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

Abstract

In ‘Estate Regeneration and its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London’, Paul Watt’s focus is on ‘comprehensive redevelopment’ regeneration projects. Such regeneration sees estates demolished and then rebuilt as ‘mixed tenure’ communities, with significant numbers of properties being made available via the open market, facilitating the ‘state-led gentrification’ of previously working-class areas (p. 5). London (and most major cities) is experiencing a serious housing crisis, with the diminishing role of public housing being a major contributing factor. Although the working class and where they live have become increasingly devalued over the last forty years, scholars such as McKenzie (2015) argues that council estates and those who live on them should not only be viewed from a deficit perspective (see also Deverteuil, 2016). Moreover, Brown-Saracino (2018) argues that the perseverance of distinctive city cultures plays a key role in shaping the character of their residents and maintaining unique individualities in people. Such arguments would seem to have little impact on the implementation of policies, which, ironically, given the scale of the housing crisis, continues to see London’s public housing being replaced with new mixed-tenure developments as a consequence of regeneration. Against this backdrop, Watt presents narratives which are grounded in resident experiences and perspectives throughout multiple stages of these regeneration processes, enabling the reader to have a more nuanced understanding of how these London estates and their residents have managed very difficult circumstances. The book also contains a very good methodological appendix (pp. 437–52) in which the author expands the discussion of the study design and provides profiles of the research participants.