Böcker av Malcolm Miles

Modernist urbanism seems progressive, even Utopian: design for a better world through a democratic and humane built environment.

How can we unmask the vested interests behind capital's 'cultural' urban agenda? Limits to Culture pits grass-roots cultural dissent against capital's continuing project of control via urban planning. *BR**BR*In the 1980s, notions of the 'creative class' were expressed though a cultural turn in urban policy towards the 'creative city'. De-industrialisation created a shift away from how people understood and used urban space, and consequently, gentrification spread. With it came the elimination of diversity and urban dynamism - new art museums and cultural or heritage quarters lent a creative mask to urban redevelopment.*BR**BR*This book examines this process from the 1960s to the present day, revealing how the notion of 'creativity' been neutered in order to quell dissent. In the 1960s, creativity was identified with revolt, yet from the 1980s onwards it was subsumed in consumerism, which continued in the 1990s through cool Britannia culture and its international reflections. Today, austerity and the scarcity of public money reveal how the illusory creative city has given way to reveal its hollow interior, through urban clearances and underdevelopment.

When capitalism is clearly catastrophically out of control and its excesses cannot be sustained socially or ecologically, the ideas of Herbert Marcuse become as relevant as they were in the 1960s. This is the first English introduction to Marcuse to be published for decades, and deals specifically with his aesthetic theories and their relation to a critical theory of society.*BR**BR*Although Marcuse is best known as a critic of consumer society, epitomised in the classic One-Dimensional Man, Malcolm Miles provides an insight into how Marcuse's aesthetic theories evolved within his broader attitudes, from his anxiety at the rise of fascism in the 1930s through heady optimism of the 1960s, to acceptance in the 1970s that radical art becomes an invaluable progressive force when political change has become deadlocked.*BR**BR*Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation, in which art assumes a primary role in interrupting the operation of capitalism, made him a key figure for the student movement in the 1960s. As diverse forms of resistance rise once more, a new generation of students, scholars and activists will find Marcuse's radical theory essential to their struggle.

Features an account of the relations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce which questions the received ideas of what constitutes a city's culture, through cases in which different kinds of culture are seen to be differently used in, or affected by, the development of particular cities.

Environmentalists, whether engaged in direct action or creating new models of sustainable industry and settlement, propose radical changes in the values and organization of society. This title explores if new practices in the arts and architecture can reshape values and create a new consciousness.

Each chapter includes a specific case of a city or aspect of consumption, ranging from a history of urban consumption, gambling to the consumption of culture and its place in tourism to the consumption palace of the cruise liner.

This text attempts to see public art outside the normal confines of art criticism and place it within broader contexts of public space and gender by exploring both the aesthetic and political aspects of the medium.