Spatial cleansing: Monumental vacuity and the idea of the west

Abstract

This article comprises preliminary remarks about spatiality and power, with a particular focus on field data from Greece and Thailand (with secondary materials from Italy). I suggest that the creation of large open spaces in city contexts, generating a marked contrast with local tolerance of crowding, represents the intrusive presence of regimentation and aesthetic domination. Within a larger pattern of conceding to hegemonic ideas about classical ornamentation as well as rational town-planning, such idioms of 'spatial cleansing' create a context entirely compatible with the current structures of economic inequality. They also occlude the understandings of past experience that characterize l..