25-27/9 There's Trouble at t'Line @ AND Festival Barnsley UK

There's Trouble at t'Line 

One of the things I've been thinking about recently, is utopian architectures & aesthetics of technocapital. I was reminded recently of "Prezzagrad" which was the Blair-era plan to "revitalise" the North of England by making the M62 corridor into a "mega-city". More recently the now-shelved Saudi NEOM project The Line planned to build and operate a city in the form of a linear structure in the desert. Today, I guess, we have the amputated HS2 infrastructure projects, a recently closed passenger airport (Robin Hood) and AI training hubs in Barnsley and Doncaster under construction. 

In Prezzagrad vision, Barnsley was to be reinvigorated with the spirit of a "Tuscan hillside town", leading to many very funny archive newspaper article headlines such as Mamma mia, whatever's happening to Barnsley? in the Guardian. Down the road, Doncaster (more specifically, Bawtry) was an inland medieval port, and by letting the wetlands bloom could we Make Doncaster Venice Again? 

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