Property: The myth that built the world
Property carries a great promise: that it will make you rich and set you free. But it is also a weapon, an agent of displacement and exploitation. In Britain, it has led to a new class division between those who own and those who don’t.
Rowan Moore, the architecture critic for The Observer, presents a powerful analysis of our concept of property ownership; from 16th century enclosures to the present day, of life in the developer-led boomtown of Gurgaon in India, of a giant experiment in co-operative living in the Bronx, to the impacts of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘property-owning democracy.’ He asks how have we come to view our homes as investments and how could things be reformed to enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society?
