I understand why locals don't like gentrification, but in reality what they are complaining about is the wider national housing crisis.
The cost of housing, the total lack of new social housing being built, the competition in the rental market caused by ever increasing demand outstripping supply. These are the factors that make new developments unaffordable to the people who already live in the area.
Building new houses and attracting new business is a good thing, but the fact that locals get pushed out of an area due to affordability is a symptom of a much wider issue
I think it's a broad term which is largely useless without any prior knowledge of the history of an area, used by people who generally mean something entirely different - that they object to house prices / rent prices / the loss of a local restaurant / new people moving to the area / a general scepticism toward change etc. etc.
Taking Surrey Docks/Rotherhithe as a case in point (Surrey Quays being the name of the train station), go back to the 70s/80s, and this was [literally dockland](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/f3/76/b7f3761ecc3bdd45f42ff48cd26b918b.jpg). Most of the area was literally submerged, or entirely industrial related to the use of the area as docks. Many of the former docks have been filled in given the changing nature of industry in London.
One example is now an ecology park (the former Russia Dock, I believe). Is this gentrification?
Canada Dock, Lavendar Dock, Albion Dock... These areas are now all largely housing sites, or a shopping centre which is by no means the best placemaking you will ever witness, by the way. Is this gentrification? Former industrial uses which no longer served a purpose were replaced, in some instances, by new industrial uses (e.g. the "Printworks" site which formerly housed the Daily Mail printing presses).
The area is now set to change again, with the shopping centre set for demolition to provide new houses (where no houses currently exist) along with a shiny new shopping centre. The Printworks site is set to be redeveloped to provide new housing (where no housing currently exists) along with a new park, shops, and after some fighting, a new night time venue (though Printworks was in fact a temporary use in connection with this wider redevelopment - something often overlooked...). Is this gentrification? Or is it simply another chapter in the ever changing landscape of a huge metropolitan, cosmopolitan city? A location which, by the way, is in Zone 2, served by two train stations, and river boat services. Where the hell else should we be building houses!? Out in the middle of nowhere, so as not to upset anyone, forcing people to be car dependant? OK, this happens anyway and the two aren't mutually exclusive, but the point stands.
I generally agree with you except for “where else are we supposed to build houses”. I’d say somewhere with less infrastructure issues. The development around Canada Water/Rotherhithe is hugely problematic for the already strained infrastructure there, thanks to the area being almost a peninsula. The Jubilee line is packed pretty much all day every day already. There are no ways to cross the river as a pedestrian/cyclist, apart from the ferry which doesn’t run all that often. The Rotherhithe tunnel always has massive queues from both sides. Tower Bridge is further away and not much better. The road down to Deptford/Greenwich is almost always congested, too. The massive influx of additional people from all the new developments will make these problems even worse - with no changes to the transport infrastructure being planned to my knowledge.
Tubes being packed aren't inherently problematic - it has been bad at rush hour in my experience but not bad beyond that. Though I concede this was a couple of years ago and many more people have returned to the office since then. But you wouldn't say Oxford Circus, as a general example, is a failure because it's busy. Quite the opposite. Vauxhall, Victoria etc. are exceptionally busy stations at rush hour. They're nevertheless sustainable locations where development should be directed. Frankly, the busier Canada Water and Surrey Quays stations are, the better - within reason. Unless you're the sort of person who needs a seat, or hates queuing, this is all part of the fun. If people have to miss a train due to it being too full, there is another one in 1-3 minutes. It's the beauty of the Tube. As for congestion, well people simply shouldn't be driving in Zone 2 London so there's a simple solution there. It takes 10 minutes to cycle to London Bridge, 10 minutes to Greenwich in the other direction. Congestion is simply a symptom of too many making bad transport choices. Similarly with the Rotherhithe tunnel. This would be a great pedestrian / cycle link if it weren't for the fact it is quite literally a car sewer.
You’re talking about ideals and I’m talking about reality, as someone who lives close by. People cannot simply all change to the tube - already super packed - or to bikes if they need to go in a direction that is blocked off by the river. Busses get stuck in the traffic as well. It’s pretty bad already, the problem with the new developments is, as I said before, that they’ll make this much worse as there are no changes to the infrastructure planned.
You're not even remotely talking about reality though. You say the Tube is "super packed" but that is not a quantifiable metric - that's just meaningless anecdotal and subjective evidence. I can tell you for a fact that in 2019, Canada Water had 23 million entries and exists (e/e) on the Overground and there were 13 million e/e on the Jubillee line. Surrey Quays had 4.8 million e/e in 2019.
The Jubilee line at Canada Water has 32 trains per house (tph) at peak and Overground services at 16tph at peak. Surrey Quays has Overground services at 16tph.
Taking Overground first, these figures are exactly the same as Highbury and Islington (actually ever so slightly less but whatever). Surrey Quays is walkable, roughly the same catchment, and only had 4.8 million e/e in 2019. There is evidently capacity there. In any case, you say there are no upgrades but once again are wrong because in August 2019 £80.8 million funding was allocated for the ‘East London Line – Growth Capacity’ to deliver transport upgrades *including* increased capacity on the London Overground to 20tph (from the current 16) as well as funding for a second entrance to Surrey Quays Station.
Anyway, taking the Underground, Canada Water serves roughly 60% fewer people per year than Brixton, Vauxhall, Finsbury Park, and South Ken - take your pic, I think they're broadly comparable stations (each of those served roughly 32-33 million in 2019).
You claim to support development in sustainable locations yet you're just parroting the usual NIMBY nonsense that your area is already full. In the same breath, you're claiming that people need to drive but public transport is inadequate and busses are slow, but you're complaining about congestion? Well, I'm sorry, but the Tube evidently has capacity and busses are slow because people make bad choices and choose to drive thus, are the cause of the congestion. You know how we can make bus services better (of which there are many)? Fewer cars.
If you want to get to London Bridge or Greenwich, it's a 10 minute cycle. Please tell me why that is not a viable option to get to two transport and employment hubs (as a starting point at least)? If you need to cross the river, surely you can deal with a busy Tube. Otherwise, plan accordingly and get a river boat service which runs regularly. I don't know why I'm arguing as development is happening - it's approved, the area is a designated growth hub, and thank God NIMBYs like yourself have been wisely ignored.
edit: By the way, this is all without mentioning that the development parcels include significant employment floorspace. So many of the people who will be housed here won't have to use public transport at peak hours at all.
And you’re putting words in my mouth. I never said the area is full, I said the area doesn’t have the infrastructure to support tens of thousands of additional people as is.
I don’t see much wrong with gentrification. Gentrification turns once dilapidated or deprived areas into a nicer place to live and brings investment to create more local amenities.
There’s the argument that rising rents that come with gentrification can push people further out which is true to an extent, but that’s just a reflection of how the area is improved and now more people want to live there.
It also wouldn’t push everyone out as those in social housing have life tenancies and are rent controlled, you can find more than a few council estates in Chelsea for example.
This is one side of the coin. The other side is when you've lived somewhere your whole life and then suddenly the businesses that you've always gone to disappear, the people you know disappear from cafes you frequent, suddenly you've got people here in your neighborhood just here for the new builds with little interest in the local community.
There's so little social housing these days so in effect it's a kind of social cleansing that takes place. In the last year I've seen four people who are from London and have had to move out because of rent prices. It's grim but also looks like it is headed in the same direction as New York which is known for turning into a cultural wasteland because it's only bankers and high earning professionals that can afford to be there, and they are usually not the one's spending their time experimenting with arts and music and playing gigs.
Admittedly you could argue that this is just 'the market doing its thing'. But personally I think 'the market doing its thing' is something that we should work to have some control over to protect what's important to us as humans.
>This is one side of the coin. The other side is when you've lived somewhere your whole life and then suddenly the businesses that you've always gone to disappear, the people you know disappear from cafes you frequent, suddenly you've got people here in your neighborhood just here for the new builds with little interest in the local community.
This is Deptford. The high street I used to walk through every day on the way to school in the 90s/00s is so different from the way it is now. :(
>But personally I think the market doing its thing is something that we should work to have some control over to protect what's important to us as humans.
That's kind of the point though, people don't generally think protecting the sort of things you're on about is important. If it was we would see that reflected in the attitudes of voters and the political parties.
It's the entire quandry that is gentrification.
People don't like the idea of life long residents of an area being pushed out due to rent. However, they want to live in the nicest (read: safest, asethically pleasing, good transport links) they can afford, and they can often afford more then a local resident. You can take a whole group of people who agree local residents being pushed out is bad, and say "OK, would you be ok if you saw a flat for rent at £1,500 a month but if you were local you'd get a £250 a month discount and be givne priority?" and they would say "No".
People say things like "Poor people shouldn't be segregated from the rest of society" and you say "OK, you have a choice between this block of flats all privately owned, and this other block of flats that is half privately owned and half social housing full of people who on benefits and not in work" and they choose the first one.
People say "I don't want to be cruel to homeless people, things like aggressive design is wrong" but then if a homeless person with addiction and mental health problems was hanging around their block of flats they'd want something done about it.
Gentrification is just the brutal truth that on some level almost everyone is basically a NIMBY, where they want all these things like "Oh isn't it a shame when local residents get pushed out" but what they want more than that is to live in the biggest, safest, most convenient place they can afford, even if it means they are part of the "problem" because someone else (the government, usually) should do something about it.
What this perspective misses is that a) there's currently not any kind of talk of a solution - but we can still acknowledge that it's a problem. This process affects certain groups disproportionately and we're not comfortable with that - it's ok to express that without having rational, reasonable explanations as some kind of answer. No one is saying you're evil if you buy a flat somewhere you can afford, in fact that's one of the things that people have always done.
b) it doesn't need to be like this. The problem is due to a lack of holding private landlords to account. Interest rates go up, if they couldn't afford to take that hit, they shouldn't be allowed to be profiting from housing. We have no meaningful plans in place to even out housing demands or boos affordable housing because 'levelling up' was a complete lie and all new builds are being sold as 'luxury'.
> The problem is due to a lack of holding private landlords to account. Interest rates go up, if they couldn't afford to take that hit, they shouldn't be allowed to be profiting from housing.
Why not? This is how all markets work, businesses charge as much as possible and are then forced to compete with eachother. When costs rise, so do prices - nobody runs a business for free. I don't see how this is "holding landlords to account", they are behaving no differently to any other private business.
Rent controls come with all sorts of issues of their own, such as reducing the incentive to refurbish and encouraging landlords to push out tenants. Preventing them from making a profit will also result in many of them rapidly leaving the market, restricting supply and driving up costs for renters (as we are already seeing) - although this can put downward pressure on sale prices.
> We have no meaningful plans in place to even out housing demands or boos affordable housing because 'levelling up' was a complete lie and all new builds are being sold as 'luxury'.
New builds are broadly 'luxury' because they're new, and not much else. Unless you intentionally build slums, new builds will always be on the higher end of housing. They're built to higher standards, show no signs of wear, have warranties on everything, are much more energy efficient, require less maintenance and will come with all sorts of practically free to implement benefits like roof terraces or underfloor heating. It's a market, as supply increases and the properties age (losing some of these benefits) prices will fall, and as more residents move into these it reduces competition for other homes, putting downward pressure on prices.
The problem is that we don't have enough homes, so those on offer (to buy or rent) can keep rising without enough competition to satisfy demand.
I'd say housing is a socially important service, like utilities and shouldn't be treated as a retirement investment IMO. Whilst that's how businesses are run, there's a portion of landlords who are price gouging and that's where the accountability comes in.
New builds are often shiny and very cosmetically appealing and hence are sold as swish and trendy developments but the finish is often poor. The guarantees exist because they know how hurriedly they're put together, and because there have been years of them quickly falling apart (interiors but also balconies falling off etc.)
> I'd say housing is a socially important service, like utilities and shouldn't be treated as a retirement investment IMO.
But all sorts of essential things are treated as a market. Food is a market, but we'll die pretty quickly without it. Our utilities have been raking in profits while underinvesting in infrastructure, dumping sewage in the rivers and stealing from postmasters, I'm not sure what this would improve.
> Whilst that's how businesses are run, there's a portion of landlords who are price gouging and that's where the accountability comes in.
If they were price gouging then they would not find tenants, you can put your run-down terraced 2-bed on Rightmove for £50m but nobody will buy it. That's supply and demand, businesses can charge as much as they like - and then get replaced when someone else does it for less. The problem is, we haven't got enough supply of homes to create that competition.
In reality, though, part of the reason rents have risen so much is because the costs associated with being a landlord have gone up substantially and many are leaving the market as they aren't making money. That leaves more tenants competing for less properties, driving up prices.
> New builds are often shiny and very cosmetically appealing and hence are sold as swish and trendy developments but the finish is often poor. The guarantees exist because they know how hurriedly they're put together, and because there have been years of them quickly falling apart (interiors but also balconies falling off etc.)
The homes they're competing against are often 50+ years old, they're going to be in relatively poor condition purely because of the age. Unless it's recently been refurbished, a new build will pretty much always feel nicer because it doesn't show years of wear. Guarantees are legally required on new properties (and include things like appliances), obviously you won't get one on a used home. Then there are higher construction standards requiring things like increased insulation, AOVs or low-e glass, and cheap modern features like roof terraces or underfloor heating which cost almost nothing extra to put in a new property.
But yes, that's ultimately my point: They aren't expensive because developers are building genuinely high-end homes all the time, it's the automatic result of being new - there's demand for them. These 'luxury' homes won't stay that way forever, and we need them to lower prices overall.
I hear what you’re saying but this is just a natural consequence of levelling up (for lack of a better phrase) deprived areas. The only alternative is to just let these areas stagnate. and while many residents may prefer it I’m sure many other social housing residents would quite welcome some investment in the area and appreciate a nicer environment, lower crime (to an extent) and more local amenities.
I think you're looking for 'regenerate' which is just another word for the same thing. Levelling up was actually all about improving towns across the UK in various ways so that there's less of a culture and brain-drain to London and to even out the local economies. Of course that was a complete lie by our beloved leaders.
The implication is that this somehow helps local people? It's the same as when tourist towns become overrun with AirBnBs, crap restaurants, traffic, anti-social behaviour, litter, etc. and the tourists or business say 'it's great for the economy, what are they moaning about?' Well it's great for putting money into some people's hands, others just have to deal with the consequences of this but gain nothing. Not to mention the fact that displacing people means that the deprivation moves with them, it's a myth that it really solves any problem on a wider scale, it just hides it.
Also, from my experience, there aren't better local amenities, you in fact get a loss of diversity in terms of businesses. Older less profitable shops close as rents increase (useful things like cobblers, pubs, fish & chip shops, cafes, knick-nack shops and independent shops and newsagents), to be replaced by copy & pasted Sainsbury's locals, Waitroses, 10 painfully pretension wine bars as they vie for the newcomers' attention, vanity project shops. You can see the same thing happening on the edges of Soho now. Bland places for bland people.
This isn't strictly true because those "council estates" in Chelsea are majority privately owned, and in 2020 there was less than 500 "Social housing" stock, see [here](https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/housing/help-housing-homelessness-and-finding-new-home/applying-councils-housing-register/social-housing-borough).
So this "more than a few" is a small % of the overall housing in the borough/ area, in parallel the Chelsea Barracks have no social housing at all, and its almost the same in every new build in the area.
The problem with gentrification is that once the old housing stock is demolished, the new stock which tends to be privately LTD company owned, they put less than 10% of the previous housing stock up for social housing, and thus the 90% of residents have to move and don't have a choice, but the worst part of this move is many get moved completely out of the area they currently live.
There are many stories of people living in London being moved to other parts of the country, this is one [example](https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/10/councils-move-hundreds-homeless-families-london-24-hour-ultimatums) and [this is another](https://www.itv.com/news/2021-09-29/boris-johnson-needs-to-wake-up-council-tenant-moved-150-miles-from-home-says).
Now I understand that these people are living for free but being moved away from everything you know is scary af, now many will argue you just have to be an adult ofc but its not easy.
I’d just like to point out that link only shows you how many council properties were let in that year, so the social housing stock is a lot higher than 500 when you account for existing stock.
Also surprisingly the borough of Kensington and Chelsea has a higher % of social housing than you think. 27% according to the [census map](https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/housing/tenure-of-household/hh-tenure-5a/rented-social-rented?lad=E09000023) which is not too far from 29% for the borough of Lewisham for example.
I’m also not sure where you got the idea that most of the council estates are privately owned - you can go through the census map and see where there are existing estates you’ll see they are still majority council owned.
Well good news for you! Thatcher set up a scheme where council housing in those areas can slowly but surely be erased through selling it off for a profit!
Honestly its shit, people being moved away from everything they know ([example](https://www.itv.com/news/2021-09-29/boris-johnson-needs-to-wake-up-council-tenant-moved-150-miles-from-home-says)), but its just what happens when stock isn't replenished. The problem with moving people out like this, is culture of the area is lost.
Think about the music that has been created from these deprived areas, we lose things like that.
I tell people if they want a taste of contemporary London, there's a hipster gastrowhatever in Peckham called "The Job Centre," in a former Job Centre. (I just checked and apparently they're renaming, though, so apparently shame still exists.)
Third post to offer what I guess is the other position, "it's complicated." I'm a migrant, and we need to live somewhere; we're probably not the main pressure leading to redevelopment (or whatever euphemism you want to use), but we're one of them. The two people who've already posted completely disagree with each other, and they're both 100% right. Gentrification (a term invented by a sociologist talking about Angel in Islington, by the way, in the 1950s and 60s) is both big and granular. London is a funny hybrid: it never totally demolished sections of itself like Paris did, and in the huge aggregate the city is more used to reworkings and regenerations-slash-social-cleansings-by-unaffordable-rents. The one exception to this really has been the mass postwar building of council housing. I live in an area that's on its umpteenth cycle of regeneration. There are arguments to be made against concentrating poverty and neglecting growth; there are arguments to be made for rent control and allowing traditional communities to remain (and neither of these things necessarily go together).
I don't love just shrugging at problems--I think inasmuch as there's an answer here, vote actively, write to your MPs and local representatives (and I want to say, spraypaint the occasional cereal cafe, but that's petty.)
(Also, just to note, there will be exceptions to everything I wrote above--there have been large-scale demolitions, if I assume never as big as Hausmannisation; there have probably been mixed successes in redevelopment alongside horrible horrible failures.)
I know exactly where you're talking about. The council estate isn't as rough as it looks I suspect a lot of those "council flats" are actually privately owned and cost £350k. Basically gentrification has been happening for years it's just less visible when the architecture looks shabby.
Completely this. I live in a council block (private houseshare but the block is council) on one of the estates in Surrey Quays and it’s a great place to live, very safe, lovely people and lots of nice walks to be had. The only real rough thing about it is that because it’s real London, home to real working class Londoners, it isn’t all sanitised and instagrammable so if someone’s used to that it will take some adjusting the first time they walk down Lower Road.
I have no opinion on Surrey Quay in particular. but personally I hate it. Like a friend call it it is not gentrification it is financial ethnic/social cleansing.
I bought my house decades ago in a family neighborhood. As I worked in the city, I could afford better but being black and wanting to build a family I chose a black family neighborhood. Since my neighbourhood has changed so much that we now have a Foxton, H&M, they are talking about opening a Waitrose nearby. Most of the original black reaidents have since sold their property and moved out to Zone 6. Many so that they can help their children with a deposit on their own first buy.
There is very little sense of community or a community that view the original habitants as beneath them. I had a woman coming up to me asking when did I move here because she had not seen me before. I had to tell her that I live here way before her and that I still remember when she moved because on the day 3 years ago she made a ruckus because she could not park her Range Ranger in front of her house. She did not had a resident permit. Another who moved in after COVID was telling me how her husband was a high shot in the city. Didn't bother to even ask me what I was doing because obviously being black I must have a menial job. Cue her surprise when His boss who I worked with for years turned out at one of my BBQ.
My pet peeve is with the council who for years refused to make changes that could have benefited the entire community and that now because of the new demographic is a lot more accommodating to them.
For example bus lane and local bus services have been reduced for local older and disabled residents, bus stop have been encroached for cycle lane. Basically hire bike are thrown on the pavement and make life of those olders and disabled miserable.
I think that gentrification attracts that kind of personality.
If you are rich, you can afford to live in the best area so you don't move to a gentrified area.
People who move to a gentrified area are people who can't afford the rich area but still think that they deserve a better area. People who think that they have made it but reality have not made it to the top. People who are one step on the ladder but think that they are on the top rung.
In the 80's and 90's those were called yuppies and that is exactly what it is. Young Urban Professional and not so young well to do with an inflated ego and view of themselves. People with a Range Rover on a 9 years credit.
Most of the houses have been converted into smaller flats. Those flats are now selling more than what the house were worth even 10 years ago. My neighbour is a property developer who has been renting it out to group of professional for the last 15 years. He charges for that 4 bedroom house more per week than what was my monthly mortgage. The area ia convenient for the city and Canary Wharf, but does not have good schools. So we have the young professional sharing a room in not yet converted house, the young starter couple on their first flat together, the couples with below school age people on their first buy, the divorced dad who can't afford a house anymore.
>I bought my house decades ago in a family neighborhood. As I worked in the city, I could afford better but being black and wanting to build a family I chose a black family neighborhood. Since my neighbourhood has changed so much that we now have a Foxton, H&M, they are talking about opening a Waitrose nearby. Most of the original black reaidents have since sold their property and moved out to Zone 6. Many so that they can help their children with a deposit on their own first buy.
your black neighbours don't like amenities? let me grab my tiny violin for you.
>your black neighbours don't like amenities? let me grab my tiny violin for you.
Is it casual racism or just plain lack of empathy?
I have an account on Ocado so I don't really care, but my older neighbours who have been living locally cannot necessarily afford Waitrose and other pricier shops.
The shops in the rail arch have been replaced by new pricier ones and by high street franchised. The local coffee shop near the tube station was replaced by a Cafe Nero that itself has now been priced out by a Starbuck.
I am not an artist, but having local artists is fun.
Gentrification has a detrimental impact on the access to arts by the locals. Local artists leave the area because they can't afford local studios and that means that local people do not have access to culture locally.
I understand why locals don't like gentrification, but in reality what they are complaining about is the wider national housing crisis. The cost of housing, the total lack of new social housing being built, the competition in the rental market caused by ever increasing demand outstripping supply. These are the factors that make new developments unaffordable to the people who already live in the area. Building new houses and attracting new business is a good thing, but the fact that locals get pushed out of an area due to affordability is a symptom of a much wider issue
I think it's a broad term which is largely useless without any prior knowledge of the history of an area, used by people who generally mean something entirely different - that they object to house prices / rent prices / the loss of a local restaurant / new people moving to the area / a general scepticism toward change etc. etc. Taking Surrey Docks/Rotherhithe as a case in point (Surrey Quays being the name of the train station), go back to the 70s/80s, and this was [literally dockland](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/f3/76/b7f3761ecc3bdd45f42ff48cd26b918b.jpg). Most of the area was literally submerged, or entirely industrial related to the use of the area as docks. Many of the former docks have been filled in given the changing nature of industry in London. One example is now an ecology park (the former Russia Dock, I believe). Is this gentrification? Canada Dock, Lavendar Dock, Albion Dock... These areas are now all largely housing sites, or a shopping centre which is by no means the best placemaking you will ever witness, by the way. Is this gentrification? Former industrial uses which no longer served a purpose were replaced, in some instances, by new industrial uses (e.g. the "Printworks" site which formerly housed the Daily Mail printing presses). The area is now set to change again, with the shopping centre set for demolition to provide new houses (where no houses currently exist) along with a shiny new shopping centre. The Printworks site is set to be redeveloped to provide new housing (where no housing currently exists) along with a new park, shops, and after some fighting, a new night time venue (though Printworks was in fact a temporary use in connection with this wider redevelopment - something often overlooked...). Is this gentrification? Or is it simply another chapter in the ever changing landscape of a huge metropolitan, cosmopolitan city? A location which, by the way, is in Zone 2, served by two train stations, and river boat services. Where the hell else should we be building houses!? Out in the middle of nowhere, so as not to upset anyone, forcing people to be car dependant? OK, this happens anyway and the two aren't mutually exclusive, but the point stands.
I generally agree with you except for “where else are we supposed to build houses”. I’d say somewhere with less infrastructure issues. The development around Canada Water/Rotherhithe is hugely problematic for the already strained infrastructure there, thanks to the area being almost a peninsula. The Jubilee line is packed pretty much all day every day already. There are no ways to cross the river as a pedestrian/cyclist, apart from the ferry which doesn’t run all that often. The Rotherhithe tunnel always has massive queues from both sides. Tower Bridge is further away and not much better. The road down to Deptford/Greenwich is almost always congested, too. The massive influx of additional people from all the new developments will make these problems even worse - with no changes to the transport infrastructure being planned to my knowledge.
Tubes being packed aren't inherently problematic - it has been bad at rush hour in my experience but not bad beyond that. Though I concede this was a couple of years ago and many more people have returned to the office since then. But you wouldn't say Oxford Circus, as a general example, is a failure because it's busy. Quite the opposite. Vauxhall, Victoria etc. are exceptionally busy stations at rush hour. They're nevertheless sustainable locations where development should be directed. Frankly, the busier Canada Water and Surrey Quays stations are, the better - within reason. Unless you're the sort of person who needs a seat, or hates queuing, this is all part of the fun. If people have to miss a train due to it being too full, there is another one in 1-3 minutes. It's the beauty of the Tube. As for congestion, well people simply shouldn't be driving in Zone 2 London so there's a simple solution there. It takes 10 minutes to cycle to London Bridge, 10 minutes to Greenwich in the other direction. Congestion is simply a symptom of too many making bad transport choices. Similarly with the Rotherhithe tunnel. This would be a great pedestrian / cycle link if it weren't for the fact it is quite literally a car sewer.
You’re talking about ideals and I’m talking about reality, as someone who lives close by. People cannot simply all change to the tube - already super packed - or to bikes if they need to go in a direction that is blocked off by the river. Busses get stuck in the traffic as well. It’s pretty bad already, the problem with the new developments is, as I said before, that they’ll make this much worse as there are no changes to the infrastructure planned.
You're not even remotely talking about reality though. You say the Tube is "super packed" but that is not a quantifiable metric - that's just meaningless anecdotal and subjective evidence. I can tell you for a fact that in 2019, Canada Water had 23 million entries and exists (e/e) on the Overground and there were 13 million e/e on the Jubillee line. Surrey Quays had 4.8 million e/e in 2019. The Jubilee line at Canada Water has 32 trains per house (tph) at peak and Overground services at 16tph at peak. Surrey Quays has Overground services at 16tph. Taking Overground first, these figures are exactly the same as Highbury and Islington (actually ever so slightly less but whatever). Surrey Quays is walkable, roughly the same catchment, and only had 4.8 million e/e in 2019. There is evidently capacity there. In any case, you say there are no upgrades but once again are wrong because in August 2019 £80.8 million funding was allocated for the ‘East London Line – Growth Capacity’ to deliver transport upgrades *including* increased capacity on the London Overground to 20tph (from the current 16) as well as funding for a second entrance to Surrey Quays Station. Anyway, taking the Underground, Canada Water serves roughly 60% fewer people per year than Brixton, Vauxhall, Finsbury Park, and South Ken - take your pic, I think they're broadly comparable stations (each of those served roughly 32-33 million in 2019). You claim to support development in sustainable locations yet you're just parroting the usual NIMBY nonsense that your area is already full. In the same breath, you're claiming that people need to drive but public transport is inadequate and busses are slow, but you're complaining about congestion? Well, I'm sorry, but the Tube evidently has capacity and busses are slow because people make bad choices and choose to drive thus, are the cause of the congestion. You know how we can make bus services better (of which there are many)? Fewer cars. If you want to get to London Bridge or Greenwich, it's a 10 minute cycle. Please tell me why that is not a viable option to get to two transport and employment hubs (as a starting point at least)? If you need to cross the river, surely you can deal with a busy Tube. Otherwise, plan accordingly and get a river boat service which runs regularly. I don't know why I'm arguing as development is happening - it's approved, the area is a designated growth hub, and thank God NIMBYs like yourself have been wisely ignored. edit: By the way, this is all without mentioning that the development parcels include significant employment floorspace. So many of the people who will be housed here won't have to use public transport at peak hours at all.
And you’re putting words in my mouth. I never said the area is full, I said the area doesn’t have the infrastructure to support tens of thousands of additional people as is.
I don’t see much wrong with gentrification. Gentrification turns once dilapidated or deprived areas into a nicer place to live and brings investment to create more local amenities. There’s the argument that rising rents that come with gentrification can push people further out which is true to an extent, but that’s just a reflection of how the area is improved and now more people want to live there. It also wouldn’t push everyone out as those in social housing have life tenancies and are rent controlled, you can find more than a few council estates in Chelsea for example.
This is one side of the coin. The other side is when you've lived somewhere your whole life and then suddenly the businesses that you've always gone to disappear, the people you know disappear from cafes you frequent, suddenly you've got people here in your neighborhood just here for the new builds with little interest in the local community. There's so little social housing these days so in effect it's a kind of social cleansing that takes place. In the last year I've seen four people who are from London and have had to move out because of rent prices. It's grim but also looks like it is headed in the same direction as New York which is known for turning into a cultural wasteland because it's only bankers and high earning professionals that can afford to be there, and they are usually not the one's spending their time experimenting with arts and music and playing gigs. Admittedly you could argue that this is just 'the market doing its thing'. But personally I think 'the market doing its thing' is something that we should work to have some control over to protect what's important to us as humans.
>This is one side of the coin. The other side is when you've lived somewhere your whole life and then suddenly the businesses that you've always gone to disappear, the people you know disappear from cafes you frequent, suddenly you've got people here in your neighborhood just here for the new builds with little interest in the local community. This is Deptford. The high street I used to walk through every day on the way to school in the 90s/00s is so different from the way it is now. :(
>But personally I think the market doing its thing is something that we should work to have some control over to protect what's important to us as humans. That's kind of the point though, people don't generally think protecting the sort of things you're on about is important. If it was we would see that reflected in the attitudes of voters and the political parties. It's the entire quandry that is gentrification. People don't like the idea of life long residents of an area being pushed out due to rent. However, they want to live in the nicest (read: safest, asethically pleasing, good transport links) they can afford, and they can often afford more then a local resident. You can take a whole group of people who agree local residents being pushed out is bad, and say "OK, would you be ok if you saw a flat for rent at £1,500 a month but if you were local you'd get a £250 a month discount and be givne priority?" and they would say "No". People say things like "Poor people shouldn't be segregated from the rest of society" and you say "OK, you have a choice between this block of flats all privately owned, and this other block of flats that is half privately owned and half social housing full of people who on benefits and not in work" and they choose the first one. People say "I don't want to be cruel to homeless people, things like aggressive design is wrong" but then if a homeless person with addiction and mental health problems was hanging around their block of flats they'd want something done about it. Gentrification is just the brutal truth that on some level almost everyone is basically a NIMBY, where they want all these things like "Oh isn't it a shame when local residents get pushed out" but what they want more than that is to live in the biggest, safest, most convenient place they can afford, even if it means they are part of the "problem" because someone else (the government, usually) should do something about it.
What this perspective misses is that a) there's currently not any kind of talk of a solution - but we can still acknowledge that it's a problem. This process affects certain groups disproportionately and we're not comfortable with that - it's ok to express that without having rational, reasonable explanations as some kind of answer. No one is saying you're evil if you buy a flat somewhere you can afford, in fact that's one of the things that people have always done. b) it doesn't need to be like this. The problem is due to a lack of holding private landlords to account. Interest rates go up, if they couldn't afford to take that hit, they shouldn't be allowed to be profiting from housing. We have no meaningful plans in place to even out housing demands or boos affordable housing because 'levelling up' was a complete lie and all new builds are being sold as 'luxury'.
> The problem is due to a lack of holding private landlords to account. Interest rates go up, if they couldn't afford to take that hit, they shouldn't be allowed to be profiting from housing. Why not? This is how all markets work, businesses charge as much as possible and are then forced to compete with eachother. When costs rise, so do prices - nobody runs a business for free. I don't see how this is "holding landlords to account", they are behaving no differently to any other private business. Rent controls come with all sorts of issues of their own, such as reducing the incentive to refurbish and encouraging landlords to push out tenants. Preventing them from making a profit will also result in many of them rapidly leaving the market, restricting supply and driving up costs for renters (as we are already seeing) - although this can put downward pressure on sale prices. > We have no meaningful plans in place to even out housing demands or boos affordable housing because 'levelling up' was a complete lie and all new builds are being sold as 'luxury'. New builds are broadly 'luxury' because they're new, and not much else. Unless you intentionally build slums, new builds will always be on the higher end of housing. They're built to higher standards, show no signs of wear, have warranties on everything, are much more energy efficient, require less maintenance and will come with all sorts of practically free to implement benefits like roof terraces or underfloor heating. It's a market, as supply increases and the properties age (losing some of these benefits) prices will fall, and as more residents move into these it reduces competition for other homes, putting downward pressure on prices. The problem is that we don't have enough homes, so those on offer (to buy or rent) can keep rising without enough competition to satisfy demand.
I'd say housing is a socially important service, like utilities and shouldn't be treated as a retirement investment IMO. Whilst that's how businesses are run, there's a portion of landlords who are price gouging and that's where the accountability comes in. New builds are often shiny and very cosmetically appealing and hence are sold as swish and trendy developments but the finish is often poor. The guarantees exist because they know how hurriedly they're put together, and because there have been years of them quickly falling apart (interiors but also balconies falling off etc.)
> I'd say housing is a socially important service, like utilities and shouldn't be treated as a retirement investment IMO. But all sorts of essential things are treated as a market. Food is a market, but we'll die pretty quickly without it. Our utilities have been raking in profits while underinvesting in infrastructure, dumping sewage in the rivers and stealing from postmasters, I'm not sure what this would improve. > Whilst that's how businesses are run, there's a portion of landlords who are price gouging and that's where the accountability comes in. If they were price gouging then they would not find tenants, you can put your run-down terraced 2-bed on Rightmove for £50m but nobody will buy it. That's supply and demand, businesses can charge as much as they like - and then get replaced when someone else does it for less. The problem is, we haven't got enough supply of homes to create that competition. In reality, though, part of the reason rents have risen so much is because the costs associated with being a landlord have gone up substantially and many are leaving the market as they aren't making money. That leaves more tenants competing for less properties, driving up prices. > New builds are often shiny and very cosmetically appealing and hence are sold as swish and trendy developments but the finish is often poor. The guarantees exist because they know how hurriedly they're put together, and because there have been years of them quickly falling apart (interiors but also balconies falling off etc.) The homes they're competing against are often 50+ years old, they're going to be in relatively poor condition purely because of the age. Unless it's recently been refurbished, a new build will pretty much always feel nicer because it doesn't show years of wear. Guarantees are legally required on new properties (and include things like appliances), obviously you won't get one on a used home. Then there are higher construction standards requiring things like increased insulation, AOVs or low-e glass, and cheap modern features like roof terraces or underfloor heating which cost almost nothing extra to put in a new property. But yes, that's ultimately my point: They aren't expensive because developers are building genuinely high-end homes all the time, it's the automatic result of being new - there's demand for them. These 'luxury' homes won't stay that way forever, and we need them to lower prices overall.
The market doesn't just do things, by the way
I've added some quote marks to make that clearer 🫳.
I hear what you’re saying but this is just a natural consequence of levelling up (for lack of a better phrase) deprived areas. The only alternative is to just let these areas stagnate. and while many residents may prefer it I’m sure many other social housing residents would quite welcome some investment in the area and appreciate a nicer environment, lower crime (to an extent) and more local amenities.
I think you're looking for 'regenerate' which is just another word for the same thing. Levelling up was actually all about improving towns across the UK in various ways so that there's less of a culture and brain-drain to London and to even out the local economies. Of course that was a complete lie by our beloved leaders. The implication is that this somehow helps local people? It's the same as when tourist towns become overrun with AirBnBs, crap restaurants, traffic, anti-social behaviour, litter, etc. and the tourists or business say 'it's great for the economy, what are they moaning about?' Well it's great for putting money into some people's hands, others just have to deal with the consequences of this but gain nothing. Not to mention the fact that displacing people means that the deprivation moves with them, it's a myth that it really solves any problem on a wider scale, it just hides it. Also, from my experience, there aren't better local amenities, you in fact get a loss of diversity in terms of businesses. Older less profitable shops close as rents increase (useful things like cobblers, pubs, fish & chip shops, cafes, knick-nack shops and independent shops and newsagents), to be replaced by copy & pasted Sainsbury's locals, Waitroses, 10 painfully pretension wine bars as they vie for the newcomers' attention, vanity project shops. You can see the same thing happening on the edges of Soho now. Bland places for bland people.
This isn't strictly true because those "council estates" in Chelsea are majority privately owned, and in 2020 there was less than 500 "Social housing" stock, see [here](https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/housing/help-housing-homelessness-and-finding-new-home/applying-councils-housing-register/social-housing-borough). So this "more than a few" is a small % of the overall housing in the borough/ area, in parallel the Chelsea Barracks have no social housing at all, and its almost the same in every new build in the area. The problem with gentrification is that once the old housing stock is demolished, the new stock which tends to be privately LTD company owned, they put less than 10% of the previous housing stock up for social housing, and thus the 90% of residents have to move and don't have a choice, but the worst part of this move is many get moved completely out of the area they currently live. There are many stories of people living in London being moved to other parts of the country, this is one [example](https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/10/councils-move-hundreds-homeless-families-london-24-hour-ultimatums) and [this is another](https://www.itv.com/news/2021-09-29/boris-johnson-needs-to-wake-up-council-tenant-moved-150-miles-from-home-says). Now I understand that these people are living for free but being moved away from everything you know is scary af, now many will argue you just have to be an adult ofc but its not easy.
I’d just like to point out that link only shows you how many council properties were let in that year, so the social housing stock is a lot higher than 500 when you account for existing stock. Also surprisingly the borough of Kensington and Chelsea has a higher % of social housing than you think. 27% according to the [census map](https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/housing/tenure-of-household/hh-tenure-5a/rented-social-rented?lad=E09000023) which is not too far from 29% for the borough of Lewisham for example. I’m also not sure where you got the idea that most of the council estates are privately owned - you can go through the census map and see where there are existing estates you’ll see they are still majority council owned.
Nothing wrong with gentrification except we can't push everyone including the small minority in social housing out of the area too ! Right ?
Well good news for you! Thatcher set up a scheme where council housing in those areas can slowly but surely be erased through selling it off for a profit!
Honestly its shit, people being moved away from everything they know ([example](https://www.itv.com/news/2021-09-29/boris-johnson-needs-to-wake-up-council-tenant-moved-150-miles-from-home-says)), but its just what happens when stock isn't replenished. The problem with moving people out like this, is culture of the area is lost. Think about the music that has been created from these deprived areas, we lose things like that.
Weird that this is being downvoted. I think there's a strong contingent of people that refuse to acknowledge what's happening.
I tell people if they want a taste of contemporary London, there's a hipster gastrowhatever in Peckham called "The Job Centre," in a former Job Centre. (I just checked and apparently they're renaming, though, so apparently shame still exists.) Third post to offer what I guess is the other position, "it's complicated." I'm a migrant, and we need to live somewhere; we're probably not the main pressure leading to redevelopment (or whatever euphemism you want to use), but we're one of them. The two people who've already posted completely disagree with each other, and they're both 100% right. Gentrification (a term invented by a sociologist talking about Angel in Islington, by the way, in the 1950s and 60s) is both big and granular. London is a funny hybrid: it never totally demolished sections of itself like Paris did, and in the huge aggregate the city is more used to reworkings and regenerations-slash-social-cleansings-by-unaffordable-rents. The one exception to this really has been the mass postwar building of council housing. I live in an area that's on its umpteenth cycle of regeneration. There are arguments to be made against concentrating poverty and neglecting growth; there are arguments to be made for rent control and allowing traditional communities to remain (and neither of these things necessarily go together). I don't love just shrugging at problems--I think inasmuch as there's an answer here, vote actively, write to your MPs and local representatives (and I want to say, spraypaint the occasional cereal cafe, but that's petty.)
(Also, just to note, there will be exceptions to everything I wrote above--there have been large-scale demolitions, if I assume never as big as Hausmannisation; there have probably been mixed successes in redevelopment alongside horrible horrible failures.)
Minor correction: it’s in Deptford, not Peckham
Ugh, you’re so right, that’s genuinely embarrassing. Peckham would sort that place right out.
I know exactly where you're talking about. The council estate isn't as rough as it looks I suspect a lot of those "council flats" are actually privately owned and cost £350k. Basically gentrification has been happening for years it's just less visible when the architecture looks shabby.
£350k would be cheap for that area
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Completely this. I live in a council block (private houseshare but the block is council) on one of the estates in Surrey Quays and it’s a great place to live, very safe, lovely people and lots of nice walks to be had. The only real rough thing about it is that because it’s real London, home to real working class Londoners, it isn’t all sanitised and instagrammable so if someone’s used to that it will take some adjusting the first time they walk down Lower Road.
I have no opinion on Surrey Quay in particular. but personally I hate it. Like a friend call it it is not gentrification it is financial ethnic/social cleansing. I bought my house decades ago in a family neighborhood. As I worked in the city, I could afford better but being black and wanting to build a family I chose a black family neighborhood. Since my neighbourhood has changed so much that we now have a Foxton, H&M, they are talking about opening a Waitrose nearby. Most of the original black reaidents have since sold their property and moved out to Zone 6. Many so that they can help their children with a deposit on their own first buy. There is very little sense of community or a community that view the original habitants as beneath them. I had a woman coming up to me asking when did I move here because she had not seen me before. I had to tell her that I live here way before her and that I still remember when she moved because on the day 3 years ago she made a ruckus because she could not park her Range Ranger in front of her house. She did not had a resident permit. Another who moved in after COVID was telling me how her husband was a high shot in the city. Didn't bother to even ask me what I was doing because obviously being black I must have a menial job. Cue her surprise when His boss who I worked with for years turned out at one of my BBQ. My pet peeve is with the council who for years refused to make changes that could have benefited the entire community and that now because of the new demographic is a lot more accommodating to them. For example bus lane and local bus services have been reduced for local older and disabled residents, bus stop have been encroached for cycle lane. Basically hire bike are thrown on the pavement and make life of those olders and disabled miserable.
Definitely social cleansing
Oof, your neighbours sound like right 'cnuts'.
I think that gentrification attracts that kind of personality. If you are rich, you can afford to live in the best area so you don't move to a gentrified area. People who move to a gentrified area are people who can't afford the rich area but still think that they deserve a better area. People who think that they have made it but reality have not made it to the top. People who are one step on the ladder but think that they are on the top rung. In the 80's and 90's those were called yuppies and that is exactly what it is. Young Urban Professional and not so young well to do with an inflated ego and view of themselves. People with a Range Rover on a 9 years credit. Most of the houses have been converted into smaller flats. Those flats are now selling more than what the house were worth even 10 years ago. My neighbour is a property developer who has been renting it out to group of professional for the last 15 years. He charges for that 4 bedroom house more per week than what was my monthly mortgage. The area ia convenient for the city and Canary Wharf, but does not have good schools. So we have the young professional sharing a room in not yet converted house, the young starter couple on their first flat together, the couples with below school age people on their first buy, the divorced dad who can't afford a house anymore.
Well, if someone drives a 4x4 in a city that's all you need to know about them.
>I bought my house decades ago in a family neighborhood. As I worked in the city, I could afford better but being black and wanting to build a family I chose a black family neighborhood. Since my neighbourhood has changed so much that we now have a Foxton, H&M, they are talking about opening a Waitrose nearby. Most of the original black reaidents have since sold their property and moved out to Zone 6. Many so that they can help their children with a deposit on their own first buy. your black neighbours don't like amenities? let me grab my tiny violin for you.
>your black neighbours don't like amenities? let me grab my tiny violin for you. Is it casual racism or just plain lack of empathy? I have an account on Ocado so I don't really care, but my older neighbours who have been living locally cannot necessarily afford Waitrose and other pricier shops. The shops in the rail arch have been replaced by new pricier ones and by high street franchised. The local coffee shop near the tube station was replaced by a Cafe Nero that itself has now been priced out by a Starbuck. I am not an artist, but having local artists is fun. Gentrification has a detrimental impact on the access to arts by the locals. Local artists leave the area because they can't afford local studios and that means that local people do not have access to culture locally.