This Dissertation investigates the ways in which marketing strategies and public perception shape the identity of U.K. housing estates.
In today’s Britain, the perception of working-class estates contributes towards the demonization of its struggling resident population. The role of marketing can be pivotal towards the opinion upon estate architecture, and the opinion upon estate architecture can be damning towards the perceptions on class.
Where post-war, brutalist, high-rise and high-density housing estates exist, so do both admiring and demonising architectural opinions. Although these often appear to rely on societally-important design criterium:
Functionality | Aesthetics | Sustainability | Cultural Significance | Economic impact | Social impact
, often these opinions might actually relate more to class-associations and demographic resident build-up.
This is a dissertation presented to the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, in part fulfilment of the regulations for BA (Hons) in Architecture.
This dissertation is an original piece of work which is made available for copying with permission of the Head of School of Architecture.
Marketing strategies are implemented deeply within the sale of housing estate properties in order to appeal to certain demographics. Whether it is social or private owners of these estates, the marketing strategies used attract their perfect target audience and clientele.
However, through this process the appearance of these estates, whether socially-owned or private, is one that is directly associated to the class of residents within. With these class-associations, outsiders often regardless of or without architecturally-informed background knowledge or opinion choose a side of Sink Estate/Great Estate; Concrete Monstrosity/Concrete Masterpiece; Council House/Creatives House.
This is what i would argue is Architectural Classism
Architectural Classism is what I would describe as architecturally uninformed opinions made upon a building regarding the class of users, residents and general demographic. It refers to the ways in which architecture and design can reflect and reinforce class distinctions and inequalities.
These opinions often appear to be related to the societally-important criterium of design: Functionality, Aesthetics, Sustainability, Cultural Significance, Economic Impact, Social Impact etc., however in truth these exist as a façade to classist judgements.
Through this act of Architectural Classism, a product of middle- and upper-class oases results. With the fetishization of gentrified and privatised post-war, brutalist, high-rise and high-density housing estate oases, a division between the prosperous and underprivileged factions of society widens. This fetishization originates from marketing strategies that formulate the admiration of large-scale housing estates in their form through the medium of their associated class.
Simultaneously, the by-product of this is working class demonization. Marketing strategies that do not fetishize estates result in opinions and perceptions that follow closer to the line of Sink Estate, Concrete Monstrosity and Council House, and the negative connotations towards the community, residents and population that those hold.
Despite communities of residents within these estates that own their homes outright through the Right To Buy scheme of the Thatcherite era, the working class marketing strategies that exist within properties being sold around privately owned homes are still subject to a lack of fetishization, and subsequent demonization.
To effectively measure Architectural Classism as a by-product of housing estate marketing strategies, the vast collection of every biased opinion, perception, thought, idea and concept both on and surrounding the topics of housing estates and estate class must be listened to through an equally vast dataset medium.
AI software can act as this medium. As a software that channels billions of pieces of data ever put online, Midjourney AI can act as the most perfect mirror of society’s perceptions, as reflected through online data.
By generating visuals that define opinions and perceptions of housing estates, Midjourney will be able to show what society thinks is a working, middle- and upper-class housing estate.
With the interactive nature of these visuals, the intentions of Midjourney’s use will be to get the reader to see how these visually generated definitions are influenced by the marketing strategies put in place upon housing estates within our built environment.
These visuals will also be able to represent both the demonization and fetishization at the extremities of this binary.
To take a direct precedent of working-class demonization as a product of middle and upper class fetishization would be to investigate the Lobster.
The lobster presents a direct example to this same school of thought.
If today’s lobster wears a top hat and an opera cape, 80 years ago he was wearing overalls and picking up your garbage.
In its abundance it appeared and was presented as trash food fit only for the poor, but simply through marketing without any change to its inherent form, taste or presentation and despite the fact it looked like a bug, the Lobster found its appeal and opportunity to become a delicacy, a craving and a need for the middle and upper classes.
In order to highlight how this experience of marketing exists within the precedent, the 2 figures below directly show how Midjourney can be utilised to represent class divide.
Both these figures were generated using the same text prompt:
‘A ______-class man eating a lobster’
Only an addition of the words working- and middle- were used to differentiate the visuals.
Where the tired, grey, worn, dirtied and anonymous working-class man eats his somewhat-rationed lobster directly from his hands without care within a background of darkness and question; the white, smart, suited, clean and professional middle-class man dines in an exclusive restaurant-like setting adorned with china, crockery and a lavish varied spread of delicacies set within a curtained-off area of privacy.
By exploring the products of opinion and perception of these strategies similarly to the Lobster, this dissertation aims to argue that the core problems facing housing estates is not primarily architectural or design-related, but one of class-associated discrimination. This research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex and multifaceted issues surrounding estate identity.
This research also hopes to have the potential to inform future policies and initiatives aimed at addressing these issues.
Ultimately, it is hoped that the findings of this dissertation will contribute to the ongoing efforts to promote social justice and equality in the realm of housing and urban planning.
A selection of literature is the presented, which shows that marketing strategies can play a significant role in shaping societal perceptions and influencing the way that consumers perceive person and place. The literature gives insight into how strategies can be used to promote certain values and beliefs, and how they can be designed to appeal to specific demographics, cultures, and values.
The literature also establishes that the themes discussed within the first subchapter are inherent within the built environment of housing estates. Through an analysis of relevant literature on housing estate cultures, architectures and class-associations, it can be seen how these marketing strategies influence and formulate societal-perceptions by segregating class-associated consumer groups.
From these 2 subchapters, it can be seen how although there is a collective of literature pertaining to marketing strategies and housing estate cultures, architectures and class-associations, there is a clear gap for a piece of literature that brings together these deeply connected matters.
This dissertation aims to address this gap.
The Methodology chapter provides a detailed explanation of how Midjourney AI will be used to investigate the biases behind the perceptions and opinions upon class within the built environment of large-scale UK housing estates, as a product of the marketing strategies used to advertise them.
By utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, the analysis of the images generated through Midjourney will allow for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between marketing strategies and societal biases. The results of this analysis will also be able to make recommendations for future research on the topic.
It is important to note that, as with any research, there are limitations to using Midjourney as a methodology. These limitations include the potential for human error, personal interpretation and subjectivity in the categorization, coding and analysis of the images, as well as the possibility that the model will not accurately reflect all societal biases.
However, by considering these limitations and triangulating the findings with existing literature, the results of this methodology can provide valuable insights into the relationship between marketing strategies, societal biases, and perceptions of class in large scale UK housing estates, all within using the unique perspective provided by the images generated through Midjourney.
Within the results section of the dissertation, a collection of 90 images generated from Midjourney AI are presented. These images have been categorised into triptychs that originate from the same identical text prompt, varying only through the input of “working-”, “middle-” and “upper-” so as to represent the softwares’ learnt perceptions and opinions upon class as Midjourney acts as an infinitely complex mirror held up to our society. The text-prompts presented were selected to best refer to the themes discussed throughout this dissertation, so as to present them visually and represent and highlight the issues and importance of this research question.
It is important to be aware that the 90 images presented are not the total collection of all images generated using this software for the purpose of this results chapter, and that this is only a selection of images that are most relevant and serve the best range and representation for the success of this dissertation.
The purpose of the 90 image results is to show how a taught AI software interprets the class-divide within U.K. housing estates, as a reflection of societies’ beliefs, perceptions and opinions. This chapter aims to represent issues that we as a society are not aware enough of, do not discuss enough, and subsequently do not solve. From this, this chapter seeks to contribute to the dissertations effort of closing the class-divide within the socially dualistic built environment medium of the housing estate.
The content and thematic analysis method identifies patterns and themes in Midjourney’s images by taking the 90 images generated and measuring them against 84 measurements.
Within the table of results, the left column numbers correlate to image no. e.g., along with the “WORKING”, “MIDDLE” and “UPPER” variables used, whilst the top row numbers correlate to the measurement number.
The advantages of content analysis allow for an unobtrusive collection of data and a transparent and replicable method, as images will be analysed without external interaction, and where yielded results can be repeated by others with high reliability.
"SINGLE U.K. HOUSING ESTATE BUILDING FOR THE WORKING-, MIDDLE- & UPPER-CLASS"
MIDJOURNEY IMAGE
Image 91 is a collective image also generated in collaboration with Midjourney that aims to bring all of the themes explored and discussed in images 1-90 into one single image in an aim to break the binaries.
Image 91 is a collective effort of the previous 90 images generated within the presented results section of this dissertation as a product of the outlined methodology. Image 91 was generated in the hope of breaking the belief produced as a result of images 1-90 that housing estates cannot exist as one for all, and that they can be a unity.
Where images 1-90 returned vast communications of inter-class disparity and social binaries set within housing estates, along with the themes discussed within the introduction to this dissertation of dualistic extremes exemplifying both social rise and decline (Bentley, 2008), image 91 was generated in the hope of breaking this binary, and presenting an image that did not submit to architectural classism, or classism of any kind.
Despite this objective, image 91 produced the most divisive image of all.
Within image 91, we can extensively see the content and themes depicted and discussed within images 1-90 spread across one large housing estate. However, these themes and content details are separated and segregated into 3 subsections of the image.
Although image 91 is completely uninhabited, it is clear to see where Midjourney intends to place the working-, middle- and upper-classes within this single housing estate.
This research made it clear that marketing strategies contribute extensively to the negativity directed towards the working-class, both within their culture and their housing estate homes.
Through the utilisation of the new, infant and learning software Midjourney, that is rife with programmed societal biases, this dissertation generated images from text prompts that depict built-environment housing estates visuals varying solely upon class. These images were generated based upon information gathered from an extensive literature review exploring themes of housing estate marketing, culture, architecture and class, and were presented to reflect Midjourney’s understanding of these themes by mirroring societal beliefs, opinions and perceptions. Midjourney was used to directly represent how our societies’ consciousness of U.K. housing estates is done subject to Architectural Classism.
As stated previously, Architectural Classism is my own claim, of architecturally-uninformed opinions made upon architecture that appear to address societally-important design criterium, but in truth exist as judgements of resident and user class.
This research has addressed and contributed to the gap identified within the existing critical literature within this highly-contentious field. Where this dissertation has taken advantage of the infant-stage of Midjourney, blatant societal biases of its millions of users have been reflected and appear throughout all of the images presented. The images generated have represented obvious impressions of Architectural Classism, and have subsequently highlighted the major issues and concerns of the existence of Architectural Classism within our society.
This research has also considered the demonization of the working-class as a by-product of the marketing strategies discussed, and the fetishization and privatisation of working-class housing estates into middle- and upper-class estate oases.
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Thank you for reading
Further reading on these topics can be found in the appendix to this dissertation as additional research so that the magnitude of these contentious issues, as well as the success of Midjourney in representing them can be even better understood and appreciated.
In order to read this appendix, as well as the entire dissertation in its completion, please find it here:
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