commodification Archives - Amateur Cities

Article: The Unmasters

Play and Imagination Against Debt

We spoke about debt and imagination to Steyn Bergs and Cassie Thornton during Moneylab #3 – Failing Better? in two separate conversations, addressing a set of the same questions from two different perspectives. The final format of this interview as a conversation has a comparative purpose and should not be read as an actual record of […]

Article: Critical Imagination

Feature Image: Kevin Dooley, Paper Money, Extreme Macro, CC BY 2.0

The Four Faces of Financialization: Cities as a Site of Struggle

In spite of describing an important set of social and economic transformations, the word financialization has become used so frequently and in so many contradictory ways, that it risks becoming as fragile and confusing as other recent buzz-words like globalization, neoliberalism and gentrification. Yet the forces at work behind the term are real and have […]

Article: Wishful Thinking

Ziggurat, East, Summer

Vacant spaces are often considered ownerless. Detroit’s Fisher Body Plant 21 has been abandoned for more than 30 years. When Scott Hocking constructed a ziggurat structure out of 6,201 wooden floor-blocks inside of it, it’s devalued and deteriorated state has been called into question. It seems to have awoken a desire to control that space. […]