Speaker
Description
London has been going through a population growth since the 1980s. This population growth has been paired with a neoliberal planning approach, in which city-making relies heavily on private-sector developers, and in which public authorities follow a private development logic. Since the beginning of the 21st century, local authorities have viewed social housing estates as places for redevelopment and densification. They have seen in estate regeneration an opportunity to address London’s housing crisis and deliver housing numbers that meet their targets. This concentration on number of homes results in disregarding the relevance of social infrastructure (spaces where people can gather), which is typically reduced or not extended in such densification schemes, resulting is less social infrastructure per resident. In addition to this, most of these schemes do not result in an increase of social rent units, but in a decrease of social housing units at expense of private market homes.
Social housing regeneration in London has been heavily contested by residents, housing campaigners, as well as scholars. Since the 2010s, there was an increase in community groups campaigning against the demolition of their homes and demanding other approaches to regeneration, which have managed to have some influence on regeneration schemes and on London-wide policies on estate regeneration. Between 2016 and 2019, Daniel Fitzpatrick and I conducted a research project that explored how community groups were engaging with different planning tools and using a diversity of campaigning strategies for opposing the demolition of their homes and proposing community-led regeneration schemes. This piece of research led to the publication of the book Community-Led Regeneration: A Toolkit of Residents and Planners (Sendra and Fitzpatrick, 2020). One of the strategies that many groups used was collaborating with architects to draft a “People’s Plan” or “Community Plan”. A People’s Plan is not a statutory planning document, but a community vision that residents put together with the aim of influencing or leading decisions on the future of their neighbourhood.
Since 2019, I have worked in collaboration with various community groups facing top-down regeneration schemes on co-producing a People’s Plan for their neighbourhood. Through funded research and knowledge exchange projects, I have used a participatory action research approach and co-design methods to co-produce community-led schemes with residents living in social housing, as well as supporting evidence for these plans in relation to their social and environmental impact, and their financial viability. Residents have used the outputs of this projects to present it to local authorities and stakeholders to influence planning decisions.
This paper presents four London-based case studies of participatory action research projects carried out in partnership with community groups living on social housing that were facing the demolition of their homes, other type of top-down developments, and/or the loss of social infrastructure. These case studies are South Kilburn Estate, Alton Estate, Trellick Tower and Edenham Way, and Barking Riverside. The paper first introduces each of the case studies and, based on the results of the project, it reflects on the value, ethics, methods and impact of working with communities. This includes how to build partnerships with community groups, how to define the purpose of the collaboration, how to plan to the project to maximise impact in relation to the context, the impact that each of the project has had, the different types of knowledge it has generated, and how each of these experiences can learn from each other.
References
Sendra, Pablo and Fitzpatrick, Daniel (2020) Community-led regeneration: A toolkit for residents and planners. London: UCL Press.
| Keywords | People's Plan; participation; community-led planning; social housing; social infrastructure; activism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
