Tom Slater
@tomslater42
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Urban geographer. Letters of recommendation writer. Professor at Columbia University @gsapp_planning.
NYC and East Lothian, Scotland
Joined April 2009
Hi Minouche, I live just down the street from you. The cops you called have sealed off our street and are asking residents for photo ID to access it. Please can you “respect someone else’s point of view” (mine) and ask them to leave? Thanks.
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"I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie." . Friedrich Engels, 1845.
Luxury penthouse in Manchester named after Friedrich Engels
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There is no better illustration of the limits of liberalism than the fact that the author of this book has locked us all out of our campus and surrounded it with cops.
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I made a map of the disgraceful #redlist from 8.8.21 Anyone arriving in the UK from one of these countries has to pay £2285 to stay in a hotel for 10 days. Colonialism has always been about coloniser extracting from the colonised. #decoloniseglobalhealth
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The debate on rent control is so messed up that hardly anyone asks a simple question that should end it: If rent control ultimately drives up rents, then why do landlords and their economist pals spend so much time warning us about something that brings them financial benefits?.
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Literally every time I check twitter I see loads of academics “thrilled” to announce something, and loads of others highlighting how fucked up universities have become. Like two ships passing in the night.
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My book Shaking up the City was published by @ucpress in 2021. I think it went a bit under the radar as there was no opportunity for an in-person book launch/symposium/debate at that pandemic restriction time. (Also, I'm really not a marketing person🤣) So what's it about? 🧵
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So, here's some news. Starting Sept 1st, I'll be tenured, full Professor in @ColumbiaGSAPP @Columbia in NYC. Very excited to learn loads from the amazing people there, doing what I can to honour the intellectual legacy of the late great Peter Marcuse where he worked for 30+ years.
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About six weeks ago I examined a really fantastic PhD at Durham Uni. It was two full weeks of work to read it carefully, write reports, examine via Zoom, etc etc. I just received my fee for this labour. A grand total of £88.00, which is about £1 an hour.
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It dawned on me today that I've collected over 25 years of articles (academic, media, blogs, etc) all trying to demonstrate that gentrification doesn't lead to displacement. It's quite a file! Many of these pieces have varying intentions, but what do they have in common? 🧵.
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Seems that we need to point out to @UniversitiesUK (who have hardly tweeted anything about the #USSstrike) that we - the people dedicated to universities as places of scholarship and learning, not as corporations - are in fact “the voice of UK universities” #solidarity.
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I don’t know what words to tweet, these photos are hopefully sufficient!
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My book has a cover! It will be published by @ucpress this September. Webpage with more information coming soon
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If you are a senior UK academic who proudly serves on a REF panel or sub-panel or whatever the hell they are called, now is the time to wake up and stand down, all together, at the same time, so that REF cannot proceed.
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Sent this off in February. Now approved and coming soon👇More details when a webpage for it is up and running
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We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the neoliberal university, with all its bullying, pathetic lies, aggressive managerialism, and empty rhetoric. It’s some sight.
Columbia University faculty have linked arms at the entrance of the encampment as the 2p deadline passes for students to vacate or face suspension.
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Absolutely sick of this “urbanism as medicine” shite. Yeah, sure, urban green spaces and cycle lanes are really going to help us fight systemic oppression and ongoing attempts of deranged politicians to divide and kill us. Stop quoting Jane effing Jacobs too, it’s exhausting pish
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THREAD. How to piss off thousands of dedicated university staff and strengthen a massive social movement against your own organisation, by @AlistairJarvis 1/.
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It totally sucks paying your employer's broadband, phone, printing, electricity and heating bills for over a year.
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Final day of #USSstrike at Edinburgh. We are still opposed to the incremental privatisation of HE, to the planned theft of our pensions, to the idea that students are customers, and much more. We will not stop fighting the ruinous charade that is @UniversitiesUK✌🏾👊
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I'm on Radio 4 "Thinking Allowed" this afternoon at 4pm talking about the stigmatisation of council housing, specifically this paper I wrote Insa Koch will be on the show too, talking about her wonderful book:
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PUBLISHED! Still awaiting my author copies, so if you get one before me, enjoy! Thanks to brilliant editor @NaomiUCPress for believing in me & being patient and kind; to Loïc Wacquant for the Foreword, to Tanja Winkler, @LibbyJPorter @UrbanTheoryLab & Virgilio Pereira for blurbs.
ONE WEEK UNTIL PUBLICATION DAY!. Info here: (30% discount for orders placed in US & Canada, enter code 17M6662 at checkout). Limited preview here (incl. foreword by Loïc Wacquant): . Podcast interview here:
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Happy 2020 - we have FOUR permanent positions in human geography at Edinburgh. We are looking for kind and interesting people to join us. A lot of good and exciting things happening here, plus we're in Scotland! 3rd February deadline.
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My latest article, "The invention of the sink estate", now published. Want to know where the term "sink estate" comes from, and who has been using it to attack the very idea of social housing? Read on!.
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This is truly one of most remarkable, theoretically absorbing and politically salient academic papers I have read in a very, very long time. Thank you.
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Note to university senior managers for the next 10 days: “enhancing the student experience” can never be achieved without looking after their teachers @ucu #UCUstrike.
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Try a university.
It is hard to imagine another workplace in the UK where this behaviour would be condoned by those at the top. The Government should be setting an example. Instead, it is one rule for Boris Johnson and his friends, another for everyone else.
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Are you into "placemaking", "resilience", "YIMBY", "smart growth" etc etc and looking for new phrases? Try the Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator:.
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Good documentary films on gentrification to show undergrads. Go.
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When did the phrase “thought leader” enter academia? And how can such vacuous mince be expunged and never return?.
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Well I suppose it was only a matter of time. This is a colleague of mine (we work at the same university, and she has blocked several other colleagues and everyone who disagrees with her about anything).
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In South Africa, the collapse of the tourist industry - a lifeline for millions who would otherwise face destitution and starvation - will likely kill many more people there than Covid. Interesting how nobody bleating “elimination” considers that.
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Also: ‘Rent control drives up rents for other tenants who are unprotected by it’ is almost always framed by economists as an argument against rent control, not one against unregulated landlords. Worth thinking about that…….
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Occasional reminder that lockdown has very little to do with keeping us safe, and everything to do with years of austerity and systematically starving and undermining the NHS to the point where it cannot cope.
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I’m muting anyone who says “But it reduces supply!” No it doesn’t. And even if it did, then build social housing and problem solved.
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I’m deeply saddened by the passing of the great Peter Marcuse (1926-2022). An extraordinary human being in so many ways. (Photo I took of Peter in a café in Beirut in 2015). Short thread. @UrbanTheoryLab @ColumbiaGSAPP @pcityradical @CITYanalysis
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1) They are either unaware of, or choose to ignore, rent gap theory (or critical urban theory of any kind). Rent gap theory shows how the violence of disinvestment and reinvestment is tightly connected, part of the same process of capitalist urbanization enabled by state power.
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Also, reading some of the non-bot replies below, I find it singularly execrable that being scared of a military-style invasion of a university campus is a cause for celebration and smug abuse.
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There are many brilliant scholars around. Distinguish yourself by being kind.
Academic Twitter friends: can you provide a tweet worth of advice to PhD students? Things you wish you knew when you were in the midst of your own PhD? Things you wish you told yourself?. #phdlife.
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In one tweet, the Universities Minister reveals everything that is wrong with Higher Education in the UK, and how he and his horrendous Tory friends will make it worse.
Will be discussing our plans for consumer style ratings for university courses to help drive value for money on @BBCr4today at 7.50 today.
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I’m re-reading this absolute belter of a book for a conference next month organised by @tprweaver and colleagues to mark the 25th anniversary of its publication 1/
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2) They are rooted in what I have called 'false choice urbanism' (i.e. disinvestment = bad, gentrification = better than disinvestment). Not much of a choice, & one that stops us asking critical questions such as urbanization for whom, against whom, and who decides?.
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The late great geographer David M. Smith on the RAE (predecessor to the REF). Worth a read before tomorrow’s mixture of gloating and despair.
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Just been reading a lot of terrible stories here about the REF and how many people are dreading #REF2021 This makes me feel compelled to say the following. To any of the panelists who think they are absolutely amazing because they sit on a REF panel: 1/.
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I have just taken over from Eric Clark as one of the Managing Editors of the Journal of Urban Affairs @JUAurban So send me your papers folks 👍.
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This has really bothered me. Doreen Massey was an intellectual giant of enormous integrity and kindness. Theresa May is an appalling human who has been wrecking many lives. The picture of May on this wall, next to Doreen, is a shameful disgrace, and needs to be removed.
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6) Land, and especially land rent, are not even in the room. Gentrification is and always has been about land: who owns it, how did they get it, and who was kicked off it to make a profit.
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A reviewer of an application I made to the European Research Council about 10 years ago wrote this: “This is complete nonsense by an obvious idiot who now owes me hours of my life back.” I worked the rejected nonsense into an article that now has over 600 citations 🤣.
What’s an insult you’ll never forget?.
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So those cut off from loved ones in the Global South are left without any organisation challenging what is so obviously happening - racist/colonialist immigration policy dressed up as necessary public health measures.
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This is Hamilton Hall from Amsterdam Avenue, now occupied. Anti-apartheid students occupied this building in the 1980s and then Columbia divested from South Africa. Now the whole campus has been locked down. University leadership in full panic mode….
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Microsoft Teams must die. Wtf happened to the simple act of sending a simple email with an attachment. Now I have to wait ages for clunky purple shite to open and then all I find are stupid chats, files that don't display well and just utter pish.
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Displacement has many causes, often nothing to do with gentrification. But gentrification by definition means displacement in some form, and even if you think data show that it doesn't, read some theory & a very different picture emerges.
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5) There is no historical analysis or even awareness. Yet many areas where people think displacement isn't happening have had prior rounds of evictions/dispossessions, usually racialized, and always to do with class and class struggle. History matters.
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I'm calling bullshit on entering the following in bibliographies for academic publications: 1) the issue number of journal articles 2) the place of publication for books.
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Hello @UniversitiesUK regarding your assault on our pensions, your treatment of university staff across the UK is not only ruinous, but larcenous. Here’s George Lakoff to explain this to you:
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Somewhat late to the discussion here but the argument that more friendships between rich and poor people will 'reduce poverty' is a completely redundant contagion theory otherwise known as neighborhood effects. Here's a contrasting argument: pay people more and house them.
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Feels like universities are under siege from outside (politicians) and inside (senior managers). Imagine if the latter expended the same energy fighting the former as they currently expend crushing workers’ morale, trust, community etc etc.
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People in the UK saying 'only in Trump's America' could an anti-fascist movement be classified a terrorist organisation. Look up what Thatcher called the African National Congress.
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I keep seeing rent control mentioned here, especially the problem of mainstream/neoclassical economics agnotology getting in the way of research, analysis and debate. I've written a fair bit about this - some key things I found 1/.
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This is a remarkable book on how “data-driven innovation” can be a terrible thing for marginalised communities. Beautiful writing and an utterly compelling argument.
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When you fuse together the “neighbourhood effects” and “gentrification brings improvements” literatures, and avoid 50 years of critical analysis and urban theory, a bank will fund your research & it will get featured in the FT: . .
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There is a hideous assumption from these self-appointed scientists of sanity that people travelling to these countries are going on safari or something, rather than desperate to see loved ones.
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Two weeks to go until publication date (21st Sept)! . Information here: Limited preview here:
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All this “look how many novels I’ve read since the start of the pandemic”. Fuck, I’ve barely got further than glancing at Lidl leaflets.
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If you're a teacher who puts your heart & soul into supporting your students, & need a reminder of just how much difference you can make, you might enjoy reading my tribute to my teacher, the great geographer David M. Smith @QMULGeography I miss him.
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Here are the blurbs for my forthcoming book. Thank you so much Tanja, Libby @LibbyJPorter Neil @UrbanTheoryLab and Virgilio.
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4) In terms of 'data' (increasingly a problematic word!) there are usually lots of numbers and graphs presented, but qualitative evidence and housing justice struggles tend to be trivialized as 'anecdotal'. Blending sources and types of data is very rare in these 25 years.
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The arrogant, toxic managers running universities these days are so divorced from everything that happens in them - education and research - that they are completely incapable of making a single decision in the best interests of anyone other than themselves.
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My latest paper, "The Invention of the 'Sink Estate': Consequentional Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis", available here: It was fascinating tracing the genealogy of the awful "sink estate" label.
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Interesting, but a triumph of data over theory. When areas go from poor to rich (via gentrification) then evictions fall as richer people (homeowners) don't get evicted. Evictions happen prior to reinvestment, but that’s *also* part of gentrification (hence why we need theory).
New article out in @SF_Journal! @rjx_louis, @just_shelter, and I look at the relationship between gentrification and eviction. I wrote a summary up for @evictionlab, but here’s a quick rundown (1/12).
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3) Displacement is never fully conceptualized. But reading more about it is so important. Peter Marcuse nailed it on the many forms of displacement, and more recently others have taken an even broader view (Mindy Fullilove, Rachel Pain, Yunpeng Zhang, Adam Elliott-Cooper, etc).
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Thank you very much for all the lovely replies and messages I have received since Julie’s tweet 👍.
I'm super ecstatic that my dear friend, colleague and collaborator @tomslater42 has been promoted to full professor. It's great that the university has finally officially recognised his major intellectual contributions to urban studies and anti-capitalist thought.
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A truly amazing exam paper set by the late great David M. Smith. One of the great experiences of my life was to take that course. (If memory serves me correctly, I answered questions 3, 8 and 9). @QMULGeography @AlastairHackney @TTESmith @ememess
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My son (age 16) became a Scottish Champion on Friday and followed it up with two silver medals over the weekend, with some wonderfully fast freestyle times. He trains so hard and just amazes me with his drive and dedication 🏊♂️🥇🥈🥈
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The reason you “didn’t agree on everything” is because Hawking knew bullshit when he heard it and put your ruinous bullshit against evidence and critical reason. He will also be remembered for fighting illness, whereas you will be remembered for aggravating it on a massive scale
Stephen Hawking was a defining force in the world of science whose loss will be felt in every corner of the globe. I was sad that we didn’t agree on everything, but he was still a hero to me as one of our greatest ever thinkers - he inspired with his courage as well as his words.
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I keep seeing some unbelievably dreadful mince on this website about what causes gentrification. Including a desperately fuckwitted take that it’s somehow caused by NIMBYism. Perhaps I should revisit this, 16 years on.
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There are many people in the UK who don’t have £56.05 for a whole week of food. But this wealthy idiot tweets his receipt showing he just got a taxpayer subsidy for one expensive pub lunch. Tories are just utter sociopaths.
Delicious lunch at the White Horse in Hascombe - thanks to Paul and Sorrel Morganti and their great team and of course to @RishiSunak! #EatOutToHelpOut
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I will never grasp how fundamentally damaged you would have to be to believe that a time when we plundered and brutalised half the world and stole all their assets was somehow better than a mutually beneficial set of arrangements with our closest neighbours.
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My take on rent control is equally simple: we need actual rent control.
My take on rent control is simple: The Best rent control is landlords desperately trying to fill their vacant units because we have abundant housing and they have to compete on price or amenities or both. Build housing.
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1) the harms of gentrification are not hard to fully gauge 2) most 'studies' like this, without any theoretical framework, reach these conclusions 3) trivialising the work of housing justice movements & critical scholars as "the traditional neighborhood narrative" is ridiculous.
According to a just-released study, original residents gain more from gentrification than the traditional neighborhood narrative lets on. And the harms of gentrification, while hard to fully gauge, may not be so severe for original residents.
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A wonderful writer. City of Quartz is still as fresh and urgent today as it was in 1995, when I first read it as a geography undergraduate. The same can be said about many other great books and essays he wrote. RIP.
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Day 6 for @EdinGeography and the #UCUstrike We oppose falling pay, the gender and ethnic pay gap, precarious employment practices, excessive/unsafe workloads, and pension theft. @ucuedinburgh
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A really conservative response I have heard time & time again. I think most would wish for a well funded sector where we don’t have to justify our existence via an imposed, reductive, compromised, artificial assessment system that destroys morale. Careful what you lie down for.
So if you want to trash the REF, what's your alternative? I'd be careful what you wish for.
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Perhaps what is most astonishing and appalling about this is that it has unfolded without any serious challenge.
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High house prices are not caused by undersupply as 1) we don’t have a choice about needing to be housed 2) there are hundreds of thousands of empty homes 3) a feudal system of land ownership 4) insanely low interest rates 5) people who write about this stuff who aren’t economists.
@Clarice007 @emmadentcoad @PricedOutUK The causes are decades of undersupply, as robustly evidenced in the economic literature on the matter.
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