Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will discuss how specialised knowledge relating to housing policy and law is acquired and used, or at times rejected, by a group of London homeowners who are resisting the dispossession of their properties, and the implications of this for local democratic processes.

Paper long abstract:

Urban regeneration schemes are widespread in the contemporary city. As sites that engender processes of privatisation, dispossession and displacement, they are also greatly contested and often become the centre of bitter disputes. In this paper I will present material collected during fieldwork in one of London's largest public housing estates - a site that has been undergoing redevelopment for 15 years and that is currently earmarked for demolition. I will focus on the activities of a group of homeowners who are actively resisting the dispossession of their properties, and in particular I will hone in on the ways in which access to information about the scheme, knowledge about housing policy and law, and the ability to deploy such pieces of information are negotiated by residents who have little or no prior experience of such matters. Sites of decision making, such as council meetings, public inquiries and tribunals hinge on the use of highly specialised legal and technical forms of knowledge. A number of innovative strategies for gathering, understanding, sharing and using this specialised knowledge are developed by residents, as a way to negotiate with the local authority responsible for the regeneration. At times this specialised knowledge and language is also rejected outright, and alternative forms of framing the regeneration are used, leading to conflict and profound incommunicability. I will argue that this complex and conflictual encounter between different regimes of knowing reveals profound limitations present within the democratic decision-making structures and within the governance systems of local city planning.