Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London

Front Cover
Series
Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
List of figures, tables and photographs
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Housing in an unequal city
Estate regeneration
Two discourses of estate regeneration
Rationale and methodology
Overview
Place
Place attachment, belonging, images and myths
Neighbourhood, community and belonging
Inequalities, class and values
Urban inequalities: marginalisation
Urban inequalities: gentrification and the elite city
Dispossession: expulsions, displacement and un-homing
The structure of the book
Part I Policy analysis and research context
2 Housing policy: the rise and fall of public housing
The wobbly pillar of the welfare state
Towards housing decommodification: the expansionary period of public housing
Municipalism and labourism
Keynesian welfare state
Recommodification: the contractionary period of public housing
Local government proto-Thatcherite housing policy
Roll back to roll on and on neoliberalism
The contraction of public housing in London3
Public housing conditions
Conclusion
3 Urban policy: estate regeneration
From old to new urban renewal1
Early estate regeneration: 1980s to 1990s
London’s estates
Comprehensive Estates Initiative in Hackney, 1992–2003
Peckham Partnership SRB in Southwark, 1994–2004
Contemporary estate regeneration: 1990s to 2010s
New Labour
New Deal for Communities3
Austerity
From community new deals to estate densification projects
Place myths and neighbourhood effects
Regeneration rationale5
Urban renaissance: the entrepreneurial city and entrepreneurial boroughs
Comparing early and contemporary estate regeneration schemes involving demolition and rebuild
Regeneration costs
Conclusion
4 The research boroughs and their estates
Newham
Carpenters estate1
Canning Town and Custom House
Barnet
West Hendon estate4
Hackney
Woodberry Down estate
Northwold estate
Haringey
Lambeth
Clapham Park estate10
Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill and Westbury estates11
Southwark
Tower Hamlets
Supplementary boroughs
Comparing the estates
Large estates
Small to medium-sized estates
Resident interviewees
Part II Estates before regeneration
5 Marginalisation and inclusion
Public housing and marginalisation
Residualisation and socio-tenurial polarisation in London
Social housing, class analysis and socioeconomic groups
Employment and socioeconomic groups on London estates
Gender and local jobs
Racism, diversity and social inclusion
Tenure preferences
Housing histories: continuity and change
Entering council housing: 1950s to 1970s
Entering council housing: 1980–2010s
Homelessness: from housing priority to housing precarity
Housing priority
Housing precarity5
Conclusion
6 Valued places
Homes and home-making
Place belonging at the neighbourhood scale
Traditional belonging, neighbourliness and sense of community
Facilities and location
Large estates
Intra-estate place belonging
The Right to Buy as buy to stay
Incoming middle-class owner-occupiers
Housing histories
Arrival stories and elective belonging
Disaffiliation or mixing?
Estates as 21st century urban villages?
Conclusion
7 Devalued places
Small places: overcrowding and poor housing
Neglected places: landlord disinvestment
Narratives of neglect
Valued/devalued places
Ex-GLC estates
Who cares? The diminishing role of caretakers
Front-line housing officials
Contextualising neglect
Disorderly places
Crime and anti-social behaviour
Vulnerable tenants and ASB
Stigmatised places
Conclusion
Part III Living through regeneration
8 Beginnings
Introducing regeneration
Canning Town and Custom House (Newham)
Northwold estate (Hackney)5
Information and consultation
Attitudes towards redevelopment
Consultation: residents’ perspectives
Information and non-participation
Participation and disillusionment
Consultation: professionals’ perspectives
Responding to comprehensive redevelopment
Housing tenure and rehousing rights
Mind the value gap – demolishing ‘failed places’ and ‘sink estates’
Poor housing conditions
Conclusion
9 Degeneration
Enhanced neglect and managed decline
Suspending Decent Homes
Deteriorating maintenance, repairs and cleaning services
Dispossession of estate infrastructure
Transience and boarded-up flats
Living on a building site4
The mass media: producing urban dystopias
Shifting aims, broken promises and lack of trust
Waiting for Godot in limbo-land
Conclusion
10 Displacement
Dispossession
‘It’s not for us’ – social cleansing
Social cleansing the ‘others’ – clearing out the ‘riff raff’
Social housing tenants: pre-relocation
Social tenants: returning to the redeveloped estate
Rehousing as liberation
Rehousing as bereavement
Social tenants: moving away from the estate
Owner-occupiers
Pre-relocation – RTB owners
Pre-relocation – middle-class incomers
Relocation
Temporary tenants3
Pre-relocation
Relocation
What kind of right is the right to return?
Agency, control and power
Conclusion
11 Resistance
Housing activism: from pragmatism to contesting neoliberalism
Estate-based campaigns
Council tenants, tenure and place
Tactics and strategies
Radical outsiders and novice insiders
The paradox of community
Pushing apart
Housing struggles and non-engagement
Resistance successes
Big wins
Little victories
Conclusion
12 Aftermaths
West Hendon/Hendon Waterside (Barnet)
Living in the old place
New homes, new landlord
New blocks, new neighbourhood
Mixed communities or new inequalities?
Woodberry Down (Hackney)
Living in the old place
New homes, new landlord
New blocks, new neighbourhood
Mixed communities or new inequalities?
Carpenters estate (Newham)3
Never-ending degeneration
Degeneration is never-ending at the half-empty Carpenters estate. Photograph 12.13 shows the near-empty Dennison Point in 2019, one of the three tower blocks. Although long-term residents praised the estate for its one-time strong sense of community (Chap
Never-beginning regeneration
Conclusion
13 Conclusion
Policy and estate regeneration
Valuing estates before regeneration
Devaluing estates before regeneration
Living through estate regeneration
New places, new inequalities
Comprehensive redevelopment versus refurbishment
Policy, politics and research
Appendix A: Methodology
Appendix B: Profile of interviewees
Resident interviews
Official interviews
Fieldwork
Documentary and photographic research
Notes
References
Index
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