On Demolition
by Ken Gibb
Anderston Glasgow September 1 2013
I was at a multi-storey demolition in Glasgow today (see story on BBC News page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-23921636 ). My housing association is redeveloping a large part of Anderston just west of the city centre and the M8 and key to the programme is the clearance of a large property in the middle of the estate. We watched it come down this morning from a hotel on the other side of the motorway.
It got me thinking about a lot of things, notably when and when not to demolish but also the realities and complexities of area regeneration, especially when you have a stake in it.
This is the third Scottish blow down of a multi I have witnessed as a board member or chair of the housing association. The other two were a few years back on the Ardler estate in Dundee. The Dundee case involved the transformation of an entire neighbourhood and the development of mixed tenure terraced and semi detached housing following a stock transfer and design competition for remaking the area. Not only has the Ardler been completely transformed physically, it is a great sight to behold, demand for its housing is now very high and voids are few and far between. Moreover, the owner-occupied segment works well. While local residents do on occasion remark with some fondness about the multi storey flats, the new housing is extremely popular.
Anderston is a high amenity location with the housing originally split between council and the Scottish Special Housing Association (later Scottish Homes). Via Glasgow Housing Association, part of it is now managed by a local housing association. The rest was the last ever Scottish Homes stock transfer, sold to my association (Sanctuary Scotland) and was again organised as part of a regeneration programme to rebuild the homes of more than 440 tenants and RTB owners. In both Anderston and the Ardler there has been extensive local consultation on the form of redevelopment and this was intimately connected to the transfer ballots.
Anderston has several important features. One is that there is an effort being made to reinstate the original streetscape lost in the 1960s comprehensive development. Another has been the use of shared equity models to allow RTB owners to move into new homes in the redeveloped neighbourhood – an opportunity that they have now all taken up.
I was delighted that my mother was able to be present today and see the blow down. She grew up in St Vincent Street in Anderston between the wars and her parents were eventually forced to move as a result of the comprehensive redevelopment of the area in their retirement to a pretty dreadful interwar scheme in Yoker.
So should demolition be used as extensively as it is (particularly in Glasgow)? It is controversial and I have colleagues who are in general dead set against closing housing stock in a period of need and when socio-technically the properties have years of potential useful life ahead of them. It is also well-known that local politicians and community leaders can see symbolic political capital in the demolition of ‘notorious’ buildings (as was the case in my home town of Motherwell recently). These, of themselves, are not very convincing arguments though one can see how they can be seductive.
What are the issues? First, does the cost-benefit analysis that gives appraisal advice add up to a demolition and redevelopment decision, and, within that, does this take sufficient account of the interests and preferences of residents and the local community? Capital costs, expected life of the property, life time running costs, discount rates and many other factors have to be assessed as well as important intangibles. Of course, there may be straightforward financial reasons that make in some cases refurbishment and in others redevelopment impossible. Of course, the CBA may not stand up but it at least exposes the key assumptions and arguments.
Second, the loss of net social units is a material consideration i.e. where the redevelopment is mixed tenure, at lower density or reduced numbers. This does need to be put in a context of long term reduction in Glasgow’s high rise flats and disillusionment with what comprehensive redevelopment produced, as well as the city council’s and GHA’s long term plans to reduce provision overall over a now 30 year period. Some of this is really about gentrification and what goes in its place and the extent to which new and different households are able to earn capital gains from the regeneration at the expense of local residents being displaced (as well as the controversy as to the necessity or sustainability of mixed tenure redevelopment).
It is worth saying however, third, that it is not necessarily the case that all of these high buildings are being removed. GHA have come up with an innovative affordable renting solution to an Ibrox multi-storey block and other buildings remain popular and successful across the city (e.g. Anniesland and London Road). Equally, agencies across the country are seeking to maximise the re-use of empty properties including offering homesteading packages.
As far as the high flats go – there is clearly nothing definite about their future (or lack of it). Where there are no technical problems and where residents are happy to live in such a way that seems eminently reasonable. We know well that it does not always work for young families, and that there may be inadequate or insufficient supporting community infrastructure, shops and services in some areas. But if people want to remain and to find solutions that do not involve demolition where it makes for a sustainable solution, fair enough. What has always seemed wrong to me is that professionals or local politicians determine what should happen without resident consultation or involvement in alternative solutions.
Clearly there can be technical reasons for demolition and replacement with new homes. We should also be aware of the beneficial value of new supply. While there may be a debate about injecting mixed tenure into an area, it does seem to be stronger ground to argue that new high quality social housing does have a positive impact on residents and wider neighbourhoods – we have seen that very clearly in the Ardler and throughout the community-based movement in Glasgow.
I don’t want to get into architectural debates. For me the key issues are financial and economic on the one hand and, from within the set of feasible solutions, making sure that residents have real control over decisions made in their name and have a voice in design solutions that follow. Obviously, that has not always been the case but equally ruling out any demolition or saying it always makes sense cannot be right. In my pragmatic way I would suggest that these are and should be decisions based on the views of those who matter, the underlying economics, what is really sustainable and making sure there is a proper debate around the competing visions for the future of neighbourhoods in question.
Ken Gibb's 'Brick by Brick' 
Interesting overview on what are a number of themes. It all does for me again conjure of that pub topic of a dull evening, ‘What is regeneration?
In many neighbourhoods it was axiomatic that certain high flats ‘had to go’. Demolition may well have been the least bad option – even the desirable option where it was replaced with better quality housing meeting equivalent needs – that may not included slavish provision for so-called ‘affordable home ownership (or mortgage indebtedness).
That, however, is almost without exception a remedial action to address, or at least mitigate, existing problems. Is that really ‘regeneration’? I have witnessed in my career areas of acute urban deprivation that have now been subject to at least two immense investments in urban development/regeneration. My subjective and anecdotal sense in walking and working those areas is that they are again troubled and in danger of renewed decline.
In retrospect there was no ‘development or renewal’ (or, along the way heaven help us, ‘transformation’). There was that attempt at a remedial action to address, or at least mitigate, existing problems.
At least two factors seem common in these scenarios; 1) An absence of any fundamental cultural change either in the communities or neighbourhoods concerned, or in their governance 2) A lack of any spatially-specific, clear or convincing economic rational or purpose in what was being done.
(In among all this there is also, perhaps, a cue for the Paul Cheshire poser of, ‘are people poor because they live in poor neighbourhoods, or do they live in poor neighbourhoods because they’re poor?)
It would be good to know that much has changed? I suppose that’s what makes the work of the likes of the GCPH, and the GoWell project on regeneration areas, so important.
I agree, in general, though I do think there are posiitve examples but they need to be sustained externally ad internally and yes there are many 2nd or 3rd round attempts to ‘fix’ things. I think the debate I was stumbling around was whether it is a false debate to say we should never demolish. I remember being down in East Manchester around their commonwealth games and there was three generations of plaques to regeneration of one urban neighbourhood then once more tipped in delcine. No simple general solutions but there are often answers.
Yes, and I in turn should make it clearer that I do agree that it is indeed a false debate around the notion that we should *never* demolish
Even if residents favor the demolition (as quite a few in the U.S. do, initially), there is little guarantee of what policy or market changes will bring to the area in the future. I’m curious: how many folks are actually displaced these days in Glasgow by such projects, or have you done a better job solving this issue than we have (with something like a 5-10% return rate of former residents to the new developments)?
It is different in specific regeneration projects but in our case in the Ardler and in Anderston we are developing new social housing for the existing residents. Thereafter there will be different specific arrangements for rehousing vacancies e.g. there may be nomination rights from the council or there may be use of our own social housing allocation scheme. The Ardler had new home ownership too and its broader area success brought the inevitable growth in former council house ‘right to buy’ sales and that may have a long term impact on income and tenure mix. So, I guess it is quite a bit different from your context but within that there is consderable variety in model, mix and outcome. But in our case at least the redevelopment is primarily for the residents of the area.
Fascinating. Thanks.
Maybe a bit tangential but still, IMO, relevant, is the work some years ago by Professor Mark Joseph on the HOPE V1 in the USA. HOPE V1 was in essence a Federal-wide, urban area clearance, demolish and rebuilt programme. The core aim was the creation of sustainable mixed income communities where there had been neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty and associated disadvantage. (Whereas in Scotland we might talk of ‘the schemes’, in the USA it is ‘the housing projects’).
Mark Joseph’s work was a fieldwork evidence based demonstration that the entire programme had failed in virtually all of its policy aims. From my understanding, it was notable was that the evidence on the experiences of the low income families who returned to the ‘redeveloped’ neighbourhoods did not, mostly, benefit in the ways anticipated.
I chaired at a regeneration forum event in Scotland at the time that Mark Joseph’s work was in progress. To the consternation of some forum participants, it emerged that there had been a high degree of ‘social engineering’ going on in HOPE V1 – for example some ex resident households that had been ‘cleared’ from an area would either ‘not been enabled’ or ‘not encouraged’ to return to the redeveloped neighbourhood. It was a concern to some participants that, aside of the arbitrary socio-economic discrimination implied, it was telling that the households deemed most eligible for return, did not benefit in the ways anticipated (sounds a very familiar story in the history of would-be social engineers?).
There has been some great critical material written on this and related programmes by George Galster and Paul Cheshire and gets right to the heart of the neighbourhood effects literature. I seem to recall excellent though decidedly mixed reviews of moving to opportunity too.
Ken
Sent from my iPhone
Staff website: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/staff/kennethgibb/
Personal blog: https://kengibb.wordpress.com