Tag Archives: urbanisation

Creative Capitalist City Online

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Tino Buchholz has released his film – Creative Capitalist City – online for free distribution. The film covers issues of urban regeneration and housing issues in modern Western society.

After a year of DVD distribution and events in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London,
Athens, Vienna and Zurich, Bucholz has annonced the film online with a number of different subtitles.

Visit the website – www.creativecapitalistcity.org – for more information.

Synopsis: This film is more than a local documentary on Amsterdam. It
explores the latest urban re-/development pattern in advanced Western
capitalist cities. The hype around the creative city began already a
decade ago, it is global in scope and about to reach its peak. After
Richard Florida’s influential book “The Rise of the Creative Class” (2002)
creativity has advanced to be the role model of urban regeneration: The
New American Dream. What is new about this dream? What happens when the
hype is over? Housing as a job or the Right to the City”?

For interviews with Anti-Squat company managers and their tenants visit our archive here.

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Westfield Stratford bottleneck forces reduction in Olympic day tickets

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The new Westfield shopping centre at Stratford has already seen millions of people walk through its doors. As the only way to get in to the Olympic 2012 site those numbers are only likely to increase. Good for business, bad for sports fans.

In what seems like a rather large oversight in planning, it has recently been reported that crowd flow analysis at the centre has shown that the ‘Olympic gateway’ has already produced a potentially dangerous bottleneck. This is even before the Olympics has started. It’s only going to get worse.

For those sports fans that were unable to get tickets to the actual events, day or “Rover” tickets will be available. These tickets will allow general access to the Olympic park where events can be seen on large screens. Due to concerns over the bottleneck, the number of day tickets have now been reduced.

Controlling access to the Olympics in this way, forced “footfall”, obviously felt like a good business plan for Westfield and their Olympic friends and too good to miss, unlike the Olympics for all those without tickets.

Westfield wins Olympic Gold

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Do the business, secretary!

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A new video has recently surfaced on youtube which gives a great summary of the problems surrounding the redevelopment of the Hampton Court site.
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The video makes the point that urbanisation of the south bank of the river Thames will not  only mean destruction of a historic view of Hampton Court Palace, but will also make some people and companies very rich.
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Hampton Court Palace lies in business secretary Vince Cable’s constituency of Twickenham. Mr Cable opposed the plans whilst in opposition, but since coming to power he seems to have lost his voice on the subject.

The video makes one point that should give us all cause for concern. The application itself is opposed by many factions, including Hampton Court. If Hampton Court is unable to oppose an inappropriate planning application then there is no hope for us commoners.

 

Here it is:

 

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