Urban planning

Gentrify this: the pros and cons of urban development

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• published: 26 Jan 2016
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From a media storm over the opening of a pricey ‘Cereal Killer’ cafe in Shoreditch to the trashing of an estate agent’s in Brixton, there is growing resentment across London at gentrification pricing out or excluding poorer local residents. ‘Hackney Heroine’ Pauline Pearce last year compared the hipsters in ‘beards and bobble hats’ to the 2011 rioters in terms of their divisive impact on local communities, whilst Deptford residents lobbied unsuccessfully to change the name of a novelty pub located in the area’s former Job Centre. Meanwhile, demands that new builds provide some provision for socially affordable housing has led to controversy over ‘poor doors’ and complaints that such accommodation is often sub-standard or circumvented by resentful developers selling to overseas buyers, leaving lucrative properties empty in London’s desperately over-subscribed market. In response to fears that young families and under-35s are being priced out of buying property, lobby groups such as Generation Rent have argued for tough measures and rent controls to help to temper the soaring cost of living in the capital. Yet some commentators are sceptical about the ability and desirability of such policies to counter gentrification. They argue that the explosion of niche pop-up shops and cafes are part of the healthy regeneration of poor areas which, a generation ago, were being abandoned by population flight. Others point out that rent controls have proven enormously counter-productive in similar cities such as New York, either depressing the number of rental properties available or acting as a subsidy for already wealthy urbanites. The only solution, from this perspective, is an urgent increase in the number of houses being built in London and surrounding areas. Yet given the failures of successive governments to stimulate effective house-building, and the restrictive nature of planning laws in high-density areas, others counter that short-term interventions are required to avoid London’s vibrant areas from becoming sanitised playgrounds for the super-rich. Are campaigns against gentrification driven by a genuine anxiety around social fairness or nostalgia against changing neighbourhoods? Does regeneration generally improve residents’ lives in deprived areas or simply price them out? Should policy-makers take a more interventionist approach to preserve cultural diversity or does such interference risk killing off the entrepreneurial an drive which makes gentrified areas so desirable? Does antipathy to hipsters really have much to do with broader questions of social housing and fairness? Speakers Niall Crowley freelance designer and writer Laia Gasch special assistant to Deputy Mayor for Culture, Mayor's Office; chair of trustees, Chats Palace Arts Centre Phineas Harper deputy director, The Architecture Foundation David Orr chief executive, National Housing Federation Barbara Speed staff writer, CityMetric, New Statesman Chair Neil Davenport writer; teacher; contributor, spiked