About this item
Highlights
- Public housing estates are disappearing from London's skyline in the name of regeneration, while new mixed-tenure developments are arising in their place.
- About the Author: Paul Watt is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
- 520 Pages
- Social Science, Sociology
Description
About the Book
Using original interviews with estate residents in London, Watt provides a vivid account of estate regeneration and its impacts on marginalised communities in London, showing their experiences and perspectives. He demonstrates the dramatic impacts that regeneration and gentrification can have on socio-spatial inequality.Book Synopsis
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.
Review Quotes
"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
About the Author
Paul Watt is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.