URBLOG

How not to prevent violent extremism

Spooked: a report published  by the Institute of Race Relations finds that the government's Prevent programme for tackling extremism fosters division, mistrust and alienation.

"The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to risk losing funding and facing isolation as an 'extremist', while those organisations which support the government are rewarded. "

Government responds to forgotten Britain

Communities Secretary John Denham has outlined a £12m plan to reinvigorate and connect with those communities (many of which have seen strong BNP support) that are feeling the pressure from recession most acutely and ensure they are well placed to share fully in future prosperity and emerge stronger and more cohesive.

'The communities involved vary considerably and the challenges are different from place to place. But there are a number of key issues that cut to the core of local concerns. These include;

• a decline in traditional jobs in predominantly white areas and worries about young people's future;
• recent migration is perceived as having changed communities and created competition for jobs and resources like social housing; and
• anti-social behaviour - although fallen across the country - remains a real challenge and can create tensions between the majority of hard working families and the troublesome minority.

For some, the pace of change has led to a sense of resentment and a rise in insecurity and threatens to corrode the cohesion of these communities and create tensions. In some places support for the far right has risen. There could be a rise in migration and resentment at the perception that others are getting a better deal. Some people are left feeling that 'no one is speaking up for us'.

To support this programme CLG is publishing new guidance Building Cohesive Communities - what frontline staff and community activists need to know.

Wrestling With Moses

Mother Courage

A bicycling mother arrested for rabble-rousing, Jane Jacobs has set the agenda for urban planning for half a century. But was she right?

It was only when [Robert] Moses tried to bring light and air into the city that he was charged with elitism. Like Jacobs, he wanted to democratise space - it was just his techniques that were different.

Jacobs checked Moses's mad worship of the car and his despotic excesses. But in a world of faux cobblestones, pedestrian zones and hanging baskets, aren't we a little nostalgic for Moses's obsessive audacity - for an era when planners could transcend the nimbies to execute grand gestures in the public interest?

Right to the City conference papers published

Most of the papers from the 'Right to the City' conference (Berlin, 6-8 November 2008) have been published in a special double issue of the journal CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action .

This special issue of CITY (volume 13, issues 2-3) explores the theme ‘Cities for people, not profit’ through wide-ranging contributions by a diverse group of European and North American urban theorists, sociologists, planners and activists.

You can view the Editorial, Introduction and Tom Slater's paper on 'Missing Marcuse: On gentrification and displacement' for FREE online.

 

Our city centres are turning into secure enclaves that erode trust

Can we banish fear and loathing from the city?

While the centres of our cities are turning into secure enclaves, high security is also becoming an ever bigger feature of the homes we live in.

The real issue is that most people simply don’t know what is happening, presuming that because the streets have always been public, as far as they are aware, they will continue to be so.

Review by Owen Hatherley

Yesterday's Tomorrow

Interesting reflections from the weekend's press on the architetcural legacy of modernism and Friday's BBC2 programme on the renovation of Park Hill Flats in Sheffield by Urban Splash.

Penthouse and pavement  Owen Hatherley in The Guardian

"Brutalism was never just an architectural style. It was a political aesthetic, an attitude, a weapon - dedicated to the precept that nothing was too good for ordinary people. After decades of neglect, its buildings are now either "eyesores" or "icons", fine for the Barbican's stockbrokers but unacceptable for the people who were always its intended inhabitants."

Jonathan Meades on Owen Hatherly in The New Statesman 

Hatherley  'makes a brilliantly audacious suggestion that will leave the Prince of Wales, Léon Krier and their “new urbanist” acolytes speechless: what if modernism was not imposed on a working class that really yearned for good old back-to-backs and outdoor privies but was welcomed “as part of a specific collective project”? Streets in the sky were paved with hope. Aneurin Bevan envisaged a National Housing Service.'

Michael Keith on an urgent policy rethink

Don't leave migration policy to the BNP

Before the election the UK must address the tensions between equalities law and the realities of job competition amid recession

"The economic and social factors that will trigger the recovery may in turn demand a defence of migration policy, understanding the eithical legacies of the colonial past and the labour market rationalities of the European present. Any such consideration requires both high quality research and an open and honest debate about a difficult subject. Otherwise the field is left to the half-truths and shibboleths of the British National Party to set the tone for the June elections. That is an outcome that few should welcome."

Ethics, Economics and Global Justice

In a lecture given in Cardiff, the Archbishop of Canterbury calls for patience and trust to be re-established in economic processes, and for governments to resist the lure of protectionism which prejudices the growth of developing economies.

"....we need to move away from a model of economics which simply assumes that it is essentially about the mechanics of generating money, and try to restore an acknowledgement of the role of trust as something which needs time to develop; and so also to move away from an idea of wealth or profit which imagines that they can be achieved without risk, and to return to the primitive capitalist idea, as sketched above, of risk-sharing as an essential element in the equitable securing of wealth for all."

A call for a new socialism

Rowan Williams is right to be concerned, but by building a fairer political community can we develop a just economy. Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford

THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

David Harvey in NLR

Examining the link between urbanization and capitalism, David Harvey suggests we view Haussmann's reshaping of Paris and today's explosive growth of cities as responses to systemic crises of accumulation”and issues a call to democratize the power to shape the urban experience.

David Harvey at LSE - 18.30 18th November

Future of Cities

A collection of Guardian pieces on urban futures.

Spark of inspirationBritain's cities are trying to be distinctive, but too many are doing so by copying each other. Beyond boutiques and public art, is there any fresh thinking?

Knowledge is power Just 10 years ago, cities were seen as vital contributors to the global economy. That's no longer true.

Blears and Pickles on urban leadership.