The Blackbird Leys Estate, Oxford: ‘Never accepted as part of the city proper’

Municipal Dreams

This is the 200th post on the blog.  I’ll be participating this week in the ‘Architecture, Citizenship, Space: British Architecture from the 1920s to the 1970s‘ conference at Oxford Brookes University.  For that reason, I hope you’ll forgive a repost – the first to date – of this piece on the Blackbird Leys Estate which seemed appropriate. Rosamund West, who contributed an earlier post on the blog, will be there too, speaking on ‘Replanning Communities through Architecture and Art: the post-war London County Council’. 

Blackbird Leys, situated on the south-eastern periphery of Oxford, is to all appearances a pretty ordinary, not to say humdrum, council estate.  But it’s achieved notoriety.  Some of this is typical of unloved and maligned marginal estates throughout the country but it’s loomed larger in Blackbird Leys and came to a peak in 1991 when three days of rioting followed a police crackdown…

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Grenfell Tower

Municipal Dreams

For almost four decades, we have been taught to see public spending as a bad thing; ruthless economising as a virtue.  We have come to know the price of everything and the value of nothing…and have ended with the funeral pyre of Grenfell Tower. 

Three days after the night of Wednesday 14 June, I still haven’t written anything about Grenfell Tower.  I’ve been trying to process the tragedy emotionally and intellectually. Even the pronoun jars.  This is – or should be – all about the pain and anger felt by the victims of the tower block fire. Those feelings are shared by many but have been appropriated by a few to fit their existing worldviews, to serve pre-existing agenda. In the meantime, it seems every journalist has become an expert, every pundit has their opinion.

I do know a bit about social housing but I’m certainly not an expert on…

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The Blackbird Leys Estate, Oxford: ‘Never accepted as part of the city proper’

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“Aos Nossos Amigos” do Comité Invisível.

L´obéissance est morte

Está para breve a publicação local da sequela da “Insurreição Que Vem” assinada pelo Comité Invisível. Ao longo das próximas semanas iremos deixar aqui alguns excertos de “Aos Nossos Amigos”. Aos mais ansiosos sugerimos entretanto a leitura de Burning Dwelling Thinking, uma extensa crítica elaborada por Alberto Toscano.

“As insurreições chegaram, mas não a revolução. Raramente teremos visto, como nestes últimos anos, num lapso de tempo tão condensado, tantas sedes do poder oficial tomadas de assalto, desde a Grécia até à Islândia. Ocupar praças bem no centro das cidades e aí montar tendas, e aí erguer barricadas, cantinas ou barraquinhas, e aí reunir assembleias, tornar-se-á em breve um reflexo político elementar como ontem o foi a greve. Parece que esta época começou até a segregar os seus próprios lugares-comuns – como esse All Cops are Bastards (ACAB) que a cada golpe de revolta passa agora a pintalgar as paredes…

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