ABSTRACT
This chapter will seek to show some of the ways in which the neo-liberal ideologies and politics discussed in the previous chapter have had effects on the environment-generating processes dealt with in Chapters 3-7 and on their output. This is an ambitious project and it is undertaken in the recognition that there are no simple cause-effect relationships in matters so complex. Changes in the built environment, while primarily politically determined, do occur partly in response to influences which are not overtly political – for example as a result of changes in building or transport technology. But even here one is on shifting sands, because technological and political processes are intimately bound up in each other. For example it would be extremely naive to believe that the decline of investment in the railway system and the growth of spending on roads was purely a reflection of technological change in these two forms of transport infrastructure. It would be equally innocent to ascribe the 1970-90 changes in land use in London’s Docklands entirely to the new facilities required by containerisation.
