Abstract:The Grenfell fire was symbolic of an unequal urban landscape closely tied to material and aesthetic norms around property ownership and entitlement. The aim of this paper is to unsettle these norms by advancing a novel genealogical approach. Through systematic review of government archives seldom studied by property researchers, historical comparisons are mobilised to challenge the taken-for-granted way in which we approach property and ownership today. It is shown how, in the face of a comparable housing cris… Show more
“…Such chains operate to channel wealth from these locations and should not be seen as uncomplicated forms of investment in the property market. In the context of massive housing stress in the capital and the crisis in urban management symbolised by the Grenfell Tower catastrophe in Kensington and Chelsea (Burgum, 2019), the massive profitability and lack of accountability of capital is marked. But this, of course, is precisely what capital seeks out in its formation as wealth chains and a force for its own enlargement at the behest of its owners.…”
Taking as our focus the city of London over the last decade, we use state-held records of house sales to consider the impact of competition for housing resources in the luxury property market. This data suggests that the use of offshore investment vehicles and the concealment of wealth from national tax agencies have become key mechanisms by which housing resources have been exploited by the wealthy and their capital deployed by agents of the rich. Using the concept of wealth chains, we consider these methods of capital accumulation as these extending flows of managed capital become ‘anchored’ within specific urban spaces, in this case the luxury housing market of inner West London. Our analysis of a selection of these chains shows that the prevailing political management of the property economy benefits those already winning the war of inequality while looking to augment their capital and shield it from tax and regulation. The ultra-wealthy, financial intermediaries and multinational corporations have created chains articulated across space, with the effect of undermining the value of dwellings as homes, and have replaced them with assets to be traded in pursuit of private and offshore wealth gains. The result is an urban context that favours already advantaged and powerful interests and enables the avoidance of tax obligations desperately needed at a time of austerity and intense housing need.
“…Such chains operate to channel wealth from these locations and should not be seen as uncomplicated forms of investment in the property market. In the context of massive housing stress in the capital and the crisis in urban management symbolised by the Grenfell Tower catastrophe in Kensington and Chelsea (Burgum, 2019), the massive profitability and lack of accountability of capital is marked. But this, of course, is precisely what capital seeks out in its formation as wealth chains and a force for its own enlargement at the behest of its owners.…”
Taking as our focus the city of London over the last decade, we use state-held records of house sales to consider the impact of competition for housing resources in the luxury property market. This data suggests that the use of offshore investment vehicles and the concealment of wealth from national tax agencies have become key mechanisms by which housing resources have been exploited by the wealthy and their capital deployed by agents of the rich. Using the concept of wealth chains, we consider these methods of capital accumulation as these extending flows of managed capital become ‘anchored’ within specific urban spaces, in this case the luxury housing market of inner West London. Our analysis of a selection of these chains shows that the prevailing political management of the property economy benefits those already winning the war of inequality while looking to augment their capital and shield it from tax and regulation. The ultra-wealthy, financial intermediaries and multinational corporations have created chains articulated across space, with the effect of undermining the value of dwellings as homes, and have replaced them with assets to be traded in pursuit of private and offshore wealth gains. The result is an urban context that favours already advantaged and powerful interests and enables the avoidance of tax obligations desperately needed at a time of austerity and intense housing need.
“…Cooper and Whyte build a picture of routine and mundane administrative and bureaucratic decisions, creating a lived reality of violence and harm in innumerable working-class communities against the backdrop of the neo-liberal capitalist city. Stuart Hodkinson, meanwhile, offered that this institutional chain of events was structured by neoliberal housing policy (2019, 2021; see also de Noronha, 2019 andBurgum, 2019). It is important to understand, from this perspective, that the Grenfell Tower tragedy is not an accident: rather, it is an event that was decades in the making.…”
Section: Responding To Grenfell: the Lived Reality Of The Neoliberal ...mentioning
The idea of the open city has been used both conceptually and analytically to understand the politics of the city. The contrast between the open city and the closed city relies, in part, upon an understanding of the global systems that enfold cities and, consequently, the politics that are – and are not – afforded cities. Notions such as the postpolitical city depend not on temporality where the city has ceased to be political, but a spatialisation of politics where the (properly) political has become excluded by the closed systems that envelope cities. In this paper, we explore analytical and theoretical responses to the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire to disclose the ways that different critiques of neoliberalism and racial capitalism deploy and rely upon different conceptions of the open and closed systems of the city. Rather than settle for the open/closed binary, we seek to understand how different forms of openness and closedness afford/constrain the politicisation (and depoliticization) of city life – and its catastrophes.
“…In the context of successive governments’ commitments to property market inflation, deregulation, the reduction of state capacity, and the accommodation of powerful industry lobbying groups (Bayliss and Fine 2020; Colenutt 2020; Ferm and Raco 2020), the UK's building regulations regime has been relaxed significantly in recent decades. Following this process of flexibilisation there was an evident failure of regulation (Burgum 2020; Hodkinson 2019; Tombs 2020). As one technical academic review noted in an analysis of building safety post‐Grenfell:Almost every aspect of the industry's safeguarding regulations and procedures appear compromised or overlooked … it is evident that the industry is either unaware of the regulations and standards that apply or is neglecting responsibility for fire safety.…”
Section: Distributing Disaster: Value Extraction and Engineering In B...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The social housing block was designed to contain a fire in a single apartment, but cladding panels installed on its façade during a recent renovation were combustible so that flames spread rapidly across the building's exterior and within the wind tunnel created by the panel's cavity. Scholars have analysed the ways in which Grenfell encapsulates structural violence against Britain's marginalised populations (Burgum 2020; Danewid 2020; Hayes 2017; Shildrick 2018; Tombs 2020). Yet the atrocity also exposed systemic fire safety issues across the UK's housing stock, with many of the estimated 13,500 buildings covered in dangerously flammable cladding being private residential blocks (HCLGC 2020).…”
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholders) or the developers who built them. Faced with unaffordable remediation bills, leaseholders became stuck in uninsurable, unsellable, potentially fire‐prone units. Through the case of a London housing block, we trace the relationship between the structure of landed property, value extraction, and the distribution of risk to understand how a significant portion of the UK's housing stock have remained firetraps. We argue that institutionalised value grabbing not only created the conditions of social murder but also became an obstacle to remediation, resulting in a politically charged “asset class struggle” over the way in which the structure of housing property and its capitalisation mediates social harm.
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