David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ agenda is best understood in terms of ideological and policy continuities with earlier Conservative and New Labour governments. But where previous post-1979 governments have sought to renegotiate the role of the state mostly through privatisations and marketisations of public services, the ‘Big Society’ agenda also proposed the replacement of the state by individual voluntarism and community enterprise. The accompanying political narrative portrays an atomised ‘broken Britain’ but at the same time insists that untapped community spirit can take the place of the state. This article examines the disjuncture between Big Society narratives and urban policy responses to the 2011 Tottenham riots. By comparison with previous local regeneration initiatives in Tottenham there was very little emphasis on community development. Instead explicit goals of gentrification in the Plan for Tottenham echo Thatcher-era approaches to ‘place shaping’ and exemplify a wider re-emphasis on property-led regeneration.

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This article is a sequel to an analysis of diagnoses of the causes of the 2011 Tottenham Riots published in this journal (2012) which charts the emergence of a predominant focus on developer-led gentrification in the area. We locate this focus on gentrification within United Kingdom urban policy and political debates and through a historical analysis of regeneration policy and community development as this played out in Northumberland Park, the most deprived area of Tottenham.

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