Amateur urbanism

Andy Merrifield

City, 2015, vol. 19, issue 5, 753-762

Abstract: Professionals and wannabe professionals are everywhere in urban studies today, everywhere in the exclusive running and ruining of cities, everywhere in the control of urban economies, everywhere in austerity drives, everywhere in think tanks and institutions who study cities, everywhere mass media have a say about cities, everywhere the grant money flows, the payroll beckons and the spotlight shines. The biggest problem this professionalism poses for any urban dissenter--for people I shall call amateurs--is representation. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, into a representation done for and by professionals. And professionals brook no dissent. Professionals are realists; everybody else lives in cloud-cuckoo-land. This paper stakes out its terrain in cloud-cuckoo-land and explores the nemesis of professionalised urbanism: amateur urbanism, an urban knowledge and practice not on anybody's payroll, a passionate labour of love.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2015.1071119

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