tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8157870361155998365.post5011846941939748592..comments2023-12-26T08:33:56.833+00:00Comments on Studies in Urban Order: Comment is Free - The Procurement of Social HousingJane Clossickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08341045002655243901noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8157870361155998365.post-50141418918540533412011-05-05T11:01:46.538+01:002011-05-05T11:01:46.538+01:00I liked Hatherley’s article, and I like these poin...I liked Hatherley’s article, and I like these points of yours. I get two important things from it:<br /><br />1. It’s impossible to separate the ‘strictly’ architectural issues (how do we make nice houses? Is Trespa a good cladding material?) from the cloud of related social, legal and political issues. As you said, the problems with the process in this case come from the fact that the client and user are different, with different interests. Presumably there are other structural features which need to be considered in the same breath as well: the type of legal tenancy rights people have, for example. It looks as though, to do their job well, the architect has to broaden the classical idea of what ‘architecture’ consists in.<br /><br />2. People are very good at seeing when a ‘regeneration’ project is in fact merely offering cosmetic solutions on the cheap. Few people are fooled by shiny new surface finishes. And they get very cross when they are disempowered by the process. Sometimes that’s because they are genuinely happy with some of the elements of their present situation which they feel are threatened; sometimes it’s presumably just because they are unhappy about knowing that their homes and living arrangements can be turned upside down as the result of a process in which they have no voice. <br /><br />It gets all the more insulting, I think, when we see the phenomenon you mentioned (the ‘just keep asking until people say yes’ process), whereby the appearance of democratic consultation is co-opted as a way of actually de-democratising social housing. As you said, ‘the more apparent control, the less actual control’. <br /><br />I’ve just been to a conference on ‘nudge’ techniques in public policy, where I was asked to give an overview of the philosophical issues arising from position papers which various people (computer scientists, civil servants, sociologists, educators, engineers) had submitted. One of the main themes that emerged was that people see ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’ as a way of getting the benefits of coercion while retaining valuable free choice. My worry was that this is just window-dressing: a diminution of free choice which is cloaked by apparent enthusiasm for freedom. I don’t know whether any work has been done on this particular ideological trick in respect of urban design, but I assume that there must be people thinking about nudging in that context too.Ben Colburnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15426046545059382655noreply@blogger.com