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.
When I first moved to Walthamstow in 2009,
I naturally began to look at the locale through the lens of the regeneration
expert. What was Walthamstow like back then? Walthamstow Village was widely
regarded as the only affluent enclave. It was typical of its kind. Fairly close
to the underground at Walthamstow Central, it was nevertheless tucked away
behind the natural boundary of Hoe Street. It could be accessed via a
ten-minute walk from the Centre, or via the steps downwards in St Mary Road up
through the narrow alleyway by the Vestry House Museum.
The Village is secluded with narrow, windy
streets. It is known as a ‘shooting ducks' mugging spot, a situation not aided
by the mini-Holland scheme which has added to the sense of the local being
walled in. Nevertheless, much like areas such as Highgate and West Dulwich, it
had been a place of established affluence since the 1980s and 1990s. It has
larger housing than the rest of E17, and Orford Road was one of the first
places where gentrified restaurants and cafes emerged. The Village also has
long-standing community representation and organisation. Geographical boundaries,
larger scale housing and community organisation tend to be the usual
ingredients of organic gentrification.
Lloyd Park, on the other hand, was a bit of
a neglected spot. It was an area with smaller housing, a unique and well-used
but unmodernised park, and street upon street of Warner flats and houses, much
of which was still social housing. Towards the edge of the park, facing the
congested Forest Road was the William Morris Gallery. Quaint and rustic, and a
Grade II listed building, it was so loved by the residents that they campaigned
for its retention and improvement after cuts to its budget in 2007 by Waltham
Forest Council. Nevertheless, it sat empty and a little unused for much of the
time.
The William Morris Gallery then received
£1.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, an amount matched by the Council’s
£2.3 million and the Friends of William Morris Gallery’s £1 million. Monies
were also dedicated by Waltham Forest to renovate Lloyd Park, and it all
reopened in 2012. The gallery was painted internally and painstakingly restored
with new multi-media exhibits. A café was built to the side of the building.
Lloyd Park was also renovated, with an adventure playground, café and artist's
studies (though fewer and more expensive than before).
There was
a catalyst effect. The following year, the Bell pub, which sits on the corner
of Hoe Street and Forest Road, was renovated and opened as a gastro pub, though
with a slightly cooler chic. Then Bygga Bo, a Scandinavian café, opened a few
doors down the road (now it's closing and the owners escaping to Brighton, but
it is to be replaced by another ‘hipster’ café). Then the Wynwood café opened,
similarly offering good coffee and food.
After a wobble, the newly built park café
was taken over by La Delice in 2015, and for the first time had a professional
operation, good coffee and good food. This was not the only catalyst effect.
House prices began to escalate in a crazy way, particularly from 2014. The
Warner flats, which, when restored in North London style (wooden floors, white
walls, shabby retro furniture), were Victorian/Edwardian railway style two-bed
apartments, ripe for a newly imagined lifestyle. These increased in price from
around £180k in 2009 to around £450k in 2016. Now Hoe Street has an Italian
deli and a craft beer emporium. And so it goes. There will be more.
So flagship projects can deliver
regeneration (and gentrification). What is the theory behind them?
Their popularity and spread lay in the
historic shift from state-sponsored redistribution of the post-war era to
letting the markets rule from the 1980s. In the urban context, it meant that
keeping cities together was no longer the function of the state, but had to
rely on levering in private capital and creating the preconditions for secure
investment. Security is more imagined that real, however, and in many ways,
flagship regeneration projects are a big confidence trick…a confidence trick
that nevertheless sometimes work. And sometimes they make cities more exciting
places than were on offer in the dour 1970s.
Balancing organic regeneration and flagship
developments is a terse problem and something that councils often don't get
right. Take the example of the William Morris Gallery - how did this work as a
flagship development? Firstly, it was odd to see something so elegant and
beautifully restored right in the heart of Walthamstow. It both awarded the
area cultural capital and, by increasing footfall, set the preconditions for
secure investment. It made the area a known and talked about place in the
national media. It looks exciting and happening, an area worthy of gentrifier
investment. The place to be, as
opposed to “ugh, Walthamstow...” and it’s associations with poverty, the dog
track and the north circular.
Imagining, however, that flagship
developments always deliver these kinds of results, misses the bigger
picture. Underpinning the regeneration
of Walthamstow, and the Lloyd Park area, in particular, were the following
elements:
·
An increasingly middle-class
population who enacted the usual mechanisms associated with social capital,
that is;
·
Strong community activism,
which creates both a sense of guardianship and creative energy, facilitated by
social media;
·
William Morris as a figurehead
of creative design and socialism – the lure of East London political ideology;
·
A baby boom, meaning the
presence of mum or parents in the park and on the street. This facilitated both
consumption and security. Think about Jane Jacob's argument that, for local
businesses to thrive, it needs more than two social groups providing foot
traffic, and at different times. Parents were the added factor, alongside local
workers and residents.
·
The Lloyd Park Children’s
Centre, nestled in the Park and benefitting from the expansion of Sure Start
(and bringing families from different social groups together), spearheaded
adventure playing for the new generation, which has been the cutting-edge child development philosophy in recent years
(think risky play, forest schools, and so on).
·
A physical geography of
township – Walthamstow is a place, a destination, not just a through road.
·
Hoe Street (5 minutes away from
the Gallery), while very congested, has a physically attractive curve with a
parade of old Victorian buildings in which the shops are housed. Still home to
far too many takeaways and men's cafes perhaps, it now also has a gift shop and
an Italian deli, after the William Morris Ward's Big Local paid for shop signs
to be renovated from neon to painted ones.
·
The Gallery and park are
well-maintained and staffed, in accordance with the ideas of the ‘broken
windows theory,' leading to a sense of security.
So, what can we conclude from this? Flagship
developments play an important role in creating cultural capital and secure
investment structures in the neoliberal city, but they are not the only
precondition for regeneration. Placemaking and regeneration involve people, and
moreover, people who are involved.
Facilitating organic creative innovation is critical, and democracy delivers
change. Managing the necessary elements of security is important, delivered in
a non-intrusive way. Moreover, seeding money to assist organic development
(like painted shop signs) should be offered alongside showcase projects.
Lloyd Park is a success story of
regeneration, delivered with (eventually) little criticism of its benefits.
That gentrification has also occurred, inflating house prices is partly a
product of those improvements, but has much to do with the London property
market. Individual Council's have little room to maneuver in the face of the
vagaries of the property investment in London.
Any council looking to improve their
locales may want to take note of Walthamstow as a case study. Flagship
developments are critical, but they aren't the whole story.
No comments:
Post a Comment