Abstract

The UK's urban regeneration mania of the last decades has taken many forms and defines much of our contemporary urban landscape. Post-crash and mid-austerity, the preponderance of over-hyped and over-leveraged glamour-towers, prestige starchitecture and insidious ‘splashes’ of new urban living rouse familiar anxieties about the trajectory and accessibility of cities. In the shadows of these visible neoliberal affronts however, a legacy of injustice has begun to emerge not through action to displace and renew, but through inaction and failure. This piece is a call to recognize, confront and challenge what happens to residents when urban regeneration does not stay within the linear, unfolding narratives of ‘successful’ neoliberal urban development and instead mires people and neighbourhoods in limbo, uncertainty and devitalisation.