Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores the impact of urban regeneration on urban communities. It brings together three ethnographies set across London and Belfast, where residents of urban housing have challenged short-term future visions of economy-led redevelopment of urban environments.

Paper Abstract:

In cities around the world, large-scale, economy-led processes of renewal and redevelopment tend to go hand-in hand with the demolition of perfectly viable buildings (and other social infrastructures). From the rubble, sanitised and seductive future visions of social and urban change, materialised in architectural renderings, marketing materials and community consultations, tend to emerge. In this paper, we will challenge whether this so-called “creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1942; Harvey 1989) tied to the devaluation of pre-existing structures, landscapes and communities is inevitably linked with a city’s prosperous future. This paper interrogates how short-sighted future imaginaries and relentless past and planned cycles of demolition and eviction have impacted on the health and wellbeing of local people; how do they deal with repeated broken promises over time? What practices and narratives of care emerge when people step in to care for each other, for their communities but also for their everyday material surroundings and ecological environments, when broader, conventional structures fail? The paper brings together two ethnographies set in London and one in Belfast that sketch out the varying arcs of elusive promises made by developers to urban residents. It also examines how residents respond through a range of material practices - from gardening and grieving to setting up bonfires - as ways of puncturing glossy architectural renders of the future where they find it difficult to locate themselves.