Anna Minton's blog

The True Legacy of the Olympics

2012-01-25T07:52:00.001-08:00

Piece in today's Guardian on the true legacy of London 2012.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/24/london-olympics-festival-private-legacy?INTCMP=SRCH

New edition of Ground Control, with a new chapter on the Olympics, published by Penguin tomorrow

Right to protest: Guardian comment and BBC debate

2012-01-24T09:14:00.000-08:00

The High Court's decision that the Corporation of London could evict the Occupy protestors around St Paul's in 'defence of the public highway' created a fair bit of news interest around the curtailment of the right to protest. I wrote this piece for The Guardian, about the irony od the Corporation fighting its case in defence of the public highway, when in fact the City of London has presided over the closure of hundreds of public highways and rights of way as privately owned estates took over the City over the last decade.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2012/jan/18/occupy-london-war-public-space

BBC1's The Big Questions picked it up on Sunday and hosted a good debate, where I put forward these points, alongside Alastair Campbell who seemed surprisingly positive about Occupy, posing for pictures with the protestors afterwards.

On Thursday the new edition of Ground Control, with a new chapter on the Olympics, will be published so watch this space.

Occupy comment piece on private space in the City

2011-10-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Comment piece for The Guardian on how the privatisation of public places in the City is the reason why the Occupy movement has nowhere else to go but St Paul's if they want to stay in the City - the focus, after all, of the protest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/private-spaces-protest-occupy-london

GLA draws back from Mayor's pledge on Public Space

2011-06-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

A disapppointing report from the GLA - Greater London Assembly - which draws back from the Mayor's pledge that public space in London should be genuinely public - ie. adopted by local authorities. The assumption of the GLA's review into public space is that it will inevitably be privately owned and that local authorities should negotiate with developers to ensure public access. Not the right way to go. I published a comment piece in Building Design, printed as part of a debate on the issue. My opponent makes the case very well I feel, by stating his view that the "the notion that when we go out in public we are exercising our role as citizen" is outdated!
As the magazine is subscription only the piece follows here:

Should local councils reclaim ownership of the public realm?

03 June 2011

Yes, says Anna Minton, the new report is a backwards step; while Crispin Kelly says shopping centres show the way forward.

Yes
Anna Minton, author of Ground Control

I wish I could welcome the London Assembly’s report on the city’s public space. At first sight it seems to say all the right things, that the public realm should be public, open and accessible to all. But the clue to the real message is in the title. The review is called Public Life in Private Hands, and that is exactly what it proposes.

Public space has become a surprisingly complex subject, as over the last decade in the UK virtually all new development has followed a model based on private ownership and private control, which includes the streets and public spaces within these new places.

This marked a significant change. Since the rise of local government and local democracy in the 19th century it has been customary for local authorities to “adopt” streets and public places.

In 2009 the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, grew so concerned about what he described as a “growing trend towards the private management of publicly accessible space” that he published a Manifesto on Public Space in which he explicitly stated that local authorities should continue to adopt streets and public places. But this report barely mentions this and appears to take it for granted that the ownership and control of places is changing because local authorities cannot afford to look after our streets and public places.

Instead it recommends that boroughs negotiate with developers to ensure public access is maintained in private spaces. This is a significant rowing back from the mayor’s manifesto and is no way to safeguard a genuinely public realm.

No
Crispin Kelly, developer, Baylight Properties

Management of public space hasn’t really caught up with the reality of what goes on there. The idea that public space needs to be managed and mothered by the state is left over from the notion that when we go out in public we are exercising our role as citizen.

In fact now we are largely going out for entertainment and shopping, and the codes developed for shopping centres have turned out to deliver both what the punter wants and the investor needs: safe, clean and orderly places. Now these codes can be applied more widely.

The fact that they are without character is accordingly inevitable. Interesting spaces have to be somewhat uncertain and edgy. They are unlikely to be strictly managed by anyone, public or private, and they are likely to transit from interesting to dull as they become successful.

Places may become attractive precisely because they don’t have the open arms of “inclusive access”. In my view, adoption by local authorities can just as often be a sterilising factor, leading to homogeneous management by the apparently unanswerable. At least private developers may have an eye on the market value of edginess. What is so hard is to preserve it. I would rather leave this calibration to the private sector.

For me a more fruitful discussion would be on the rules governing spaces which are not specifically public, but are shared by a smaller community: they have the potential for irrigating the dryness of the completely public space.

Dutch life

2011-04-22T04:34:00.000-07:00

Just returned from The Hague, where I was invited to give a talk by Stroom, an arts centre and gallery with a specific focus on the city. Holland is in a very different position to the UK with regard to the themes covered in Ground Control, with for example only one gated community in the whole country and an incredibly high quality public transport infrastructure.

The day after my talk my hosts suggested I borrow the office bicycle and cycle around the city, which was fantastic. Boris Bikes may have arrived in London but we are light years from Dutch cycling culture. Cycling in London is virtually impossible without levels of assertiveness bordering on aggression and I am normally too much on edge to enjoy it. The Dutch experience is entirely different with a network of cycle lanes, with equal status to roads, built into the city. Also nobody wears helmets - after all there is no feeling of danger - and the bikes are notable for their utilitarian unfashionability, in contrast to the hugely expensive top of the range models competing for status on London streets.

Cycling is just one aspect of Dutch life where the standard of living seems incomparably higher than in Britain. This was my feeling from the moment I arrived in Holland. The transport system apart, I couldn't quite say why this is the case but I think a perception - and gross generalisation - that everyone is middle class contributes to such a feeling. My hosts assured me that this was not the case but income differentials between people are far, far less than in the UK which does create an all round sense of greater common affluence, emotionally as well as financially.

One other piece of news: a new edition of Ground Control will be published in January 2012, in time for the Olympics, which will be a focus.

Events for 2011

2011-01-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I’ve posted new upcoming events on the site and will be back on the blog as I return to work after maternity leave. I am particularly looking forward to giving a lecture at the Architectural Association on February 15th. Should be a good evening.

Solutions to the financial crisis from Edinburgh

2010-07-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Just returned from Edinburgh where I spoke at a couple of events organised by the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust. Saturday afternoon saw a packed crowd of community organisors turn out for an afternoon seminar on the themes covered in Ground Control. The best thing about the day was the sense of enthusiasm about where the city finds itself post financial crash and what can be done. A key focus was the Caltongate site in Canongate. The development there, like so many others around the country, has stalled following the financial crisis and despite a number of possible alternative uses - including a literary centre - the council is so far failing to consider alternatives and hoping to resurrect the privatised mall model, despite very considerable opposition.

The upshot was a number of suggestions to take things forward and the Trust has a series of meetings and seminars planned to coordinate activities. The day produced a number of ideas that I really hope are followed up. These include setting up a 'Free the spaces database' to coordinate community groups engaged in similar issues around the country, which is a much needed resource. Another idea I particularly liked was 'Site Seeing', alternative walking tours organised around the key areas under discussion, to which local decision makers would also be invited.

From Docklands to the Olympics

2010-07-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

Found myself immersed in the Olympics this weekend after leading a walk around Docklands and Stratford, curated by Ruth Ewan for the Chisenhale Gallery. It was an unusual event for me – a talk on the move, or series of talks – but it worked very well. We began at Crossharbour, outside The George pub, where Ground Control opens. I chose it as it seemed to draw a boundary line between the finance district and the Isle of Dogs which remains almost entirely untouched by the supposed promise of ‘trickle-down’. Next stop was the privatised Canary Wharf Estate, before crossing the dual carriageway which separates Canary Wharf from Poplar. There can be no better illustration of the stark segregation of the area than Aspen Way, a motorway which separates the glittering towers from local communities, who are literally on a different level. The walk drew to a close in Stratford, overlooking the Olympic site. With its reliance on Westfield Stratford City, Westfield’s 170 acre open air shopping mall, the development looks increasingly outdated. However, while Stratford City will effectively be a private city within a city, the Olympic Park might have a more promising future. While there is no doubt that the entire Olympic site will be a disturbingly high security zone it is by no means certain the park will be entirely private. I understand the details on who will own and control the site have not yet been finalised and I hope to do more work on this soon.

Debating with BID managers

2010-06-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

Spoke today at the 'World Congress of Town Centres and Downtowns', a mainly American and British gathering of Business Improvement District managers. My remit, clearly, was to give the audience something to think about, given the stance I take towards BIDS in Ground Control. On the whole I got a receptive and interested reception although I did provoke the ire of one American BID director who claimed that I conflated gated communities and BIDS in a 'sloppy' manner. His question was the last of the session so I didn't have time to address his points properly, which I'll briefly do here.

The reason I think BIDS and gated developments have a lot in common is because both are privately run organisations which rely on fees from their members to provide common - ie. 'public' - services. Secondly, I draw parallels between BIDS and privately owned places such as Liverpool One because they are both run according to the same 'Clean and Safe' - ie. high security and sanitation - principles laid out by the New York Mayor's Office in its guidelines to BIDS. He also felt I was simply arguing that public money was 'good' and private 'bad' and was harking back to a non existent socialist utopia. One of the themes underpinning Ground Control is that the last decade has seen a wave of development comparable only in scale with the 1950s and 60s which saw modernist arterial roads and tower blocks slice through cities and communities. My argument is that the disturbing consequences of the very public centralised planning of the post war period have in many ways been replicated by the wholesale privatisation of cities more recently. Ground Control is not a call for a return to centralised planning but a commentary on the consequences of today's property fuelled approach to cities, as practiced particularly in the US and Britain.

I spoke afterwards with Cathy Parker and colleagues at the Institute of Place Management who suggested that we both debate these points in their journal, which I'd be very happy to do.

'Tesco Towns' artlicle in The Guardian

2010-05-05T02:45:00.001-07:00

Published this piece in today's Guardian, on the spread of 'Tesco Towns' - where homes, streets and even schools are built by Tesco:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/05/urban-development-tesco-towns

The failures of investigative journalism

2010-04-23T07:04:00.001-07:00

Very interesting event at the Southbank Centre last night, with Patrick Wright and Dan Jones from the theatre company Sound and Fury. It was great to do an event with Patrick Wright, whose book ‘A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London’ is, I like to think, a precursor to ‘Ground Control’. Wright also collaborates with film maker Patrick Keiller who made the brilliant ‘London’ and its sequel ‘Robinson in Space’ and is, with Iain Sinclair, representative of a more political generation of writers and film makers who link politics and place with memory and identity.
Sound and Fury is a theatre company particularly interested in the sound space of theatre, which uses darkness to dramatic effect to highlight other senses. They are workshopping a play about surveillance for the National Theatre and currently touring ‘Kursk’, a play about the Russian nuclear submarine tragedy.
The discussion brought out how journalism has failed us in recent years, with the most interesting political work emerging either in non fiction or the theatre, with plays like ‘Enron’ and the ‘Power of Yes’ doing the work that investigative journalism fails to do. A big gripe of mine is that I tried to get half the stories in ‘Ground Control’ into newspapers I write for but editors weren’t interested, finding pieces ‘too negative’. Now, of course, that the book has been well-received there’s plenty of interest, but I think that response speaks volumes about the ongoing crisis in investigative journalism.

New Statesman happiness piece

2010-03-15T03:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece on happiness I've written for this week's New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/health/2010/03/positive-psychology-happiness
I'm very critical of positive psychology courses and the teaching of happiness, which is being enthusiastically imported to the UK directly from the US. There these courses are part of a multi-million 'Resilience' programme teaching happiness in the US army while over here they've started to be rolled out in our schools. The piece shows how this approach originated during the cold war, with management guru Abraham Maslow.

Guardian comment piece on Drones

2010-02-25T13:25:00.000-08:00

Apologies for delay in moderating comments and posting, had minor tech problems. Wanted to post a link to this comment piece I published in The Guardian earlier this week, about Drones coming to Britain. It was partly sparked off by discussions following recent talks and chat on the blog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/doesnt-work-didnt-ask-why-cameras

Drones come to London

2010-02-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

Great event with Michael Rosen on Thursday night, at Bishopsgate Institute, a beautiful, unexpected Victorian hall opposite the starkly demarcated Broadgate Centre. Put on by Newham Books the event pulled in lots of people from nearby Dalston, and local groups Southwark Cyclists and 'Space Hi-jackers', who lightly disrupt the regimen in privatised places by towing in an enormous banner, proclaiming the banning of photographs and the usual. Keep feeling surprised that every time I'm asked if policymakers have responded to the messages in 'Ground Control' I find myself praising Boris's Manifesto for Public Space, which states that streets and public places in London must stay under local authority control.

Unfortunately I fear that has come too late for Stratford City which is shaping up to be a scarily high security zone. When I give talks about the book I mention the Drones - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles used in Iraq - which now fly over parts of Liverpool and are set to patrol over Stratford City. After a talk the other day someone in the audience told me she had attended an Olympics reception where the Drones had a demonstration stand! So, not only are they certain to fly over London, they're clearly seen as something to be proud of.

Rowan Williams, MI6 and Shell...

2010-02-01T06:54:00.000-08:00

Silence on the blog front because I’ve been on a two week residency at the Southbank centre, with a group of artists, film makers, musicians and writers. Highlights included lunch with the Archbishop of Canterbury, a briefing with a top bod from MI6 and a tour of the Shell building. The visits were organised by Jeremy Deller, the artist who suggested a burnt out car from Iraq for the fourth plinth. He’s interested in mapping power. As to the least powerful, we also went to Kids Company, the children’s charity run by Camila Batmanghelidjh, who is a phenomenon. I’m not sure what will come out of it, though I’ll certainly be writing about Kids Company again. And certainly memorable to have the Archbishop define god for us.

Contemporary art and the end of celebrity

2009-12-31T07:03:00.000-08:00

Published a piece on a new directions in contemporary art in this week's New Statesman. I argue that the energy in the art world is coming from non commericial, independent galleries, heralding a more intellectual approach in place of the indivdualistic, showman, celebrity figure. So, not a world away from the arguments in Ground Control.

http://www.newstatesman.com/art/2010/01/british-work-gallery-frieze

Happy New Year!

'These cities within cities are eating up Britain's streets'

2009-12-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

Comment piece published in today's Guardian covering the main themes in Ground Control
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/15/public-space-private-property-companies?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

Boris' 'Manifesto' to keep public space public

2009-12-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

Surprised and pleased to see Boris Johnson call for public space to remain genuinely public. In his ‘Manifesto for Public Space’, which goes under the heading, ‘London’s Great Outdoors’, Boris writes that “there is a growing trend towards the private management of publicly accessible space” and that where this “corporatisation” occurs, “Londoners can feel themselves excluded from parts of their own city”. But he makes clear “this need not be the case” pointing to the Kings Cross development where it has been agreed that the local authority will retain control of the streets and public areas – ‘adopt’ the streets to use the jargon. He explicitly states: “This has established an important principle which should be negotiated in all similar schemes.”

The Mayor has considerable planning powers so this is a significant policy statement. The irony is that the Greater London Authority, Boris’ own office and the seat of democratically elected government in the capital, is in ‘More London’, the privately owned enclave at Tower Bridge, policed by the kind of private security that makes Londoners feel “excluded from parts of their own city”.

‘London’s Great Outdoors: A Manifesto for Public Space’, by Boris Johnson, can be found at: http://www.london.gov.uk/greatoutdoors/docs/londons-great-outdoors.pdf
The relevant paragraph is buried on page 8, but it is nonetheless there. Whether Boris ensures developers and London’s local authorities listen remains to be seen.

Alarm and fear

2009-11-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

The Architecture Foundation launched the European Prize for Public Space this week, won this year by Barking Town Square, which is, I’m told, a rare of example of new genuinely public space. I haven’t yet been there so I can’t comment on what it’s like but it was good to hear Sarah Gaventa, director of CABE Space, talking of the importance of keeping streets and public places truly public. Mark Brearley, who as head of Design for London is arguably London's most influential designer, unfortunately didn’t agree. He claimed Sarah’s take – which referred to the arguments in ‘Ground Control’ - was ‘alarmist’. That's the point: it is alarming.

Alarm and fear were very much the order of the day, at ‘Maximum and Minimum’, a conference organised by Cambridge University’s architecture department yesterday. I was speaking in a session on ‘The anxious city’, with interesting contributions from architecture critic Penny Lewis, planning academic Jon Coaffee and Richard Williams author of ‘The anxious city’, from which our session took its name. Coaffee talked about that latest buzzword, ‘Resilience’ and how the idea of creating ‘Resilience’ in places – buildings, public places, communities – is becoming interchangeable with a defensive culture, breeding more fear. Lewis's talk, about fear coming from within, was an interesting counter.

London Review of Books

2009-11-18T02:41:00.001-08:00

Great review of Ground Control by Andrew Saint in this week's London Review of Books. You can read it here:
http://www.annaminton.com/LRB_review.htm

The psychology of walls

2009-11-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Just come from talking about the psychology of walls on the Jeremy Vine Show, broadcast from Berlin on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Well, Jeremy Vine was in Berlin, I was in London.
Why was I on? To give a different slant to the eye witness accounts and to talk about the psychology of fear which gives rise to walls. ‘Ground Control’ looks at the growing security – gates, walls, guards, CCTV - which accompanies our increasingly privatised cities, rather than the walls which are a physical reflection of geo political conflict. But issues of security, fear and identity are a critical part of any discussion about walls and their psychological impact on the people who live in their shadow.
The Berlin Wall was born out of Soviet fear of the West, to bolster the GDR and stop East Germans from leaving. We also talked about the ‘peace lines’ in Belfast, in Northern Ireland – the walls dividing loyalist and nationalist communities from each other – which have more than trebled in number since the peace process, as the fear between the two communities has failed to diminish. Walls have always been built for political reasons, from the Great Wall of China to the Israeli West Bank barrier and they are always a reflection of fear and a desire for security. Yet rather than bring security, they ramp up fear and insecurity. But they are the symbol, not the cause, of division and when larger forces shift walls can come down, as the Berlin Wall did.
Even so, people continue to have mixed feelings about the Berlin Wall and some are nostalgic for it, exemplified by films like 'Goodbye Lenin'. But it's not the wall itself they miss, as the East German guest on the show with me explained, but the life they had then, with its old certainties, jobs for life and slower pace. Walls are much more than a physical barrier, though they may be oppressive, they are also the symbols of a time.

The Bigger Picture

2009-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

The New Economics Foundation ‘festival’, 'The Bigger Picture' this weekend lived up to its name, with literally thousands of people queuing for hours to get into the Bargehouse on the SouthBank, to the point that sessions transferred outside. I was speaking with Stacy Mitchell, American author of ‘Big Box Swindle’, in a session called ‘Tales of how it turned out right: How communities in the US fought back and won.’ Much of Ground Control is based on the premise that we have imported one divisive American policy towards the city after another so how is it that Stacy Mitchell was asked to speak about how it turned out right? To my surprise, a key theme which emerged while I was writing the book is just how much more engaged Americans are with what is happening to their cities. Stacy talked about how local business alliances of independent shops were successfully working against the ‘Walmart economy’ to change federal government planning policy. She also talked of the success of local campaigns such as ‘Keep Portland independent’ and ‘Keep Austin weird’. In contrast to UK trends, 400 new independent bookshops have opened in the US over the last five years. Although American trends towards private government, gated communities and high security are so much more advanced than ours in many ways their federal structure offers more opportunities to revive local democracy.

The structure of the day – and the Bargehouse - was that people wandered from one packed session to another. Oliver James, speaking with Stewart Wallis about the myth of progress, described the atmosphere as akin to a 60s protest. For the thousands who attended, the idea of a politically apathetic voting public couldn’t be further from the truth.

Stokescroft and Cabot Circus

2009-10-19T03:57:00.001-07:00

Highlight of the week was my visit to Bristol, where I was shown round burgeoning artists quarter Stokescroft, before making my way down to the monolith that is Cabot Circus. Run by a collective, the ‘People’s Republic of Stokescroft’, the area is becoming an artdoor gallery, distinguished by beautifully hand painted street signs, murals and street art. Stencilling street names onto council signs is illegal but it is hard to see how this can be an offence. Chris Chalkely, a leading light in the ‘PRSC’, was a wholesaler in the potteries and he bought the old lithographs, setting up in a warehouse and creating a local industry, with handpainted china on sale in local shops.

Five minutes walk away, the concrete roundabout complex cuts through and provides a boundary line between Stokescroft, the old modernist shopping centre and Cabot Circus. This gleaming ‘mall without walls’ of private streets, CCTV and security guards was more reminiscent of an airport than a part of Bristol and reminded me exactly of the identikit anonymity of Liverpool One.

I was in Bristol to give a talk at the Arnolfini, with Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City, a great book which shares many themes in common with Ground Control.

CCTV gameshow

2009-10-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

Just come from the Jeremy Vine Show where I was asked to talk about the latest crazy CCTV invention, which really is unbelievable. ‘Internet Eyes’, a new business which launched today, is to pass on live CCTV footage to members of the public who can win up to £1,000 a month if they spot crimes being committed.

Suspecting the police would find this as ridiculous and disturbing as I do, before I went on the show I called a police contact who used to run a CCTV network. “I can’t imagine any public body in their right minds would get involved in something like that. Transferring responsibility for policing to a game-show has to be a complete no-no,” he told me.

Public bodies are not involved in this, only businesses which are gullible enough to pay for the so-called service, creating a steady stream of income for the businessman behind the idea, apparently a former restaurant owner. While I was on the show it was clear that the idea was unravelling and it was almost universally panned by callers.

What I find most disturbing about the scheme, quite apart from the fact that anybody would actually sign up to it, is how it illustrates the link between the growing commercialisation of security and technology, which is an important theme in the book. It is also distasteful that this cross between reality TV and vigilantism is dressing itself up as civic responsibility. I can almost imagine late night cable TV channels interspersing CCTV footage with over-excited adverts about how ‘you too can win £1,000.’ Fortunately, I think privacy issues and questions over putting this type of footage in the public domain would restrict this. They may well fell this outfit too.

Cuddly pacifists...and local democracy

2009-10-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

So, here’s the latest instalment of photographer Lee Garland’s removal from Manchester’s Spinningfields, by an abusive security guard. According to Crain’s, Manchester’s business magazine, Garland is described – and dismissed - as a “cuddly floppy fringed pacifist”. I suppose that’s called writing for your audience.

Crain’s writes: Lee Garland, a professional photographer and lecturer at The Manchester College, was on the wrong end of the rather over-zealous security team at Allied London's Spinningfields development the other day. Garland said he was quickly approached by a security person from Warrington-based Westgrove Security Services. “His first words to me were "Pack that up now and get the f**k off Allied London land'. He then grabbed my camera lens in an attempt to stop me photographing Spinningfields. What surprised me most was the thick air of aggression given out by the security guard.” The security man also asked Garland, a cuddly, floppy-fringed pacifist: “Have you always been a dickhead?”

My own visit to Manchester last week went much better, with Cathy Parker at the Institute of Place Management organising a very good debate. On the panel was Steve Shaw, from Local Works, which was behind the Sustainable Communities Act, an interesting, if unfinished, piece of legislation. The discussion about the pathetic state of local democracy, as a result of current mechanisms which exclude rather than apathy, is an area I want to do a lot more work on.

Spinningfields

2009-10-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! The book was published three months ago so I feel it’s well overdue. The idea is that it will provide a place to talk about the wide range of issues raised by Ground Control.

I thought I’d kick off with this email I received the other night from a photographer acquaintance called Lee Garland:
“I decided to come down to Spinningfields to take some photos this evening, and lasted 10mins before the security guard descended upon me. Some of his choicest phrases so far: (he's still standing in front of me) "pack that up NOW and **** off" and my personal favourite "have you always been a dickhead?" whilst he held his hand over my camera lens. What I find most ironic is the fact I'm standing outside of the Guardian's Manchester office!”

The spread of private security in privately owned places has been one of the themes which resonated most with people since the book came out. When I was interviewed about this on Broadcasting House Paddy O’Connell could not believe the way security guards ejected the BBC from the South Bank, as you can hear here.

Right now, I’m about to go and talk about the book to a community group in Walthamstow and tomorrow I’m off to Manchester, to talk to the ‘Institute of Place Management’ at Manchester Metropolitan University. It should be interesting as they’re a business school and I suspect some of the audience will vehemently disagree with my take on the private management of cities. I’ll blog and let you know.