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Email: saffron.woodcraft.11@ucl.ac.uk
Year of start: 2011
Subject: MPhil/PhD Material Culture
Research Topic
Another failed utopia? What does social sustainability mean for the planning, development and formation of new urban communities?
Supervisor(s)
Supervisor: Dr Victor Buchli
Second supervisor: Professor Laura Vaughan
(Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)
Introduction
Why do some planned new communities flourish and others fail? How do new urban neighbourhoods represent political narratives about what a 21st century city should be? And, how are competing ideas about urban development, sustainability, citizenship, community, family and home materialized in new communities?
My research will address these questions by looking at how a planned, new community in London is imagined, constructed and inhabited. Over the next 20 years several large-scale planned communities will be built in London creating more than 25,000 new households. I am interested in how narratives about London’s future, economic growth, housing need and sustainable development are interpreted by the planners, architects, developers and public agencies working on these neighbourhoods to create new visions of urban social life and new built forms. My work will explore how this generation of planned communities relates to previous experiments with new forms of housing in London; how historical relationships and processes exert influence over current decisions about spatial planning and housing; and how current ideas about sustainable development are put into practice.
Research interests
- New urban communities
- Utopian planning
- The social life of cities
- Social sustainability
- Time and place in anthropology
Academic Background/Education
MSc Anthropology and Development, London School of Economics, 2004
