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The Sanitised City: How public is public space?
Introduced by
Alastair Donald is associate director of the Future Cities Project, and co-editor of The Lure of the City: From Slums to Suburbs (Pluto 2011). He is an urban designer, researching mobility and space at the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, University of Cambridge.
Nikki Pugh works in the grey areas between and across Art, Science and Technology. She is primarily interested in issues around interaction: how we interact with spaces and landscapes and, in supporting exploration and criticism. She is co-author of the 'Splacist Manifesto'.
For all the talk of reigning back the state, binning the red tape, and letting the Big Society emerge, the explosion of rules and regulations, bans and behavioural codes, shows no sign of abating under the Coalition. The securitised, commercialised and homogenised centres that dominate British cities have been to the fore in the urban discussion in recent years.
Privatisation, in the form of shopping malls or managed developments such as Brindley Place, are said to create ‘pseudo public spaces’, what one commentator describes as ‘pacification by cappuccino’; others point to the eviction notices pinned to tents outside St Paul’s Cathedral as showing that the interests of the Corporation prevail over the freedom of the people.
All welcome
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