Inspiring the depoliticised generation

In the second part of this conversation, Shiv Malik goes deeper on why millennials never organised around housing despite it being the defining material issue of their generation. His book tour for Jilted Generation in 2010 drew audiences full of chest-beating boomers—but almost no millennials showed up. Was it that they saw housing as a personal failure rather than a systemic one? That complaining about rent wasn’t intellectual enough for degree-educated people who’d read theory? Or has social media created weak bonds and the illusion of political action through likes?

In the second half of this two-part conversation, Shiv, Tom, and Calum discuss:

• Why millennials never protested housing: Shiv’s book tour drew boomers who either self-flagellated or accused him of wanting them dead, but almost no millennials—possibly because rent isn’t intellectual enough for degree-educated people who prefer causes with “great bodies of theory,”
• The cavalry isn’t coming: a major decision-maker told Shiv that building a city “is not the kind of thing we could do in 21st century Britain” and asked where his generation’s protests were—because politicians would act if young people actually demanded housing,
• The social contract, not cities: Shiv doesn’t only care about cities—he cares about restoring the promise that if you work hard you can buy a house and raise a family. The city is just the only vehicle that might get past all the NIMBYs,
• Development corporations as tools: the Olympics legislation took nine months and had spades in the ground within 18 months. HS2 failed because it had to negotiate bat tunnels with every parish along the route,
• The aesthetics problem: how do you bring back decoration without being slavish to the past? Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Art Deco represent the last moment of both futurism and ornamentation before the brutalists threw out decoration entirely,
• Manufacturing charm: Richard de Haan transformed Folkestone by renting to creative businesses at peppercorn rates. But can you manufacture what 220-year-old London pubs have imbued into their fabric, or does it just happen?