The city as colony

The planning system is right – Something must be wrong with the people who don’t fit it. Such is the attitude of the corporate planners, particularly when people get in the way of profits. We need to adapt to the corporate project that renders the citizen as by-product of the plan, rather than being part of it.

We are encouraged to love the athletes village, that will remain after the mega event that precipitated its development (Commonwealth Games) disappears. And after the developers have wiped out public] housing stock, have blighted massive areas of land and displaced communities. Only then we will be allowed to use what is left to live in – if we can afford it that is.

We do not now plan our cities, we allow them to be colonised. Urban planning or the lack of it has a profound effect on masses of people, through loss of confidence, sense of place and the feeling of instability and isolation. The history of past mega events, unnatural in scale and economy is never questioned for the simple reason that they serve as corporate feeding frenzies at the expense of local communities.

The plan for the city should meander around social needs as its architecture should adapt to serve them. In the colonised city, buildings are not celebrated for their beauty and functionality, but are despised for what they are.

Architecture is part of our visual history the more we understand it the more capable we are of interpreting our environment, enjoying its retinal value and putting forward ideas of what it should look like. Buildings are an integrated important part of our community, a visual history. Destroy the buildings and you destroy community.