Evil Paradises

Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism, Evil Paradises is a collection of essays edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Monk. Davis and Monk first met when teaching a course entitled Socialism and the City, and were both incredibly interested in the utilitarian and utopian social concepts of Le Corbusier and Mies Van de Rohe.

What they go on to expose in this book is the architecture built  for the world's ever richer and global elite. They look at the way this group of people are pushing forward the architecture of places such as Dubai and Beijing, reshaping their environments into extraordinary high rises that creates a social dimension where the elite are segregated from the rest. These fantastic buildings are often built through the availability of cheap labour. It combats theories on capitalism as a necessary evil to push society and markets forward, and looks at the neoliberal theories on the market as an ethical end in itself.

Overall it is an interesting reflection on the globally rich in today's age and the way in which they seek to segregate themselves, and what their new utopian's mean for the rest of the world.