lies redemption? Let’s return to those “emerging urbanists” mentioned earlier. Neatly lending expression to the grass-roots perspective adopted throughout the book, the notion of the “emerging” suggests a youthful and idealistic cohort of up-and-coming hatchlings, presumably the personified antithesis of The Urban Industry.

There is something of the innate appeal of the underdog in this. Yet is this condition of emergence a fully accessible and inclusive concept? Entirely involuntary as it may be to some, to others achieving this outsider status might be quite challenging. Perhaps the moment of emergence might be prolonged, as a sort of coy hesitation in mid-step – or maybe there is some way by which, even after having exceeded a certain level of personal involvement in The Urban Industry, the nimbus of emergence might be regained?

Indeed, having digested Naik and Oldfield’s trenchant indictments, an opening for salvation would be most encouraging. But what would the editors of Critical Cities recommend? Repent, make a full and unconditional confession and, duly sentenced, use the hours of isolation in your cell to write the autobiography, perhaps? “How I sold my soul to The Urban Industry” might be a suitably contrite title. Maybe a reading of some excerpts might be accepted at the next TINAG festival, although it might be viewed as a severe relapse if the book sold all too well.

Taking Critical Cities to hand once again, I note that in fact the book draws its strength from the fact that many of the contributors possess a considerable wealth of knowledge and depth of experience. These are surely ultimately enriching qualities, necessary starting points for all insight and learning. I am somewhat puzzled as to what might lead Naik and Oldfield to thus underplay the gravitas of their contributors by describing them as emergent, other than perhaps a desire to provide absolution per definitionem from the deadly accusation of collusion in The Urban Industry? Would it not lend greater weight to the work gathered together here to accept and embrace the value of life experience, warts and all, and allow for a greater range of shades between black and white?

Make no mistake, the fundamental driver behind Critical Cities is a moral campaign. Of course, Naik and Oldfield are elegantly erudite where I have been somewhat crude in traducing their work. Therefore let me recommend Critical Cities Volume 2 once again. Read it thoughtfully. There is sure to be the occasional brickbat lobbed in your direction, but this will merely quicken your reflexes. Besides, there is much of great value to learn along the way. Naik and Oldfield have successfully tailored a silk purse out of a hair shirt.