Gentrification or Regeneration

Firstly let me apologize for not posting for a while - just too busy. I intend to do several over the next month (honest!)

The subject of this post was prompted by two discussions I have had recently - the first an interview with a student and the second with a local resident of East Oxford. Gentrification is an emotive word often used as an insult and often sloppily, without real evidence to support it. It also asks a fundamental question of regeneration - if what you are doing is improving an area, you will make it more desirable to live and work in and where the area involved is one where the private sector conditions the locality - eg East Oxford where all the housing stock is privately owned - then you will have more well-off people moving in and potentially displacing some of the indigenous community. The questions that follow are a) is that necessarily a bad thing? b) does this mean that one shouldn't attempt to improve areas? c) how can avoid the worst effects of this process?

I have thought long and hard about these questions and asked them constantly of myself and the regen programmes I have worked on. This has not stopped me from working on them, so I suppose my simple answer to questions a) and b) is no.

The local resident I referred to above said that the rise in the number of middle class people and students he saw on the road made him feel out of place as a member of that much threatened minority the white working class male and that he felt more at home when the road was full of druggies and pushers. His family is one of the large local families and has been in the area for years. But I am certain his is not a view held by all the local working class community or even the majority. I suspect some will criticize the number of incomers and indeed put it down to the regeneration programme, but few would take the argument to its conclusion which he did (with a degree of objectivity which I respect). My husband, who has impeccable working class credentials (better than our local resident I suspect), feels very strongly in the opposite direction that why should deprived people be expected to live in run-down unattractive areas and that we should be trying to improve things.

When I worked in community regeneration in Lambeth, an area in my patch was Lambeth Walk, where 8 out 10 shops were closed. Then came a disastrous blow to the local community - the Londis supermarket on the walk was closing down. I went to see the manager, pleading with him to keep the shop open as its closure meant local people, many of whom did not own a car, would have to walk miles to the nearest shop and in so doing negotiate the Vauxhall Cross interchange. Why was the shop closing I asked, there were always queues at the checkouts. Yes he said but they are only buying a few things at a time and then only the budget brands, the shop was not viable. The tragedy was that with Londis closing so would the few remaining shops in the Walk. In such a circumstance the only way out of the spiral of decline is to bring money into the locality and the people that have that money. In so doing you are opening yourself to the accusation of gentrification.

But it is not just about the financial support of infrastructure such as shops and other amenities, it is also about employment. Because with the shop's closure went local jobs. In such circumstances people will find alternatives - alternative ways of making money - hence the drug pushing. I always say that some of the most entrepreneurial people in the communities in which I work are dealing. The point is there is no such thing as standing still in communities and areas - market forces (on both sides of the law) will be operating.

In the case of East Oxford - this was always an area with a large turnover in the population. The student population was part of this and undoubtedly the rise in student numbers has not helped. But also the large amount of private rented accommodation meant that a lot of those moving in were people with problems - homeless, drug users, people with mental health issues. It still does. A major regret of mine re the regeneration programme was our failure to persuade the powers that be to crack down more on the appalling conditions in which such people were housed. But had we done so we almost certainly would have been even more guilty of gentrifying the area in the eyes of our accusers.