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6 C O N T E X T 1 7 9 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 IHBC London Branch Conference 2023 Heritage and gentrification: who wins, who loses? The IHBC London Branch conference made a welcome return to the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Denys Lasdun’s Grade I listed building, to discuss regeneration and communities. Charmaine Brown of the University of Greenwich noted Ruth Glass’s definition from 1964 of gentrification being the middle class displacing the working class. The social and cultural capital invested by Peckham’s Caribbean Windrush generation, for example, had been hidden under waves of later migrants and gentrification. The north Peckham estate regeneration of 1994–2004 saw families moved away, never to return. When the Bellenden Road regeneration of 1997–2007 rebranded the area as Bellenden Village, black businesses serving the local community were lost and undocumented. Regeneration may bring investment, cleaner, safer environments, new cultural space and trends such as charcoal- grey joinery paint. But it was Columbus-style colonisation, distanced from existing inhabitants, involving a transient middle class, increasing property prices and not investing in the community. Colin Thom of UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture noted that policy to restrict London’s growth and promote decentralisation saw shifts to new towns. The growth of service industries, tech and consumer booms and regrowth of the city centre followed later. Early gentrification was organic, led by owner occupiers. Young, middle-class professionals who valued diversity and period buildings as a cultural lifestyle were priced out of more established areas. In the 1970s and 80s, this led to rehabilitation of rundown buildings in fringe places – often enclaves independent from their surroundings and council estates, but with good public transport. First Georgian, then Victorian and Edwardian housing was cheap, restorable and had capacity for improvement. The process was reinforced by amenity groups, conservation areas and improvement grants. Working- class renters were displaced to the suburbs but some remained in council housing, which stopped London becoming demographically homogenous. The subsequent phase was gentrification by design, developer- or state-initiated and led, such as at Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs Enterprise Zone and Vauxhall Nine Elms Opportunity Area. This is typified by large-scale redevelopment with clusters of high rise, where the working poor are replaced by affluent residents. The most recent phase is super- or hyper-gentrification, or regentrification of areas that have already been gentrified. The super- rich from international financial firms with a bonus culture, foreign oligarchs and industrialists displace the previous affluent community; housing is financialised. Period buildings are not respected but treated as investment assets. The lack of local engagement reduces the vitality of neighbourhoods, leading to dead zones, little street life and disappearing diversity. Tim Walder of the Greater London Assembly and Yianni Hadjiyianni of Historic England explained that Historic England’s publication Keep it London: putting heritage at the heart of London’s future referred to what is now the London Heritage Engagement Strategy, and how the local plan process should be frontloaded with heritage considerations. It sought to broaden the understanding of what heritage was to encompass culture, intangible heritage and use. This would remove barriers to community engagement and move away from the top-down approach. The Historic England project begins to address how to resource this through the National Lottery Panel members (left to right) Alec Forshaw, Tim Walder, Colin Thom, Yianni Hadjiyianni and Charmaine Brown with conference chair David McDonald (Photo: Franki Webb)