Neoliberalism on the Ground

Reviews / Votes

An impressive collection of interesting and thoroughly researched studies of recent architectural history which is worth reading for anyone interested in understanding our present moment. The book will surely prove useful to many scholars researching the particular places and actors studied, as well as functioning as an introduction to architecture, urbanism and neoliberalism. * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research * The essays in this book are wonderful-models of architectural history that are deeply engaged, well researched, and carefully written. Nearly all of the chapters are formulated around a case study . . . taking in social and political issues wider than those normally canvassed in architectural scholarship. . . . The chapters also share a certain sensibility-maybe a kind of sublime?-in the way they allusively touch on the incommensurability of conventional architectural values and the contemporary socio-economic dispensation. * Isis * The material origins and consequences of the political and economic reasonings of neoliberalism are as pervasive as they are difficult to define. This volume has successfully taken on the challenge of revealing an archive of facts and events that make visible the processes and systems that shaped cities and territories in the past half-century. Neoliberalism on the Ground will greatly expand historical and theoretical understanding and is an indispensable contribution to our comprehension of our present moment. -- Timothy Hyde, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This impressive edited volume addresses the links between worldwide neoliberal policies and recent architectural trends. If neoliberalism equals the belief that market economies provide the sole key for progress and emancipation, this book discusses how this ideology impacts architectural culture and the everyday built environment, bringing together in-depth theoretical analysis with wide-ranging and intriguing case studies. -- Hilde Heynen, author of Architecture and Modernity: A Critique