REVIEW129

BLUEPRINT OCTOBER 2012

A New KiNd of BleAK– JourNeys ThroughurBAN BriTAiNowen hatherleyVerso, £20Review by Thomas Wensing

>>BOOK

Owen Hatherley’s most recent book, A New Kind of Bleak – Journeys Through Urban Britain, is an animated narration of Hatherley’s latest travels through the UK, away from world heritage sites and conservation areas into what is arguably the day-to-day reality of how cities present themselves to their inhabitants. His journeys usually start from the train or bus station and he often humorously describes the obstacles that need to be overcome in getting from A to B. Declining high streets are visited and the occasional monument, but the emphasis is mainly put on the dereliction of industrial brownfield sites, neglected council estates and the utter desperation of the out-of-town retail parks, ‘enterprise zones’ and regeneration projects of successive, allegedly different governments. The objective of the book, reflected in the choice of subjects discussed, the chosen modes of transport, and the selection of cities visited is, of course, political.

The literary mode of offering a political critique through an account of travels, either real (Daniel Defoe’s Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain) or imagined (Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) has a long tradition in the UK. I am especially fond of the way in which Patrick Keiller has adapted this form of critique to cinema. (London and Robinson in Space). The similarity between Keiller’s astuteness, cynicism and political message is uncanny, and I would not be surprised if Owen Hatherley turned out to be the

pseudonym of Robinson, the manic depressive anti-hero featured in these movies. If memory serves me well, one of the bleakest days in Robinson’s life was when Thatcher came to power. Like Hatherley, he has since committed his life to the defence of lost causes such as the welfare state and aims to expose the harsh legacies of Thatcherite class warfare, de-industrialisation, privatisation and deregulation. The message of Hatherley’s materialist critique of our urban and exurban landscapes, it may by now be clear, is that it is deeply

regrettable that both the socialist and modernist projects have been abandoned in favour of the neo-liberal myth of unfettered wealth creation through free trade, deregulation and speculation. Apart from Hatherley’s political bias and his nostalgia for modernism as an expression of a yet-unachieved socialism, the questions poignantly raised through Hatherley’s travels are where the real price lies of the 30 years or so of neoliberal experimentation and what the alternatives could be. The journey starts in the Thames Gateway and ends in the City of London and takes us through places as diverse as Brighton and Belfast. Hatherley adopts a passionate and angry prose, is acidic and witty, undoubtedly informative, and is quite successful in exposing that no real replacement has been found for the loss of production and an enlightened state patronage of housing, architecture and urbanism.

Although I agree in large measure with his points, I do think that his analysis could have been deeper and his argument sharper. Each chapter deals with a visit to a different location, but the assessment of them

always develops along the same lines: industry has left, developers come in and politicians leave a mark with their pet projects.

In a travelogue, I would have liked to see an argument carefully and consistently constructed through the different chapters to finally reach a climax, preferably towards the end. For me, the highlight was in the introduction, where the political message was delivered, but the chapters at a certain point felt too repetitive and too much like political point-scoring. The blame owing to politicians for the negative developments of the past decades is sometimes ludicrously overstated. A case in point would be that the process of de-industrialisation has been strongly abetted by Thatcher, Major and Blair respectively, but the root causes lie much deeper and were well in place when Thatcher came to power. Capitalism has been with us for a few centuries now, and one of its qualities has always been that as a system of accumulation of power and wealth it has proven extremely adept at reinventing itself and recasting labour relations in its favour.

You could blame capitalism for outsourcing, but when ships get built in Japan at a quarter of the cost of those on the Clyde, there are no politicians who can afford to keep such an enterprise afloat. They are much less powerful actors than Hatherley makes them out to be and cannot be blamed for every single bad piece of architecture that went up on their watch.

As for the alternatives that Hatherley offers, there is, to my mind, a large measure of wishful thinking in his betting on groups on the Left, such as the trade unions, students, the Occupy movement and climate activists as likely agents for change. These groups wield people power, which is very much needed, but if the objective is to change the built environment for the better, then more mainstream institutions and methods of financing are needed to deliver change on any meaningful scale.

However, I would not want Hatherley to get of his soapbox any time soon; the timing of his reflections – amid the massive socialisation of the cost of bank bailouts – could not be better chosen.

Right: A New Kind of Bleak follows Hatherley’s 2010, excoriating look at New Labour’s architectural legacy, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain

Below: Owen Hatherley

The BlAme owiNg To poliTiciANs for The NegATiVe deVelopmeNTs of receNT decAdes is ofTeN ludicrously oVersTATed