The Changing Image of Affordable Housing

Design, Gentrification and Community in Canada and Europe

Ulduz Maschaykh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317038948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture générale

Illustrated by a range of case studies of affordable housing options in Canada, this book examines the liveability and affordability of twenty-first-century residential architecture. Focussing on the architects' and communities' commitment to these housing programmes, as well as that of the private building sector, it stresses the importance of the context of the neighbourhoods in which they are placed, which are either in the process of urban transition or already gentrified. In doing so, the book shows how, and to what extent, twenty-first-century dwelling architecture developments can help to create an integrated sense of community, diminish social and demographic exclusions in a neighbourhood and incorporate people's desires as to what their buildings should look like. This book shows that there are significant architectural projects that help to meet the needs and desires of low- to middle-income households as well as homeowners, and that gentrification does not necessarily lead to the displacement of low-income families and singles if housing policies such as those highlighted in this book are put into place. Moreover, the migration of the middle class can result in a healthy mix of classes out of which everyone can enjoy a peaceful and habitable coexistence.

1

From Eighteenth-Century Landed Gentry to Twenty-First-Century Gentrification

The term ‘gentrification’ was first used in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass in London: Aspects of Change. Glass was directing research for University College London on socio-economic changes after the Second World War in inner-city London. After the war, housing in Britain was in a state of crisis: the London County Council faced an estimated shortfall of 400,000 dwellings (Greater London Records Office 1946). Glass noted the global aspect of gentrification in her claim that London’s urban planning development, which preferred urban revitalization and displacement of the poor, was representative of the affluent Western world (Glass et al. 1964: xiv). Gentrification, according to Glass, requires the displacement of the indigenous mostly lower-class population and their replacement by the middle and upper classes. It defines a process in which run-down, sometimes underpopulated, neighbourhoods (Islington, Paddington, North Kensington, Notting Hill) are transformed into popular residential areas by upgrading cottages and older houses, which also increases the value of the land (ibid.: xviii–xix). The change in the status of the residents provides an incentive for business and industry to invest in the economically upgraded neighbourhoods, which causes further transformations in the demography and landscape. Urban branding is part of this process, as, along with changes in neighbourhoods, cities need to keep their economies rising. How and why the socio-economic changes occur is the subject of controversy. One area of contention is who is harmed and who benefits from gentrification. Some consider gentrification positive and desirable as it enhances people’s lives (Byrne 2003: 406), while others consider it a form of ‘social cleansing’ (Kipfer and Keil 2002: 237). In order to shed light on this complex subject, I will examine the four major theories of gentrification: Neil Smith’s supply-side thesis on the ‘rent gap’, which appeared in the 1980s and saw the correlation between land value and property value as the determining factor in gentrification; Richard Florida’s Creative Class (2004), which maintained that creativity was the driving factor in economic growth; David Ley’s examination of the role of middle-class aesthetic taste and cultural preferences in boosting a city’s attractiveness; and the modern trend in urban planning of mixed-income neighbourhoods, which is also one of the most controversial approaches to gentrification and raises the question of whether gentrification is revitalization, beautification or simply displacement of the poor.

All four of these theories deal with gentrification in North American and European cities. It is not only a political, social and economic concern but also a cultural one that affects people’s everyday lives in a very real way. Therefore, the academic theories will be illustrated with examples from popular culture, such as TV shows, musicals and novels. This makes the rather academic and theoretical subject matter more approachable and ‘real life’.

THE WORKING CLASS, THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE LANDED GENTRY: FIRST USE OF ‘GENTRIFICATION’

‘Gentrification’ is a term with class connotations, being derived from the word ‘gentry’ with its connotations of the landed gentry (Breckner 2010: 27) and the squirearchy, a class in Britain just below the aristocracy but well above the commoners.¹ Members of this class had the option to bear a title and were wealthy enough to live without having to work, their main source of income being the possession of property and land (rural, urban or industrial) and the collection of rents (Bence-Jones 1965: xv). Even though they were amongst the most politically powerful members of British society, their status did not automatically guarantee material wealth, which challenges the idea that property ownership was always lucrative. One of the best known members of the landed gentry was Diana Spencer, before she married Prince Charles and became Princess Diana, who famously went from shy kindergarten teacher to wife of the future king of England (Corby 1997). In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams observed that in Jane Austen’s novels the characters that belong to the country gentry marked a firm division between themselves and their neighbours and the workers and servants who actually help them to maintain their status (1973, cited in Redfern 2003: 2362).

Glass examined the liveability and affordability of public housing in Lansbury, a small estate in East London. Ten years after she visited and interviewed the tenants and residents, who were mostly working-class, she compared her results for Lansbury with the rest of London and concluded: ‘Lansbury is a pointer to what has yet to be achieved in the many areas of our large cities which are still waiting for reconstruction’ (Glass et al. 1964: 191). Besides gentrification, Glass also described the marketing measures – although she did not specifically use the term ‘urban branding’ – undertaken by the citizens of London, through the labelling of products and goods as well as visual symbols, to express their upgraded status (ibid.: xiv). This is observation has been elaborated on by later scholars such as Jörg Blasius (1993), Peter Dirckmeier (2010) and Pierre Bourdieu (1985).²

London is very significant in the history of gentrification, but what Glass described as a post-war development had actually happened already in Victorian Islington in north London (Redfern 1997). A century prior to Glass’s coinage, German philosopher and co-founder of Marxism, Friedrich Engels described the urban process and the problem without using the term ‘gentrification’ in ‘Zur Wohnungsfrage’. In very simple words, he described England’s housing situation:

Die Ausdehnung der modernen großen Städte gibt in gewissen, besonders in den zentral gelegenen Strichen derselben dem Grund und Boden einen künstlichen, oft kolossal steigenden Wert; die darauf errichteten Gebäude, statt diesen Wert zu erhöhn [sic], drücken ihn vielmehr herab, weil sie den veränderten Verhältnissen nicht mehr entsprechen; man reißt sie nieder und ersetzt sie durch andre. Dies geschieht vor allem mit zentral gelegenen Arbeiterwohnungen, deren Miete, selbst bei der größten Überfüllung, nie oder doch nur äußerst langsam über ein gewisses Maximum hinausgehn [sic] kann. Man reißt sie nieder und baut Läden, Warenlager, öffentliche Gebäude an ihrer Stelle. (Marx and Engels 1873: 215)³

Engel’s nexus theory evolved through an analysis of the struggle between capital and labour. In his first publication ‘Die Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse in England’ he realized that the population explosion of the ‘proletariat’ in the inner city was due to the rapid expansion of industrialization and its need for labour (1972: 250). Engels concluded that the working class would suffer from the effects of gentrification through an alarming housing shortage caused by the demolition of run-down but affordable residential buildings (ibid.: 215). Their replacement with luxury houses, high-end shops and public buildings causes the cost of land in inner cities to rise, forcing the working class to move to the peripheries. Engels also recognized that speculation in real estate also forced up land prices. His solution to gentrification however, was the entire abolition of capitalism.

About half a century later in 1929, Le Corbusier developed his theories of a new type of futuristic city that would meet the demands of the citizens’ contemporary lifestyles in The Cities of Tomorrow. Although, Le Corbusier’s primarily focus was on the overall improvement of the city, the city centre and life in the suburbs, he acknowledged that the ‘security of the dwelling is the condition of social equilibrium’ (1929: 84). His work was heavily influenced by Howard Ebenezer’s The Great Cities of To-Morrow (1902).

Le Corbusier saw the danger of the big city – which he called a ‘beast’ that has no tolerance for human beings – as the city is destructive and, ‘with its throbbing and its tumult, crushes the weak and raises the strong’ (1929: 87). Therefore he constructed a concept of town-planning with the city at the centre connected to the suburbs by a mass transport system. Unlike Engels, Le Corbusier did not make distinctions between rich and poor, capitalist and proletariat when it came to city dwellers.⁴ He divided the population of a city into three groups according to their place of residence: those who lived in the city he called ‘citizens’; those who lived in the suburbs, or ‘garden cities’, he called ‘suburban dwellers’; and those who live in the suburbs but worked in the city he called the ‘mixed sort’ (ibid.: 21). Le Corbusier favoured the suburbs for family dwellings, as he saw city centres as being in a ‘state of moral sickness’ that embraced an ‘intense form of capital for the mad speculation of private enterprises’ (ibid.: 96). Consequently the types of architecture in the city centre included skyscrapers surrounded by luxury stores, coffee shops and other amenities. To the architect the purpose of skyscrapers was purely business (ibid.: 23), which meant dwelling space should be in the suburbs, the lush green garden cities and everyone was enabled to get to the city centre through the mass transport system. Le Corbusier’s strict division between business zone in the core and residential zone in the suburbs combined with a smoothly operating mass transport system remained a vision. However, it is one that should be looked at more closely, as it does offer some promising ideas about how to avoid class segregation through town planning.

Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities challenged urban planning guidelines in North American cities. Jacobs advocated the active involvement of ordinary citizens over that of academic professionals in matters regarding urban planning processes (1961: 54). Even though she did not use the term ‘gentrification’, she did describe the process by quoting from the book of Job (24: 2) and comparing the passage with the urban renewal policies of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, which would destroy the social fabric of poor neighbourhoods through displacing low-income residents (ibid.: 2). Use of the biblical reference brought urban transformation, urban branding and gentrification down to earth, enabling ordinary people to understand the processes.

GENTRIFICATION: AN ILLUSION OF INCLUSION?

Gentrification had been dealt with critically before the Second World War, but it was not until Glass’s coinage of the term ‘gentrification’ that the academic battle between those for and against began. Just one year after Glass’s book was published, English writer James Lees-Milne expressed his concerns about the diminishing properties of the landed gentry in Great Britain and wondered if there will ‘in another generation’s time be any land left for the gentry to possess?’ (1964: xxiii). This demonstrates how land possession and urban land development are a matter of perspective.

After the Second World War gentrification went from being a geographically European-bound subject matter to a global one, as it now affects any mega city from Tokyo to Teheran, due to the rising migration of people into the city. (N. Smith 2002: 444)⁵

Apart from the geographical expansion there have also been disagreements on the socio-economic and ethical effects of gentrification. On the one hand, the process can be considered as a transformation of less developed, sometimes very run-down and devalued neighbourhoods into well-developed and popular areas with greater economic value. This gives gentrification a positive connotation, because it breathes life into formerly dead neighbourhoods: the term ‘revitalization’ is used and ‘gentrification’ carefully avoided by those in favour it. On the other hand, gentrification has also been criticized: the neighbourhoods’ rising popularity increases the value of the land, which forces low-income residents out. An ongoing question about gentrification is how inclusive it is for the marginalized and whether it really harms the poor (Vidgor 2002).

Jacob Vidgor and Lance Freedman share the opinion that gentrification has a positive outcome, as improving abandoned and low-income areas through renovating deteriorated buildings and attracting businesses attracts affluent residents and investors. This will work in everyone’s favour (Freedman and Braconi 2004).⁶ They argue that these kinds of transformations boost the value of the neighbourhood through the influx of higher-income neighbours and hence foster its popularity and economic ability. However, Paul Redfern and Tom Slater criticize the exclusion of the marginalized as a result of gentrification.⁷ Redfern argues that gentrification is not a class but a status struggle which creates marginality. To Redfern there are clear winners and losers: marginalization happens to those who do not have the means to protect themselves, while those who displace them (usually the middle and upper class) find their distinctiveness and sense of uniqueness through this displacement (Redfern 2003: 2360).

In ‘Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Theory in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation’, David Harvey highlighted the problem of the relationship between quality of living and rental-prices of residential units in overcrowded parts of the inner city, noting that rents are ‘very high relative to the quality of the accommodations, while properties, if they do change hands, do so at negligible prices’ (2008a: 140). Hence the inhabitants of poor, devalued areas are not in an advantageous situation to begin with as they lack liveable and affordable dwellings. Harvey acknowledges that ‘urban renewal’ is not the solution, as it ‘merely moves the problem around and in some cases does more harm than good’ (ibid.: 141).

Whether gentrification includes or excludes the poor remains a subject of debate, but it is clear that there is no straightforward answer. It always depends on the perspective: that of supply or demand. The following four theories each attempt to explain how and why gentrification occurs as well as who benefits from it the most.

ABANDONED SPACES BECOME PROFITABLE SPACES: RENT-GAP THEORY

Neil Smith was one of the very first scholars to deal with the subject of gentrification, arguing that it is driven by economic rather than cultural factors. Examining why inner-city areas were being gentrified in the first place, Smith noticed that gentrification is a ‘back to the city movement’ and therefore, he concluded that there is a direct correlation between disinvestment in property-value and recycled land-value (1979: 546). The driving factor is the relationship between the providers on the supply side and the consumer (buyer, tenant, resident) on the demand side (ibid.: 540). As a Marxist, Smith emphasized the profit-oriented motives of investors and developers in buying devalued land in inner cities and redeveloped land in abandoned urban areas. To Smith we live in a competitive market economy driven by supply and demand. Therefore, gentrification happens when middle- and upper-class landowners and residents aim to increase their capital through investing in devalued areas that will eventually increase in value and produce profit (ibid.: 537). Space is a creation of profit-oriented investors and real estate agents who transform it into whatever is most profitable for them (N. Smith 1982: 153). This is how Smith developed his rent-gap theory. It is the struggle over the use of space, which has little to do with the middle class but everything to do with the widening discrepancy between property value and underlying land value in inner cities. His main premise was that gentrification was an entirely economic driven process that adjusts to supply and demand (N. Smith 1996: 57):

The rent gap is the disparity between the potential ground rent level and the actual ground rent capitalized under the present land use. The rent gap is produced primarily by capital devalorisation (which diminishes the proportion of the ground rent able to be capitalized) and also by continued urban development and expansion, which has historically raised the potential ground rent level in the inner city. (N. Smith 1996: 65)

In order to illustrate his hypothesis Smith used Homer Hoyt’s ‘land value valley’ as an example. Hoyt created a pattern of land value for the city of Chicago in 1933, which he called a ‘valley in the land-value curve’. In the 1920s, the investment capital from businesses moved to the outer periphery of Chicago due to the lack of investors willing to build and invest in the city centre. This resulted in the drastic decrease in wealth in the city centre, and the remaining run-down old buildings continued to lose value (hence the ‘valley’) and be habited by ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 From Eighteenth-Century Landed Gentry to Twenty-First-Century Gentrification
• I Early Beginnings of Affordable Housing
• II Canada's Approach to Affordable Architecture
• Bibliography
• Index