Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London

About this event

This seminar is based on a monograph, Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London (Policy Press, 2021) and related papers. This body of work provides an in-depth account of how public/social housing estate regeneration – in the form of demolition and rebuilding, typically via public-private-partnerships and involving large-scale market housing provision – is reshaping London’s physical and socio-spatial landscapes. It is based on over a decade of original research at several London council-built housing estates. The first part of the presentation examines the shifting urban policy rationales for estate regeneration, including community-building (under New Labour) and also solving London’s housing crisis. The second part focuses on residents’ experiences of living at London’s social housing estates before regeneration occurs. The third part examines how residents live through regeneration over many years, and argues that regeneration is experienced as physical, social, psychosocial and symbolic ‘degeneration’. The fourth part discusses displacement and the aftermaths of regeneration, and argues that state-led gentrification is occurring involving the fragmentation rather than mixing of communities. Paul Watt is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely on social housing, urban regeneration, communities and neighbourhoods, homelessness, housing activism, gentrification, suburbanisation, and the 2012 London Olympic Games. He is co-editor with Peer Smets of Social Housing and Urban Renewal: A Cross-National Perspective (Emerald, 2017), and co-editor with Phil Cohen of London 2012 and the Post-Olympics City: A Hollow Legacy? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His most recent book is: Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London (Policy Press, 2021): https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/estate-regeneration-and-its-discontents.