Navigating the Complexities of Council Estate Regeneration
Alessandro Busà and Loretta Lees
Contrast between old and new housing blocks at Woodberry Down. Image © 2022 Alessandro Busà
The redevelopment of Woodberry Down, one of the largest council estates in London, has been the subject of intense debate: touted in regeneration circles as a success story, critics have labeled it as yet another example of the pervasive state-led gentrification of London council housing. As we delved into the multifaceted story of Woodberry Down, we have uncovered a nuanced tapestry of victories and losses, forcing us to grapple with the question: is Woodberry Down an example of successful regeneration or is it yet just another casualty of “state-led gentrification”?
At a moment in which the UK’s Labour party heralds a future “boost to affordable, social and council housing” (should they return to government), and the newly re-elected London Mayor boasts of a “new golden era in council home building,” we situated our findings not only in relation to previous research on the redevelopment of council estates, but also in the context of this seeming policy turn back to promoting council housing provision and the refurbishment, rather than demolition and redevelopment, of estates.
Gentrification scholars have long highlighted how the state-led redevelopments of council estates across the UK (and in London more aggressively) have come at a high social cost for longstanding residents, unleashing waves of displacement of council tenants, leaseholders, and private tenants, disrupting communities, families and individual lives. Woodberry Down is being redeveloped using a project-based self-financing strategy in which the site is leased to a private developer and the original blocks are demolished to make way for a new and denser development, with the sale of the brand new market-rate units being used to cross-subsidize the re-provision of social housing.
What we found is that Woodberry Down has experienced many of the negative outcomes that have been common to other estate redevelopments across London: indeed, no new social housing units have been built, instead the development will eventually result in a net loss of around 200 social units as compared to pre-regeneration numbers; secure council tenants are moving to housing association tenures, which do not offer the same securities as council tenures; leaseholders have been displaced because the compensations offered for their leasehold properties can’t cover even a fraction of a new shared-ownership unit in the new development. Disruptions within the social fabric of the community are apparent even in the absence of physical displacement, as relocations in the new blocks, along with a massive increase in population density (with an expected 5,584 dwellings in an estate that was once home to around 2,000 households) are taking their toll on neighborly ties in the community. As a result, Woodberry Down today feels like a disjointed neighborhood, where new affluent homebuyers and low-income social tenants live side by side.
Yet, the story of Woodberry Down is far from black and white. Amidst the challenges, many glimpses of success have emerged. Throughout the regeneration process, the Woodberry Down Community Organization (WDCO) has played a crucial role in advocating for the rights of residents, steering the redevelopment towards a more positive trajectory: the most notable success has been the implementation of a "Right to Return" policy which is ensuring that secure council tenants have a guarantee to relocate in new homes of a similar size within the redeveloped neighborhood. Because of this policy, unlike in many other council estate redevelopment projects across London, the vast majority of council tenants in the estate have been able to remain in their neighborhood so far. More recently, a groundbreaking “Split Household Policy” has been secured, allowing adult children who have resided in the estate for a minimum of 10 years to be offered a suitable home for themselves on the estate. Increased investment in the area has also brought about new opportunities: due to the development partners' coordinated efforts, new services have been introduced, including a large multipurpose community centre, the renovation of the youth club, and the delivery of job training and job offers for locals. Importantly, the partnership between developer Berkeley Homes, Thames Water and the London Wildlife Trust has facilitated the reopening, in 2016, of the adjacent Woodberry Wetlands, whose preservation the council tenants had long fought for, and which has brought significant environmental and social benefits to the entire community.
Amidst losses and victories, there exist shades of gray and lingering ambiguities. Our interviews with new homeowners and tenants at Woodberry Down have uncovered new patterns that have been absent in London’s council estate regeneration literature to date. We encountered senior residents who have decided to downsize and move to Woodberry Down in order to set aside money for retirement. But probably even more interesting, we found accounts of the many challenges faced by the “Generation Rent” cohort, including adult children of homebuyer families who are opting to cohabit with their parents because of the unaffordability of rents across London, and of multiple private renters sharing 1 and 2 bedroom flats because of the exorbitant rents in Woodberry Down. These “Guppies” (giving up on property) and precarious private renters, with some occasionally revealing a hint of envy towards the ex-council tenant’s tenures that they will never be able to access, are not the wealthy gentrifiers of the traditional gentrification literature.
Woodberry Down's regeneration is an ongoing process (now planned to be completed in 2040), making it premature to label it as a regeneration success or failure. Despite the efforts to mitigate displacement, gentrification is indeed occurring in Woodberry Down, with a population of new private residents which will soon more than double the size of the pre-existing community.
Despite the seeming policy turn back to promoting council housing, the threat of gentrification and displacement still looms large over London council estates, as demolitions and new schemes continue to shape and re-shape the urban landscape, leaving absolutely no guarantees for the future. However, by learning from the experiences collected in Woodberry Down, we shed light on the essential role that the individual and collective agency of residents can play in ensuring community empowerment and “survivability” in the midst of the upheaval of council estate redevelopment. Woodberry Down stands as a testament to both the possibilities and challenges of estate regeneration, and we stress the need to continue to learn from residents in our search for more fair approaches to urban regeneration.
Alessandro Busà held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellowship at the University of Leicester 2020–2023. His research project “SUSTEUS” explores the socio-economic impact of environmentally sustainable redevelopment plans on social housing estates in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Recent publications include “Renovation without renoviction: the green redevelopment of a municipal housing estate in Drewitz, Germany” in Housing Studies. He holds a PhD in Theory of Urban Planning from the Technical University of Berlin.
Loretta Lees is Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University. Her research focuses on urban regeneration, gentrification, urban policy, architecture, and urban public space. Current projects include developing an antidisplacement toolkit for a US city. Recent publications include “The ALTERNATIVE Good Practice Guide to Estate Regeneration” and “Defensible Space: mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice,” RGS-IBG Book Series, Wiley. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Edinburgh.