City To City

Some amazing innovations are quietly taking place on the edge of mainstream thinking that challenge the culture of low affordability, price inflation and market-led housing.

The housing market is a friend to investment but a threat to relational-living. The collective direction of housing policy over the past 100 years has meant that a house has become an investment that you can live in rather than a home that could provide generational stability for the future of families.

Past, present and future

In the UK of the 1920s the picture was quite different. A significant majority of housing – 80 per cent – was rented. In the years that followed there were periods of council home construction, a growing ownership market and, in the Thatcher era, the sale of council properties.

In 2016, 64 per cent of housing is privately owned and 32 per cent is rented either privately or through housing association/council provision.

The housing market has created highly inflated prices in cities that few can afford. In rural areas the affordability of houses is jeopardised by fewer jobs and lower wages and this brings a complex mixture of pressures for individuals and family groups. The average multiplier for affordability in England and Wales is 5 x a person’s wage and that rises to 10 x in urban centres such as London.

It is projected that an extra 250,000 households are required per year until 2033 in the UK. Yet the country is only building 100,000 to 150,000 houses each year.

So what could change this?

A political u-turn? We might be waiting a long time.

Another economic crash? This would quieten the current market but may only provide opportunities for vulture capitalists ready to exploit the down turn.

Yet despite these negative indications, some amazing innovations are taking place quietly on the edges of mainstream thinking, building upon a legacy of creative philanthropy and cementing stable, multi-generational communities.

Living on the water

Although living on the water paints a nomadic picture of existence that few can contemplate, we have an unbelievable supply of rivers, lakes and sea moorings. We don’t advocate spoiling beautiful vistas and environmental eco systems, but residential accommodation on waterways is a chance to turn a static leisure industry into a living community. Boats, barges and other vessels are relatively cheap and have provided an incredibly eco-friendly lifestyle and strong communities in places like The Netherlands and parts of Scandinavia.

Given the environmental shifts that are happening and increased weather instability (i.e. higher rainfall), living on water is both sustainable and basic common sense in the light of the increasing climatic shifts we are experiencing. Waterways have the potential to be living communities in urban and rural settings, and in some places they are revitalising parts of the country and the countryside that struggle to survive economical and socially.

In one example of water-based living in south-east London, 175 people live alongside each other, sharing a system of walkways between boats, joint laundries and showers. The importance of these communal spaces provides strong motivation to manage the environment well, grow small business infrastructures, small eco-communities and mini economic hubs.

Community building

We tend to think of self-builders either as ‘eco warriors’ or ‘grand designers’, but beyond these stereotypes ‘community build’ provides an altogether different set of possibilities.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are local organisations that are set up and run by ordinary people to combine their finances and skills and develop homes as well as other assets important to that community, for example, community enterprises, food growing or workspaces. They build on land that might be council or brown-site designated, given as a gift or bought by a community group.

This is a sustainable alternative to private rental or private ownership. You can get a flavour of a CLT in action in a feature in the Guardian newspaper and a TV interview for London Live:

There are around 200 buildings in the UK built by architect Walter Segal. Segal’s self-build experiments in the 1980s transformed the approach to low-cost housing.
Kareem Dayes grew up in one of Walter Segal’s housing schemes in south London. In partnership with local people who have opted to build their homes with the CLT group, he’s now developing 33 new, high quality, sustainable homes on the site of an old school in Ladywell, Lewisham.

CLTs make homes affordable by removing the cost of land from the cost of a new home. This materials-only model could empower many more community builds. ‘We aim to establish a new precedent, a replicable model in community-led housing that will benefit people currently unable to access housing on the open market,’ says Kareem Dayes.

There are multiple advantages to a CLT. Those who build together usually stay together over longer periods – this has been statistically proved through early and more recent ‘Walter Segal’ builds. These communities are more socially diverse, multi-generational, stable and safe. They are literally built on interaction and community cohesion and they have proved to be great places for more holistic community care.

Other examples are Habitat for Humanity who build sustainable low-income housing globally and are also active in the UK. The organisation has successfully transformed the housing conditions for individuals and families from sub-standard housing conditions into sustainable housing solutions through ‘community builds’. This has provided long-term community stability and empowered individuals within those communities to reach for their life goals and aspirations.

One single mother in a re-built community housing scheme said ‘my daughter barely went to school when we were housed in a tower block in SE London … but she has now qualified to go to university to train as an architect’. Community housing is more than the fabric of the building but the essence of a more cohesive, safe and creative community.

Long-term vision rather than short-term solutions

The pressure is on for more housing at affordable pricing. However, the kind of quick, easy-build, non-eco housing that is being rushed into construction is only a short-term illusion. It gives no thought to the future community and long-term sustainability in terms of materials and environmental credentials.

We could be repeating the housing nightmare of the 1970s. It is important for architects, planners, environmentalists, housing experts and potential residents to sit down together to plan and dream the communities of the future. These are not pie-in-the-sky ideals but innovations that harness the creative skills of individuals and multiply them through collaboration.

CitytoCity is helping to bring together innovators and inspirers to encourage the cross-pollination of creativity and the willingness to re-imagine urban living.

Cities and gentrification

There is nothing new about cities being centres of money, power and activism, places where heritage and change exist side by side. Over the last 50 years gentrification has gained notoriety as a modern, global force for change at the cutting edge of urban policy. It’s a phenomenon that is having a huge impact on cities.

Simply put, gentrification is the change that happens to an area when it becomes a property hot spot. The influx of wealthier residents displaces older generations, attracts ‘yuppie’ businesses, pushes up rents and causes segregation.

There are many voices to be heard on this subject – from protesters to property developers – but many settle for the grey area between the sharply defined political colours. So what, if born-and-bred locals walk to the shops in disbelief beneath advertising hoardings that shout about the new desirability of their community … aren’t there some good things about ‘going upmarket’? The vintage shops, ale bars and cafes create tax and wealth for local councils to spend in the local area. The crime rate drops. Green spaces are regenerated. Who wants to live in a tower block that’s been earmarked for demolition, anyway?

Gentrification is a provocative subject

Here are some of the sentiments you’ll hear expressed about suburbs that are undergoing gentrification:

This place is a victim of its own success
What’s happening here is social cleansing
Blended communities are what you get from gentrification
A city is a force of nature, it will change whether we like it or not
Gentrification is a boost for everyone
Quirkiness, individuality and working-class prices will be lost
People around here have been priced out of their own home
This area is safer now.

Every sphere of life is affected by gentrification. However, those of us who are passionate about transforming and re-imagining cities don’t want to be negative or nostalgic about processes of change – but we do want to be realistic. We’re asking, what is driving these changes? We want to challenge the enterprise argument that says that money makes things grow, that growth is good and that more growth means more money.

If you think that money is the key, you are opening the wrong door

The economic argument says that everything has to grow and that it’s only money that pushes creativity further. But, using a Christian value ethic, we believe that money exists as a means to serve the planet, not run it. When money is used ‘fruitfully’ for the common good, people and places are replenished. So there’s an eco argument for genuine, shared transformation in cities that we would like to make heard. The planet will give more if we interact with it in responsible, creative and caring ways.

In this ethic for the world money is not the evil, although the way that we spend it can be. We want investors who invest with good economic sense but also with long-term community sustainability in mind. City to City is looking to sow the seeds of an economy that is not focused on money but on growing diverse communities sustainably. We don’t want to see money ‘grown’ but money ‘spread’. Money that is spread will see everyone benefit.

Seeking the common good

Who cares for the common good? We believe that there are people who seek the good of everyone. Every place, organisation or community group needs a few people like this who will be advocates for integration. That’s where we see City to City working best – we put the ideas out and ask, who’s up for this?

When we seek the common good we start to find something that is not attached to our own material conditions.

For City to City, intervention in the processes of gentrification starts in the micro context, in small localities where communities are under pressure. We want to hold on to a city’s multicultural, multigenerational identity – and we believe that we have to fight for it. Now is the time to act, to make some inroads, before genuine communities – artistic communities, lower-income communities, intergenerational communities – disappear. We want to resist gentrification as the norm in our cities.

Protecting creativity

Every sphere of life is influenced by gentrification. The artistic and creative industries in our cities, places where edginess, prophecy and politics thrive, will be knocked back, if not knocked out by gentrification because our society puts a higher value on money than it does on creative energy.

Our hope is that creativity will be nurtured and empowered as alternative ways to live together are explored. Creative people are those who say that without much money they will throw open the window of new possibilities – workshops, small operations for community activism, affordable retail units and food outlets. When these enterprises are run by local people, prices are lower because the people running them know what is affordable to other locals.

What does creative energy need to thrive? It needs a realistic business base with a realistic price freeze. It also needs space – physical, communal spaces for hire. We can all picture the shabby community venue, the prefab Scout Hut or the converted manufacturing unit. They’re not necessarily places of beauty but their available communal space is where creativity and relationships can thrive.

Protecting the power of relationships

Gentrification exposes fundamental questions of home, identity and community. City to City believes that there is a tangible quality to relationships in longstanding communities that is damaged by the influence of economic forces and individualism. What is important about community life is relationships, and what is important about relationships is the presence of possibility.

What we love about cities is the way that they define us, and we define them. City to City aims to encourage all of us to be intentional about our actions to support communities in the face of gentrification. Whether we pray, gather together in a City to City conversation, form a cooperative or campaign for amendments to the Housing Bill, we need to be intentional – otherwise nothing will happen.

A man living in Newcastle in the UK was recently interviewed about the massive changes he had witnessed over the last 10 years in the Byker Bridge area of the city. Protesting against the huge investment in this part of Tyneside, he said that the community had ‘organic potential’ of its own, for its own development and progression. To him, gentrification resembled a bad sci-fi movie … ‘local people invaded by aliens’. There’s cynicism here but we also hear in his words a powerful call for humanity to prevail. Let’s work for the re-making of cities around principles of justice, integration and relationship.

Bring your experience, your connections, your ideas and your hopes, and join the conversation with City to City.

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