Interesting Article on Dalston's slide towards social Gentrification

Gentrification no thanks

Dave Hill guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 May 2008

The scheme centres on the redevelopment of the old Dalston Junction railway station (closed in 1986) as part of the northern extension of the East London Line, but also includes the construction of new shops and homes, a library and a public square. Its backers - Hackney council's Labour leadership, former Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, Transport for London and the London Development Agency - say it will regenerate the centre of Dalston. So do the house builders Barratt, whose east London MD claims that the scheme "will finally lift Hackney into another league".

For Michael Rosen, though, "regeneration" is a fig-leaf word to cover something else. "What's happened," he writes, "is that the Labour party has lubricated the wheels of big property developers and retail magnates in order to 'regenerate' an area. But it hasn't been 'regenerated' for the people living and working there. They've been shoved out."

I can't speak for readers of Socialist Worker, but three of the most thoughtful and informed visitors to my little blog - fellow Hackney residents all - responded strongly to Michael's argument, each in a different way.

The first to comment was Felix, whose local knowledge puts mine to shame. Citing Charles Booth's famous map of late 19th century London poverty, he noted the affluence of the Dalston of that time and rather tartly, he made the point that if house prices in the street where Michael lives are anything to go by, it's been "coming up" again for quite some time. Michael responded: Felix was missing his point, which was that public assets are financing a process whose "net effect ... is to remove the poorest families."

Next came Mark, who objected to Michael's "purely negative" characterisation of bankers and developers, adding that the far left came nowhere in the London elections and observing that the demographics of inner cities have always been in a state of change. Then Glyn popped by. Though a Liberal Democrat, he expressed similar concerns to Michael's about "long-established Dalston residents being pushed out".

The exchanges continued, with Michael inviting Felix to imagine a walk through a future "regenerated" Dalston in November, "past the half-empty Starbucks, and boarded up "retail opportunities" 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'", Glyn insisted that he wasn't opposed to "regeneration" as such, but wished it could be done with more consideration for people like him. He wrote that the rent he pays to a private landlord in Clapton has "risen by 12% this year," and that with the Olympics on the way, "Soon, I will not be able to afford to live here any longer". He won't be able to afford a new Barratt apartment in the future Dalston Square either: most of those cost over £300,000.