Anyone who has studied the creative city rhetoric over the last 2 decades or so will tell you that they only thing keeping its runaway gentrification in check has been the subcultural and critical workers and institutions that operate in its cracks, and the planning system.

The virus (or more accurately the government's inaction to it) has decimated urban cultural institutions that were already struggling, and fatally wounded the freelance creative community. Now, the planning system has been reworked to prioritise risk-averse developers

This pincer movement will squeeze the cultural life out of cities (and don't be fooled by all the 'new urbanists' sycophantically fawning over street coffee shops and wider bikelanes. These are elite consumption motifs under the guise of culture)

The Creative City - the Floridian one that has been derided by may (including me) for years - will seem positively utopian to what is coming. The government won't listen, the opposition won't oppose. We need a new creative city movement from below.

And here is a case in point. This’ll reduce the @southbankcentre to a glorified office block. Shameful decision https://twitter.com/newstatesman/status/1291347039507415040?s=21 https://twitter.com/newstatesman/status/1291347039507415040