Is not-London the new London? An article in CityMetric

The novelist AL Kennedy recently said that‘being out of London is the new being in London.’ Ironically we were both moving to the same place for largely the same reasons, though my exit was less newsworthy and (possibly, who knows?) more agonised.

And it seems that those we'd categorise as thinking people have to consider their reasons for leaving London. We may decry gentrification, pollution, the struggle of managing children, and the lack of proximity of everything. And, after we have emotionally and physically extracted ourselves from this ‘problem,’ we await a better life on the outside, in whatever ‘like London but without the bad bits’ location you have chosen.

Continue reading @ CityMetric.

To preserve communities, not everything should be for sale

London, if not the whole of the UK, is in the oft-noted, midst of a housing crisis. House prices and rents along with them have reached levels of absurdity, while wages either stagnate or spiral downwards for the majority. Councils are effectively banned from building social housing, even if loopholes preventing them from building are being exploited by a small number, such as Camden. 
 
The super-rich are emptying Central London, and conservation districts messed with in the name of vulgar opulence. Gentrification scatters populations ever outwards, as the takeover by artists and cultural experimenters - who unwittingly and often unwillingly inflate land values - is followed by shopping centres, developer flats, and chain stores.

What hipsters tell us about cities

Hipsters have received bad press in recent months, blamed for gentrification, poverty and a rash of beard oil shops in East London. Here I attempt to put the record straight, and ask, from the perspective of subcultural analysis, what exactly are hipsters all about, and should we be quite so mean to them?

Hipsters, subculture and the Cereal Killer Café

Anyone who lives in East London, as I used to until very recently, will be familiar with the term hipster, the (normally male) figures of the shaped hairstyle, unkempt beard, plaid shirt and tight trousers, serving coffee or being served coffee. There are variations on the theme, but that’s the stereotype. What is remarkable is the degree of hostility they attract. Hipster is a term of derision, spoken of with a curl of the lip and a roll of the eye. It is, as Michael Gosse points out in an essay called Creative Bodies: Hipsters, Clothing and Identity, a label applied by the out-group and not one adopted by the subculture.

Psychosocial relationships: William Morris, Walthamstow and gentrification

William Morris (1834-1896), noted designer and socialist, spent six years of his life, from the age of fourteen to twenty-two in what is now the William Morris Gallery in Lloyd Park, E17. Of course, many London buildings and even houses are marked by a, sometimes short, residency by famous public figures. They give culture and flavor to an area, often done as part of local area boosterism.

In Walthamstow, I would argue there is a confluence between the psychosocial spatiality of the area and the legacy of William Morris. This is, of course, much to do with the history of the house itself. The William Morris Gallery was first established in Morris's old residency in 1950, with artists Sir Frank Brangwyn and Arthur Mackmurdo donating collections to it, as well as housing many artifacts from Morris himself. From 2011 to 2012 it was substantially renovated, and as I have noted elsewhere on this blog, has become a key flagship regeneration project and influence.

Flagship urban regeneration projects aren’t the whole story

Many, though by no means all, regeneration plans have at their core a flagship development or project which aims to act as a catalyst for regeneration. Arguably local authorities have become dependent on this approach, sometimes spending millions on new developments that never have the intended effect. This article will look at the regeneration of Walthamstow in East London E17, and argue that while the flagship project is important, other ingredients are necessary to realise the potential of large-scale developments as a catalyst for change.

What makes for a resilient town?

It has been difficult in the UK to try and quantify (in a non-numerical sense) the values around which towns are built and made sustainable. A multitude of contested ideological visions or prejudices, along with the ongoing erosion of public spending, has meant that anything other than crisis management is the order of the day.

We hold up our hands at the dominance of the car, rapacious private (and expensive) house building, the growth of out of town shopping centres, the collapse of community initiative and the arts, low-paid and poor employment opportunities, and say we can do nothing to stop it.