Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London PDF
Preview Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London
JAMES ROSBROOK-THOMPSON AND GARY ARMSTRONG MIXED-OCCUPANCY HOUSING IN LONDON A LIVING TAPESTRY Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology Series Editors Italo Pardo School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury, Kent, UK Giuliana B. Prato School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury, Kent, UK Half of humanity lives in towns and cities and that proportion is expected to increase in the coming decades. Society, both Western and non-W estern, is fast becoming urban and mega-urban as existing cities and a growing number of smaller towns are set on a path of demographic and spatial expansion. Given the disciplinary commitment to an empirically-based analysis, anthropology has a unique contribution to make to our understanding of our evolving urban world. It is in such a belief that we have established the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology series. In the awareness of the unique contribution that ethnography offers for a better theoretical and practical grasp of our rapidly changing and increasingly complex cities, the series will seek high-quality contributions from anthropologists and other social scientists, such as geographers, political scientists, sociologists and others, engaged in empirical research in diverse ethnographic settings. Proposed topics should set the agenda concerning new debates and chart new theoretical directions, encouraging reflection on the significance of the anthropological paradigm in urban research and its centrality to mainstream academic debates and to society more broadly. The series aims to promote critical scholarship in international anthropology. Volumes published in the series should address theoretical and methodological issues, showing the relevance of ethnographic research in understanding the socio-cultural, demographic, economic and geo-p olitical changes of contemporary society. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14573 James Rosbrook-Thompson Gary Armstrong Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London A Living Tapestry James Rosbrook-Thompson Gary Armstrong Department of Humanities College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences and Social Sciences Anglia Ruskin University Brunel University London Cambridge, UK Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology ISBN 978-3-319-74677-7 ISBN 978-3-319-74678-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74678-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932346 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover Design by Henry Petrides Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Lennie, Phoebe and Aden. We dedicate the book to your futures and hope that the cost of your contributing to life’s rich tapestry is never to suffer anything like the wholly preventable grief and tragedy of Grenfell Tower. A cknowledgements First, we would like to thank the people we cannot name: the residents of Lashall Green. They were generous with their time and tolerant of our presence and lines of questioning. We are also grateful to Hani Armstrong and Caesara Gill for their patience and understanding. They lived through and tolerated not just the writing of the book but the experiences and fieldwork routines that under- pin it. Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato have been unstinting in offering encouragement and guidance—many thanks. Thank you also to our col- leagues at Anglia Ruskin University and Brunel University, respectively, who have remained supportive and comradely during difficult and uncer- tain times. Finally, we extend gratitude to Irmani Smallwood, who read and corrected the manuscript. The many errors that remain are ours. vii c ontents 1 I ntroduction: A Living Tapestry? 1 2 Setting the Scene 25 3 Mixed Occupancy: Mixed Occupations? 55 4 Custodians of (Dis)order: The Pusher, the Publican and the Matriarch 91 5 Rubbing Along: Proximity and Understandings of Difference 121 6 Habitable Space? The Price of Gentrification 149 7 Mater Out of Place? Women, Mobility, Livelihood and Power 183 8 Conclusion: The Tapestry Unpicked? 207 References 219 Index 231 ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction: A Living Tapestry? In the summer of 1951, a national exhibition was held at venues through- out the UK. The Festival of Britain,1 as it was known, was designed to cultivate a sense of national recovery in the aftermath of the Second World War. Integral to this was the showcasing of key British contributions to science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. One of the exhibits was a newly built housing estate in Poplar, east London. The estate was named after the former MP for Bow and Bromley (and former leader of the Labour Party), George Lansbury, who was popular locally because of his campaigns for social justice.2 Its design was described by the American sociologist Lewis Mumford as ‘based not solely on abstract a esthetic principles, or on the economics of commercial construction, or on the techniques of mass production, but on the social constitution of the community itself, with its diversity of human interests and human needs’ (quoted in Blanton 2016: 21). Others concurred, seeing the estate as successfully avoiding the design flaws of public housing constructed elsewhere in the interwar period, collectively dubbed ‘tenement town’ (Hanley 2007).3 The Lansbury was lauded as the finest example yet of what Minister for Health, Aneurin Bevan, had called ‘the living tapestry of a mixed community’ (quoted in Goodchild 2008: 85), with solidly built dwellings of different sizes existing alongside vibrant street markets and transport nodes. There were no special requirements for living on the estate, but it came to be dominated by the area’s local working-class © The Author(s) 2018 1 J. Rosbrook-Thompson, G. Armstrong, Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74678-4_1 2 J. ROSBROOK-THOMPSON AND G. ARMSTRONG p opulation; 90 per cent of the estate’s principal wage earners had manual jobs, while 28 per cent had found employment on the East End’s docks or in ancillary trades (Ravetz 2001). In this context the term ‘mixed’ was addressed more to the function of the estate than the demographic characteristics of its residents; the Lansbury’s design took careful account of residents’ access to schools, retail outlets, transport hubs and places of worship. However, in contem- porary London many estates are more mixed in terms of social class, eth- nicity, nationality and age than they are in terms of function. It is important to note that the diversification of such estates along demographic lines has had little to do with the political logic espoused by Bevan, which sought to reorder the national landscape according to the egalitarian principles that typified the Labour government of the day. Times change but housing remains a political issue. Thirty years after the Festival of Britain, in pursuit of what Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (following Conservative party icons like Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan) termed a ‘property-owning democracy’, new government legislation gave council tenants the statutory right to purchase their homes from local authorities. This had far-reaching conse- quences for the social complexion of Britain’s housing estates. Critics have laid the blame for Britain’s current shortage of affordable housing at the door of ‘Right to Buy’, seeing in the policy all that is wrong with the neo- liberal ideology promoted by Thatcherism (Foster 2015). Indeed, it is interesting that in qualifying the remark so often taken to encapsulate her creed of individual responsibility, Thatcher (speaking in 1987) reached for the same phrase that Bevan had used back in the 1950s: There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. (Quoted in Seawright 2010: 36) While it would be unfair to identify the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme exclu- sively with the Conservative government under whose auspices it was passed—cross-party support for the scheme is underplayed by many com- mentators (Hanley 2007)—its elevation to a national level was a bold move. In line with Margaret Thatcher’s Hayekian endorsement of
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