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Public housing estates are disappearing from London’s skyline in the name of regeneration, while new mixed-tenure developments are arising in their place. This richly illustrated book provides a vivid interdisciplinary account of the controversial urban policy of demolition and rebuilding amid London’s housing crisis and the polarisation between the city’s have-nots and have-lots.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with over 180 residents living in some of the capital’s most deprived areas, Watt shows the dramatic ways that estate regeneration is reshaping London, fuelling socio-spatial inequalities via state-led gentrification. Foregrounding resident experiences and perspectives both before and during regeneration, he examines class, place belonging, home and neighbourhood, and argues that the endless regeneration process results in degeneration, displacement and fragmented communities.
“Paul Watt is a leading analyst of housing policy and politics. He draws on this experience to make sense of a pervasive and troubling housing policy that is reshaping urban space and urban lives in London and beyond.” David Madden, London School of Economics
"The book enables a new understanding of the complexities of tenure and its interaction with place and housing system dynamics. Watt superbly renders the experiences and views of secure and insecure local authority and housing association tenants, owner-occupiers, RTB owners and those displaced to the private sector, allowing the power of their stories to illuminate a wider explanation for their varied orientations to the regeneration process." International Journal of Housing Policy
“This book is a powerful and in-depth account of residents’ life experiences in fourteen London public housing estates. Paul Watt’s recommendations are worth exploring and fighting for to stop the human suffering that regeneration is bringing upon some of the most vulnerable in London.” European Planning Studies
'A first-rate work of scholarship, grounded in the experiences of those living in the neighbourhoods he has studied over a long period [..] an outstanding addition to the literature on housing and urban change in Britain in the 2000s.' People, Place and Policy
Introduction
PART I: Policy analysis and research context
Housing policy: the rise and fall of public housing
Urban policy: estate regeneration
The research boroughs and their estates
PART II: Estates before regeneration
Marginalisation and inclusion
Valued places
Devalued places
PART III: Living through regeneration
Beginnings
Degeneration
Displacement
Resistance
Aftermaths
Conclusion
Appendix A: Methodology
Appendix B: Profile of interviewees