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| Regenerating London: to develop, don't destroy | Regenerating London: to develop, don't destroy |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| The line between localism and nimbyism is thin to non-existent in London as elsewhere, but that doesn't mean a London neighbourhood's people aren't good judges of what's best for them. They, after all, live, work, learn, laugh, cry and die in them. They, after all, have the most pressing interest in any changes to the use of the land they occupy and know. That is often particularly so of those in the greatest danger of losing out from regeneration schemes – usually the residents and small businesses with the least wealth and power. No such scheme should even be scribbled on an architect's napkin if it doesn't put those residents first. No property developer with eyes on a profitable prize should be allowed to set foot in a town hall unless it can be used to further that goal. | |
| All that "community" stuff it, of course, is easier said than done. It requires time, effort and commitment on the part of the planning authority concerned - initially the borough - including the councillors who represent the areas concerned. It requires the same from neighbourhood organisations and individuals. Much of that time, effort and commitment will be devoured trying to square circles. Communities, being comprised of human beings, have a range of views about what an improvement is, some of them very hard to reconcile. | |
| What defines a "community" anyway? My home in Hackney of 21 years suddenly lies within a "neighbourhood area" for which a "neighbourhood forum" is drawing up a "neighbourhood plan" that may give the community, as mapped by particular members of it, more influence over borough planning decisions, thanks to provisions in the Localism Act. The forum's very admirable aim is to see the benefits of recent, visibly rapid, gentrification shared and its ill-effects mitigated, but residents' post-it note contributions to a recent workshop spanned a wide spectrum of opinion: "too many hipster shops that serve no purpose to local people"; "less pizza, more Japanese food;" "shops should be serving locals," one contributor declared; "we are all locals!" came the riposte. | |
| Still, that's the nature of the city, of participation, of democracy and of London's ever-shifting demographic landscape. It's all rather untidy. Untidiness makes work and sometimes crystalises tensions, as the exercise of those new neighbourhood planning powers has been demonstrating in another part of Hackney and in Bermondsey. Maybe those powers have been badly defined and are at risk of being misused by selfish, unrepresentative interests. But that wouldn't change the fact that local insights and local strengths should be bedrock factors guiding any programme of regeneration, especially if homes, shops and familiar facilities and are being earmarked for demolition in the name of improving the lives of those who inhabit and use them. | Still, that's the nature of the city, of participation, of democracy and of London's ever-shifting demographic landscape. It's all rather untidy. Untidiness makes work and sometimes crystalises tensions, as the exercise of those new neighbourhood planning powers has been demonstrating in another part of Hackney and in Bermondsey. Maybe those powers have been badly defined and are at risk of being misused by selfish, unrepresentative interests. But that wouldn't change the fact that local insights and local strengths should be bedrock factors guiding any programme of regeneration, especially if homes, shops and familiar facilities and are being earmarked for demolition in the name of improving the lives of those who inhabit and use them. |
| In Responsible Recovery, a recent paper for think tank ResPublica, Julian Dobson writes – in a chapter called "redefining regeneration" – that too often this has all got the wrong way round: | In Responsible Recovery, a recent paper for think tank ResPublica, Julian Dobson writes – in a chapter called "redefining regeneration" – that too often this has all got the wrong way round: |
| In the most challenged places [across the country], people cling on. In streets earmarked for clearance under the Labour government's housing market renewal programmes homeowners and tenants would often refuse to leave. People's attachment to place, family and community will often defy cajoling, compensation or coercion. It can be tempting for policymakers to imagine that the problem is the stubbornness of the people. But look from the other end of the telescope and you get a different view. From here, those who are "hard to reach" are the policymakers and professionals. | In the most challenged places [across the country], people cling on. In streets earmarked for clearance under the Labour government's housing market renewal programmes homeowners and tenants would often refuse to leave. People's attachment to place, family and community will often defy cajoling, compensation or coercion. It can be tempting for policymakers to imagine that the problem is the stubbornness of the people. But look from the other end of the telescope and you get a different view. From here, those who are "hard to reach" are the policymakers and professionals. |
| Further on, Dobson argues that, "a localist perspective begins with peoples' lives as they are lived and seeks to draw out what can be learned to influence how policies are formulated and implemented at a wider scale." | |
| Localism is a concept adopted by Conservatives, yet David Cameron's favourite council, Hammersmith and Fulham, has taken the opposite approach towards the planned redevelopment of the Earls Court area to the one Dobson describes. | |
| The result is anxiety and opposition from the residents of two threatened estates, even though they have been promised new, replacement homes within the project area and that they won't have to be "decanted" elsewhere while these are being built. The residents' associations aspire to owning and running the estates themselves, along the lines of the successful Walterton and Elgin Community Homes in Westminster, but the council's now former leader Stephen Greenhalgh – a close ally of Boris Johnson, who's gone on to head the mayor's office for policing and crime – lobbied ministers to water down new powers lined up to enable this. Little has since been heard of late about the provision in question, section 34a of the Housing Act 1985. Whatever has become of it? | The result is anxiety and opposition from the residents of two threatened estates, even though they have been promised new, replacement homes within the project area and that they won't have to be "decanted" elsewhere while these are being built. The residents' associations aspire to owning and running the estates themselves, along the lines of the successful Walterton and Elgin Community Homes in Westminster, but the council's now former leader Stephen Greenhalgh – a close ally of Boris Johnson, who's gone on to head the mayor's office for policing and crime – lobbied ministers to water down new powers lined up to enable this. Little has since been heard of late about the provision in question, section 34a of the Housing Act 1985. Whatever has become of it? |
| The saga of Earls Court, which I've been covering for four years, has generated anger similar to that directed at major regeneration schemes in other parts of London, some with roots in the last century. It is argued north and south of the river, in Labour boroughs as well as Conservative ones - and seemingly in vain - that the damage done to existing businesses outweighs any benefits brought by new offices and shops in the future. Claims about bogus costings, rigged consultations, unrepresentative residents' groups, secretive deals with property giants, and "independent" assessments of economic benefits framed to produce the outcomes those who commission them require are commonplace. So are disputes about what constitutes a community and who is entitled to speak for it. | |
| Each situation is different, each history distinctive, each story has many sides, and I'm in no position to judge every case. But it seems that much divisive rancour, human heartache and wasteful destruction could be avoided if regeneration thinking switched from top down to bottom up. Just as the word "regeneration" needs to be redefined – or maybe completely dumped – so does the word "development," so that it means a process for fixing what is wrong by nourishing what is right, rather than risking bulldozing it away. | Each situation is different, each history distinctive, each story has many sides, and I'm in no position to judge every case. But it seems that much divisive rancour, human heartache and wasteful destruction could be avoided if regeneration thinking switched from top down to bottom up. Just as the word "regeneration" needs to be redefined – or maybe completely dumped – so does the word "development," so that it means a process for fixing what is wrong by nourishing what is right, rather than risking bulldozing it away. |
| In terms of housing policy, so often pursued by way of regeneration schemes, London politicians of every shade should think a little harder about their widely-held beliefs in using regeneration to "create mixed communities" for the particular good of the least well off. Studies show that although most people enjoy living in such areas, these don't of themselves make poor people richer. | In terms of housing policy, so often pursued by way of regeneration schemes, London politicians of every shade should think a little harder about their widely-held beliefs in using regeneration to "create mixed communities" for the particular good of the least well off. Studies show that although most people enjoy living in such areas, these don't of themselves make poor people richer. |
| This doesn't mean that every post-war or inter-war estate is a glorious success to be preserved in its current form forever more - far from it. Too many critics of regeneration orthodoxy weaken their own case by failing to acknowledge this, sometimes rallying round symbolic lost causes to the exclusion of all other considerations, including the wider community. Neither do they take on board the cost to boroughs (and hence to its residents) of maintaining those estates that were badly designed. It needs to be admitted that plenty of estate residents aren't happy with where they live, and reject alternatives largely because they feel safer with the devil they know. Even in the case of Earls Court a significant minority of residents have indicated that they are receptive to the council's redevelopment plans. | |
| None of this stuff is simple to resolve. But doing so in the right way is surely more likely if a borough's first instinct is not to dissemble or dictate but to devolve. London's boroughs and London's mayor should also recognize the full social and economic costs of knocking estates, perhaps noting, en route, that many are actually quite socially mixed in any case. | |
| Easy alternative options are hard to find. The recent Create Streets report, published by Policy Exchange, argued strongly that London's high-rise social housing should be replaced with traditional streets, citing studies that find most people prefer them and adding that no present high-rise resident should be made to move. | Easy alternative options are hard to find. The recent Create Streets report, published by Policy Exchange, argued strongly that London's high-rise social housing should be replaced with traditional streets, citing studies that find most people prefer them and adding that no present high-rise resident should be made to move. |
| It's an appealing thought in many ways, but demolition makes moving elsewhere unavoidable in most cases. Even if it isn't far geographically, the psychological distance can be great. The "decanting" of households means their relocation to a home another household needs, and possibly being there unwillingly for years. "Right to return" promises seem to have a way of not being kept. In these days of council borrowing constraints and "affordable rent" who would meet the cost of providing like-for-like low cost replacement homes? | It's an appealing thought in many ways, but demolition makes moving elsewhere unavoidable in most cases. Even if it isn't far geographically, the psychological distance can be great. The "decanting" of households means their relocation to a home another household needs, and possibly being there unwillingly for years. "Right to return" promises seem to have a way of not being kept. In these days of council borrowing constraints and "affordable rent" who would meet the cost of providing like-for-like low cost replacement homes? |
| Dismantling housing deemed unfit or "failed" by planners and politicians who don't inhabit it has a way of producing unintended, undesirable consequences, whatever type of housing it is. And it should never, ever be done without the solid consent of the majority of people living there. | Dismantling housing deemed unfit or "failed" by planners and politicians who don't inhabit it has a way of producing unintended, undesirable consequences, whatever type of housing it is. And it should never, ever be done without the solid consent of the majority of people living there. |
| It can argued that such an insistence has drawbacks – that comprehensive redevelopments enable more homes of various kinds to be built at greater densities, and that, far from being just for "the rich," (as some opponents of demolition automatically allege) many of these could be rented by people on average London incomes who are, after all, among the many victims of the capital's ludicrous housing crisis. | |
| Such dilemmas must be faced, and there is no universal template for resolving them. But as the LSE's Anne Power has remarked, the way things are just now every brick of social housing is precious. And I liked what commenter Calmeilles wrote the other week: that regeneration should be for "the preservation of communities while making more efficient use of urban land." Sounds about right to me. | |
| Tomorrow: to think big, think small. | Tomorrow: to think big, think small. |
| Update: This article was both tarted up and smartened up just a little bit on 27th March, 2013 following an overdue proper night's sleep. |