Hijacking of Urbanism
18th March 2023
If you’ve read this blog over the years you know that I’ve increasingly written about a general staleness in urbanist discourse. I’ve characterized it as seeing a need for new ideas in urbanism discourse, superstar cities becoming the victims of their own success, or the needs of interior cities being glossed over in favor of the coasts. They’re all valid. But it comes down to the fact that the urbanism of the 2000s and early 2010s, when the rise of cities gave so many urbanists hope that a new urban era was dawning, is not the urbanism we talk about anymore.
Recently I realized it wasn’t staleness at all that I was reacting to, but a subtle shift that eventually replaced all previous urban discourse. The affordable housing crisis has hijacked urbanism.