Aestheticization and the cultural contradictions of neoliberal (sub)urbanism

摘要

The political, economic and socio-spatial characteristics of neoliberal urbanism have received much attention. The cultural facets of neoliberalism, and the landscapes that are germane to it, however, have until recently remained less well understood. This is beginning to change as urban scholars begin to interrogate the cultural politics of contemporary urban development(s) and processes, and their effects on urban form. The aestheticization of politics-that is, the emergence of a politics driven by aesthetic motivations, delineated by aesthetic concerns and/or masked by aesthetic appeals-would appear to be an important component of neoliberal times. While a politics of the aesthetic plainly pre-dates neoliberalism, it would appear that neoliberalization and aestheticization are intertwined, emerging as a by-product of, and as a strategy for, social exclusion and the management of class and other social identities in the context of deepening cultural reification. Yet, while evolving partly as a response to the contradictions of the contemporary (neoliberal) city, aestheticization processes produce new contradictions and amplify existing ones.