30 May Is placemaking creating gentrification and driving out families?
You may have read the recent article by Anna Minton in the Guardian, which aligns gentrification with placemaking and, in turn, with the decline of families in cities, particularly London.
if only it were that simple...
The argument presented is too simplistic, says The Assembly Line’s founder Diane Cunningham. What shapes a place or creates a neighbourhood, what keeps people there, isn’t down to one issue. The points of success or failure are many.
Schools in some parts of London are closing as families move away or people choose not to have children, which changes neighbourhoods.
The article links housing shortages and cost as a deterrent for starting a family. But there are multiple reasons why birth rates are declining in cities, resulting in the need for fewer schools and affordability of housing is just one of them.
Other factors include the cost-of-living crisis, insecure jobs, and mortgage rates. City living may also be less attractive when there is less requirement to be in an office or people have changed careers post-COVID.
There is also a long-standing trend for people to relocate from inner city areas to more suburban ones when having a family.
And one issue not mentioned in Anna Minton’s article is the UK’s ageing population. Older people have different housing needs and requirements from their neighbourhood, which aren’t necessarily being catered for in cities.
Are the places being created or changed aligned to what people want or need?
We need many different types of housing to accommodate different groups and often the housing available, or being built, is not the type needed eg, too many 1-bed flats or the surrounding amenities don’t encourage play or create places to socialise/interact with others.
The article talks about the sterile placemaking around London’s new luxury developments, suggesting they don’t contribute to or support family living.
However, this isn’t necessarily the case. There are examples of new large-scale regeneration projects in London, which include children’s playgrounds open to all and are well-used.
At Brent Cross Town, Related Argent and Barnet Council’s £8bn mixed-use development, which includes 6,700 homes, a playground was constructed as part of the first phase. It quickly became popular, and there seems to be a genuine plan to house families as part of the project.
Lendlease’s Elephant Park, the mixed-use development which includes 3,208 homes in Elephant & Castle, which is cited in the article, had an equally packed playground when Diane visited recently.
Of course, it doesn’t cancel out the demolition of the Heygate Estate to make way for the new high-rise development and greatly reduced social housing. And there is also something seriously wrong when a 2-bed flat costs nearly £1m in a location that isn’t considered ‘prime central London’ despite its redevelopment.
However, when Anna Minton describes the regeneration of King’s Cross and Olympic Park as “part of a larger story of the extreme gentrification of cities like London where soaring house prices are leading directly to a decline in birthrates…” there is a different story to tell.
Prior to development, these areas were primarily light industrial and underground nightlife areas rather than places with extensive housing. There were some homes but, it could be argued, much less displacement, with a substantial addition of residential property that hadn’t previously existed.
Families and city centre living isn’t just an issue in London. In Manchester, the council is working to increase the mix of housing available to attract families and older people into the centre to diversify the population living there (Manchester Housing Strategy). To support this, the first school to open in the city centre in almost 20 years opened in 2024 to cater for city centre residents who may not want to move to the suburbs when their children reach school age.
Gentrification is a toxic term, but improving an area with things like new street lighting, traffic crossings, supermarkets, and better transport should benefit all who live there and use it.
There is also a danger with this sort of ‘gentrification’ that private landlords take the opportunity to increase the rent (unrelated to affordability).
What can we do about it?
Places are complex and individual. As practitioners, we can help shape places with the people who use them and give them the tools to continue after projects finish, but we aren’t a fan of the term ‘placemaking’, and as the article demonstrates, it’s in danger of becoming misunderstood and toxic.
Places should evolve and change to meet the needs of users rather than be ‘made’.
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