Place-making and the London estates: land ownership and the built environment

European Urban and Regional Studies

Raco

2021

Self Cite

Writings on urban development and planning in Europe have been dominated by a combination of technical studies of the real estate sector and more structural political economy approaches on land expropriation and financialisation. In this paper we draw on the example of the London Landed Estates, to critically assess how land-owning real estate companies, that we call city-owners, perform their roles and what models and knowledge sources they draw upon in managing and carefully curating urban spaces and places. Data sources include interviews with estate managers, others involved in, or affected by, their management, and other corporate public information. Our theoretical framing draws on performativity theory that we see as a valuable addition to existing research approaches. We describe and analyse the ways these agencies construct narratives and practices of socially responsible and historically established forms of performance, that they label place stewardship, and the specific mechanisms they use to bring places into existence. Collectively, the discussion calls for an increased focus on how models abstracted from local context and politics can be ‘localised’, in the study of the governance of the built environment. Greater attention also needs to be paid to the work that place does in influencing the strategies, tactics and activities of property owners.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The London Landed Estates (Lles)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

European Urban and Regional Studies

Raco

2021

Self Cite

“…This involved the careful curation of space catering for the interests of the booming tourism industry and other consumers. In that context, measures of successful place-making included footfall, consumer spend, and mentions in international rankings appealing to hedonistic audiences on the lookout for emersion in 'unique' place-based experiences (Canelas, 2019). Placemaking has been instrumentalised to prop up cities for competition in the global market, arguably extracting value instead of creating use value in place (Mazzucato, 2018).…”

Section: Guerrilla Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guerrilla urbanism, guerrilla governance: governing neighbourhoods in ‘with-COVID’ times

Baptista

2021

Town Planning Review

“…Arguably, regulating land-use change protects uses that could be otherwise threatened by others with higher market value. Land-use planning also enables some control over the mix of uses in a neighbourhood, a critical place-making dimension considering the interdependency and synergetic potential between different uses (Beauregard 2005;Canelas 2018). The capacity to enact and implement planning regulation to manage office-to-residential conversions can thus be perceived as good governance.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hard, soft and thin governance spaces in land-use change: comparing office-to-residential conversions in England, Scotland and the Netherlands

European Planning Studies

Clifford

Ferm

et al. 2021

In recent years, converting office buildings to residential use became a high-profile issue in the UK and in the Netherlands. There has, however, been differentiation in the policy response between England and Scotland (planning policy being devolved within the UK), and the Netherlands. We conceptualize this differentiation through the lens of variegated neoliberalism in the forms of hard, soft and thin governance spaces. England, where planning deregulation is more strongly adopted, represents a thin governance space. Scotland, where there has been little policy change, illustrates a hard governance space. The Netherlands represents a soft governance space, where proactive partnerships between government and developers predominate. This paper characterizes these distinct governance spaces and explores their impact on housing delivery and place-making, and the impact of underlying ideologies and planning culture(s) in governing officeto-residential conversions in the three countries. Drawing on national government assessments and statistics, interviews with stakeholders, and case study data from three cities: Leeds, Glasgow and Rotterdam, we conclude that while both hard and soft governance spaces, to different degrees and with different merits, are environments that enable planning, thin governance spacesbeing driven more by ideology than notions of good governanceimply weak planning and place-making.