Urban asymmetries

de Tahl Kaminer, Heidi Sohn, M. Christine Boyer

The onset of the current global economic crisis provides the perfect backdrop for reviewing the dire consequences that neoliberal urban policies have had upon the city, and for discussing possible alternatives to market-driven development. In this light "Urban asymmetries" centres on the contradictions of uneven urban development as a means of providing both a substantial critique of the current urban condition and a discussion of necessary counter practices, policies and strategies for designing in such environments, and inferring that social betterment within the city is possible by strategic use of the tools available to the urbanist and to the architect. The book aims to disprove some of the prevailing disciplinary discourses in architecture and urbanism which see the city as 'a given' rather than as an evolving socio-historic phenomenon, and intends to challenge the ubiquitous understanding of architecture as devoid of any social transformative power.