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The right to community?

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  • Phil Hubbard
  • Loretta Lees

Abstract

Displacement is central to the process of gentrification, but the importance of law in both enacting and resisting such displacement is often overlooked. Noting the tensions between existential, embodied meanings of displacement (i.e. being removed from a place called home), and the formal legal definitions of displacement (i.e. the removal of the right to a property), this paper explores how the law is implicated in the struggle for London's remaining council estates, with processes of expropriation providing councils a means of displacing residents from these estates to allow for (private) redevelopment but also an opportunity for residents to assert their ‘right to community’. Here, we focus on the implications of the UK Secretary of State's decision not to overturn the Planning Inspectorate's (2016) recommendation that Southwark Council should not be allowed to compulsory purchase those homes on the Aylesbury Estate which residents had not already vacated via negotiation. This decision was reached on the basis that while tenants would be compensated financially for the loss of property, they would not be adequately compensated for losing their home. This is suggestive of an expanded notion of housing rights that encompasses a right to community—something that raises the possibility of the law actually aligning with the interests of council residents rather than supporting the politics of gentrification.

Suggested Citation

  • Phil Hubbard & Loretta Lees, 2018. "The right to community?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 8-25, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cityxx:v:22:y:2018:i:1:p:8-25
    DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2018.1432178
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Paul Watt, 2020. "Territorial Stigmatisation and Poor Housing at a London ‘Sink Estate’," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 20-33.
    2. Sue Easton & Loretta Lees & Phil Hubbard & Nicholas Tate, 2020. "Measuring and mapping displacement: The problem of quantification in the battle against gentrification," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 286-306, February.
    3. Sarah Leaney, 2022. "Common Sense as Political Struggle: Asserting the Right to Home Following the Grenfell Tower Fire," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(4), pages 1113-1121, December.
    4. Amelia Thorpe, 2021. "Regulatory gentrification: Documents, displacement and the loss of low-income housing," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(13), pages 2623-2639, October.
    5. Mara Ferreri, 2020. "Painted Bullet Holes and Broken Promises: Understanding and Challenging Municipal Dispossession in London's Public Housing ‘Decanting’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 1007-1022, November.
    6. Burchardt, Tania & Steele, Fiona & Grundy, Emily & Karagiannaki, Eleni & Kuha, Jouni & Moustaki, Irini & Skinner, Chris & Zhang, Nina & Zhang, Siliang, 2021. "Welfare within families beyond households: intergenerational exchanges of practical and financial support in the UK," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111868, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Nogueira, Mara & Shin, Hyun Bang, 2020. "The right to the city centre: political struggles of street vendors in Belo Horizonte, Brazil," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105867, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Stefano Bloch, 2022. "Aversive racism and community-instigated policing: The spatial politics of Nextdoor," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(1), pages 260-278, February.
    9. Youjeong Oh, 2023. "AGAINST THE COLONIZATION OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: The Top‐dong Right to the City Movement in Jeju, South Korea," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 425-443, May.

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