Can Developers Learn from Art? Janet Cardiff’s ‘The Missing Voice’ in Spitalfields

Abstract

Since the 1960s, Britain’s big cities, and above all London, have undergone vast social changes as the country’s economy has shifted increasingly from the manufacture and production of goods towards the service and financial industries and many of the traditional jobs for skilled labourers have disappeared, leaving the working classes with few opportunities for employment. As dockyards and factories closed and workers moved away in search of new jobs, large parts of the old cities became empty and began to degenerate. Parallel to the replacement of the traditional by the new industries, a social shift occurred within urban areas which saw the displacement of working-class tenants by the middle classes. Describing this shift as an ‘invasion’ or ‘take-over’ in 1964, the British sociologist Ruth Glass first coined the term ‘gentrification’ (Glass, 1964: 141). Since then, gentrification has been discussed by scholars working on urban studies from within various disciplines from architecture and human geography to literary and cultural studies.