London Housing Research Articles

Rhythms of recycling: reconfiguring apartment waste practices in London and Melbourne

ABSTRACT Taking the example of recycling in apartments, this paper argues that paying heed to the rhythms of urban waste can provide insights into how the waste burden can be more justly distributed. Housing in London and Melbourne, our two case study sites, is an essential locus for the domestic waste regime, and apartments are anomalies that disrupt it. Overall, recycling rates are lower in apartments, and comingled stream contamination rates where they exist are relatively higher. Rather than assuming this is a product of household behavior, we take the starting point that socio-material dynamics are at play that make apartments and apartment living incompatible with dominant waste regimes. We construct and apply a practice-based spatio-temporal rhythmic framework, in which recycling is analyzed as a social practice and apartments as the site of the social, leading to two main insights. First, the spatio-temporal dimensions of more than material and more than waste relationships add to the insights that practice theory can provide on the importance of mundane urban domestic processes of waste management by pointing to unevenness. Second, spatio-temporal rhythms analysis also assists in identifying possibilities for purposive attempts to intervene at various scales of waste governance.

The Queen Catherine Court Slum Clearance Scheme: A Turning Point in the History of Social Housing in London

Maps provide a valuable resource to historians and genealogists, but the neat rows of compact houses in the courtyard of the Queen Catherine pub in Ratcliff, home to four of my Irish great-great-grandparents, only hint at the living conditions of its occupants. This article draws together evidence from newspapers, archival sources, censuses, and other genealogical records to provide a conjectural reconstruction of Queen Catherine Court. The overdevelopment and overcrowding of the site resulted in it being declared unfit for human habitation in 1888, but owing to decades of laissez-faire ideology and fragmented local government, slum clearance and the provision of social housing in London had been beset by intractable problems. A flagship project of the London County Council, the Queen Catherine Court scheme was finally brought to completion in 1903 by Stepney Borough Council, marking a first in the capital's history of social housing.

Activity hours: Assessing liveability during heatwaves

As climate change increases the frequency and severity of heatwaves, understanding their impact on the well-being, health, and permissible activities of building occupants becomes crucial. Existing work focuses primarily on the thermal comfort of an average individual, neglecting both the impact of extreme heat on liveability and variability in resilience of different population groups. To address these gaps, we introduce the Activity hours (Ah) metric, which quantifies the liveability of indoor environments during heatwaves while taking into account air temperature, humidity, occupant age, permissible activity levels, and duration of exposure. We also present the Heatalyzer tool that allows the computation of Ah for different geographies, building archetypes, and heatwave durations. Through a case study of residential housing in London, we compare Ah with established thermal comfort metrics, highlighting Ah’s ability to quantify heatwave impacts on occupant liveability for different building types and demographic groups. Our results are made widely accessible through the Heatalyzer dashboard, an intuitive website that enables London residents to evaluate their exposure to heat-related risks.

Inter-regional rail travel and housing markets connectedness between London and other regions

Taking London as a location with which to measure the ripple effect in the UK housing market, this study aims to explain and verify the high degree of correlation between inter-regional transportation and the regional correlation of the housing market. Based on the literature on the relationship between short-term mobility and long-term migration, this paper illustrates that the extent to which people use trains for travel across regions will be related to the ripple effect in the regional housing markets. Frequent railway transport behavior, whether for commuting or traveling, might increase people's desire to relocate between regions, and thus leading to information transmission effects across regional housing prices and transaction volume. First, we estimate a dynamic indicator for the ripple effect. Then, the empirical tests use panel data, including the ripple indicator and passenger number data across time (1996–2022) and regions (nine regions). It is found that if London house prices drive other regional house prices to rise, inter-regional transportation demand will increase, and in turn, the increase of house prices in other housing markets will again drive up London house prices. The number of passengers will affect the information transmitted by the housing market transaction volume in other regions to the London housing market. This implies that higher inter-regional transport needs may lead to migration between London and other property markets, causing their transaction volumes to change in the same direction. The results of this paper verify that travel behavior between regions is a crucial factor in the leading/lagging behavior of regional housing market performance, implying a relationship between short-term travel and long-term migration. The results also indicate that incorporating variables of housing market correlations may help in the prediction of passenger numbers or transportation demand.

Patterns of supported home purchase in the United Kingdom

Housing markets are an important arena for the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage in advanced economies. In recent years, academics and policymakers have argued that homeownership is becoming a ‘family affair’ as home buyers become increasingly reliant on receiving financial and in-kind support from their relatives. This article develops our understanding of supported home purchases in Britain by examining the distribution and residential implications of receiving assistance to buy a home. The results show that support for home purchase is more widespread, varied and multichannelled than is often assumed. Receipt of support is also socially patterned as younger and more economically marginal buyers, as well as those in the tight London housing market, are disproportionately likely to purchase homes with assistance. Finally, although support generally has weak associations with the characteristics of housing purchases, drawing on an inheritance boosts the probability that those entering homeownership buy homes in more advantaged neighbourhoods. Receiving support also reduces the likelihood of heavier mortgage borrowing among moving owner-occupiers.

Brexit and the London housing market: An empirical contribution

This study aims to analyse the impact of Brexit on London’s housing market, exploring socio-economic and regional disparities. By examining property transaction data from 2012 to 2022, the research seeks to understand how Brexit has influenced real housing prices across different boroughs of London. The methodology involves aggregating transaction data from the Her Majesty (HM) Price Paid database and normalizing prices using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to obtain real price variations. These data were segmented into three distinct periods: pre-Brexit (2012–2016), post-plebiscite Brexit (2016–2019), and post-implementation Brexit (2020–2022). Spatial analysis was conducted using the software Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS), transforming point data (postcodes) into polygonal data (wards) for better visualization and comparison. The findings reveal significant socio-economic impacts, with traditionally affluent areas such as Westminster, Kensington, and Chelsea experiencing notable declines in real housing prices. Conversely, certain outer boroughs like Newham and Barnet showed resilience, with positive real price variations despite decreased sales. This geographical disparity underscores the uneven distribution of Brexit’s economic consequences, highlighting the critical role of localized economic policies and development projects in mitigating adverse effects. The results confirm existing literature on the polarization and regional inequalities exacerbated by Brexit while providing new insights into the complex interplay of local and global factors affecting housing markets. The findings emphasize the need for targeted policy interventions to address the diverse challenges posed by Brexit, ensuring both affluent and disadvantaged areas receive adequate support. This research is crucial for informing public policy, urban planning, and housing market strategies in a post-Brexit context, promoting equitable and sustainable development across London.

Self-supervised learning unveils urban change from street-level images

Cities around the world are grappling with multiple interconnected challenges, including population growth, shortage of affordable and decent housing, and the need for neighborhood improvements. Despite its critical importance for policy, our ability to effectively monitor and track urban change remains limited. Deep learning-based computer vision methods applied to street-level images have been successful in the measurement of socioeconomic and environmental inequalities but did not fully utilize temporal images to track urban change, as time-varying labels are often unavailable. We used self-supervised methods to measure change in London using 15 million street images taken between 2008 and 2021. Our novel adaptation of Barlow Twins, Street2Vec, embeds urban structure while being invariant to seasonal and daily changes without manual annotations. It outperformed generic pretrained embeddings, successfully identified point-level change in London's housing supply from street-level images, and distinguished between major and minor change. This capability can provide timely information for urban planning and policy decisions towards more liveable, equitable, and sustainable cities.

A qualitative study examining the experiences of people who use drugs in supportive housing in London, Ontario

Background Since 2016, London, Ontario has experienced increasing numbers of opioid overdoses and overdose related deaths. Supportive housing agencies have been especially impacted, experiencing an 890% increase in opioid overdose from 2018-2021. A coalition was formed between London housing agencies and our research team to better understand the perspective of precariously housed participants who use drugs on existing substance use and overdose related policies within housing agencies. We aimed to center participant voices in policy development efforts. Methods Using a community-based participatory research framework, 17 participants were interviewed at three housing agencies. Drawing on qualitative descriptive methods, transcripts were subject to content analysis and three themes were identified. Results Themes included (1) conflicts between agency rules and resident realities, (2) safe use accessibility, (3) trust and understanding key to facilitating harm reduction. Conclusion Trust and understanding were weaved across all themes and mediated participants’ opioid overdose experience and risk of overdose related deaths. We recommend interventions to rebuild trust and foster understanding alongside harm reduction-based policies to reduce overdose related deaths.

Shaky Foundations -  NIMBYism's Grip on London's Housing Development

Shaky Foundations -  NIMBYism's Grip on London's Housing Development

The regularity of informality: Reframing the formal–informal relationship with the help of informal housing in London

The article suggests distinguishing between illegality as a practical phenomenon and informal regulations as a structuring feature of everyday life. This allows rethinking the role of the law and regulation in contexts of urban informality, showing that the law, and formality more generally, is connected to the informal in that the formal only receives its meaning and relevance through the informal. The concepts are illustrated by case material from informal housing and what is known as ‘beds in sheds’ in London.

Estate regeneration and its discontents: public housing, place and inequality in London

Estate regeneration and its discontents: public housing, place and inequality in London

Enabling health and maintaining independence for older people at home (HomeHealth trial): a multicentre randomised controlled trial

BackgroundNHS frailty services commonly target more severely frail older people, despite evidence suggesting frailty can be prevented or reversed when addressed at an earlier stage. HomeHealth is a new home-based, manualised voluntary sector service supporting older people with mild frailty to maintain their independence through behaviour change. Over six appointments, a trained HomeHealth worker discusses what matters to the older person and supports them to set and achieve goals around mobility, nutrition, socialising and/or psychological wellbeing. The service showed promising effects in a feasibility trial. We aimed to test the clinical and cost-effectiveness of HomeHealth for maintaining independence in older people with mild frailty compared with treatment as usual. MethodsIn this single-blind multicentre randomised controlled trial, we recruited community-dwelling older people aged 65 years or older with mild frailty from 27 general practices, community groups and sheltered housing in London, Yorkshire, and Hertfordshire. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either HomeHealth monthly for 6 months or treatment as usual (usual GP and outpatient care, no specific frailty services). Our primary outcome was independence in activities of daily living, measured by blinded outcome assessors using the modified Barthel Index, and analysed using linear mixed models, including 6-month and 12-month data and controlling for baseline Barthel score and site. The study was approved by the Social Care Research Ethics Committee, and all participants provided written or orally recorded informed consent. This study is registered with the ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN54268283. FindingsThis trial took place between Jan 18, 2021, and July 4, 2023. We recruited 388 participants (mean age 81·4 years; 64% female [n=250], 94% White British/European [n=364], 2·5% Asian [n=10], 1·5% Black [n=6], 2·0% other [n=8]). We achieved high retention for 6-month follow-up (89%, 345/388), 12-month follow-up (86%, 334/388), and medical notes data (89%, 347/388). 182 (93%) of 195 participants in the intervention group completed the intervention, attending a mean of 5·6 appointments. HomeHealth had no effect on Barthel Index scores at 12 months (mean difference 0·250, 95% CI –0·932 to 1·432). At 6 months, there was a small reduction in psychological distress (–1·237, –2·127 to –0·348) and frailty (–0·124, –0·232 to –0·017), and at 12 months, we found small positive effects on wellbeing (1·449, 0·124 to 2·775) in those receiving HomeHealth. Other outcomes in analysis to date showed no significant difference. Health economic outcomes (including quality of life, capability, health services use and care needs or burden) are pending. InterpretationThis high-quality trial showed that HomeHealth did not maintain independence in older people with mild frailty, and had limited effects upon secondary outcomes. Future studies need to explore different ways to promote health in this population. FundingNational Institute for Health and Care Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA).

Planning deregulation as solution to the housing crisis: The affordability, amenity and adequacy of Permitted Development in London

Since 2013, Permitted Development Rights (PDR) in England have allowed commercial-to-residential conversions in locations once deemed suitable only for non-residential land-use. This deregulation of planning control has been justified as a way of encouraging more home-building in areas experiencing ‘housing crisis’, but its overall consequences remain unclear. This paper hence compiles quantitative evidence on a city-wide scale on the price, size, build and location of these conversions in London 2013–2021. It finds that homes produced through this route are generally smaller than the London average and are over-concentrated in neighbourhoods with fewer accessible green spaces and higher-than-average levels of air pollution. Here, larger conversion schemes (of more than 10 units) appear particularly problematic, potentially subjecting residents to forms of ‘slow violence’ that could have long-term consequences for their physical and mental health. The paper also finds that, on average, PDR conversions are marginally more affordable than other new developments in the capital, but are also more expensive per square metre, suggesting deregulation is allowing developers to ‘extract’ maximum value from these schemes rather than providing affordable homes per se. The implications of this are discussed in relation to the politics of housing in London and the wider forms of planning deregulation allowing developers to accrue increased profits from housing in an era of intense financialisation.

How to Make a City into a Firetrap: Relations of Land and Property in the UK's Cladding Scandal

AbstractDespite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholders) or the developers who built them. Faced with unaffordable remediation bills, leaseholders became stuck in uninsurable, unsellable, potentially fire‐prone units. Through the case of a London housing block, we trace the relationship between the structure of landed property, value extraction, and the distribution of risk to understand how a significant portion of the UK's housing stock have remained firetraps. We argue that institutionalised value grabbing not only created the conditions of social murder but also became an obstacle to remediation, resulting in a politically charged “asset class struggle” over the way in which the structure of housing property and its capitalisation mediates social harm.

The conflictive discourse of density in London's planning system

Density in planning presents a series of conflicts in its use based on how it is defined and perceived. When codified into planning policy, however, it is conflictive due to how it manages strategic and local planning needs and the subjective experiences of density. This article researches the evolution of density policy in London, from the density matrix to the current design-led approach, examining how this conflictive discourse manifests and is resolved within planning practice. Extensive research of planning applications referred to the Mayor of London, known as called-in applications, examine the strategic and local conflicts in a design-led approach. To further inquire on the findings of the extensive research, semi-structured interviews were conducted to design officers across London local authorities to collect their experiences on the practice of density policies and the design-led approach in development management. The results of the planning application research show a tension between design-led approach and a strategic dominance to deliver more housing in London. The design officer interview explains further how this emerges in negotiations and signal into potential solutions. The article presents the deficiencies in density policy and proposes design-led tools to address the limitations of the current approach.

Regional spillover of housing (un)affordability: an empirical study on the residential housing markets for first-time buyers in the U.K

ABSTRACT This study examines the lead–lag relationships between the levels of housing affordability of different regions of the U.K. By utilizing government data, a number of housing affordability indicators are constructed to explore whether spatial diffusion exists between different regional submarkets of first-time homebuyers over the period of 2000 – 2021. The results reveal that during periods of economic expansion, housing unaffordability tended to diffuse from regions of slower economic growth to regions of higher economic development. It is further evident that in the aftermath of the GFC, the London housing market Granger-caused other regional markets in terms of housing (un)affordability. Lastly, the U.K’.s decision to leave the EU in 2016 seems to have led to more divergence between the submarket regions, which in a Granger causal sense, have become less causally correlated in terms of pricing. We conjecture that the causal interactions between the different regional housing submarkets exist with the lead–lag relationships governed primarily by their underlying macroeconomic fundamentals.

Financialisation of Housing in London: Empirical Evidence on Housing Prices

This paper aims to empirically review the process of housing financialisation in London, exploring a time series causal relationship between house prices and financial instruments, using the Granger method and a VAR test. In order to carry out this analysis, we use a vector autoregressive model with a monthly data series that seeks to contribute to exploring this relationship. The results are relevant to the important role that the theory of housing financialisation plays in explaining the crisis of access to secure tenure that can be seen in developed nations. The results also provide an empirical background to pursue this theory more specifically in the context of the vectors that are effectively causal to the financialisation processes that impact everyday life through housing prices. The study is original, given that this type of modelling has not previously been carried out for a major world city such as London, and adds to the findings of similar explorations that have applied other methodologies.

Opportunities and Challenges of Municipal Planning in Shaping Vertical Neighbourhoods in Greater London

Production of housing in London is driven by three factors: a housing crisis that requires the construction of more than 1.6 million homes by 2025, a model of social housing production mainly delivered through private developers’ contributions, and a metropolitan governance structure through which housing targets are allocated to municipalities with highly unequal pressures, being inner London boroughs the ones with the highest targets to meet. In the context of a non-prescriptive and liberalised planning system, this threefold scenario has resulted in the construction of unprecedented residential landscapes, dominated by high-density and high-rise buildings. Tower Hamlets Council is at the forefront of this challenge both in the UK and Europe and is trying to develop planning tools to shape them. This article discusses three innovative supplementary planning documents (SPDs) produced by the policy team that have had unequal success in shaping different aspects of this form of development: the South Quay Masterplan SPD, the High Density Living SPD, and the soon-to-be-adopted Tall Building SPD. A comparative analysis of these planning documents and the perception of urban planners working at different stages of the planning process on the effectiveness and limitations of these SPDs in shaping vertical neighbourhoods shed light on the key factors influencing the role municipal planning can have in delivering a built environment that supports residents’ quality of life. By doing so, this case study illustrates the limitations of municipal planning and planners in local government, pointing to more structural and strategic issues of metropolitan governance.

Resources and Strategies Used by Young, Black Men to Gain Status on an Inner-City London Estate

This paper delineates the resources and strategies that three young black men use to gain status and construct and perform an often-violent street masculinity on a London (UK) housing estate. Ethnographic fieldwork occurred in 2019 during a growing moral panic about youth violence and knife crime. Referring to resources as types of capital, they are categorised under the four headings of economic, social, linguistic, cultural, and physical. Central to the research is the material body, which we view as both an agent and object of the practices through which young black men produce their masculinities.

Overheated behaviours and spread effects: an analysis of London’s housing market

ABSTRACT This paper takes the London housing market as an example to discuss whether housing markets with more significant overheating effects have a greater influence on other housing markets. The spillover effect of London’s housing market has been the subject of much literature, but the empirical results of the relevant literature are inconsistent. This paper proposed a new perspective to explain these inconsistent conclusions: Whether the housing market is overheated or not can affect the spread effect of a regional housing market. The paper estimated the indicators of real estate overheated behaviours and market connectedness. Further, it revealed that when real estate overheated behaviours became more severe, the irrationally high house prices resulted in spread effects. The empirical results also showed that when the overheating effect occurred in London’s housing market, the rental yield of its adjacent regions significantly increased; specifically, the rental yield of a region increased with its closeness to London. The results of this study provide an explanation for the variation in spread effects. This study also indicated that when studying the influence of the relatively booming housing markets on other regions, it is necessary to test the prosperity status of these housing markets to more accurately estimate the spread effects of these markets.