Estate Regeneration and its Discontents

Abstract

This book provides a theoretically informed, empirically rich account of the development, causes and consequences of public housing (council/local authority/social) estate regeneration within the context of London’s housing crisis and widening social inequality. It focuses on regeneration schemes involving comprehensive redevelopment – the demolition of council estates and their rebuilding as mixed-tenure neighbourhoods with large numbers of market properties which fuels socio-spatial inequalities via state-led gentrification. The book deploys an interdisciplinary perspective drawn from sociology, geography, urban policy and housing studies. By foregrounding estate residents’ lived experiences – mainly working-class tenants but also working- and middle-class homeowners – it highlights their multiple discontents with the seemingly never-ending regeneration process. As such, the book critiques the imbalances and silences within the official policy discourse in which there are only regeneration winners while the losers are airbrushed out of history. The book contains many illustrations and is based on over a decade of research undertaken at several London council-built estates. The book is divided into three parts. Part One (Chapters 2-4) examines housing policy and urban policy in relation to the expansion and contraction of public housing in London, and the development of estate regeneration. Part Two (Chapters 5-7) analyses residents’ experiences of living at London estates before regeneration begins. It argues that residents positively valued their homes and neighbourhoods, even though such valuation was neither unqualified nor universal. Part Three (Chapters 8-12) examines residents’ experiences of living through regeneration, and argues that comprehensive redevelopment results in degeneration, displacement, and fragmented rather than mixed communities.