The AJ asks prominent architectural thinkers to comment on the architecture of our cities and why Britain is burning

 Thanks AJ!

Joseph Rykwert
Cities incite riots - and herding people in high rise reservoirs of social aggression doesn’t help: if we didn’t have football and rugby matches to release it, however messily, we’d have many more, though riots are almost always triggered by specific incidents. Current hoody anomie was fostered by the spectacle of the fat-cats bloated bonuses accompanying  the ‘we’re all in it’ talk about cuts - as well as by the knowledge that the police was among the public services to be mutilated (which also goes for parks, youth centres), so was inevitably demoralised. And the spark was a mishandled police shooting. Locking up cowed hoodies in overcrowded prisons won’t solve anything. We need to think about public housing and public space - quickly

Richard Sennett
The riots were all too predictable: a generation of poor, young people with no future becomes a tinderbox for violence.  The British riots have one resemblance to those which afflicted France in the last decade; they occur in the places where no-hopers live, rather than political riots directed at the centres of power; the result is that the principle victims are their local neighbours

Jeremy Till
At least the architects are not blamed this time, as we were with Broadwater. Nor could we be, because (quoting Simmel) the city is not a spatial entity with sociological consequences, but a sociological entity that is formed spatially. Here the riots spatialise years of ramping up of social inequality. So when my Twitter feed calls for the reintroduction of Jane Jacobs, I blanch (because space is not the solution, just the symptom) and when the Tories say it is ‘pure’ criminality, I rage (because of the implicit disavowal of their political responsibility). One way out? Act on the New Economic Foundation’s Great Transition

Alain de Botton
People tend to distinguish between violence against people (very serious) and violence against property (not so bad). But in these riots, what emerges is how offensive it is to see buildings on fire because this symbolises a destruction of the hopes and efforts of so many who struggled to build and maintain them. It isn’t just money that goes up in flames; it’s the spirit of civilisation

Robert Tavernor
The London riots are a sobering reminder that cities are for people, that people make cities. Cities rely on a precarious social balance that can be wrecked by the irresponsible. Leadership and good action are now essential

Wouter Vanstiphout
The reality of urban riots is that they have always turned out to be the opposite of a learning experience for a city. Riots have nearly always resulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and looking away even further. After a riot your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness.