Reordered Publics

LSE Cities MSc. Research Project
with Ilana Adleson, Sharifa Alshalfan,
Ariana Valdez Young and Nicolas Palominos
2011/12

Read the journal article here

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This research offered a socio-spatial and political analysis of the City of London as a ‘business as usual’ city in which private interests trump public good. Through a design-based proposal for policy intervention and physical restructuring that radically alters the City’s socio-spatial realities, we re-imagined the City of London as a true public city for the 21st century, where ‘productivity’ stemmed from the residential diversity, urban intensity and inclusive public spaces produced by significantly increasing the number of people living in the City.

This project formed a major component of the MSc City Design and Social Science design studio at the LSE in 2011/12. In this studio, students were tasked with exploring the ‘Public City’. The timing was palpable following the London riots, and with Occupy protests taking hold in London. This research used posters, infographics, and other forms of spatial analysis such as collage to present a complex analysis of the social, economic and political functioning of the City of London, a small business enclave in th,e heart of the city. A number of city design recommendations were made. These used the democratising nature of public housing as a means to subvert an increasingly privatised public realm, while providing opportunity for new marginalised people to benefit from living in the heart of London. I was involved intensely in all aspects of the project from research, to graphic design, video production, writing, and editing. The work was developed into a journal article for City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action (listed separately). Here I include four extracts from the twenty-five page poster report produced through this design research project.