One of the key phrases in gentrification, I’ve noticed, is to label a place ‘an up-and-coming area’. It’s not. It’s simply a place which, for lack of a better description, has begun to decay around the edges, and the rot is beginning to seep into the centre. (Which, usually, makes it ripe for private-investor-led investment.)
In a previous post, I quoted political philosopher and linguist, Noam Chomsky. To paraphrase Chomsky’s theory, the standard technique of privatisation is to ‘defund what you want to privatise. Defund then, when things don’t work and people get agitated, even angry, and they want a change, you say “Okay,” and you sell off the responsibility of the public asset – instead of implementing a state-led regeneration – and then things, well, they get worse.’
Reading what I’ve just wrote, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s not much state-led regeneration happening anywhere; that it’s slim pickings out there for residents in inner-city communities. But what if I told you that it’s not all seemingly untrustworthy property developers, sat, waiting for the ‘low-hanging fruit’ to fall? That, in pretty much every corner of the globe, there are governments aware of the potential in their civic communities, who choose to invest, using public money for urban renewal. (I mean, why wouldn’t they? The lands are in public ownership. Here’s an example. Here’s another.) We’ve flirted with the idea in the UK, but never truly committed to the endeavour of tackling inequality via state-led regeneration in our towns and cities. (Too many conflicting ideological interests.)
But if the ‘powers that be’ were to really dig into sustainable state-led regeneration, they’d implement mindful development techniques, which focused on:
• Investment in commercial areas to support small business start-ups
• Increasing the amount of available social housing so that residents can continue to live in their localities in properties priced at affordable rents, not dictated by the privately-owned property market’s whims
• Investment in access to amenities via public transport infrastructure, which increases exploration, and so strengthens connections between communities because no one should be marooned inland, or living in a ‘food desert’.
• Remove cost-prohibitive barriers-to-entry of parks, gardens, commons, and other green spaces to aid residents’ work-life balance, while developing community-led, community-cohesion initiatives in these spaces which emphasise health, well-being, and education.
• Invite local residents to voice their opinions, and vote, as board members, instead of infrequent local elections, where each ward elects a councillor to local government in the hope that they’ll give voice to residents’ concerns.
This would result in the creation of “a feedback loop with the local economy to ensure the future of the development,” and build “a trusted platform for public engagement in processes that shape the public realm; one which provides opportunities for varied opinions to be expressed and to be seen and, importantly, maintain a clear record of the discussion behind the planning and development decisions.” (I’m quoting Martha Grekos, in the 2020 edition of the Journal of the London Society.)
To speak plainly about things as they are, now, and as someone who lives inner-city: sustainable state-led regeneration requires everyone with a stake in the project – community members and government representatives – to develop an understanding of where each person is coming from, even when that person has an opposing viewpoint, and to find a common-ground. As any elected representative who encourages clear, concise, open dialogue with their constituents knows: constituents do provide context and clarity to what is needed in their communities. (And it’s not one multi-storey car park built, and another one demolished.) All stakeholders must commit to the endeavour, and work in collaboration to avoid splintering into warring factions, so something valuable is achieved. And that value? It’s in place-making. And every resident in the vicinity, every last one of us, deserves a seat at the table so that when those decisions are made, we can say, with honesty: “Our place is defined by its people.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if that became the standard way of doing things, rather than the exception?
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