Dalston Regeneration

A view from the left by Michael Rosen:

"As I watched Ken Livingstone’s eyes water at the sight of Boris Johnson giving his victory speech, my feelings of sympathy were halted by the thought of some new signs that have gone up near me. One says, “A stunning new development at the heart of the regeneration of Dalston” and the other says, “Dalston Square – marketing suite open. These signs represent Livingstone’s – and New Labour’s – idea of reform and progress. This is what they offer us as a reason to vote for them. And then they wonder why Labour voters stay away in droves – or worse – turn rightwards hoping they’ll get a better deal."

Now read on.

Comments

[felix]

Bizarre! A glance at Booth's map of poverty shows huge swathes of red around Dalston...solidly middle class. About the time of this map,mid 1890s,Michael Rosen's own house in a most agreeable row of villas, a late addition, was being laid out. Thanks to the North London railway (1850) and the Broad Street Link to the city (1865) wealthy people flocked to Dalston. By the time the Broad Street Line was shut,1986, it had ceased to have any real function, as most of Dalston's affluent city types had long moved out to Hutton Mount or Brookmans Park. Now it is on the up again, and one would struggle to find a pleasant late Victorian Terraced house in, say, Parkholme Road for much short of 800,000K, thanks (or no thanks),I guess, to regeneration....

[MichaelRosen]

A nice sleight of hand there, Felix. Yes, 1890s, was Dalston at its most middle class. I knew Dalston in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and most of the villas and houses were multi-occupied. So, for example my grandparents and my great uncle's dwellings in Sandringham Road and Montagu Road were divided into two (and sometimes three) flats, with outside toilets well into the late sixties and on occasions into the seventies.
Some of the villas in Parkholme Road were council owned and multi-occupied - one still is. The estate that I'm writing about which was demolished, tower-blocked and now rebuilt is the story of robbing the public purse several times over in order to hand the lot over to a mix of private ownership and into housing trust hands (ie with even less democratic control over it than is afforded by local authority estates) This is exemplified by the campaign over the old people's sheltered housing near London Fields, handed over to a Housing Trust and therefore available for demolition and decanting the old people away from the community they've lived near for many years (all in the name of maximising their assets)

If middle class people (like me) have taken hold of some of the old villas that used to be multi-occupied (mine was divided up by a slum landlord so that he could put in people on benefits in every room in the house) this has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'regeneration' that I'm writing about. The regeneration I'm talking about is the process of planning by public authorities in cahoots with developers and bankers to demolish and build. Dalston, like many other places all round the country, has experienced several waves of this process, the net effect of which is to remove the poorest families, to provide no alternative accommodation, to remove the tenant and leaseholding small shopkeepers, to bulldoze historic buildings, to remove some basic part of the infrastructure and to replace it all with a mix of office blocks, buy-to-let block and retail chain stores. This process is not regeneration. It doesn't regnerate an area for the people living there. It replaces what is there with a new demography altogether.

As for the Broad Street Line story, this is a classic example of the big fib. When bureacrats deem that this or that section of the public service is uneconomic, we know that this is always a bit of creative accounting. The line was run down, it was dirty, there was old rolling stock, the trains were becoming unreliable, ticket collecting was falling into decline. The calculation didn't take into account what kind of place Hackney and Dalston was nor what it would be like in the following ten or twenty years (the kinds of calculation that the Victorians did all the time!). But the real engine of the matter was the Broadgate development. Public land was sold to that development right where the railway entered the City and that was the main reason for its closure. It's a red herring to claim that it had lost its purpose. We know now that the people who said we should try to hang on to every inch of railway that we've got in inner city areas were absolutely right. It's just luck that has enabled the Thameslink project to develop as some of this route was old, disused or underused tracks, which if property developers had had a chance to get hold of, would have prevented that route from developing.

The other matter you don't address, Felix, is the untold millions of our money that have gone into enabling the developers and bankers come in and create their 'regeneration' schemes. I gather from a chat this morning that Barratts who are building the blocks at Dalston have also wangled an arrangement with Hackney council whereby they are not taking the financial risk - or at least that LBH is carrying the main burden of risk on the project. Why? In order to make the lives of the people of Hackney better? Not one bit of it. It's in order that Barratt's can come in and make profits.

[Mark]

I have three objections to Michael Rosen's arguments.

First, by using the words "developers" and "bankers" as he does - that is as purely negative, purely abusive - it follows that any large-scale building scheme will fall foul of his catch-all criticisms. Large scale projects need management and finance which is why developers and bankers get involved. Whether a specific large-scale project (in Dalston or anywhere else) has merits or demerits needs be judged on independent criterion; not lazy slogans.

Second, the original article in the Socialist Worker started with the results of the mayoral election. But there is no acknowledgement that Michael Rosen's particular brand of politics was decisively rejected by voters all over London. The Left List polled less than 1% of the electorate in the party list vote for the Assembly. Galloway's list polled slightly more, but still fewer votes that the anti-congestion charge lobby. There is no popular support whatsoever for this type of political opposition to "regeneration". I suspect this is because most London residents are somewhat less sentimental about the city's past than the SWP appear to be.

Finally, as for the point about replacing what was once characteristic of Dalston with a "new demography", this is of course true but so what? If we go back a couple of hundred years the area was farmland. A couple of thousand years and it was woodland. Areas change; people come and go; economic forces drive social and cultural transformation. (It's all in Das Kapital).

[Glyn]

With respect, Mark, it`s not just the far-left, which has a degree of concern about the Dalston Square development. I am a Liberal Democrat, but also from a solid working-class background. I, too, am concerned about long-established Dalston residents being pushed out, and hope that the "new" Dalston doesn`t see this happen (just as I have concerns on how the Olympics will change the demographics of Homerton, Hackney Wick and Lower Clapton).

[MichaelRosen]

Mark, try this: do the new developments benefit the people of Dalston/Hackney as it's the people of Dalston/Hackney who are laying out millions to pay for it? No. So what exactly is being regnerated here? Yes of course the past is littered with examples of development being at the expense of the people. A classic example of this is slavery. Slavery helped 'develop' the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations. Hooray for slavery. Enclosures helped develop the countryside and fill the factories. Hooray for enclosures. Industrial slave labour helped the Nazis develop their industry. Hooray for industrial slave labour.

[Mark]

Glyn

With regard to Dalston Square, I'm sure there are lots of interesting arguments for and against. But these need to be made more thoughtfully than was the case in the original article.

On the point about demographics, these change all the time in big cities, which is one of the reasons why they are such interesting places to live.

As it happens my grandmother lived in Stamford Hill from the 1930s to the early 1970s, but I don't think that gives me any additional rights when it comes to present day plans to redevelop the area. Length of residency does not get you an extra vote in a democratic system. Why should it?

[felix]

Well, the late 1960s picture here
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/d/dalston_junction/index.shtml
is how I remember Dalston Junction, indeed Broad Street and the North London line. Rather a rustic affair, to be savoured , like the Braintree branch,which also could have been axed. I don't think developers were bribing city people not to use Broad Street: they were voting with their feet, or weren't there. Hence lots of houses for cheap rent multiple occupation, like in Notting Hill,after the middle classes had decamped to somewhere more rustic.
If the East Cross route hadn't been built, we could have had the DLR extended to Hackney. Again,so what? As Mark says, things change, people adapt. And, as the Labour Party always finds and the SWP will likewise when it achieves government, money and big business always run the show.
Glyn: there is an excellent supply of Welsh Yoghourt in a turkish supermarket in Stoke Newington High Street, just north of the turkish fishmongers.

[MichaelRosen]

I like the laid-back cynicism you've turned to, Felix: 'money and big business always run the show'. Yes, we could all adopt that tone and outlook if it weren't for the fact that we are told 'no we don't have money to keep that nursery open, we don't have money for that old people's centre, that adventure playground' etc etc, and then we find that that public money is being shovelled into the mits of 'money and big business'. What's more, the issue is who benefits from all this 'development'? Is it 'the people' as LBH claim? I don't see it. I wonder if you're going to be as laid back when you try to walk down the windswept canyons of Dalston on a November day, past the half-empty Starbucks, and boarded up 'retail opportunities' because the council tax is too high for the small shopkeepers they turfed out, and the empty flats because the yo-pros (young professionals) have gone home to mum and dad for the long weekend, because Dalston is so 'awful' etc etc. Never mind, we'll have a privatised Overground Line and bus station right bang in the middle of Dalston, (the 1930s planners realised that the best places for bus stations was away from the central points), so that Kingsland Road (where they'll have to turn into the ex-Oxfam site)will be permanently jammed up. Let's talk again in 2010 about housing and development needs and who were the winners and losers and how you feel about paying poor old Barratts a bung out of your council tax so that you can have a high rise buy-to-let block on your doorstep.

[Glyn]

One of my main concerns is that working-class people seem to being pushed further and further out from central London. A few generations ago, it was quite feasible for working-class people, or, people on lower salaries (such as myself) to live comparitively close to central London. As time has moved on, this has become more and more difficult. House prices and rents have increased, and areas within reasonably easy commuting distance of the City and West End have become more and more middle-class. What happens to those on lower salaries? Are they supposed to roll over and shrug, and shuffle off further into Essex and to Zones 3 and 4, for the greater good? Lower Clapton - where I live, in a modest 1 bedroom rented flat - will change immeasureably when the Olympics come. Already, my rent has risen by 12% this year. Soon, I will not be able to afford to live here any longer (I am a common-or-garden variety higher education admin gonk, based in central London), and will need to move, in all probability. Or maybe move to a small flatshare once again.

By all means, "regenerate" areas. However, what I would like to see is a greater consideration given to current residents and existing businesses. My concerns are not reactionary "nothing should change" viewpoints. It`s about accepting change within certain parameters, showing a degree of sensitivity for local populations. It`s rarely the middle classes who face these radical changes; it`s virtually always those on lower salaries who have to adjust. And those are the people with less options.

[felix]

I have a lot of working class friends and colleagues who live in Essex yet have grown up in Hackney and environs. They have no wish to return even if they could afford to. They would not return because of an irrational fear of crime and a dislike of the racial mix. They feel they have been chased out, but theirs is the dream of an estate house in a small town-somewhere to park their car- and their move has been voluntary. Often they commute large distances. Of course they probably could not afford a modest late Victorian three bed terrace in Hackney, so somewhere like Dagenham or Barking is a stepping stone to the rural idyll

I find it odd that "key workers" housing is only for a narrow sector of the workforce which runs London. But without all the long-distance commuters or London dwellers crammed into poor inner-city housing doing non-key jobs, London would cease to function.
How have we got here? Perhaps the 40% top tax rate has quite a role, though any ideas of raising it were kicked into the long grass ages ago. Indeed Brown,G is in favour of a low tax economy. That means that the well-paid London professionals who don't want to commute have high disposable income,which combined with generous lending policies of banks,etc., has allowed house prices and rents to climb steeply in inner London. A more moral society is one where the gap between rich and poor is smaller. Taxation is one means of achieving that, but....
So one cannot always live where one wants to because of market distortion due to inequalities of spending power.
And if the new arrivals in Dalston want to spend their money in Airport type shops,so be it. But I do recall that Dalston residents failed to support the more moral Co-operative movement when it was there in recent times.

[Mark]

Michael

I'm afraid your rhetorical approach does not convince me at all. You ask: "do the new developments benefit the people of Dalston/Hackney as it's the people of Dalston/Hackney who are laying out millions to pay for it?". Answer, yes, some of the people of Dalston will undoubtedly benefit from this development as they have done from other recent developments in Hackney, although plainly not all residents will do. There is a sensible debate to be had about compensation for the losers, but to pretend that everyone in Hackney is a loser and all the winners are "big business" is nonsense.

Again you write, this time in reply to Felix: "I wonder if you're going to be as laid back when you try to walk down the windswept canyons of Dalston on a November day, past the half-empty Starbucks, and boarded up 'retail opportunities' because the council tax is too high for the small shopkeepers they turfed out, and the empty flats because the yo-pros (young professionals) have gone home to mum and dad for the long weekend, because Dalston is so 'awful' etc etc". Well, sorry, but young professionals have just as much right to come and live in Dalston as anyone else.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, immigrants from the West Indies were welcomed all over London by signs that said "No Coloureds" when they looked for places to rent. Nowadys the SWP offers us "No young professionals" instead as if prejudice based on class is somehow less offensive than prejudice based on skin colour.

Final point, "public money" has been flooding into Hackney in the past few years in case you hadn't noticed, in the form of new schools, new and better transport facilities, more police men and women, and higher salaries for many public sector workers. One of the reasons why so many people want to come and live here is because the public services are so much better than they were 10 years ago.