Hope Springs From Haringey

The Wound by Qlowski / Moraliser by Negative Gears / Split by Lágrimas and Habak / A Self-Portrait At The Stage Of Totalitarian Domination Of All Aspects Of Life by Industry / Disrupting The Speculative City by Amy Horton and Joe Penny (clockwise)
‘My landlord called in sick today, My landlord has anxiety, My landlord has nowhere to stay, He calls me up just to say…Your rent will rise, By 300 percent, Starting next week, Extract wealth and die’ (Extract Wealth And Die, Industry)
It is difficult to be positive as to what the future holds at present. Internationally, levels of militarised violence, state oppression, and climatic breakdown are accelerating at an alarming pace. Closer to home the degradation of public services, entrenchment of socio-economic inequality, and the trappings of the surveillance state continue unabated. Even when a government is elected who claim to be ‘progressive’, it soon becomes clear that they remain wedded to the worn-out doctrines that dug us into this hole in the first place. As I say, it is difficult to be overly hopeful.
Yet, amidst the prevailing gloom, you do still come across examples of community action that restore your belief that an alternative future can be realised. And one such story is vividly brought to life in the excellent study, Disrupting The Speculative City: Property, Power And Community Resistance In London. The book explores how a community-wide coalition came together in the London Borough of Haringey to defeat one of the most rapacious ever planned programmes of state-led gentrification.
‘I grew up in this city, this is my home, soon I will not be able to live here’ (I Can’t Afford It, Lágrimas)
From London (Qlowski) to Sydney (Negative Gears), by way of Berlin (Industry) and Los Angeles (Lágrimas), the story of cities being subjugated to the demands of real estate capital are starkly consistent. The specifics of each city’s experience are, of course, coloured by local history and politics, but the driving forces that connect the lived experiences and patterns of urban development across major cities are readily identifiable. Housing is no longer recognised as a social good by which society can redistribute its wealth, but rather as an asset through which wealth can be further accumulated and extracted by capital. This process which has been unfolding over the past forty years, manifests itself in the stigmatisation of working-class housing, the wholesale privatisation of public land, and the return of an exploitative private rental market wildly out-of-step with the economic realities of work. The ripple effects of insecure housing on people’s lives in terms of health and wellbeing are difficult to overstate.
‘Rotting in my own bed, Black mould crumbling through my mattress, Drowning in my defeat’ (A Vision, Qlowski)
In London, this dynamic has seen many of the city’s councils seek to exploit housing through speculative development vehicles – land is now a financial asset to be exploited, homes a ‘unit’ to be sweated for investor gain, and inner London’s working-class communities are no longer deserving of a place in this new landscape. One such vehicle was The Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), which sought to exploit the aftermath of the 2011 riots sparked by the police shooting of local resident Mark Duggan, to unleash an unprecedented programme of demolition and gentrification that would dispossess large swathes of the local community, while enriching one the one world’s largest property developers, Lendlease. And, for the council, deliver an ‘improved’ resident profile and a more affluent electorate.
‘Yeah, there’s cracks in the roads, disposable shitholes they call affordable homes’ (Ain’t Seen Nothing, Negative Gears)
However, Haringey’s Labour council massively underestimated not only the scale of the local opposition, but even more importantly the skill with which the community would co-ordinate its resistance. And this is the story that Disrupting The Speculative City richly animates as it examines how the community contested the plans through street protest, electoral challenge, and planning / legal contestation. It also details how the campaign developed a broad coalition spanning local residents, housing activists, and political campaigners from across the left of centre spectrum to maximise their support. After a bitter six-year battle the plans for HDV were cancelled in July 2018, the council leader, Claire Kober, having been forced to resign several months earlier.
As you will have gathered from the title, the book itself is an academic one having been written by Amy Horton and Joe Penny from UCL. However, they wear their detailed research lightly and the narrative unfolds with a satisfying clarity of argument as to what defines the speculative city, whose interests does it serve, and how did the residents of Haringey succeed in defeating it. The authors ensure that the momentum never dims, even for the lay reader. A community victory to put a spring into even the most jaded of steps.
Disrupting The Speculative City is available from UCL Press, including as a free download, at www.uclpress.co.uk.