Writing & Films

Housing

There is a powerful and somewhat neglected tradition of local authorities, often socialist, building good quality, low cost housing across Europe.

The photograph is of the Rabenhof estate in Vienna, with a lovely wall for sitting on and passing the time of day. It’s the sort of detail that Jane Jacobs, Josef Frank and Christopher Alexander understood so well.

I’m involved in a research project on housing, including London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris and Amsterdam and the ideas feed into Radical Walks and talks.

Here are some related articles.

Building Red Vienna
New Frankfurt and the Housing Question
Red Metropolis: Review
Municipal Politics and the Revolutionay Left
The Scale of Britains’s Housing Crisis

The Image of the City

The development of cities in the past 200 years or so has fundamentally been about the expansion of capital and the interests of capital accumulation.

I’ve been exploring the expansion of capital on city development through a series of walks, writing and short film making.

This is a short promotional film based on the Radical Walk ‘Canary Wharf & Marx’s Literary Style‘

The walk will take place on Thursday 16 May and will be partly used to generate more content for a longer film.

Politics?

On the defection of Nathalie Elphike:
Dover’s Dodgy Defector