As an old wrinkly who has lived practically all his life in Glasgow I have seen many changes, and it is with hand on heart I can say that very few of the changes were made with the welfare of the ordinary people in mind. Our elected crooks and liars have always been business orientated, always looked to placate the big buck corporate world. Sometimes the ordinary people have benefited, but mostly they have seen their communities devastated or simple wiped out. It could have been so different, but then again, the people are not in control.
This from Strickland distribution:
austerity urbanism:
A walk through the fictional city
Saturday 15th September 2012
Ah fancy a walk'n a talk.
As part of a series of projects for Transmission Gallery,
The Strickland Distribution is hosting a public walk on Saturday 15th
September to investigate contemporary forms of cultural (de)generation.
Led by writer & researcher Neil Gray, with contributions from
housing & community groups; activists & artists, the walk will
take a circular route beginning and ending at the Speirs Wharf canalside
‘cultural quarter’, via the post- industrial and brown-field landscapes
of North-West Glasgow.The
writer, Iain Sinclair once said of regeneration that “any puddle will
do”, referring to the frequency of waterside regeneration in the UK – no
matter how bitter the climate or inauspicious the view.
The canalside Masterplan for the cultural quarter is a
neoliberal mixture of soft policy options borrowing from Charles
Landry’s ‘creative city’, Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’, Andres
Duany’s ‘new urbanism’, and so-called ‘smart growth’ principles. The
masterplan is specifically framed in the language of austerity,
admitting the partial, fragmentary nature of the regeneration approach
in a time of economic crisis.
While apparently less
bullish than other large-scale gentrification projects in Glasgow,
ultimately ‘smart growth’ is about the extraction of value from land and
property, and the increase of a socio-spatial tax base, making the ‘new
urbanism’ a strategy for the few at the expense of the many despite its
green pretensions and community participation rhetoric. The new
urbanism is a separate, privileged spatial project with limited
boundaries. This walk will cross those boundaries exploring the wider
spatial relations of the area, revealing the planning blight and social
contradictions that are a direct result of an underlying ideology of
growth which the new urbanism not only leaves unchallenged but actively
supports.
The walk will critically illuminate the ‘arts-led
property strategy’; the rent-gap and blight; the continuing crisis in
housing, and the commodification of social spaces. Rather than present
gentrification as an inevitable process, the walk will explore the
possibility that capitalism is increasingly unable to reproduce the most
basic conditions of everyday life for a majority of the population,
deferring a crisis of productivity to a crisis of urbanism. This walk in
the fictional city will examine urban reality against the urban myths
of city boosters.
The walk is proposed as an investigative history from
below: a critical exploration of gentrification in the context of
austerity urbanism. City boosters and planners promote top-down
solutions to urban crisis, yet radical social change can only ever come
from broad-based pressure from
below. This walk aims to provide the means for collaborative exchange,
instigating & sustaining wider solidarity & activity between
anti-gentrification researchers, activists, community groups &
artists. We welcome all those with such an interest.
Saturday 15th September, (1–5pm): Meet outside
Cowcaddens subway entrance at 1pm. Please bring appropriate footwear and
clothing. The ground will occasionally be rough.
Transmission Gallery
28 King Street
Glasgow G1 5QP
Scotland
Tel.:+44 (0)141 552 7141
