ANDY HEDGECOCK picks out his cultural highlights of 2025
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Liberating cities from corporate rule
STEVEN ANDREW recommends a book that is a superb example of what has come to be known as engaged urbanism
SPECTACULAR WELFARE OASIS: The Wohnpark Alterlaa social housing estate in Vienna, designed by Harry Gluck has, among other amenities, indoor and rooftop swimming pools
[(L to R) Viennaphotographer/CC and (pool) Thomas Ledl/CC]
Star cartoonist MALC MCGOOKIN finds lessons for today in the punch, and the economy of line, of an extraordinary generation of illustrators
LEO BOIX, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Dreamers, It Was Just An Accident, Folktales, and Eternity
JENNY MITCHELL, poetry co-editor for the Morning Star, introduces her priorities, and her first selection
HENRY BELL is sceptical of the notion that ‘progress’ is an ideology that the ruling class uses exclusively to camouflage appropriation
In search of political understanding, MATTHEW HAWKINS welcomes a critique of anti-semitism as codified by the Israeli state
BEN CHACKO welcomes a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution
Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing
by Jenny Roe and Layla Mc Cay
Bloomsbury £28.46
INTEREST in mental illness has grown exponentially over recent years and informs many a popular and undoubtedly progressive analysis. However, there is a noticeable gap between awareness of the devastation that such illness can bring on the one hand and insight into its origins and how it can best be tackled on the other.
Attention on origins still tends to focus on the bio-medical model which highlights genetics and physiology, emphasis in recovery being upon medication and the individual’s ability or not to engage with health services offered.
The idea that there might be a whole political and economic basis to mental ill health and that there is a consequent need to create collective problems to social problems being very rarely discussed.
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