Well, If Ever There Was A Case For 'Gentrification'...

Basildon Council has revealed plans to refurbish Grade II listed Brooke House, opposite the Eastgate Centre, as part of its town centre regeneration strategy.

The authority said it is still drawing up proposals for the building - which will add to work to revamp neighbouring Freedom House and East Walk.

...Basildon would be it!

Andrew Gordon, Labour councillor for Lee Chapel North, grew up in the tower block. He admitted the building needs refurbishing - but said he hopes it will not come at the expense of current tenants.

Mr Gordon said: “We need to sit down with them as a council and find out what it is that they want from the refurbishment.

“It seems as though we are trying to gentrify Basildon, and when I speak to people living and working in the town centre about the regeneration plans for Basildon they seem to be worried about being priced out through rents.

“We can all agree that change needs to happen at Brooke House, but it has to be the right sort of changes.

“It is really important we don’t exclude anyone and consult with the residents.”

If you change the housing, but not the residents, you know what you'll get?

Yup. That's right. You'll get Basildon.

Maybe Gentrification Has Drawbacks After All...

...sounds, errr, delightful.

The Wisdom Of Youth...

Meg Hanking, 18, who lives nearby, said of the new high street branch: “I have been in the area my whole life, I grew up there.

“It’s such a deprived area. Our family lived there and it’s weird to see this happening.

“Most of the people who actually live there and people who have lived there for the past decade couldn’t afford that kind of food.

“Most people who are working there are on minimum wage. This is for the middle classes.“

So 18 year old kids can't afford a sandwich and a coffee?

She added: “I have eaten in Pret before, and I quite like their food. And it’s good because it’s going to bring jobs.

Wait, I thought...

“But it’s going to lead to more loss of culture.”

What culture?

Will Orr, who lives in Wood Green, said: “If there was ever an area that needed reviving it is Wood Green.

“Crime and antisocial behaviour is high and since we've lived here M&S and BHS have been lost from the high street. ”

Ah. Thug culture. Well, frankly, I'm with Will.

This Promises To Be A Rich Seam Of Crazy...

Starting today, this Guardian Cities series will examine the consequences of gentrification around the world, and interrogate what is being done to tackle it.

Well, I look forward to knowing what's being done to ensure that urban areas remain run-down, crime ridden hellholes.

Doesn't everyone?

My own view is that the best solution to mitigate the impact of the almost inevitable tide of urban gentrification is a tax on the value of land, which would capture the value of improvements for the local community, rather than lining the pockets of investors.

Well, Mark Wadsworth will be following this series eagerly too, then!

Funny How No-One Approves…

The ‘Guardian’ bangs on about gentrification yet again:

Although gentrification only became a mainstream topic of discussion relatively recently, the process of places changing due to an influx of wealthier residents has of course been happening for a very long time. We wanted to hear from people in cities around the world who have watched gentrification change their local area over the long term.

Do they find anyone at all who says how marvellous it is that crime is low and the area looks nicer and you can walk around after dark now?

Reader, they do not…

Ouseburn will be just another soulless riverside development of boxy apartments for semi-professional people; and the overlapping Byker district will inevitably suffer a serious knock-on effect. Byker was a showcase for affordable, well-designed social housing. It will become another casualty in the shameless rush for profits. This resembles a bad sci-fi movie … local people invaded by aliens. (Anonymous)

Gosh, if a working class white chap said this about an influx of immigrants, the ‘Guardian’ would pitch a shitfit.

But it’s clearly OK to push out local people if you have certain attributes…

Infrastructure has not been improved on much and public transport has always been abysmal so the tech companies send fleets of buses to the public bus stops to fill in for the dearth of options. Worse, the companies give their employees free meals, and the local governments get no sales tax money for any free services Google, Facebook and many other companies provide. As the corporations continue to ‘improve’ their holdings, the rest of the non tech workers must make do with eroding public services. (Anonymous, Silicon Valleyresident for 31 years)

Up the workers! Unless they are tech workers, in which case, boooooo! Never mind the use that Guardian readers and writers alike make of that tech, of course…

My parents are Nigerian immigrants that moved to London in the late 1970s. As our family grew (they had five children), we moved around south eastLondon quite a bit: Deptford, Catford, Sydenham. We eventually settled in Brockley, buying a very cheap but large council owned town house. At the time, Brockley was very run down, and regularly featured on Crimewatch. In the mid-late noughties things started to change; the Afro-Caribbean shops started to disappear and were replaced by fancy delis and Gastro pubs. My parents still live in Brockley but they downsized in 2007, selling our family home for more than four times the price that they bought it for in 1992. That is negative gentrification. I guess people feel the area is safer than it was when we first moved there. But it does come at a price to people like me who currently cannot afford to buy property there. (Anonymous, Brockley resident for 15 years)

The chutzpah is so strong with this one, I don’t think I can do it justice!

. Dalston was a no-go area when I was young as it was pretty dangerous, as was Stratford but now it’s a place you want to avoid because it is so gentrified and so full of wealthy kids from elsewhere thinking they are in an authentic East London scene, when really it’s a sad place where many locals get turfed out as they can’t afford £500,000 flats and don’t understand what these new hipsters or yuppies are …. from what I’ve seen, the gentrification of Newham has meant the loss of a wonderful, funny and vivacious working class community. (George, Newham resident since 1971)

But it’s safer. I’d happily forgo the ‘vivaciousness’ if it meant I wasn’t mugged! Wouldn’t anyone?

Just fifteen years ago, the nearby NDG park was so full of drug dealers that children would never dare to venture in to play on the rusty old swing set. Then the residents organised, demanded more police presence, and lobbied the municipal government to renovate the playground. They succeeded and now the park is teeming with families while the drug dealers stay on the far south corner, and only after dark. The park did much to make the neighbourhood more attractive to the up and coming professionals who couldn’t afford the high house prices in Westmount, but nevertheless wanted to be near their private schools. So young people moved in, renovated, had children, and created the demand for the fancy shops and cafés. (Barbara Bedont, Monkland Village resident for 15 years)

And this is a good thing!

There are no ‘bad buildings’, or 'bad areas', just bad people. Remove the latter, and everything’s rosy.

Because It’s Not The Bricks And Mortar, It’s The People…

Colin Wiles fails to understand this simple truth:

Last month I cycled the four miles between two of London’s most iconic brutalist housing estates, the Barbican and Robin Hood Gardens. Both were designed by eminent architects around 40 years ago. Both have been praised and condemned in equal measure. One is a private estate and one is social housing. One is thriving, the other facing demolition.

I doubt it’ll take a genius to guess which.

Their contrasting fortunes say a great deal about British housing policy over the past 40 years.

Really?

The Barbican, with more than 2,000 homes, is a frequent winner of London’s ugliest building award. Yet its homes are very desirable, with penthouses going for more than £4m. Designed by Le Corbusier devotees Chamberlin, Powell and Bon it features raised walkways, gardens and lush greenery. The estate has an army of caretakers and porters, and service charges range from £1,700 to £16,000 a year. Robin Hood Gardens, a stone’s throw from Canary Wharf, was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Greater London Council (GLC). There is a wonderful film online made by cult novelist BS Johnson which catches their rather snooty attitude. Two massive slab blocks enclose a large open space and a two-storey high hill. It was modelled on the “little pool of calm” at Gray’s Inn and it is astonishingly peaceful, given that the site is surrounded by major roads. The estate is innovative, with deflecting acoustic walls, “streets in the sky” and innovative internal layouts.

Right, so clearly, the failing estate isn’t down to poor design, poor location, or anything else.

Can we get a clue about what might be the cause?

I visited on a bleak December day with London-based British artist Jessie Brennan. She has worked on the estate for the past two years and has published a book, Regeneration!, about the experience. Her drawings depicting the metaphorical crumpling of the estate were commissioned by the Foundling Museum for Progress in 2014. We met on the hill in between the two blocks, like spies in a cold war film.The windows and concrete mullions are crumbling and the blocks have none of the greenery that softens the concrete facades of the Barbican. Many residents have fitted security grilles to their flats, suggesting a fear of other residents or outsiders, or both.

Aha! There’s a clue!

Abdul Kalam, a former resident who participated in Brennan’s project, summarised how many resident feel: “They are basically driving the poor people out”.

Yes. Because for most of these places, it’s the people inside them that are the problem.

Not all of them, of course, but once the percentage of bad apples gets above 5%, the place is doomed.

I Just Can't Put My Finger On It....

...I mean, how does this work? Why, of all places, would fried chicken shops be an indicator of a place to be avoided? Not pizza joints, or burger bars, or greasy spoon cafes.

It's a puzzle, and no mistake...

Mr Floy, who has a background in economics, now plans to produce further maps including one based on the ratio of bicycle repair shops to £1 stores.

The hipsters are coming!

Semantics With The 'Guardian'...

It's a feature that runs all the way through the article:

They were being used by a housing association to accommodate families on Barnet Council’s waiting list, but under Hands’s control, Annington plans to replace them with 229 houses and flats for sale

At least 45 of them were granted homes on the estate only after declaring themselves homeless, and some have said they now face that prospect again.

Jeanette Ewans, a housing campaigner who opposes demolition, said: “We have got to get out of this mindset that homes are investments. It enrages me the owners treat us like pieces of furniture. We are going to make it impossible for them not to change their minds. We want everyone who has left the estate to be brought back.”

Residents and campaigners occupying the homes have been summoned to court next week by lawyers for Annington, which is seeking possession and prevention of further trespass.

To the 'Guardian', it would seem that a house only makes the transition to a 'home' when someone other than the occupier actually owns it...

I Wonder Where Edward Lives..?

London needs more housing, agrees (almost) everyone. So when the old Mount Pleasant sorting office was shut down, here was a chance to build some.

Who could object?

Edward Denison of the Mount Pleasant Association and University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture damned RMG’s proposal for ten buildings, some as a high as 15 storeys, containing 681 housing units along with office space and shops with a pedestrian street running through it, as an architectural manifestation of the same mentality that informed the Royal Mail sell-off.

The plans would, in Denison’s view, result in an “exclusively inward-looking fortress-like development” accompanied by a misnamed “public realm”, which would, in reality, be controlled by and for private interests to create “malls without walls”.

Like a cancer, he wrote, this would eventually kill the neighbourhood around it.

How..?

The two councils were unhappy too, in particular with the amount of affordable homes being offered in the plans...

Oh, I see! He means there won't be enough of the sort of people you need a fortress to protect yourselves from.

Shock Horror! People Buy Things To Sell At A Profit!

A "sickening" online video for a £47m Deptford development has provoked a furious response for…

Oo-er!

… portraying much-needed new homes as investments rather than places for people to actually live.

Ummm, what?

The scheme is the latest in a string of major housing developments - including Kidbrooke Village and Eltham's Grove Place - being marketed to foreign investors in places like Hong Kong, who often let the properties out or even leave them vacant before flogging them off at a hefty profit.

Oh my god! I didn’t realise that people could do such a thing with property they legally own!

The video was hastily pulled from one website after an angry online response, with Deptford artist Maria Livings writing: "The idea that this project is being sold to investors and that the coolness of artists is being touted as the reason why property prices are about to hurtle still further up is completely sickening.

"None of the interesting, creative people who have contributed to the vibrant culture of the area are able to afford to buy a home and their work spaces are being eliminated wholesale as developers buy up all the land to create yet more unaffordable housing."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! 

Sorry, had to pause for breath!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

And Deptford resident Dan Strange, from the Defend Council Housing group, contrasted the video with council housing shortages and the high level of deprivation in parts of SE8, saying: "I was absolutely shocked by the clear speculation behind the project.

"No one is surprised but of course it's a loss for the people of Lewisham. It's clear the vast majority of people won’t be able to afford these flats."

I’m not sure that fewer of the ‘vibrant culture’ types could really be seen as a loss, per se…

Mayor of Lewisham Sir Steve Bullock said: "It's a problem across the whole of London. We've seen it trickle down from properties along the riverfront right through the city. I think most of us aren't very happy about it."

*shrugs* Personally, I could care less.

"The Only Jobs We Really Care About Are Our Own!"

A Deptford pub named after the former job centre it now occupies has been accused of "insulting" the area and making unemployment "a joke".

Oh? By anyone we should be listening to?

Lewisham People Before Profit have written to pub company Antic...

Ah. That's a 'no', then?

...asking them to change the name of The Job Centre pub - which has been given a generally positive reception until now.

By which you mean, normal people aren't fussed, but a bunch of idiots have spat their dummies...

Their letter states: "In the case of your bar, the Job Centre name you have chosen underscores the fact that a location that once housed a service for the many struggling people in the neighbourhood has been replaced with a bar catering to those who can afford the sort of upmarket pub food your website promises.

"By choosing to decorate with an ‘eclectic mix of vintage décor and quirky design features inspired by its function as a place that once served the unemployed’ (a quotation from your website), you turn the experience of the unemployed—an experience so widespread and painful in the current climate that it is literally driving people to suicide—into a style feature for the amusement of those with disposable cash."

Translation: "Sod off, yuppies! We need the sort of underclass that might vote for us in this area (always assuming they can stop watching 'Jeremy Kyle' for ten minutes)..."

“Because We’d Rather Have A Derelict Pub Than A Betting Shop!”

Paddy Power wants to open a branch on the site of former pub The Lordship in Wood Green, north London.

But the bookmakers was turned down for a licensing application by Haringey Council in April this year.

However campaigners now fear the betting shop could become a reality after Paddy Power appealed the decision.

Don't like betting shops. or betting? Don't go in. There! Problem solved!

Campaign group The Lordship N22 are calling on the council to find a loophole in the law and are hoping to get the pub listed as an asset of community value, giving it enhanced protection during the planning process.

But does anyone else want it? Does anyone plan to turn it back into a pub? If not, all you've got is an empty building just ripe for invasion.

Heidi Saarinen, a lecturer, who lives in the area, told the Standard: “We want to do this to say stop – enough is enough. We can’t just be allowing these gambling companies to rip apart out communities.”

How are they doing that? By providing jobs?

She added: “The many current betting shops, in the immediate stretch of Lordship Lane are attracting anti-social behaviour and creating negative environments with litter, loitering, noise and generally acting as magnets to all the negative issues that we, as a community, want to keep far away from our doorsteps, school and shopping routes.”

So...you'd rather deal with squatters instead? Be careful what you wish for!

Save The Artists!

The shortage of affordable studio space in the capital is to be investigated by the Mayor of London, amid growing evidence that artists are being driven out by rising rents and redevelopment.

Munira Mirza, deputy mayor for education and culture in London, said: “This is a pressing issue and it has been for a while. There’s a lot of concern that London is changing and artists are being forced to move to new areas.”

Is there really a lot of concern? I can’t say I’d noticed it being a topic of heated conversation on my commute, or in the office…

London is home to almost two-thirds of all artists’ studios in the UK, the majority of which are concentrated in the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, according to the most recent numbers compiled in the 2010 Cultural Metropolis report.

Ms Mirza said: “We want artists to stay in London. It’s very important culturally and economically, but there are lots of challenges in terms of finding space.”

Well, if you say so, Ms Mirza, but I think you’ll find artists aren’t especially singled out for this. Everyone’s affected. Artists aren’t special. Except in their own minds.

There’s even, believe it or not, a charity for it!

Jonathan Harvey, who set up Acme Studios, a London-based charity which provides artists with affordable studio space, said: “Artists require a lot of space and cheap space. How that can happen in London where property values are so high, is a real question. It’s now about how the Mayor’s Office and local authorities value artists.”

Maybe they don’t?

Mr Harvey said: “A phrase we keep repeating is that artists are pioneers of regeneration because they go where others don’t. But they’re also the victims as they then get priced out. Hackney is a perfect example of that.”

He called on a change to planning laws to include studio space in new developments.

Ah, yes. A demand for special treatment. Well, it’s not like we might need plumbers or paramedics or other sorts. No, having a local artist is clearly much more important…

Seb Patane, an artist at Gasworks studios in Vauxhall said: “It’s sad to see this happening, especially in an area where there aren’t many studio spaces. Yeah, I have no idea what’s going to happen; the prices will go sky high and at the moment artists are having a really tough time, funding their own expenses. It’s all quite grim.”

Meanwhile, everyone else is living in the Land of Milk and Honey…

Gasworks owner Alessio Antoniolli said the neighbourhood was changing “at the speed of light” which was damaging to the community.

Hmmm, other people say things like that and get scorned for it. It’s clearly different for artists!

He said that he receives “hundreds of requests” for studios every year, which is “an indication of how scared artists are. I’m not saying regeneration is a terrible thing, but what makes something great and special needs to be kept and celebrated and supported.”

Really? I leave the last word to the estimable David Thompson, who has so many examples of this sort of thing...

Creative people, being so creative, deserve nothing less than special treatment. I mean, you can’t expect a creative person to write at any old desk in any old room in any old part of town. What’s needed is a lifestyle at some other sucker’s expense. And so that garret has to be in a fashionable suburb or somewhere happening, where the creative vibrations are at their strongest and genius will surely follow. And that pad of choice has to come before the publishing deal and film rights and the swimming pool full of cash. Indeed, it has to materialise before the book itself, or any part thereof. How else can their brilliance flourish, as it most surely will, what with all that creativity. Our betters just need a little cake before they eat those damn vegetables. And possibly ice cream. Here’s some money that other, less glamorous people had to actually earn. You fabulous creature, you.

Long On Rhetoric, Short On Detail…

David Madden (assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics) rages against ‘gentrification’:

When gentrification is criticized these days, it tends to be done in terms that muddle the issues. The least useful way to criticize gentrification is to obsess about an area's character, coolness, or even worse, "grit". Lamenting the proliferation of cupcakes and cappuccino is a staple of reporting on places like Williamsburg or Dalston. But this kind of story reduces something that's all about inequality to middle-class agonizing over authenticity.

It also makes it rather amusing to read, but never mind. I'm sure you've got a serious point to make, haven't you?

The leading myth is that the only possibilities for neighborhoods are gentrification or urban decay. Well-meaning liberals sometimes think cities face a choice between the bad days of the past and a gentrified future. Urban theorists invoke this same theme with the idea of the city as a ceaselessly changing organism that can either gentrify or stagnate. But these are all deeply misleading arguments, because they offer a false choice. No serious critic of gentrification wants to maintain the status quo. Instead of either gentrification or decay, cities could push for more equal distribution of resources and more democratic decision-making.

Ah. I suspect this is the new dictionary definition of 'more democratic', which actually means that the people who pay for this and drive the changes should get less of a say. And I'm not wrong, as it turn out...

Another myth is that gentrification actually trickles down to help everyone. Evangelists for elite-dominated urbanism sometimes argue, as New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg did recently, that attracting the super-rich is the best way to help those city-dwellers he quaintly calls "those who are less fortunate". But the trickle-down argument for gentrification ignores the fact that the "very fortunate" invariably seek to bend municipal priorities and local land uses towards their own needs, usually to the detriment of their less powerful neighbors.

Yup, thought so. This is a man intent on spending other people's money on other people.

Probably the most damaging myth about gentrification is that nothing can be done about it beyond wrangling a few tokenistic concessions from big developers. But gentrification is not an unstoppable force. It's true that it has its roots in political-economic processes – the commodification of housing, the neoliberal transformation of the state and the growth of economic inequality – that require action at large scales. But there are many policies which, even in the short term, would produce a more democratic and egalitarian city: more and better public housing, rent control and regulation, community control of neighborhood space, expanding social welfare, strengthening progressive labor unions, and empowering social movements that embody the political ambitions of the urban working classes and poor.

Did he leave anything out of the Big Socialist Wishlist there?

Even today, it's not too late to unforeclose urban politics and build an alternative to the city of gentrification and inequality. The opposite of gentrification isn't urban decay; it's the democratization of urban space.

Chalk another one up for that new dictionary.

If It’s Not ‘Serving The Needs Of Local Residents’…

…just who is it serving?

Trojka, known as the Russian tea rooms, closed down a fortnight ago after owner Sophia Szymankiewicz was faced with paying a 70 per cent increase in the cost of a new lease. The Regent’s Park Road café had become a local institution since Ms Szymankiewicz founded it in 1992, but she says the street has now changed and established businesses are being driven out by a new wave of expensive cafés.

“Camden High Street is now all coffee and food places and Regent’s Park Road is going that way too,” she said.

Places change. That’s not news. Areas that were once little hotspots for books, or records, or fashion, change. Other shops move in.

The new owners don’t even plan to change the business all that much – it’ll still be a café:

The lease is being taken over by Morfudd Richards who has renamed it the Greenberry Café and plans to sell coffees, charcuterie and ice-cream.

But other businesses say there are too many cafés and warned that the area’s diversity is being eroded.

If there really were ‘too many cafes’, then there’d be no point in people opening them – there is such a thing as ‘market saturation’.

And hey, it's not like they are that dreaded modern scourge, Costa Coffee!

Peter Haxton, who opened the Sesame health food in 1983, is closing next month after he realised he was facing a tripling of his rent. He said: “I’ve had a very kind landlord who has kept my rent below market value for years but he can’t keep doing that and I can’t afford to pay that much more. When I first opened up there was huge diversity on this street — lots of different quirky shops and only one café. That’s all changed now and it’s a terrible shame.

This road is no longer serving the needs of local residents; it’s all about expensive cafés for the people who come in at weekends — but will they still come when there’s nothing but cafés to look at?”

I find it very hard to believe that a shop can take in enough revenue on two days of the week to offset the other five making a loss. Can that really be the case?

Amit Jain, who runs the long-established Shepherd’s café, estimates that one in three businesses on the street is now selling food and drink.

He said: “I don’t think people realise that soon Primrose village will be café village.

“The yummy mummies just want somewhere to settle their prams and have a mummies’ meeting, so anywhere with coffee and a table is in demand.”

Well….you seem to have just such a place, so why are you complaining?

But new café owners hit back at the criticism. Natalie Allen has been running her cake company, Sweet Things, for seven years and opened her offshoot shop and café in Regent’s Park Road 10 months ago.

She said: “Everyone is being very negative but people wouldn't open a café if they didn't think the demand was there. We have just taken on more employees, so we are contributing to the local economy. And I hate this phrase ‘yummy mummy’ — I'm a mum of two but I'm running a business too.”

In business, as in life, there are winners and losers. What we are hearing here is the whining of the (imminent) losers.

Let Them Eat Couscous!

I suspect this is a somewhat different story to the one about Liz Haughton’s The Park Café:

A change of menu at Stoke Newington's Clissold House café has started a row.

Claims that the manor house café had been taken over by the snooty and the "nouveau riche" came after traditional fare such as chips, beans and chocolate pudding were replaced by couscous and spiced nut salad, beetroot and seed cake, and £12.75 gnocchi with roast mushrooms.

It’s met with the same reaction from the locals, though, unsurprisingly enough:

Some customers were so angry they set up an action group on Facebook. One critic wrote: "It's a sad day for those of us who have lived in the area all our lives. Gone are the days when the café would provide basic and hearty food at decent prices."

But it’s not just because the management thinks this is the sort of thing that the residents should be eating, oh no.

In fact, it seems more as a push to get the right sort of residents through the doors:

The organic revamp has been overseen by Company of Cooks, which also runs Kenwood House in Hampstead.

The area has seen an influx of political and media types over recent years, with relative newcomers including Labour power couple Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, comedian Stewart Lee and BBC news reader George Alagiah drawn in by its village feel.

Couscous eaters if ever I saw any…

Locals say the café should be a meeting place for the community and were angry when the council handed the contract to run it to Company of Cooks rather than a local outlet.

Oh, but I’m sure there’s no hidden agenda here. Or…is there?

Vicky Cahill of Company of Cooks told the Hackney Gazette that although the café had been "incredibly busy" since opening last month they were aware that not everyone was happy.

"We're listening to the many viewpoints about the type of food that people want to see available, and in no way see the opening menu as the final version."

It’ll just stay there until you ghastly little oiks have all found some greasy egg & chip dive to favour with your custom, ok?