I severely dislike rick caruso, but he's undoubtedly important.

"In 1955 Ludwig Hilberseimer was commissioned to plan the 'renewal' of one of Detroit’s deteriorating downtown neighborhoods. Hilberseimer’s plan applied the theoretical principles he had developed as an urban planner, architect, and educator to a federally underwritten project that would come to be known as Lafayette Park. His plan fundamentally reconceived the urban pattern for this portion of the 'motor city' and orchestrated the contributions of a talented interdisciplinary design team assembled for the project. This team, composed of Mies van der Rohe, Alfred Caldwell, and developer Herbert Greenwald, produced a still vibrant mixed-income, mixed-race community of publicly subsidized housing in the midst of Detroit’s ongoing deterioration."

"Called 'malls without walls,' these regeneration schemes are privately owned and privately policed. Rics found that the ownership and control of public realm is shifting from the public to the private sector, replicating patterns not seen since the early Victorian era - when private landlords owned and managed vast swaths of cities. . . . But Roy Coleman, a lecturer in criminology and sociology at Liverpool University, says: 'The rules for the newly privatised city centre fabricate an ideal citizen - aspirational in consumption and thinking big with urban pride. This is depicted as no ordinary regeneration because Liverpool people 'possess so much passion, so much pride and such a desire to shop'.' Developments based on such a vision silence other aspects of city life, he says. . . . 'modernising agenda appears here to mean a fabrication of urban 'bustle' that is rooted in enclaves that speak to a middle-class desire for inoculation from the signs of decay, disorder and inequality.'"

"Sheffield’s former central fire station will soon be demolished to make way for redevelopment. This is a major part of the Sevenstone plan for the city centre, which will bring a greater number of shops into the empty spaces via a half billion pound mixture of Liverpool One outdoor style shopping complexes and more familiar American Mall style structures. The monetary and civic values of this project are highly debatable. As of now, however, only demolition of the fire station will take place, as the development has stalled indefinitely. Once the fire station has gone, Sheffield city centre will be left with a giant hole. . . . Under the fire station is a block designed solely for catastrophe. Constructed as the command centre in the case of nuclear war, this is a massive concrete, climate controlled war room from which the remains of the city could be overseen. . . . Regeneration follows a similar disaster narrative." (via danched; tho, most new ones here are also "malls w/o walls")

ornamental post-industrial remnant in new urbanist-y private housing?

suppose I shouldn't feel surprised by this take on the tva. oh personal history, how you inflect on all things.

headline is dumb, as this isn't really about the nouvel building going up next to st. paul's, but more of a general roundup on his role in architecture and planning in the uk more generally.

some rambling debates in the comments

oy a bunch of weirdness in this post, but kinda interesting anyway

mindboggling patronizing doublethink of new urbanism fully revealed. see in particular: "The reconstitution of a public sphere is critically important for everyone working towards traditional neighborhoods; sprawl is consistently (and correctly) accused of isolating and atomizing households. However, the solution is nearly always to increase private control of space. . . . Many of the more suburban New Urbanist developments are entirely privately governed. . . . At the Diggs Town housing project in Norfolk, Virginia, New Urbanist architect Raymond Gindroz took communal lawns and put porches and fences in, turning the lawn into individually controlled yards. Creating this defensible space helped create the safety necessary for community. However, the Disneyfication of our urban spaces is a real problem . . . corporations control an inordinate amount of how we experience urban space. The paradox here is that to support the public sphere, we must remove public control. . ." just wow.