Social housing is under attack from privatisation, gentrification, and straight up neglect. Thousands of people have found out they live in unsafe blocks which they had previously been told passed safety tests. Others are fighting privatisation and demolition. This article gives a short roundup of some struggles going on around social housing in London. In
Tag: gentrification
Basildon: Study of a tower killing
The slow death of public residential blocks and resurrection as luxury apartments is well documented in the major cities, but as The Stirrer notes, market town councils are busily trying to emulate the poisonous process nationwide. The “regeneration” of Basildon town centre has been under discussion for a number of years now accompanied by the
London College of Communication in occupation again
Today the students from UAL London College of Communication re-occupied the LCC campus in Elephant and Castle. The action follows the campus occupation from 15th January. The students protest against UAL partnering with international development company Delancey to gentrify the campus, Elephant and Castle shopping centre, and surrounding areas. Despite of UAL workers, unions, academics
Victory for anti- gentrification campaigners in Elephant and Castle
Plans to regenerate Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre and surrounding areas by development firm Delancey were halted by the council Planning Committee late yesterday night. After 7 hours of discussion, Southwark Planning Committee voted 4 against 3 to reject application for redevelopment. Now committee will meet again on 30th January to vote again for the
Students occupy the London College of Communication
A section of The London College of Communication was occupied in protest against the Elephant Shopping Centre and College campus gentrification plans and the LCC partnership in the social cleansing of the area. The occupation comes the night before the developer firm Delancey’s proposal for the redevelopment goes to planning. The redevelopment plan, described by local
Theme park and living laboratory: Lisbon and Porto’s territorial nightmares
Avalanche examines changes wrought on Portugal’s twin capitals by elites’ accelerated and brutal reconstruction of their geographies — and how communities can survive and resist amid the rubble. For some years now the issue of gentrification has been at the core of different actions and struggles with the involvement of anarchists around Europe. These changes
You Cannot Burn Us All: the Issue of Communal Housing Privatisation in Poland
Privatisation has many faces. In Poland, one of its aspects is so-called “reprivatisation”: reclaiming of the property confiscated by the communist government by its past owners, or people who bought legal rights to claim it. Since 90’s, this procedure resulted in evictions of thousands of long-term tenants by new private landlords, who wanted to convert previously
Stopping the Haringey Development Vehicle
In common with estates and boroughs in city and town centres all over Britain, Haringey is facing a major redevelopment drive which threatens to gut its local community. In the below article, written for the Radical Housing Network’s first ever newsletter [pdf], Doug Thorpe explains what strategies are being used to disrupt the process. In July
Greek Floods and Gentrification
In November, flash floods caused by heavy overnight rain have killed at least 23 people and caused significant destruction in central Greece. The floods hit one of the poorest of the areas surrounding Athens, and by many were compared to the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. This is a personal account and comment from Fani Tsioumpekou, a
The struggle against Google in Berlin
Earlier this year Google rocked up to Kreuzberg district in Berlin with plans for a swanky new Google Campus. The idea immediately sparked a great deal of local anger, and a spiky anti-gentrification campaign. In the below article, writers for Avalanche dive into the anarchist offensive against corporate spread in the German capital — and argue