Ian Cole

Social Balance and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Britain since 1979: A Review of Discourse and Practice in Social Housing

In Britain, current interest in social balance has arisen partly as a response to increased management difficulties in social housing and partly in response to the concepts of the underclass and social exclusion. Social balance is now endorsed in some, but not all, the relevant urban policy statements of the New Labour government elected in 1997. A modified form of poststructural discourse analysis offers the best way of understanding the term and its implications. The approach focuses on different levels of social reality—the level of a national policy, the level of management and estate upgrading, and the level of the social experience of residents. In doing this, the approach reveals the varied and occasionally contradictory meanings of the term ‘social balance’; it highlights the increasingly common attempts by social housing agencies to control the characteristics of their tenants; and it enables a sceptical assessment of the practical significance of mixed housing estates for poor individuals and households.

Putting the Squeeze on "Generation Rent": Housing Benefit Claimants in the Private Rented Sector - Transitions, Marginality and Stigmatisation

The term ‘Generation Rent’ has gained currency in recent years to reflect the fact that more 25 to 34 year olds in Britain now live in rented accommodation rather than owner-occupation. The term also conveys the extent to which age-related divisions in the housing market are becoming as significant as longer standing tenure divisions. However, this portmanteau term covers a wide array of different housing circumstances - from students, young professionals and transient households to the working and non-working poor. This paper focuses on the position of a specific category of this age cohort - those 25 to 34 year olds living in self-contained accommodation in the private rented sector who are in receipt of Housing Benefit. On the basis of survey evidence and qualitative interviews with landlords and housing advisers, the paper considers how the marginal economic and housing market position of this age group is being reinforced by the stigmatising attitudes of landlords which formerly applied to tenants in their late teens and early 20s and are now being extended further along the age band. The paper suggests that the use of a ‘housing pathways’ approach to signify the housing transitions of young adults needs to be revisited, to give greater weight to collective and creative responses to constraints in the housing market and to recognise the key role played by gatekeepers such as landlords in stigmatising groups according to assumed age-related attributes.

Neighbourhood Renewal Policy and Spatial Differentiation in Housing Markets: Recent Trends in England and Denmark

ABSTRACT This paper assesses recent policies and initiatives to promote neighbourhood renewal in the context of housing market change in two different policy environments – those of Denmark and England. The authors suggest that surface similarities in the recent urban policy discourses of the two countries tend to conceal deeper differences in the capacity of community-led neighbourhood-based initiatives to improve housing opportunities for local residents. The paper also suggests that comparative analysis of neighbourhood renewal policy has often been too firmly lodged at the national level, neglecting the complexities of ‘multi-level’ governance and uneven spatial development which are increasingly important in urban policy formation and delivery. The authors examine the diverse motivations for the recent policy focus on the ‘neighbourhood’ as an arena for intervention. They suggest that in England the impact of ever starker regional and sub-regional inequalities, problems associated with uneven economic growth, patterns of household migration and mobility, empty housing and cultural segregation extend well beyond the reach of the New Labour governments original urban policy agenda, in its concerns with ‘capacity building’, ‘partnership working’ and ‘joined up governance’. There are now signs of a realignment in approach to impose a more strategic emphasis at a regional level of governance, although this remains underdeveloped in England. While Danish urban policy also has contradictory elements, there is a smaller gap between national government rhetoric and the strategy to improve specific localities, and the central role accorded to local government, which stands in contrast to recent English policy, has been a key aspect underpinning this process.

Whose place? Whose history? Contrasting narratives and experiences of neighbourhood change and housing renewal

Abstract This paper suggests that more attention needs to be given to the historical formation and development of neighbourhood attachment in working-class areas. Notions of belonging and identity may be contingent, complex or contradictory and are shaped by the characteristics of place. The pattern of population change over time through the impact of migration is especially important in shaping notions of neighbourhood identity and perceptions of change. The sustainability of the local public realm and sites for local social interaction also figure strongly in narratives of change. The paper considers whether it is valuable to analyse these processes of change and continuity through the concept of path dependence. The paper suggests path dependence is of limited heuristic value, as it is difficult for this frame work to capture self-reinforcing, reactive, punctuated or incremental patterns of change – all of which were evident in the six research neighbourhoods. The paper suggests that a less deterministic “pathways” approach to neighbourhood change may be a more productive way forward

Housing Market Renewal and Demolition in England in the 2000s: The Governance of ‘Wicked problems’

Abstract This paper considers some of the issues raised by the governance of housing market renewal, and more specifically demolition, in areas of England suffering from long-standing economic decline and housing market weakness. It examines the experiences of the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) Pathfinder initiative in England, which ran from 2003 to 2011. It reviews some of the strands in the critique of the programme and suggests that they may have tended to overstate the professional and institutional power of the agencies involved to ‘deliver’ their programmes in the face of media or community resistance. On the basis of secondary analysis and stakeholder interviews, the paper suggests that the underlying fragility of the ‘partnership’ governance model on which HMR was founded caused a retreat from demolition as an option in housing market restructuring and wider uncertainty about the focus of the programme – they were ‘wicked problems’ that were difficult to manage. These problems were compounded first by the housing market impacts of global financial crisis from 2008 and the election of a hostile central government in 2010, leading to the premature closure of the HMR programme in March 2011. In conclusion, the paper considers whether it is likely that any future regeneration programme incorporating even modest levels of demolition will be attempted within a ‘partnership’ model of governance in areas of housing market weakness.

The Future of Sustainable Cities: Critical Reflections

out the book) dedicated to investigating and planning heritage landscape by involving local communities and institutions, making relevant knowledge emerge in project-oriented and interactive processes. The selected approach of action research is clearly explained. However, some criticism surfaces in different sections of the book regarding the actual impact of this approach in the long-term implementation of landscape preservation policies, the ability of influencing decision-making in a structured way and the effectiveness of mutual learning processes among different experts (one of the editors, Arnold van der Valk, correctly highlighted this point). This book definitely offers a new interpretation for facing heritage landscape preservation and development in the Netherlands, given its peculiar geographic, historic, institutional and economic conditions. For decades, the relationship between socioeconomic history and the transformation of the rural and urban landscape has been at the centre of studies in other European countries, such as Italy or France, which have radically different conditions and disciplinary traditions. From the presented perspectives, the book outlines important challenges for landscape planning in Europe and beyond. In the last years this has become more and more clear in a time of crisis and of reduction of development opportunities, the quality, sustainability and attractiveness of many European regions will also depend on the ability of not trading-off heritage and landscape values for mere economic growth.

Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in US Cities (2nd edition)

This a substantially revised and updated edition of the book Goldsmith & Blakeley originally published in 1992 and so it merits consideration afresh as providing documentation of changing trends in poverty and inequality in the United States over past 20 years. This edition was written in the aftermath of two terms in office by Bill Clinton (who writes a snappy foreword) and two terms of George Bush (who does not). It was also being finished in the wake of the sub-prime crisis and all that ensued and in the early phase of the current Obama administration. This combination of events perhaps pervades the text as a whole and might account for the rather uneasy blend between (bleak) pessimism and (guarded) optimism one finds in it. The analysis covers much ground that will be broadly familiar to those with some knowledge of economic trends, income distribution and spatial differentiation in the United States, but it is helpful to have this brought together in a coherent account that draws on an extensive array of sources to describe the divisions that isolate poorer residents from the majority of the population. The notion of ‘separation’ that underpins the book refers to processes of social segmentation, economic division and sharp political isolation, which, in the end, the authors suggest, damages everyone: ‘The toll is paid by every one of us’ (p. 4). Goldsmith & Blakeley’s position is derived from an analysis based on ‘persistent structural poverty’, rather than ‘poverty by accident’ (that can be patched up through temporary forms of public support) or as ‘personal pathology’ (and our old friend, the underclass). What is happening, they suggest, is the ‘melting pot’ in reverse—it is a process of freezing whereby water gradually solidifies into discrete blocks of ice, separated from the remaining fluid of mainstream society. After a thoughtful overview, they amass their evidence to shed light on ‘separate assets’ (income distribution, and differences by race and gender), ‘separate opportunities’ (participation in the labour market, international comparisons) and ‘separate places’ (the changing social and economic contours of city regions). For many readers of Housing Studies, the chapter on the changing shape of the American metropolis will be of most interest. Goldsmith & Blakely show that the inner city/suburb differential is alive and well in several cases (such as Detroit, where 83 per cent of the city population is African American, and where 90 per cent of the suburban area (outside Ann Arbor and Flint) is White. Elsewhere a more complex pattern has emerged (here described as a ‘checkerboard’, although ‘current bun’ rather than ‘doughnut’ has also been used as an analogy). The socio-economic topography is more

Dangers in the Pursuit of the Concept of "Pure Relationships"

Chris Allen’s article is a valuable and ambitious addition to that small but imperfectly formed body of literature seeking to engage critically with the new developments in welfare professionalism and the changing role of that unusual enterprise – the British housing profession. Clearly, we need to move beyond the arid terrain of functionalist approaches to the nature of professions, issuing lists of special, impermeable ‘traits’ which distinguish one profession from another, and all professions from the laity. The weaknesses of this essentially static, unreflexive model have been critically exposed by both the brisk sweep of ‘modernisation’ through the welfare state and the development of new conceptual frameworks, such as those used by Allen. So this bid to get out of the cul-de-sac of functionalism towards a framework premised on the reflexive interventions of human agency (rather than the inner workings of welfare agencies) at least moves us on to a wide, open road again – even if speed of all the passing traffic in new ideas on this highway tends at times to disrupt or deflect the route of Allen’s own journey in his paper. I want to pick up on a few of the many points raised in the article. First, let us consider the growing importance of ‘joined up working’ in welfare systems and in New Labour’s overarching approach to ensuring ‘delivery’ on its promises to improve education, health and welfare. The Government’s strategy to dissolve ‘false’ boundaries (between professions), to anchor welfare practice in ‘the neighbourhood’ rather than ‘the department’, to frame problems in terms of lack of (effective) communication (rather than lack of resources or expert ‘knowledge’), demands analysis. Yet Allen is surely right to argue that the phenomenon of ‘joined-upness’ has been typically addressed at the inter-organisational or systemic level rather than in terms of inter-personal relationships and the development of ‘trust’. The emphasis of Allen’s paper helps en passant to show how dessicated much of the current policy documentation on the imperatives of ‘joint working’ is. Despite its ‘active’ connotations (and how New Labour relishes the gerund as opposed to those dreary old nouns ...), ‘joint working’ is a curious world paradoxically devoid of ‘work’, in the sense of reflexive interventions by human agents. As an exemplar, the Policy Action Team report Allen quotes on Joining it Up Locally (PAT 17, 2000) is replete with rationales, diagnoses, evaluations, structural arrangements and targets – but it has little on how you actually do ‘joining up’. It therefore seems to me that the perspective culled from Giddens and others is potentially helpful to the need to think afresh about the activities and relationships involved in inter-agency work. To strike a positive note, I think Allen rightly points out the shift in the professional terrain from an emphasis on technical competence to one of demeanour and outlook. In a previous HTS article, Rob Furbey, Barbara Reid and I referred to this as a return to the ‘bedside manner’ as a key element in the ‘new’ professional stance. (Furbey et al., 2001) In other words, it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it (especially, one might add, if there is bad news to convey ...). ‘Doing interpersonal work’ is undeniably becoming a more important aspect of being a welfare professional – whether relating to other professionals or to the ‘nonexperts’.