Disruption by Opportunity and by Design: The London Squat Party Scene

This paper focuses on the London squat party scene, which emerged in the early 1990s, when the city’s urban fabric had been radically altered by industrial decline. The scene flourished in areas where the availability of abandoned resident units and warehouses allowed a number of artists and their followers to reclaim parts of the city: the illegal occupancy of empty buildings enabled members of the community to find a home and to accommodate parties. This appropriation of spaces was not only a reaction to the opportunity generated by an interruption in the urban economic growth cycle: it was also a deliberate political act, an expression of the right to the city