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Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the individualisation of communal hot pot restaurants using a ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) model of self-service that has been popularised internationally and allows patrons to eat alone. Using restaurant reviews from three Australian cities, it shows how the reception of this new style of dining is discussed as an aspect of loneliness, migration, nostalgia and belonging. Drawing on a sample primarily of migrants and Asian Australians, it demonstrates how restaurants became more fraught spaces during the coronavirus pandemic for epidemiological as well as geopolitical reasons. It ends by discussing the constant need for restaurants to innovate and seek out market niches while also providing spaces for nostalgia and tradition for migrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines housing activism in five American cities using interviews with millennial-age housing activists, seeking more apartment development, and baby boomers who are members of neighbourhood groups that oppose growth. Many of the groups supporting growth have banded together under the banner of the 'Yes in My Backyard' (YIMBY) movement which seeks fewer zoning laws and pushes for market-rate rental housing. In desirable cities with thriving job opportunities, housing costs are pricing out not only low-income renters but also the middle class. The millennial activists sampled blame baby boomers for the lack of affordable housing because of resistance to higher density construction in neighbourhoods with single-family homes (characterising these people as having a 'Not in My Backyard' [NIMBY] mindset). The research shows that boomers and millennials not only disagree over urban growth but also more fundamental questions of what makes a liveable city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Holleran on the political contingency of grandiose architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]