Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects, speaking at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, November 2016.
“You have this backlash against this so-called social cleansing, and we had a demonstration outside the RIBA during the Sterling Prize. I find it problematic to use a phrase like social cleansing, which alludes to genocidal ethnic cleansing when socially renting tenants are asked to move and offered a new place somewhere else. They were given these houses for free, and now they’re given another new [one] for free – what a tragedy for them! The fact that somebody has enjoyed the privilege of a subsidised central location for some time in my view does not and should not establish ownership over this public resource. Is it not fair that now it’s somebody else’s turn to enjoy this central location? Especially if it is those who are better able to produce the support required for those who are subsidised all along and will continue to be subsidised? I’m thinking about MY PEOPLE who are working very hard and generating value having to commute or having flatshares when these spaces are left to people who [have been] freeriding for decades and supposedly for decades to come. Central London locations are a precious productive resource that… should be allocated according to market principles, that is, to the uses most urgently demanded by the economically most potent and thus most productive users who serve us most effectively.”

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