Developer-led gentrification and legacies of urban policy failure in Post-Riot Tottenham

Abstract

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.

Youth voices in post-English riots Tottenham: The role of reflexivity in negotiating negative representations

“…passive participants trapped in a vicious cycle of deprivation and degradation where unemployment, addictions, low educational attainment, poor health, youth alienation and crime inter-connect in a causal relationship as ‘mutually reinforcing dynamics’. (Summarised by Dillon & Fanning, 2019, p. 611)…”

“…In particular, the North London area of Tottenham, where the riots erupted as a result of the deep sense of injustice at the police killing of a young, unarmed Black Tottenham man, has been at the receiving end of negative stereotypes. Since 2011, youths from Tottenham have been labelled ‘feral rats’ (Clarke, 2012, p. 297), and portrayed as ‘passive participants’ (Dillon & Fanning, 2019, p. 611) and ‘delinquents’ (Boyce Davies, 2013, p. 181) by the British news media and politicians. It is youths from this area that are the core of the present article.…”

The directors of urban transformation: The case of Oslo

“…By gentrification, we refer to the situations or processes whereby middle- and upper-middle-class households settle in, or by other means appropriate, working-class neighbourhoods, which then undergo a sociocultural or socio-material transformation (Atkinson, 2000a, 2000b; Dillon and Fanning, 2018). Although gentrification is often linked to the displacement of working-class or low-income residents (Alkon and Cadji, 2020), ‘unskilled households’ (Atkinson, 2000a: 149) or ‘the vulnerable’ (Alexandri, 2018: 36) – a claim that has been challenged by ‘recent quantitative scholarship’ (Brown-Saracino, 2017: 524–525) – we are primarily interested in the fact that certain actors occupy a strategic position in preparing the ground for the social, cultural and material transformation of a neighbourhood in order to increase or secure a long-term profit.…”