A darkly humorous architectural guide to the decrepit new Britain that neoliberalism built.
New Labour came to power in 1997 amid much talk of regenerating the inner cities left to rot under successive Conservative governments. Over the next decade, urban environments became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy: of finance, property speculation, and the service industry. Now, with New Labour capsized, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the wreckage—the architecture that epitomized an age of greed and selfish aspiration. From riverside apartment complexes, art galleries and amorphous interactive “centres” to shopping malls, call centres and factories turned into expensive lofts, Hatherley maps the derelict Britain of the 2010s, an emphatic expression of a failed politics.