Painted Bullet Holes and Broken Promises: Understanding and Challenging Municipal Dispossession in London's Public Housing ‘Decanting’

Abstract

InTernATIonAl JournAl of urbAn And regIonAl reseArch publIshed by John WIley & sons lTd on behAlf of urbAn reseArch publIcATIons lImITed This article has taken many years to write as I've reflected on a time of intense activism and research, in part as a co-investigator on the Antipode Activist-Scholar Award 2012 Challenging 'the New Urban Renewal', with Loretta Lees, the London Tenants Federation and Just Space. I am much indebted to all. I am also truly grateful to all those who have accompanied me from the first to final drafts. Special thanks go to

Fear and loathing in north London: Experiencing estate regeneration as psychosocial degeneration

“…Therefore, this article focuses on the long-term processual nature of estate regeneration via demolition and rebuilding, a process which involves overlapping strands of physical, social and psychosocial deterioration (see inter alia Davidson et al, 2013; Ferreri, 2020; Gosling, 2008; Morris, 2019; Wallace, 2015). Watt (2021, p. 263) has conceptualised this deterioration as degeneration : ‘regeneration’s demonic alter ego in the form of financial disinvestment in those areas and their accelerated physical, social and symbolic deterioration over and above any original problems they might have’.…”

Prekäre Wohnverhältnisse und wohnungspolitische Kämpfe

“…• die kooperative Entwicklung von Fragestellungen zusammen mit au ßeruniversitären Akteuren (Abschnitt 1), (3) zu Herausforderungen politischer Mobilisierung und Organisierung von Mieter*innen (Genz 2020;Hurlin et al 2021; Polanska/Rolf/Spring feldt 2021; Steenblock/Petzold 2021) -also etwa dazu, wie es gelingen kann, dass auch marginalisierte Gruppen, die am unmittelbarsten von Wohnungsnot, Verdrängung und steigenden Mieten betroffen sind, ihre Interessen kollektiv artikulieren (Ferreri 2020; Künstler/Schipper 2021) -oder (4) zur Reflexion der Wirkmächtigkeit politischer Interventionen -al so der Frage, inwiefern Bleibestrategien, die auf konflikthafte Aus hand lungs prozesse mit der Vermieterseite abzielen, Verdrängung ver hin dern kön nen (Vollmer 2018) oder wie es für eine soziale Bewe gung möglich ist, "von unten" Einfluss auf wohnungspolitische Ent schei dungs pro zesse zu gewin nen (Schipper 2018).…”

Against neoliberal domicide

“…As Penny notes, Safe as Houses is less an academic book and more a political intervention that stems from over a decade of Participatory Action Research (PAR). During this time, I worked with residential communities in their everyday practices of ‘accountability from below’ (see Ferreri, 2020) to co-produce empowering knowledge about housing regeneration schemes and residents’ lived experiences. In taking this activist scholarship stance, I owe an enormous intellectual debt to those geographers who have created space for radical academic praxis, especially the late and desperately missed British academic, Duncan Fuller (1972–2008), who encouraged, inspired, and resourced countless academics like me to ‘transform, in emancipatory and empowering terms, social relations’ (Fuller and Kitchin, 2004: 6).…”