The market and the plan: Housing, urban renewal and socio-economic change in London

Abstract

► Through examining the interaction of market agents and urban policy, the paper considers how housing and regeneration policies have affected a case study neighbourhood in London. ► It presents the notion of ’gentrification without displacement’ as a way to understand contexts where in-migration of higher income residents has not resulted in significant out-migration of long-term residents. ► However, despite the case study appearing to embody the mixed community ideals of recent urban policy, micro-level segregation of consumption spaces and amenities suggests that income and tenure mix is distinct from social mix in inhabitants’ everyday experiences. This article examines recent processes of urban renewal and housing provision in London, led by market agents and shaped by the 2004 London Plan . Against the backdrop of housing and regeneration policies in London over the last three decades, the discussion analyses the socio-economic and physical transformation of Bermondsey in inner London as a case of ‘gentrification without displacement’, via the conversion of industrial and commercial building stock to housing, together with new-build or in-fill gentrification. The London Plan ’s emphasis on densification, and the re-positioning of local government from an oppositional to entrepreneurial stance in respect of private development, has helped promote the conditions for such physical and socio-economic changes characterised less by the displacement of lower-income populations than by patterns of micro-segregation in housing and consumption spaces. In this context, Bermondsey offers one version of the mixed income and mixed tenure ‘communities’ that are central to current urban and housing policies.