Paris’s social housing is abundant. But it is around the edge, or “outside the Périphérique”, lending an impression of exclusion. The cities of former eastern bloc nations are ringed by Soviet-designed towers. But
London and New York, Hong Kong and Singapore — cities with booming property markets and thriving economies — still feature big social housing estates at their hearts. Precisely that social mix makes for a diverse and successful city, the integration bringing the wealthy and the poor into proximity so reducing the sense of urban alienation and isolation. A gentrified centre might be good for tourists but does not make an adaptable city. It petrifies.
Last week Brandon Lewis, UK housing minister, called for the
demolition of London’s council estates and their replacement with denser mixed developments as a response to the city’s housing crisis. He echoes a
proposal by Labour peer
Lord Adonis, who this year said that, while the capital’s population now matches its 1939 high of more than 8m, its centre is far less dense.
What is not noted is that pre-war density was largely down to slum housing. Furthermore, it is reported that the Conservative government’s plan to force local authorities to sell high-value social housing will
fail to raise the forecast £4.5bn intended to fund further building. The policy is described by Kate Barker, economist and author of a significant housing report, as “another rather bitty housing measure”.
London’s housing estates were built in three waves. The first was led by philanthropists such as George Peabody and the Guinness family following Victorian clearances of those slums; and by the London County Council, which, with its 1890 demolition of the Old Nichol slum in east London’s Shoreditch, created in the Boundary estate the world’s first big municipal social housing project.
The next two waves were created by the decline of the great private landed estates, often through punitive postwar death duties, and the break-up of their grounds around London (Roehampton’s pioneering 1958 Alton estate for instance) and by the gaps left in the centre by bombing.
In the 1950s, when it was assumed London would continue to shrink, they were built according to modernist ideals, demanding natural light, space and parkland. There was an element of social engineering to their placement in prime areas such as Chelsea, the City of London, Westminster and Pimlico to prevent segregation of the working or middle classes. Singapore has used a similar policy of maintaining mixed social and ethnic populations in what is often seen as one of the world’s most successful public housing policies.
Singapore has used a similar policy of maintaining mixed social and ethnic populations
Back in London recent redevelopments replacing, for example, south London’s ambitious but poorly maintained 1960s
Aylesbury estate, have met fierce resistance from residents, most of whom would never be rehoused in such a central area. The problem is that redevelopment involves properties at full market rents alongside a small proportion at “affordable” rents. In a city where “affordable” can be defined as up to 80 per cent of market rents, the phrase becomes meaningless. In central London this could mean
about £650 a week for a three-bedroom property. Working 40 hours at the minimum wage, meanwhile, earns you £260. There is, incidentally, no proposal to study the occupancy of Belgravia properties — which have become a preferred safe deposit of the global super-rich — to gauge the effect of a lack of density.
The plan to rid London of its central social housing is short-sighted. It would rob the streetscapes of the bustle of everyday life and accelerate a slide into an empty vehicle for investment — the difference between a city that has the flexibility to adapt and absorb change, and one that stagnates as a luxury enclave.
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She'd have to have smaller garden parties - we are all in it together maj
