Housing and Planning in London under the Conservative Government: Spatial impacts, social polarisation, sustainable development and social justice

This paper will be based on my continuing research on planning and housing development in London. It will focus on the proposals in the Government’s Housing and Planning Bill, which are likely to be enacted in Spring 2016. It will review the evidence of potential spatial impacts in terms of the supply of existing affordable homes and the location and affordability of new supply. This will be related to a review of the alternative development options for London’s growth in the context of the Mayor of London’s draft 2050 Infrastructure Plan. The paper will analyse the potential impact of new Government policy and legislation on whether London’s housing requirements can be delivered in accordance with the objectives of sustainable planning and social justice, and will also consider the constraints on the ability of the new Mayor of London, to be elected in May 2016 to achieve manifesto commitments.

Design as Symbolic Violence. Design for Social Justice.

Design embeds ideas in communication and artefacts in subtle and psychologically powerful ways. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu coined the term ‘symbolic violence’ to describe how powerful ideologies, priorities, values and even sensibilities are constructed and reproduced through cultural institutions, processes and practices. Through symbolic violence, individuals learn to consider unjust conditions as natural and even come to value customs and ideas that are oppressive. Symbolic violence normalises structural violence and enables real violence to take place, often preceding it and later justifying it. Feminist, class, race and indigenous scholars and activists describe how oppressions (how patriarchy, racism, colonialism, etc.) exist within institutions and structures, and also within cultural practices that embed ideologies into everyday life. The theory of symbolic violence sheds light on how design can function to naturalise oppressions and then obfuscate power relations around this process. Through symbolic violence, design can function as an enabler for the exploitation of certain groups of people and the environment they (and ultimately ‘we’) depend on to live. Design functions as symbolic violence when it is involved with the creation and reproduction of ideas, practices, tools and processes that result in structural and other types of violence (including ecocide). Breaking symbolic violence involves discovering how it works and building capacities to challenge and transform dysfunctional ideologies, structures and institutions. This conversation will give participants an opportunity to discuss, critique and/or develop the theory of design as symbolic violence as a basis for the development of design strategies for social justice.

Charabancs and Social Class in 1930s Britain

The renowned writer J. B. Priestley suggested in 1934 that the motor-coach had annihilated the old distinction between rich and poor passengers in Britain. This article considers how true this was by examining the relationship between charabancs, motor coaches and class. It shows that this important vehicle of inter-war working class mobility had a complicated relationship with class, identifying three distinct forms of this method of travel. It positions the charabanc alongside historical responses to unwelcome steamer and railway day-trippers, and examines how resorts provided separate class-based entertainment for these holidaymakers. Using the case study of a new charabancwelcoming pub, the Prospect Inn, it proposes that, in the late 1930s, some pubs were beginning to offer charabanc customers facilities that were almost the match of their middle class equivalent. Motor coaches and charabancs contributed to the process of social convergence in inter-war Britain.

Gold, power, protest: Digital and social media and protests against large-scale mining projects in Colombia

Colombia’s Internet connectivity has increased immensely. Colombia has also ‘opened for business’, leading to an influx of extractive projects to which social movements object heavily. Studies on the role of digital media in political mobilisation in developing countries are still scarce. Using surveys, interviews, and reviews of literature, policy papers, website and social media content, this study examines the role of digital and social media in social movement organisations and asks how increased digital connectivity can help spread knowledge and mobilise mining protests. Results show that the use of new media in Colombia is hindered by socioeconomic constraints, fear of oppression, the constraints of keyboard activism and strong hierarchical power structures within social movements. Hence, effects on political mobilisation are still limited. Social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures. Attention to both internal and external knowledge sharing is therefore conditional to optimising digital and social media use.