The Estate Regeneration and its Discontents: From Social Housing to Social Cleansing in a Global City

It is widely accepted that London is in the midst of a serious housing crisis, manifested most obviously in city’s soaring rents. While the causes of this crisis are manifold, many people have come to argue that the diminished role of public housing, which includes council estates, is a major contributing factor. Yet the bitter irony is that, at a time of such massive housing shortages, London’s council estates are disappearing from the city’s skyline in the name of renewal and regeneration. In The Life and Death of London’s Council Estates, Watt provides a systematic policy and sociological account of the transformation of council housing in London over the last three decades, drawing on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and statistical and documentary analysis undertaken in several London boroughs. The book explores what this dramatic shift in housing implies for ever-widening inequality in London’s distribution of wealth.