Complexity and coordination in London’s Silvertown Quays: How real estate developers (re)centred themselves in the planning process

Abstract

This paper contributes to existing research on the relational work of real estate developers to demonstrate how internal corporate complexities create opaqueness in governance settings and limit potential community engagement. This work is particularly pertinent at a time when there is renewed interest in the private sector, yet very little analysis that begins from the perspective of the developer. Drawing on the example of London’s Silvertown, this paper shows how the strategies of development organizations evident in existing research, including their work with the public sector, communities and experts, require multiple levels of internal coordination. I argue that because of these sub-centres of power, developers are able to maintain a more deeply entrenched centrality in urban governance.

Governing investors and developers: Analysing the role of risk allocation in urban development

“…Once the investor has agreed to invest in the site, they work alongside the developer, constantly monitoring their strategy, and in some cases interviewees noted that this included fortnightly meetings. Yet throughout the early construction period, investors in PRS saw the developer as the one taking the lead because it is up to developers both to co-ordinate the various forms of expertise to bring forward the site (see Brill, 2020;Robin, 2018) and to manage the risks associated with the construction: I see the developer as being the broker, he's a broker that takes risks, so in my view he's finding the contractor, he or she is finding the plot of land, and they're saying, 'I will come to you, I will raise all the logistics of this and I need you fund it and I will take my cut for doing it, over a three-year period.' (Investor 9, 2020) During the construction period, the funds will receive a coupon -in this way, as explained above, the investment strategy mimics the mechanisms of income generation associated with a bond.…”

The work that place does: The London Landed Estates and a curatorial approach to estate management

“…The role of such actors has also become significant in the wake of contested policy debates over the expanding private ownership and management of what has traditionally been ‘public’ land in cities in the global North, and also in rapidly expanding urban centres in the global South (Brill, 2019; White et al, 2013). For some, the growth of private ownership represents a significant change in the governance and management of urban spaces and represents one element of the broader financialisation of urban environments (Minton, 2017).…”

Comparing the relational work of developers

“…Our cases demonstrate other and older practices of developers in negotiating their relationships with finance through local ‘spatial capital’ (Mosselson, 2019). Some have deep enough pockets to survive financial famines – such as after the 2016 European Union referendum in the UK (Brill, 2019), or the pullback of banks from development finance after the 2008 property crash in Johannesburg (Butcher, 2019). The interests of financiers can intersect in unexpected ways with the interests of state actors in urban regeneration or reconfiguring the spatial logic of city building for other use values such as affordable housing (Mosselson, 2019; Todes and Robinson, 2019).…”

“…In this collection, some of the cases exhibited instances of outsourcing in which the lead developer firm played a largely coordinating function, subcontracting work on environmental assessments, civil engineering and planning. The role of coordinator may shift during the development process (Brill, 2019) – with consultants rather than developers taking the lead at times (Ballard and Harrison, 2019; Brill, 2019). In particularly complex developments, there is a consortium rather than a single developer firm, where opaque coordination arrangements are themselves a source of power (Brill, 2019).…”

“…In 2016, researchers, developers and municipal officials gathered at an 'Urban Lab', a workshop held at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, to understand the role of the developer in the city. The workshop, and the theme issue that has resulted, was liberated from what might have been a parochial discussion by the participation of scholars investigating developers in other cities, including Manila (Mouton and Shatkin, 2019), Toronto (Leffers and Wekerle, 2019) and London (Brill, 2019). Contrasts between these contexts underscored way that these actors, their interests and their relationships are 'overdetermined' by many different embedded processes and practices (see Hall, 1980: 325).…”