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A New Kind of Bleak:Journeys through Urban Britain
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The urban state of the nation—from Olympic dreams to broken Britain
This is what austerity looks like: a nation surviving on the results of what conservatives privately call “the progressive nonsense” of the Big Society agenda.
In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, but takes in Belfast, Aberdeen, Plymouth and Brighton, Hatherley explores modern Britain’s urban landscape and finds a short-sighted disarray of empty buildings, malls and glass towers. Yet while A New Kind of Bleak anatomizes “broken Britain,” Hatherley also looks to a hopeful future and discovers fragments of what it might look like.
Illustrated by Laura Oldfield Ford, author and artist of Savage Messiah.
Reviews
A humanely barbed Nikolaus Pevsner for our times ... This book should be required reading for planners, developers and architects.
Hatherley has busily constructed a cult reputation as the angry young man of architectural criticism.
Engaging, fearless and startlingly intelligent polemicist.
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Essential reading for anyone who ever feels their blood start to boil when they hear the word ‘regeneration.’
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Owen Hatherley brings to bear a quizzing eye, venomous wit, supple prose, refusal to curry favour, rejection of received ideas, exhaustive knowledge and all-round bolshiness.
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Fierce and original.
, Guardian -
He writes with venom and flare ... [It is] refreshing to see politics reintroduced to the architectural debate.
, Financial Times -
[A] bracing antidote to the faux-chumminess of so much British cultural discourse.
, Icon -
A timely counterpoint to Britain’s jubilee and Olympics self-congratulation ... observed with a precision and fury to force you to open your eyes.
Metro