Undergraduate Dissertation_Does Urban Participation Affect Political Structures by Adam Kelly

CITIZEN CONTROL DOES URBAN PARTICIPATION AFFECT POLITICAL STRUCTURES?

ADAM KELLY

TUTOR: DR TAHL KAMINER 2015

ABSTRACT

This paper considers participation as a re-emerging cultural ideal in relation to the urban realm. Participatory urbanism is deconstructed and analysed, with the current political setting of the United Kingdom as a backdrop. The endeavour herein is to analyse: does urban participation affect political structures? The methodology used for this task takes form as a series of representative case studies which are considered through a determined framework. This includes: user involvement, selfbuild, personalisation and also the counterproject, which is posited as a method of employing participatory action on a multitude of fronts thus proving particularly affective. Social housing is a general theme that runs through this paper, which will finally conclude by indicating that participatory urbanism could be notably successful in affecting contemporary policy on this prevailing concern. What does the future hold for the urban: will the citizen control?

CONTENTS

07 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

09 PREFACE

10 INTRODUCTION

18 CHAPTER ONE Political Structures: The Neoliberal City

24 CHAPTER TWO The Problems for Participation

28 CHAPTER THREE User Involvement as Participatory Urbanism

34 CHAPTER FOUR Self-build as Participatory Urbanism

40 CHAPTER FIVE Beyond Participation: Personalisation

46 CHAPTER SIX The Counterproject as a Participatory, Architectural Protest

62 CONCLUSION

66 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to Dr Tahl Kaminer, Lecturer in Architectural Design and Theory at The University of Edinburgh, for providing both knowledge and guidance from the inception to the completion of this paper.

Furthermore, my thanks extend to members of the Radical Housing Network for their generous provision of unpublished information and their advice, in particular to Benjamin Beach for the included interviews. I would also like to thank Oliver Wainwright, from Studio Superniche, and the Community Self Build Agency for their correspondence via email.

PREFACE

The dissertation established here assumes the position that architecture and urbanism are innately related to politics. It is presupposed that the act of creating space within the urban realm, giving an idea a spatial presence, is political by definition. Furthermore it is posited that it is not architecture’s form which defines this political interaction, rather it is the processes that are undertaken to create space along with the resultant occurrences within these spaces that hold architecture’s political relevancy. In this paper housing has naturally developed as a lens through which to discuss this notion of architecture and urbanism as apparatus to enact change upon the world. This is perhaps unsurprising due to the history of housing as a social and political matter.1 Yet all of the discussions held within this paper relate in some way to the issue of housing, an issue which is currently emerging as an acute topic in today’s political discussion, on a global scale. Therefore this paper has functioned as a primer for further study on politics, urbanism and the architect.

Brian Wheeler, ‘A History of Social Housing’, BBC News, 2015 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14380936> [accessed 18 April 2015]. 1

INTRODUCTION

Participatory culture has measurably developed and gained attention since the turn of the millennium, pursuing a revolutionary form of new democracy out with the standard mandate.2 Within urbanism, a participatory culture evolved during the 1970s, yet, within Europe, it was incorporated into institutional planning processes in a maligned, weaker form that involved barely any public participation at all.3 For reasons that will hopefully begin to reveal themselves throughout this essay, participatory urbanism is re-emerging as a relevant form of practice.

This thesis is concerned with agitating a critical position on urban participation and analysing its ability to affect current political structures. The focus of the study will be participatory urbanism as a territory innately linked with political policy yet also as the playground of the capitalist game. Moreover, it is the urban stage which is primarily concerned with participation’s key agenda: an empowerment of ‘the people’ as those who make meaningful decisions about our cities, enabling them to be participative yet not adversely tactful. Is it an effective method for progressive urban practice to bring about political change? Through participatory urbanism can architects, and other urban practitioners be agents and act upon the constraining political structures in order to affect them?

Participatory urbanism is one moniker for a loose, multi-faceted ‘movement’ that evades precise definition and includes alternative titles such as Everyday Urbanism and Tactical Urbanism, all of which invariably share incomplete overlaps.4 Although these terms share a similar goal of dismissing the traditional

Maros Krivy and Tahl Kaminer (eds.), ‘‘The Participatory Turn In Urbanism’’, Footprint, 7 (2013), p. 1 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till (eds.), Spatial Agency (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011), p. 182; Krivy and Kaminer, p. 1. 4 Kurt Iveson, ‘Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (2013), pp. 941-956. 2 3

modes of urban planning and ‘masterpiece’ architecture, each of these overlapping approaches offer distinct differences and predominately maintain their collective status through a shared platform of debate and exhibition. Participation’s unique agenda is that through an engagement of the populace within a process it promises to render that process more egalitarian. 5 In this essay it will be argued that participatory urbanism has the capacity to generate political modification by enacting upon the structures of the era. The question immanent in this ‘capacity’ is: how do various participatory approaches compare in this endeavour?

This study will predominately be concerned with the political setting of the United Kingdom as an example of Western neoliberal society, and therefore contemporary political structures that relate to participation will be discussed and dissected. Nevertheless, the goal of this paper is to form a critique on the operations of participatory urbanism. Instead of simply indiscriminately advocating these practices and continuing the deploring of neoliberalism’s effects upon the urban sphere, it intends to ascertain whether their endeavours are in fact true to their intentions, and whether they can go far enough towards empowering participants. Projects categorised as “social architecture” can easily become guarded by a “black box” outlook, setting themselves as beyond interrogation due to their humanitarian intentions.6 As the scope of this document (or indeed any document) cannot appraise the participatory movement in its entirety, characteristic case studies will be chosen in alignment with appropriate subcategories and considered against a defined framework in order to discern the virtues and inadequacies of each.

Paul Jenkins and Leslie Forsyth (eds.), Architecture, Participation and Society (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 64. Paul Jones and Kenton Card, ‘Constructing “Social Architecture”: The Politics Of Representing Practice’, Architectural Theory Review, 16 (2011), p. 230. 5 6

Sherry Arnstein’s A Ladder of Citizen Participation will act as the framework through which case studies undertaken in this paper shall be appraised.7 Furthermore, it will also explain the definition of ‘participation’ that has been adopted for this essay. Arnstein’s seminal text, written in 1969 intends to cut through the meaningless rhetoric surrounding participation and instead offer a distinct typology.8 This typology is devised into a metaphorical ladder wherein each rung corresponds to a certain level of participation, before she goes on to define each rung, from Manipulation and Therapy (which in fact lack participation altogether) through to Citizen Control: a state of complete participation.

Fig. 1. Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation.

Sherry R. Arnstein, ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35 (1969), p. 216-224. 8 Ibid., p. 216. 7

Arnstein also identifies a fundamental dynamic of participation: the principle of participation is unlikely to be disagreed upon by anyone when considered in general terms. However, once one begins to realise the practicalities, when the “have-nots” begin to call for more control in their own government, then the viewpoints of the powerful begin to change towards “shades of outright racial, ethnic, ideological, and political opposition.”9 Another of Arnstein’s assertions will be adopted by this thesis in order to more tightly define what ‘participation’ means. She posits that citizen participation essentially amounts to citizen power.10 This is an advocacy of the distribution of power more evenly among the “havenots” in society, i.e. those not involved in political processes. In real terms, this means control over decision making to a level in which it can genuinely inform the final product of the situational process.

This is the criterion used by Arnstein to form a scale of citizen participation. At the bottom of this scale are agendas to “educate” or “cure” the citizen behind a ruse of participation.11 Tokenism, the next stage up in the ladder, involves informing or consulting the participants and giving them a voice, although they still lack the power to ensure that those in charge will actually implement their views. Placation is a higher level of Tokenism, allowing the have-nots a role as advisors, although they still lack decision making powers. This level of participation holds particular dangers of co-option, a method of implying participatory engagement without the possibility of genuine change and can be purposefully used by organisations for these reasons:

Ibid. Ibid. 11 Ibid., p. 217. 9

Depending on their motives, powerholders can hire poor people to coopt them, to placate them, or to utilize the have-notsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; special skills and insights. Some mayors, in private, actually boast of their strategy in hiring militant black leaders to muzzle them while destroying their credibility in the black community.12

Participation in the form of Partnership enables negotiation, whilst Delegated Power and Citizen Control means the have-nots control the majority, if not all, of the managerial decision making powers at stake. Hence, this forms what could be reasonably considered full participation, without holding complete, absolute power. It is important to note that participation does not seek absolute power, as it would innately self-defeat the participatory endeavour for equality.

As Arnstein reveals, participation is not a binary process. Participatory urbanism can be variable in its composition, and therefore in this paper the following nomenclature will be adopted to broadly classify participatory categories for a more focused study. The 2011 publication Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture categorises participation in the spatial realm into three key categories: user involvement in the design process, design-build approaches and finally personalisation.13 This study will utilise these three categories as analytical tools to discuss the spectrum of participatory models undertaken in the urban realm. However, a fourth category will be offered, one particularly contracted to the urban: protest. This category will take form as the counterproject, an architectural protest that is engaged with reality in opposition to something currently put forward.

12 13

Ibid. Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 183.

Sherry Arnstein suggests a key pitfall that may affect a practice’s ability to accomplish participatory empowerment: the danger that participatory groups may be co-opted or placated. Adding gentrification to this list reveals that the case studies herein face legitimate obstacles in their quest to affect political structures. Therefore, this paper will devote a chapter to defining these pitfalls, calling upon vignettes to unravel how and why they occur.

First of all, this paper will begin by outlining the political structures prevalent within the UK over recent decades. The writings of prominent academics will be applied in order to outline that the policy and ideology of the state has, on the whole, progressed further and further away from participatory ideals. It will be revealed that the economics of neoliberalism has readjusted society’s view on both itself and the built environment. Next, an examination of participation’s susceptibility to co-option and its ability to be an incidental agent of gentrification will be characterised. This paper will then critique a series of participatory cases, referring to Arnstein’s framework to judge their level of participation yet also questioning the level of affect that these practices had on the very political structures they are a reaction to. First of all, user involvement in the design process will be analysed through Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall project. This venture aimed to regenerate an area of Newcastle whilst retaining its successful community, thus avoiding the gentrification effect, often a selfdefeating repercussion of participatory regeneration. It has been chosen due to its recent prominence as an ‘example’ of participatory social housing.14 The work of the Community Self Build Agency, a group who facilitate the forming of housing Owen Hatherley, ‘Pathfinder Was Slum Clearances Without The Socialism’, The Guardian, 2010 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/19/slum-clearance-housing-failed> [accessed 9 April 2015]; Tony Henderson, ‘Byker Wall In Short List For The Title Of Britain’s Greatest 20Th Century Building’, The Journal, 2014 <http://www.thejournal.co.uk/north-east-analysis/analysis-news/bykerwall-top-building-title-8187728> [accessed 18 April 2015]. 14

cooperatives will then be chosen as a case study of self-build participation. This study will also address the issue of funding as a vital consideration in the endeavour for true participation. Philippe Boudon’s observations on Le Corbusier’s Pessac housing project will provide a short analysis of personalisation as a procedure beyond conventional participation. This chapter will aim to outline the subversive act of personalisation as a more active participatory approach with regard to social and political affects, whilst also functioning as a hinge into the final chapter of this paper regarding the ‘counterproject’. Within this final chapter the counterproject will be discussed, as a method through which a variety of participatory approaches can be employed with a more direct political agenda: in opposition to an existing proposition. Maurice Culot’s successful use of the counterproject in Brussels will be discussed to both briefly define the term and also to later draw out some parallels between his successes and aspects of recent counterprojects in the UK. The Olympics, as an event which shone the limelight on gentrification issues in London, yet also as an accelerator of those very processes, will evidently be a focus. The Olympic Legacy plans functioned as the environment for a number of counterprojects from the creative sphere. One of these, The Blue Fence Project by Studio Superniche, will be discussed in order to further define the aspects of political structures that these counterprojects wrestle with, and to reveal how ‘alternative futures’ are being proposed. Legacy plans, of the more corporate kind, are once more the setting for two related participatory counterprojects that will be analysed, revealing that an activist approach of direct, participatory action in the urban realm is being used alongside ‘paper architecture’ to try and incite change in contemporary political structures. Throughout this paper the ambition will be to focus on the various approaches towards participation in the urban realm and to critique whether they successfully operate upon political structures to empower the urban citizen. 17

POLITICAL STRUCTURES: THE NEOLIBERAL CITY

David Harvey posits in his 2005 volume A Brief History of Neoliberalism that neoliberalism is the reaction to the flaws of capitalism, a process that relied upon continuous growth and technological development alongside a tightly controlled labour force.15 Harvey argues that the development of automated manufacturing processes eventually ensured that the machine could replace the role of the worker, leading to a rise in unemployment.16 The resultant lack of disposable income due to the loss of jobs caused a reduction in demand for products creating stagflation in the economy and a resultant decline in the

Fig. 2. Ford Sierra cars under construction at a Ford factory, in 1984.

flow of capital throughout the Western world.17 Therefore, developed nations began to restructure their economies towards what Harvey terms “paper entrepreneurialism”, a move away from production as the primary generator of wealth towards the realms of finance and property development, through means such as deregulation and privatisation.18 Thus neoliberalism enabled the resumption of capital accumulation and the continuity of capitalism, averting revolution.19

Antonio Negri offers similar conclusions: explaining that governmental adjustment to the financial and real estate systems enabled a process of deregulation and privatisation to channel capital towards those markets.20 In order to carry out these processes of privatisation capitalism needed “to break political and behavioural unity in the struggles of the social proletariat, whenever and wherever this shows signs of appearing”.21 This process took fruition as the promotion of the individual as consumer, deriding ‘society’ as a fallacy and

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 10. Ibid., p. 12. 17 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford [England]: Blackwell, 1990), p. 145. 18 Ibid., p. 170. 19 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, pp. 12, 59. 20 Antonio Negri, Revolution Retrieved (London: Red Notes, 1988), p. 180. 21 Ibid. 15 16

therefore dissolving the notion of social solidarity. 22 Thus the populace could be turned towards the market as the provider of services, instead of the state. This approach is evident in Margaret Thatcher’s infamous dictum “there is no such thing as society.”23

The neoliberalist agenda ushered in a political structure that was devoted to deregulation and privatisation in the name of profit, and it actively fractured society in order to achieve this. Furthermore, the built environment was progressively commoditised into a market for profit generation. For example, it is common knowledge that Margaret Thatcher’s policies increased home ownership through the 1980 Housing Act popularly known as the “right-to-buy” scheme.24 However the 1988 Housing Act shifted power within rental agreements from the tenant towards the landlord rendering buy-to-let a more plausible financial investment proposition, thus increasing house purchases and further driving up prices.25

Fig. 3. House Prices: 1975-2011. Source: Nationwide Building Society.

Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 41. Ibid., p. 23. 24 Kevin Gulliver, ‘Thatcher’s Legacy: Her Role in Today’s Housing Crisis’, The Guardian, 2013 <http://www. theguardian.com/housing-network/2013/apr/17/margaret-thatcher-legacy-housing-crisis> [accessed 10 April 2015]. 25 Ibid. 22 23

Fig. 4. Margaret Thatcher handed over the keys and deeds when 39 Amersham Road, Essex was purchased under the right-to-buy.

New Labour under Tony Blair continued this process of encouraging economic growth through real estate development.26 For example, “Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders” was a public scheme setup in northern England that partnered with private developers to demolish and reconstruct houses in low income areas, hoping to replicate the success of real estate profit-generation in the south.27 Although Pathfinder was touted as a ‘regeneration’ scheme the former community of the area was “decanted” or bought off in favour of “aspirational” newcomers.28 Compulsory Purchase Orders were wielded by the state to free up land for private housing development, usually of low affordability.29 This is an example of local Governmental power being implemented to access land and then relinquished at the point of ownership for private capital gain in the name of economic development.

Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 63. Hatherley, 2010. 28 Ibid. 29 Jenkins, Simon, ‘Simon Jenkins: Pathfinder Housing Clearance Projects In The Midlands And North’, The Guardian, 2007 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/16/comment.politics> [accessed 19 April 2015] 26 27

Since 2010, the coalition government lead by the Conservatives has pursued a decentralisation of government as a ruse towards increased citizen empowerment. In fact, this is a strategy for stimulating economic redevelopment through increasing developer liberties to generate capital through property. In their 2010 election manifesto, the Conservative party claimed:

Using decentralisation, accountability and transparency, we will weaken the old political elites, give people power, fix our broken politics and restore people’s faith that if we act together things can change.30

In fact, the weakening of central government has allowed businesses to fill this power vacuum through the altering of planning policy towards a “presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning system” so that it is no longer a “barrier to growth and wealth creation”.31

In response to a question aired on BBC’s Question Time on the 19th of March 2015 regarding a rent cap on housing in London, Sajid Javid, the Conservative Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport explained that “over the last 5 years we’ve had a very dramatic reform of planning regulations where they have been cut from 2000 pages to 50 pages to simplify and to make the whole process easier.”32

The Conservative Party, The Conservative Manifesto 2010 (London: The Conservative Party, 2010), p. 63. Ibid., p. 20. 32 BBC, Question Time, First aired19/03/2015 30 31

Neoliberalism has thus adjusted perception towards the role of the urban built environment, and in particular the housing sector. Over the past forty years the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;affordable homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; has drifted from a societal requirement towards a profit generating product to be constructed, bought, traded, leveraged and leased for profit. The result of this in relation to participatory urbanism is twofold: firstly, deregulation has resulted in an increased developer freedom and reduced citizen power over planning processes. Secondly, the ideological shift required to justify the privatisation (and fragmentary extinction) of social housing has marginalised the notion of community among the populace and the idea that the individual should participate in societal matters at all. Participatory urbanism is a reaction against this process, calling for a more democratic structure in the design of cities and a true, decentralised empowerment of the citizen.

THE PROBLEMS FOR PARTICIPATION

In this inquiry gentrification will be understood as originally described by Ruth Glass in 1964. A sociologist, she forged the term to portray the process of increasing rent and house prices that resulted in forcing communities out from neighbourhoods.33 This process is ultimately caused by the arrival of capital in an area, often in the name of ‘regeneration’, but inevitably financially pressuring the current inhabitants to leave their neighbourhoods.34 Within the UK, gentrification has been blamed for the increasing scarcity of affordable housing such as during Labour’s Pathfinder scheme. Participatory projects are not immune from having a gentrification effect on areas of the city and the issue of improving the urban fabric without contributing to a gentrification process is one which participatory urbanism needs to wrestle with.

In a recent Footprint journal on The Participatory Turn in Urbanism Monika Grubbauer points to the limits of bringing participatory urbanism to the mainstream through a review of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Berlin.35 This project was a “mobile laboratory travelling to cities worldwide” to create an “urban think tank community centre and public gathering space” with a focus on generating participatory debate.36 However, Grubbauer reveals that the intervention was too small and ‘predetermined’ in scope, meaning it lacked any real participatory aspect.37 Although the project held the BMW and Guggenheim international branding, finances were not sufficient enough to enable it to reach its full participatory potential as, on the whole, the projects were transplanted from elsewhere or preceded the Lab’s arrival in Berlin.38

Slater Tom, ‘Gentrification of the City’, in The New Blackwell Companion to the City (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 571. 34 Ibid. 35 Monika Grubbauer, ‘Mainstreaming Urban Interventionist Practices: The Case of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Berlin’, Footprint, 7 (2013), pp.123-130. 36 Ibid., p. 123. 37 Ibid., p. 128. 38 Ibid., p. 128. 33

Essentially, the project was co-opted as it engaged little with political debate and lacked a true invocation for participation. The BMW Guggenheim Lab sited itself upon a relatively conservative, middle class part of Berlin and ultimately amounted to a PR campaign, promoting the BMW and Guggenheim brand.39 This lack of genuine engagement and participation at a grass roots level is even evident in the language chosen for the project as English was used throughout the three sites of New York, Berlin and Mumbai.40 Although relevant artists were given the chance to exhibit their work, the project did not live up to its promise of “rethinking civic participation”41, and it simply relied upon this rhetoric to give an illusion of societal engagement in an attempt to build a positive brand image for the corporations involved. The BMW Guggenheim Lab hijacked participatory ideals yet failed to address issues of citizen empowerment. In any case where a participatory project is subject to external funding with ulterior objectives, the project is vulnerable to co-option in this manner.

Fig. 5. BMW Guggenheim LAB in Berlin, designed by Atelier Bow-Wow. Ibid., p. 123. BMW Guggenheim Lab, ‘BMW Guggenheim Lab’, 2015 <http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/> [accessed 11 April 2015]. 41 Christine McLaren, ‘TBC: Rethinking Civic Participation’, 2014 <http://blogs.guggenheim.org/lablog/tbcrethinking-civic-participation/> [accessed 16 April 2015]. 39 40

USER INVOLVEMENT AS PARTICIPATORY URBANISM

Perhaps the most fundamental approach to participatory urbanism is that of user involvement. As previously described, Ralph Erskine’s social housing project ‘Byker Wall’ has been admired and promoted as a model of citizen participation, and for that reason it shall be analysed in this essay. 42 Byker Wall, constructed between 1969 and 1975 is an example of user involvement in the design process as a participatory approach and is believed to hark back to an era of more socialist attitudes. 43 Whilst this is ostensibly the case, this case study will reveal that the project in fact represented limited participatory engagement as a result of the user involvement approach.

One of the project’s primary aims was to regenerate an area of Newcastle formed of highly inadequate and ageing flats whilst retaining the current inhabitants.44 The local council observed that there was a strong, united community within the neighbourhood, one that should be preserved and they therefore initiated “Byker for the Byker people”45 as a slogan for the regeneration.46 Therefore, a radical approach was proposed, one in which the estate would be slowly demolished and rebuilt in a piecemeal fashion, with a close collaboration between residents

Fig. 6. The Byker estate before regeneration, circa 1930.

and the architect throughout the process.47 The ambition to retain a successful community through participation involved Erskine setting up an office within the estate itself, operating an open door policy for residents to share their views which would hopefully ensure the final design was in line with the communities wishes.48

Hatherley, 2010. Ibid. 44 Peter Malpass, ‘A Reappraisal of Byker. Part 1: Magic, Myth and The Architect’, Architects’ Journal, 169 (1979), p. 963. 45 Mats Egelius and Ralph Erskine, Ralph Erskine, Architect (Stockholm: Byggforlaget, 1990), p. 150. 46 Malpass, p. 963. 47 Hatherley, 2010. 48 Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 183. 42 43

Fig. 7. Ralph Erskine with Byker children in the on-site office.

However, an Architects’ Journal article written since the completion of the project offers an insight into how these ambitions played out. This article is based upon an investigation by the Department of the Environment which questioned whether the “Byker for the Byker people” slogan was successfully implemented. It is explained that the relationship between the community and authorities was never one of partnership.49 Whilst Erskine’s actions promoted and encouraged the community to be forthcoming with their ideas, it is argued that the authorities were defensive towards user empowerment, resorting to leaflets and public meetings as a method of engagement.50 In fact, beyond the initial consultation for the pilot stage, “subsequent phases did not have anything like the same level of involvement with the architects.”51 The Department of the Environment investigation concluded that the authorities viewed the participatory motive of the project as an introductory process of gleaning information Malpass, p. 963; Egelius and Erskine, Ralph Erskine, Architect, p. 159. 50 Malpass, p. 968. 51 Malpass, p. 968. 49

from the community.52 They assumed that the architects would assimilate this information and resolve any issues in terms of consensus.53 For the authorities, this process could avoid animosity between themselves and the Byker inhabitants and whilst they suggested support for the notion of giving tenants authority, they never clarified their stance on the extent of participant involvement.54 This flexible viewpoint inhibited Erskineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to argue for the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wishes, a reminder that the true client was the Housing Association authorities, as the project financiers. For example when Erskine proposed alternate lease arrangements in order to give tenants more control over the personalisation and variation of their homes, the authorities suggested that Erskine had overstepped the boundary of his command.55

The Byker Wall redevelopment is a very influential example of a project which attempted to solve many of the issues facing that generation of architects, including how to regenerate a community without inhabitant removal and the issue of limiting costs whilst integrating user input.56 Whilst Byker Wall can be admired for its sensitivity to an established community, any real power in the decision making process still lay with the Housing Association authorities as it is they who funded the project. Participants could, understandably, not be given exactly what they desired as it was deemed impossible within the cost constraints.57 Furthermore, the piecemeal approach devised in collaboration with the community in order to avoid rehousing some of them off-site was failed due to construction delays which Malpass ultimately credits to central government

Egelius and Erskine, Ralph Erskine, Architect, p. 159. Ibid. 54 Ralph Erskine, Yukio Futagawa and Mats Egelius, Byker Redevelopment, Byker Area of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, 1969-82 (Tokyo, Japan: A.D.A. Edita Tokyo, 1980). 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Malpass, p. 969. 52 53

economic policy on housing programmes.58 Erskine did not wield enough decision making powers to successfully pass control onto the community. The notion of participation was viewed as little more than an information gathering exercise; an effective way for the authorities to avoid dispute. This empty ritual approach is reminiscent of a poster produced by the French student protestors in 1968.

The user involvement method was limiting for the users, as their involvement was thus constrained to an advisory role from the outset, yet beneficial for the authoritiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; image. For Arnstein, this would be far from true participation as Fig. 8. French student protest poster, 1968. Reads: I participate; you participate; he participates; we participate; you participate; they profit.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;none of the plans for greater public participation was able to challenge the existing distribution of power successfullyâ&#x20AC;?59 and the project amounts to little more than the consultation rung of the participatory ladder. The fact that less than a quarter of the original inhabitants remained in the estate upon completion is testament to this.60

Fig. 9. Byker Wall shortly after completion.

Malpass, p. 966. Ibid., p. 969. 60 Ibid. 58 59

SELF-BUILD AS PARTICIPATORY URBANISM

Self-build is an example of participation which involves the participants in the design and construction of spaces. The Community Self Build Agency (CSBA) is a non-profit organisation based in Kent. Founded in 1989, they aim to enable participants to build their own neighbourhoods.61 Their process of gaining provision and funding for self-build housing in urban developments is through lobbying local councils and housing associations.62 They also work with architects and designers to create simple, effective and efficient self-build systems. Their role is to gather those interested in self-build into a collective that can form a housing co-operative whilst their ultimate aim is that they will no longer be needed in this role, that self-build can become a mainstream method of urban development and people can naturally gather into co-operatives.63

As a reaction to the difficulties facing the unemployed to gain skills and experience, the CSBA also functions as a construction training agency. They state that no previous skills are necessary, applicants simply need to be able to contribute time to the project.64 The agency does not promote any particular method of self-build, however co-operatives have commonly utilised Walter Segal’s system such as the Hedgehog and Diggers Housing Schemes, in collaboration with architects Architype. This system incorporates a timber frame construction which is intended to put the participant in control through its ease of construction and flexibility towards innovation.65

Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 182. Community Self Build Agency, ‘Community Self Build Agency - About’, 2015 <http://www. communityselfbuildagency.org.uk/about.html> [accessed 8 April 2015]. 63 Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 128. 64 Deborah Singmaster, ‘’Anna McGettigan, Director of the Community Self Build Agency’, Architects’ Journal, 201 (1995), p. 18. 65 Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 196. 61 62

Fig. 10. Walters Way, 1982. One of the original houses constructed with Walter Segal’s method.

The Hedgehog and Diggers Housing Schemes can be analysed in further detail to unpick self-build as a participatory process. These adjacent projects, completed during the 1990s were funded by the South London Family Housing Association and CHISEL Neighbourhood Housing Association at the cost of £500,000 for thirteen homes.66 Architype developed and updated Walter Segal’s timber frame method so that it eclipsed present building standards and also undertook a “consultation process”67 which resulted in producing a specific house for each set of inhabitants. The homes were initially rented by the association whilst a “sweat equity” approach gave tenants a proportional ownership of their home Fig. 11. Drawing of the original Segal method, revealing the simple construction.

dependent upon their labour input, thus reducing their rent.68 This could be sold if they chose to leave the cooperative, or traded for improved features.69

Architype, ‘Architype / Community Self-Build Projects: Hedgehog and Diggers’, 2015 <http://www.architype. co.uk/project/hedgehog-diggers-self-build/> [accessed 16 April 2015]. 67 Ibid. 68 The Housing Design Awards, ‘The Housing Design Awards 1997’, 2015 <http://www.hdawards.org/archive/ archive/1997/> [accessed 15 April 2015]. 69 Ibid. 66

Recalling Sherry Arnstein’s participatory ladder, CSBA’s endeavours innately fulfil a key condition that is vital for the success of a participatory project: a coordinated community.70 Whilst self-build is often an intrinsically individual endeavour, the co-operative model enables a strong community to be developed which, for Arnstein, means that groups can have a better chance of challenging the power of local authorities. However, whilst this case study illustrates that selfbuild can be a highly participatory method of participation, one that requires user involvement beyond passive consultation, self-build are usually constricted to a ‘placation’ level of participation due to the reliance upon external authorities for both knowledge and funding. Participants, often unskilled in construction work, require the input of the architect to design an easily self-constructed building, and this lack of knowledge in a highly technical aspect of the profession relegates the participants to consultancy. Whilst CSBA promote the notion that no skills are necessary, it is conversely implied that a certain capacity to learn construction skills is required in order to be successfully involved in a cooperative.

Turning to the issue of funding, in the past cooperatives have been able to raise funds through the issuance of shares, such as during the nineteenth century when a group of striking stonemasons and joiners formed the pioneering Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company.71 This group successfully raised funds through shares bought by those sympathetic to their principles, which included creating an “empowered working class”.72 Although the housing market was a relatively lucrative investment at the time, there was an evident “solidarity for the co-

Arnstein, p. 222. Richard Rodger, The Transformation of Edinburgh (New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 356. 72 Ibid., p. 391.

Fig. 12. Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company houses on Collins Street in Stockbridge, Edinburgh.

70 71

operative spirit”73, which appears to have been debased in today’s society, as described in the first chapter of this paper. A cooperative formed from the middle classes could conceivably be self-funding, however housing cooperatives such as those facilitated by CSBA which specifically aim to empower the “havenots”, such as the homeless, unemployed or disabled, usually rely upon lobbying for government funds. In fact, this defeats one of the primary purposes of a cooperative: to escape from institutional control.74 Whilst the government “supports self-build”75 it has no specific allocation of funds in place and groups need to lobby for it on a case by case basis. The lobbying process does exert some political pressure upon authorities, and the Hedgehog Housing Scheme exhibited this when they successfully persuaded the local Housing Authority to admit them the use of funds which were not originally intended for self-build projects. There is some level of political negotiation at work.

Yet, the authorities remain firmly in control of such a situation, and indeed they need to be in order to fairly represent the entire public at large. They are likely only to permit funds when it is deemed within popular public opinion or economically advantageous for the state such as an offer of voluntary labour for social housing construction may be. When considering political empowerment, a self-funding (middle class) housing cooperative ostensibly avoids political processes, in the same manner as a more conventional development. It offers participant empowerment on the small scale but does little to affect political structures at large. Cooperatives and organisations such as CSBA that require public funding are operating within the existing political system and it is therefore

Ibid., p. 356. Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 130. 75 Sue Wheat, ‘A Home Of One’s Own’, Geographical, 2001, p. 85. 73 74

of course necessary for them to comply with rules and processes set out by external forces, leaving them vulnerable to co-option. When considering affect upon political structures, self-build is an example of participatory urbanism with limited scope.

Fig. 13. Diggers Housing Cooperative, Brighton.

BEYOND PARTICIPATION: PERSONALISATION

The preceding two case studies have identified the realisation of a fundamental issue facing participation: that if a project relies upon external sources for funding or permission, scope for participatory empowerment is likely to be restricted. The user involvement approach has been shown to be particularly ineffectual due to the purposeful vagueness of what that approach entails from the perspective of authorities. Self-build has been shown to be relatively affective upon political structures due to the lobbying process, however short of citizen control due to a necessary misbalance in control of the required capital. Thus these two approaches to participation have not represented full participation, which for Arnstein entails control of managerial aspects of a project along with the ability to negotiate interaction with those deemed external to the group of participants. Participatory urbanism, as an endeavour for a more egalitarian political structure, does not seek absolute power and of course has to wrestle with public representatives who are required to care for the interests of the populace at large. Nevertheless, if the aforementioned examples are considered as attempts to affect political structures it is evident that they somewhat lack the capacity to create political change as citizen empowerment is gained only when decision making powers are freely relented by those in control.

What follows will be a study of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;personalisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; within the urban realm as a pivot into the final chapter of this paper concerning the counterproject, in which personalisation will be discussed as a way to appropriate space for an activist agenda. Personalisation in fact supersedes traditional participation, as it takes place after the fact of the design and construction of an environment. As an illustration of this process one can turn to Philippe Boudonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prescient

revelations regarding Le Corbusier’s low cost housing project in Pessac during the 1920s. At Pessac Corbusier conceived a new settlement entitled “Quartiers Modernes Fruges” and designed a set of houses to be sited there founded upon the ideal that each should be a container into which the inhabitant is installed.76 In his book Lived-in Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited, Boudon Fig. 14. Corbusier’s vision of modern life, temporarily played out at Pessac shortly after completion.

identifies that, forty years after completion, Corbusier’s vision of the standardised modern home had been subverted by the inhabitants, who had taken it upon themselves to modify their houses. Corbusier’s attempt to bring together open and closed spaces into a predetermined, consistent harmony and thus provide a pleasant, affordable home had in fact led to a dwelling which could be easily converted and ornamented by the user.77 The participatory moment was enabled upon completion of the houses.

Fig. 15. House Type 4: two floor, detached with an exterior staircase. Corbusier’s plan and elevation.

Philippe Boudon, Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), p. ii. Ibid., p. i.

Ironically, users found the precise layout of the houses to be easily adaptable as the open plan offered flexibility for reformulation. The large openings could be easily infilled and subdivided with more conventional windows and the terrace could be roofed for more interior space.78

Fig. 16. User personalisation to the plan of House Type 1, original plan on top left.

Jeremy Till, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Architecture and Contingencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Field, 1 (2007), p. 133.

Fig. 17. Terraces have been spanned by pitched roofs and converted into additional rooms. Original vs. Boudon’s observation.

Corbusier’s project at Pessac illustrates that flexible spaces inspire personalisation, even if Corbusier had not intended this to be the case. This notion of subversion is key, and is captured by Henri Lefèbvre in his preface to Boudon’s volume in which he explains the actions of the inhabitants had illustrated “what living in a house really is: an activity.”79 He goes on to describe that the inhabitants adjusted their homes to “their needs,”80 seizing their own agency to affect their space. A parallel will later be drawn between these actions and such activity on an urban scale: the act of personalising and appropriating the urban realm for political affect. Where Corbusier’s architecture failed in controlling the way of life of Fig. 18. Present Pessac, religiously restored.

Pessac’s inhabitants, the rest of this essay will explain how urban regulations are being subverted and opposed in a similar manner.

“A visit in 2003 revealed that the changes documented by Boudon are now themselves being ripped out as the project is ‘restored’ back to its original state. Inevitably, many of the new inhabitants appeared to be architects or designers.” Till, p. 133.

Boudon, p. ii. Ibid.

THE COUNTERPROJECT AS A PARTICIPATORY, ARCHITECTURAL PROTEST

The remainder of this essay will discuss the notion that the counterproject can act as a powerful participatory tool to affect urban reality and the political structures associated. Proof of the capacity of counterprojects to affect political structures can be found by considering Maurice Culot’s work in Brussels since the 1970s in which counterprojects were used successfully to alter ideologies and political policy towards traditionalist postmodernism.81 These projects intended to have an active focus on citizen participation, which Culot believed was vital to oppose what he perceived as an industrialisation of the city under modernism. Neighbourhood committees were formed in order to mobilise the user as an “ally” to the proposals, although the architect was still in firm control of the design and thus these counterprojects would certainly remain only at the consultation level on Sherry Arnstein’s ladder.82 Magazines, posters and pamphlets were published alongside exhibitions to this effect, aiming to incite public support.83 Culot amassed a large collection of young architects and students to this movement, many of whom went on to form the largest practices in the country or ‘infiltrate’ the administrative positions in planning, meaning the movement now wields a strong power over Brussels urban development.84

This essay will outline examples of participatory counterprojects undertaken within the UK in recent years that have taken on a more activist approach than that carried out by Culot. The counterproject is less of a participatory approach within itself, rather a method through which participatory approaches can be effectively employed. These projects include direct action upon the public realm through forms of personalisation along with the promotion of self-build housing in contradistinction to overhaul regeneration. There is a new attempt to employ Isabelle Doucet, ‘Understanding Postmodernism In Practice: Or What We Can Learn From Brussels, A Factory Of Counter-Projects’, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of The European Architectural History Network, (Brussels, 2012), p. 457. 82 Kenny Cupers (ed.), Use Matters: an alternative history of architecture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), p. 238. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., p. 239. 81

participatory urbanism to affect political structures which those involved deem to be stripping them of empowerment.

The arrival of the Olympic Games in London in 2012 marked an acceleration of the ‘architecture as capital’85 ideology, vivifying the effects of neoliberalism upon the spatial realm. In 2006, upon the beginning of construction on the new Olympic Park site, an eleven mile long blue fence was constructed behind which wholesale regeneration began, utilising a tabula rasa approach to demolish hundreds of homes and businesses along with public spaces.86 For politicised groups and individuals this wall became a potent symbol of forced top-down Fig. 19. The Blue Fence.

urban regeneration, the blue plywood represented everything they believed to be wrong with the political system.87

One such group is Studio Superniche, a small group of architects and product designers “brought together to champion the case of the niche against the tide of the generic”88 who utilised the political potency of the wall to propose a counter project to the Olympic Park Legacy Masterplan. Their work is published in the volume The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State edited by Hilary Powell, among other projects by artists, writers and film makers that were equally dismayed by the results of the gentrification pantechnicon that is the Olympic Games. The existing proposal for the legacy of the Olympic Park aimed Fig. 20. This volume, published in 2012, is formed from a collection of works that respond to London’s Olympics through dissidence.

to “ensure that the regeneration effects associated with the Games are maximised for the existing and future communities of the Lower Lea Valley” which, in quantitative terms, amounted to 12,000 new homes along with office premises.89 David Harvey, Rebel Cities (New York: Verso, 2012), pp. 76-80. Hilary Powell and Isaac Marrero-Guillamón (eds.), The Art of Dissent (London: Marshgate Press, 2012), p. 74. Oliver Wainwright, ‘Leaping the Fence’, oliverwainwright.co.uk, 2010 <http://www.oliverwainwright.co.uk/> [accessed 6 April 2015]. 88 Powell, p. 74. 85 86 87

Studio Superniche acted against this planned “mixed-use city quarter” which was due to be phased in over the following 40 years, to take advantage of the resultant incremental rise in land values.90

In 2009, when the blue wall was replaced by an electric fence, some of the painted plywood “fell” into Studio Superniche’s hands.91 What had once been a symbol of neoliberalist ‘regeneration’ was to become the material for Studio Superniche’s Olympic Legacy Toolkit, “a catalogue of provisional urban furniture designed to encourage local re-appropriation of this vast terrain in the aftermath of the fleeting sporting funfair”.92 The toolkit aims to “encourage temporary use on the site” - enabling adjacent communities to reclaim the landscape from which they were forcibly removed.93 The pavilions re-enable activities which have been lost since the site has become off limits to locals and are low tech in construction, using the blue plywood to enable communities to self-build the pavilions in a participatory manner.

Studio Superniche’s intention was to show the possibilities of the site’s potential uses, hoping to forestall the generic regeneration masterplan. In their words:

Interim users have the potential to open up fundamental debates on land use classification, temporary permissions suggesting the slackening of more permanent restrictions. Ultimately democratic, they must prove their self-sustaining viability through their own vitality: if spaces thrive and become established before the

KCAP; Allies & Morrison; EDAW. (2009). People and Places: A Framework for consultation; Legacy Masterplan Framework. London Development Agency. 90 Powell and Marrero-Guillamón, p. 74. 91 Studio Superniche, ‘Beyond the Fence’, studiosuperniche.wordpress.com, 2011 <https://studiosuperniche. wordpress.com/writing/> [accessed 9 April 2015]. 92 Powell and Marrero-Guillamón, p. 74. 93 Ibid., p. 75. 89

Fig. 21. Plan of infiltration to Olympic site. Published as a leaflet by Studio Superniche.dissidence.

developers arrive, they can redirect the development agenda as facts on the ground and turn the whole masterplan upside down.94

The project relied upon participation not only as the construction method for the design, but also after the fact of construction. Studio Superniche hoped that community involvement and the generation of temporal communities on the site could offer an alternative future for the Olympic Park. Whilst this counter project could ultimately be deemed unsuccessful, as access to construct the pavilions on the site could never be gained, the group managed to successfully construct some of the pavilions themselves upon the very periphery of the park, within sight of the electric fence that segregated off this vast swathe of the city. Ultimately, the project would rank low on Sherry Arnsteinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ladder of Participation in terms of participant decision making during the design process as participants are

Fig. 22. Boats within site of the Olympic Stadium.

only involved in the final construction stages of the project. However, it holds a strong political agenda, creating a platform for the community to participate in an attempt to regain some empowerment regarding decision making on the urban scale. It encouraged appropriation of space, and members of the public to take up their own political agency, serving as an introduction to a theme that has developed in the aftermath of the Olympics.

The following example is similarly concerned with the issue of generic regeneration within the Olympic Legacy environment. The counterproject has been utilised as an architectural protest against a large urban development project which those involved feel is undemocratic and unjust. This section will go on to describe that these counterprojects, as a form of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;paper architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, have been

Studio Superniche, 2011.

employed in partnership with more direct action upon the urban realm. The conclusion implicit in this discovery is that counterprojects which include a direct action approach can generate sufficient clout to begin a challenge upon the power hierarchy prevalent in current political structures to resist the gentrification of neighbourhoods.

The Radical Housing Network, based in London, is a collaboration of groups and individuals intent on achieving housing justice for citizens on an urban scale.95 In 2013, they rallied in opposition to a new proposal for a UCL campus on Carpenter’s Estate, a council house community adjacent to the Olympic Park. The development essentially saw UCL, waning from educational budget cuts, become a property developer in its own right. Their plans for a new £1 billion campus included over 480,000 sq. ft. (almost one third) of “Non-UCL residential” space, i.e. a private housing development.96 Carpenters Estate was planned to be completely demolished, a continuation of the tabula-rasa approach utilised for the construction of the Olympic Park. Ultimately, UCL backed out of the controversial plans citing financial viability,97 however this was after a prolonged campaign from various groups within the Radical Housing Network which included lengthy periods of squatting and counterprojects from students within UCL itself.98 Fig. 23. Indicative floorspace for initial delivery at UCL Stratford.

Radical Housing Network, ‘About’, radicalhousingnetwork.org, 2015 <http://radicalhousingnetwork.org/ about/> [accessed 9 March 2015]. 96 UCL, Stratford Proposition (London, 2012). 97 Merlin Fulcher, ‘UCL’s £1Bn East London Campus Vision Evaporates’, architectsjournal.co.uk, 2013 <http:// www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/ucls-1bn-east-london-campus-vision-evaporates/8647650. article?blocktitle=News-feature&contentID=5471> [accessed 11 March 2015]. 98 UCL, The Bartlett Book 2013 (London, 2013), p. 59. 95

One such student is Benjamin Beach, whose final year work at The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL functioned as a counterproject to the university’s proposed development. Beach argued that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 had transformed the institution into a “neoliberal university.”99 Prolonged austerity measures, imposed by the coalition government since 2010, included cuts to spending on Higher Education, resulting in an unprecedented reduction of funding from 7.1 to 4.2 Billion.100 In tandem with this move was an increase of the tuition fee cap from £3000 to £9000, essentially passing part of the economic burden for education from the government to the student.101 Neoliberalist ideals and economics were thus being transferred into the higher education system turning education from a public right into a commodity. This is the context of UCL’s (and indeed other universities) expansion plans:

We now have two priorities. To ensure that these cuts do not impact negatively on current and future students, and to find alternative funding sources to replace these lost funds. This will be particularly challenging given the immediate year-on-year cuts to the overall budget.102

Beach has recognised that UCL’s Carpenters project was an inevitable reaction to the commodification of education, which was to play its part in increasing the commodification of housing in London, gentrifying the Carpenter’s Estate in the process.

California Student Occupation Movement, ‘Communiqué from an Absent Future’, We Want Everything, 2009 <https://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future/> [accessed 4 April 2015]. 100 Jeevan Vasagar, ‘Universities Alarmed By 40% Cut to Teaching Budgets’, The Guardian, 2010 <http://www. theguardian.com/education/2010/oct/20/spending-review-university-teaching-cuts> [accessed 27 March 2015]. 101 Sean Coughlan, ‘Students Face Tuition Fees Rising To £9,000’, BBC News, 2015 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ education-11677862> [accessed 10 April 2015]. 102 Vasagar, 2010. 99

Fig. 24. UCL Straford indicative proposition.

Beach positioned himself in opposition to the UCL approach towards ‘participation’, which had amounted to informing the residents of their imminent eviction and ironically offering them an input into the procurement process for the project.103 It was revealed by residents that the Tenants Management Organisation supposedly representing residents was largely run by council Stratford Proposition Objective Number 5: “We need to widen participation. Despite UCL’s radical past, in some senses it is perceived now as an elite environment. A new location offers the chance to reconnect with our progressive past and rearticulate our impact on, and responsibilities to, the communities we serve.” UCL, Stratford Proposition.

bureaucrats, who having hollowed out internal democracy, would uncritically accept the plans being proposed by the council.104

Beach reacted by proposing a counterproject to UCL’s Stratford Proposition. Accepting Newham Council’s questioned conclusion that the housing currently provided on the estate was inadequate and required to be demolished,105 Beach began by installing himself amongst the community in order to undertake an ethnographic study, drawing from letters written by the occupants to UCL in order to understand what the community’s needs and requirements were.

Benjamin Beach, Interview (Telephone, 10/03/2015). Ibid. Robin Wales, ‘I Apologise to the Focus E15 Families, But This Is a London Housing Crisis’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/06/apologise-focus-e15-london-housing-crisisnewham> [accessed 11 March 2015]. 103 104 105

Discovering that the majority of residents were perfectly happy in their current accommodation, the project focuses on ‘memory’ to propose an alternative future for current residents where customisable self-build housing and ‘sweat equity’ is used as a catalyst for community empowerment, whilst attempting to retain some of the aesthetic qualities of the homes which the community felt connected to.106 The residents were particularly focused on the fact that generations had passed through some of the homes on the sight, and thus Beach’s proposal incorporates a modular approach that allows for future expansion and personalisation of the homes.107 Beach attempted to exhibit the ‘light touch’ of the architect, enabling

Fig. 25. Carpenter’s Estate resident letter.

the community to influence the initial design of each home and control the expansion or modification of it in the future, not dissimilar from the situation accidentally created by Corbusier at Pessac.

Fig. 26. A mix of house units are establised in a delineated layout, creating spatial zones as social spaces in between.

106 107

Beach, 10/03/2015. Ibid.

Fig. 27. Unit construction and expansion.

Concerning the Ladder of Citizen Participation, this hypothetical project could offer a high level of participation and decision making powers for the user if considered within its academic context. However, in a real world situation, the motives of whomever provided the funds for construction would likely need to be wrestled with resulting in a loss of citizen control, as exhibited in the Byker Wall project discussed earlier. Beach recognises that the counterproject simply offers an alternative future, and as Culot exhibited, it is a way to engage the community (including the architectural communities) towards participatory political pressure.108

Beach, along with some of those involved in the Carpenter’s Estate project have recently launched the Community Architecture Agency. The group is formed from around twenty young architects, including both students and those fully qualified along with a handful of ‘coders’. Within this fledgling group’s ambitions key similarities have been observed with Culot’s work in Brussels during the 1970s. Presently, this is an underground collective in its infancy with a threefold campaign: to create a ‘development tip-off ’ system (akin to WikiLeaks) that enables conscientious practitioners to anonymously notify the agency and public at large of any developments in the pipeline that may affect social housing neighbourhoods. 109 The group recognises that projects can often surreptitiously

Fig. 28. The houses are devised as a set of universal ‘kit of parts’ which are all inter-compatible, allowing each builder to choose their own approach. Selections can be made on the roof, openings, stairs, and exterior panels.

appear for planning approval by which point it is too well established for inhabitants to effectively protest. Secondly, they will compile ‘Community Translation Documents’ which will convey the complex planning process in

108 109

Ibid. Ibid.

layman’s terms, breaking down the planning proposals into key elements and relaying them in a coherent manner. Finally, they will also propose counter proposals to the housing developments they oppose. These proposals will be lodged for planning to be considered alongside those currently on the table and Fig. 29. www.concreteaction.net

will predominately be participatory in nature, intending to empower communities through self-build. However, the group is also proposing a more anarchist approach including peaceful protest, sit-ins and squatting as a way to incite direct action against their opposition and empowering communities to “act on their own political agency”110. This reveals the groups dovetail approach towards participatory urbanism, involving both counter proposals as architectural protest and a more mainstream dissidence in an effort to develop a campaign around that proposal, an approach that rings true with Culot’s invocation “engage and be militant”.111

The employment of counterprojects in tandem with an endeavour to generate support for these proposals through the mobilisation of the citizen bears obvious alignments with Culot’s work. However, whilst Culot intended to affect the modernist mind set of Brussels during the 70s, the Community Architecture Agency (CAA)’s ambition is to incite change in the current political set up that has propagated an empowerment of the property developer in the UK. Furthermore, CAA’s approach towards citizen participation is dissimilar from Culot’s consultation method. Instead, CAA advocate a higher level of participation involvement such as self-build and personalisation. This is underwritten by their beginnings in the squatter movement and bears resemblance to the Berlin squatting movement of the 1980s. This movement marked a turn in the nature of squatting from “occupational” to “propositional”

110

111

Ibid. Maurice Culot, ‘Bruxelles, La Longue Marche.’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 180 (1975), p. 19.

as the dissident occupiers amended, adjusted and improved upon the fabric of the buildings by their own volition, offering an “enacted solution”.112 Ultimately they were successful in their opposition to the tabula rasa resolution of inner city development, achieving an “approach of careful urban renovation.”113

Such an approach succeeded in thwarting the UCL Stratsford Proposition when the activist group Focus E15 Mothers illegally occupied four flats on the Carpenter’s Estate.115 This group of single mothers were evicted from the hostel they were living in and therefore occupied the flats to counter the Newham council’s argument that the homes were no longer fit for purpose. Similar to the Berlin squatter movement previously described, the group participated in a form of militant urbanism, appropriating the flats by making small personalisations and amendments to the properties to prove there was no need for them to be rehoused.116 As previously described personalisation is a highly participatory

At present CAA are embarking upon a counterproject against a proposed regeneration of the Knights Walk estate by Lambeth Council in London. CAA intend to offer two counterprojects, one in which they will aim to undermine the council’s rationale that full demolition is required in an effort to increase density on the site, searching for other means to achieve this ambition. Secondly they will also, for the sake of argument, agree with the notion of demolition yet aim to table an alternative proposal that offers housing that is truly affordable to the current inhabitants. They also intend to be active in the community by holding design workshops and open forums in an abandoned space on the site. 114

process, and these participants have directly engaged with political structures with success. Their actions became disseminated through the local and national press, raising support for their opposition to UCL’s plans. Ultimately, with the whole project swiftly becoming a PR nightmare for both the university and council, UCL pulled out.117 When the group’s occupation of the flats went to court, Focus E15 won a qualified victory, being allowed to relocate upon their own terms to homes on the estate that would be renovated by the council.118 Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham has been compelled into making a public apology for his

Awan, Schneider and Till (eds.), p. 80. Ibid. 114 Benjamin Beach, Interview (Telephone, 14/04/2015) 115 Aditya Chakrabortty, ‘For Real Politics, Don’t Look to Parliament but to an Empty London Housing Estate’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/23/real-politics-empty-londonhousing-estate> [accessed 14 April 2015]. 116 Beach, 10/03/2015. 117 Fulcher, 2013. 118 Aditya Chakrabortty, ‘Heroes Of 2014: The Focus E15 Mothers’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/31/focus-e15-mothers-newham-council> [accessed 11 March 2015]. 112 113

conduct towards the estate’s inhabitants.119

Fig. 30. Focus E15 group removing boards from windows as they begin their occupation of four flats on the Carpenter’s Estate.

The Focus E15 group successfully resisted the processes of gentrification by avoiding displacement from their community. An active, enacted counter project legitimised their views that the homes on the estate were, or could easily become, fit for purpose and successfully challenged the notion that housing should be treated as a market commodity by focusing on the viability of the flats to be homes. In contrast to the first two modes of participation discussed in this paper, personalisation has been revealed to be an effective participatory tool for political action. By positioning themselves in opposition to existing political power, Fig. 31. The appropriation of one of the flats as a home, an act of urban dissidence.

personalisation of the urban realm does not necessarily rely upon governmental authorities for funding and ensures full managerial decision making powers are retained by the participants, at least temporarily. Parallel to the inhabitants of Pessac, the Focus E15 Mothers pursued what they deemed to be ‘their needs’

Ibid.

by seizing their own political agency, only this time on the urban scale. They effectively reduced the value of real estate to that of need through their enacted solution. They have demystified the myth that empowers London’s perpetual urban redevelopment: that low-earners are being forced out of London due to an overall shortage of housing. They have revealed there is simply a shortage of housing affordable to this social class whilst good homes are lying empty across the city.

“The Mayor has taken a totally simplistic approach, he’s said it is just a matter of supply and demand and all you need to do is build, it doesn’t matter what type of housing you’re building… and that will solve the problem.” Darren Johnson, Chair of the London Assembly Housing Committee.120

Fig. 32. The four flats occupied by the E15 Focus Mothers.

Vice, Regeneration Game, 2015 <http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/regeneration-game> [accessed 13 April 2015]. 120

CONCLUSION

This thesis has undertaken a series of case studies of participatory approaches currently operating within UK cities. It has analysed these approaches through the lens of Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation to appraise the level of purported participation in each example. However, the paper has also aimed to address whether these approaches in fact achieve the wider aim of the participation movement: affecting political structures towards increased citizen empowerment. The danger posed to participatory urbanism by gentrification and co-option mechanisms has been described and identified in the case studies chosen to outline a critique on participatory approaches.

Throughout this paper there has ostensibly been a steady progression up Arnstein’s ladder. User involvement and self-build approaches have been shown to be vulnerable to co-option due to their capacity to be influenced and controlled by current power holders or funders. The user involvement approach in the case of Byker Wall has been revealed as equivalent to the consultancy rung on the ladder, endowing little affect upon political structures. Self-build was analysed to be relatively effective in gaining participant empowerment but due to the nature of funding processes it can be exclusionary to the “have-nots” of society and have a limited political scope. Personalisation has been introduced as a subversive act: a way for groups and individuals to use that which is existing against its original purposes. It has been portrayed how this action can become a political one, in the case of the Focus E15 mothers who appropriated and personalised urban space to achieve empowerment. The counterproject has

been shown to be a framework that can dovetail such an activist approach with legitimate suggestions for an alternative future, thus engaging both the support of the populace and the decision makers at hand, forming an effective method for participatory urbanism to affect existing political structures.

This suggests there are two sides to the participatory coin: one of political conformity which involves citizen participation but accepts the political system as is, and one of political enactment, involving participation in political realities and endeavouring to incite public support (another form of participation) to achieve their goals. In and of itself participation has been proven to be a difficult route towards political reform that empowers the citizen. However, used in a dovetailed Fig. 33. Protests disrupt the MIPIM property fair in London, 2014.

approach, in a symbiotic relationship with more direct, participatory action in which political pressure builds up from the bottom, participatory urbanism can be a powerful tool in altering political realities as it can inspire participants to take hold of their own political agency.

As the context for this study, the UK has been exhibited as a setting in which housing is emerging as a genuine political issue amongst mainstream politics. In central London an income in excess of ÂŁ100,000 is deemed necessary in order to reasonably become a first time house buyer.121 Thus it is unsurprising activism against regeneration projects has involved individuals across a range of social and political backgrounds such as the unemployed, students, artists, architects, university lecturers and a new breed of middle-class activists.122 This suggests that

David Orr, Chief Executive National Housing Federation, quoted from Vice, Regeneration Game, 2015 <http:// www.vice.com/en_uk/video/regeneration-game> [accessed 13 April 2015]. 122 Beach, 10/03/2015. 121

a new popular movement could transpire, employing participatory urbanism as a tool for political change hence going some way to reverse the effect of Thatcher’s dictum “there is no such thing as society”.

This paper has aimed to describe the current economic and political structures at play in the UK, and how this is leading to wholesale gentrification in London as the epicentre of the ‘architecture as capital’ ideology utilised to accelerate growth. Participatory urbanism, particularly if employed through the counterproject method can offer a genuinely successful path to opposing this gentrification process, and indeed affecting the political system that causes it. The participatory counter project, a proven political tool, has evolved to become more militant and direct in action, akin to the Berlin squatter movement of the 1980s and found at least partial success in achieving the political agendas of the participants involved. Participatory urbanism can therefore propagate democracy not just in design, but also in society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publications:

Arnstein, Sherry R., ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35 (1969), 216-224 Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till (eds.), Spatial Agency (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011) Boudon, Philippe, Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972) Culot, Maurice, ‘Bruxelles, La Longue Marche.’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 180 (1975), 18-29 Cupers, Kenny (ed.), Use Matters: an alternative history of architecture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013) Doucet, Isabelle, ‘Understanding Postmodernism in Practice: Or What We Can Learn From Brussels, A Factory of Counter-Projects’, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of The European Architectural History Network (Brussels, 2012) Egelius, Mats, and Ralph Erskine, Ralph Erskine, Architect (Stockholm: Byggforlaget, 1990) Erskine, Ralph, Yukio Futagawa, and Mats Egelius, Byker Redevelopment, Byker Area of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, 1969-82 (Tokyo, Japan: A.D.A. Edita Tokyo, 1980) Grubbauer, Monika, ‘Mainstreaming Urban Interventionist Practices: The Case of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Berlin’, Footprint, 7 (2013), 123-130 Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Harvey, David, Rebel Cities (New York: Verso, 2012) Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford [England]: Blackwell, 1990) Iveson, Kurt, ‘Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (2013), 941956 67

Jenkins, Paul, and Leslie Forsyth (eds.), Architecture, Participation and Society (London: Routledge, 2010) Jones, Paul, and Kenton Card, ‘Constructing “Social Architecture”: The Politics of Representing Practice’, Architectural Theory Review, 16 (2011), 228-244 Kaminer, Tahl, Miguel Robles-Duran, Heidi Sohn, and M. Christine Boyer (eds.), Urban Asymmetries (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010) Kaminer, Tahl, Architecture, Crisis and Resuscitation (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011) KCAP, Allies & Morrison, and EDAW, People and Places: A Framework for Consultation; Legacy Masterplan Framework (London, 2009) Kossak, Florian, Doina Petrescu, Tatjana Schneider, Renata Tyszczuk, and Stephen Walker (eds.), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (London: Routledge, 2010) Krivy, Maros, and Tahl Kaminer (eds.), ‘The Participatory Turn In Urbanism’, Footprint, 7 (2013) Malpass, Peter, ‘A Reappraisal of Byker. Part 1: Magic, Myth and the Architect’, Architects’ Journal, 169 (1979), 961-969 Miessen, Markus (ed.), The Violence of Participation (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2007) Negri, Antonio, Revolution Retrieved (London: Red Notes, 1988) Powell, Hilary, and Isaac Marrero-Guillamon (eds.), The Art of Dissent (London: Marshgate Press, 2012) Rodger, Richard, The Transformation of Edinburgh (New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Singmaster, Deborah, ‘’Anna McGettigan, Director of the Community Self Build Agency’, Architects’ Journal, 201 (1995), 18-19 Till, Jeremy, ‘Architecture and Contingency’, Field, 1 (2007), 120-135 The Conservative Party, The Conservative Manifesto 2010 (London: The Conservative Party, 2010)

Tom, Slater, ‘Gentrification of the City’, in The New Blackwell Companion to the City (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) UCL, Stratford Proposition (London, 2012) UCL, The Bartlett Book 2013 (London, 2013) Wheat, Sue, ‘A Home Of One’s Own’, Geographical, 2001

Recorded Media

BBC, ‘Question Time’ (One: BBC, 19/03/2015) Vice, Regeneration Game, 2015 <http://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/regenerationgame> [accessed 13 April 2015]

Online Sources

Architype, ‘Architype / Community Self-Build Projects: Hedgehog and Diggers’, 2015 <http://www.architype.co.uk/project/hedgehog-diggers-self-build/> [accessed 16 April 2015] BMW Guggenheim Lab, ‘BMW Guggenheim Lab’, 2015 <http://www. bmwguggenheimlab.org/> [accessed 11 April 2015] California Student Occupation Movement, ‘Communique from an Absent Future’, We Want Everything, 2009 <https://wewanteverything.wordpress. com/2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future/> [accessed 4 April 2015] Chakrabortty, Aditya, ‘For Real Politics, Don’t Look to Parliament but to an Empty London Housing Estate’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2014/sep/23/real-politics-empty-london-housing-estate>

[accessed 14 April 2015] Chakrabortty, Aditya, ‘Heroes Of 2014: The Focus E15 Mothers’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/31/focuse15-mothers-newham-council> [accessed 11 March 2015] Community Self Build Agency, ‘Community Self Build Agency - About’, 2015 <http://www.communityselfbuildagency.org.uk/about.html> [accessed 8 April 2015] Coughlan, Sean, ‘Students Face Tuition Fees Rising to £9,000’, BBC News, 2015 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11677862> [accessed 10 April 2015] Fulcher, Merlin, ‘UCL’s £1bn East London Campus Vision Evaporates’, architectsjournal.co.uk, 2013 <http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/ daily-news/ucls-1bn-east-london-campus-vision-evaporates/8647650. article?blocktitle=News-feature&contentID=5471> [accessed 11 March 2015] Gulliver, Kevin, ‘Thatcher’s Legacy: Her Role in Today’s Housing Crisis’, The Guardian, 2013 <http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2013/ apr/17/margaret-thatcher-legacy-housing-crisis> [accessed 10 April 2015] Hatherley, Owen, ‘Pathfinder Was Slum Clearances without the Socialism’, The Guardian, 2010 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/ nov/19/slum-clearance-housing-failed> [accessed 9 April 2015] Henderson, Tony, ‘Byker Wall In Short List For The Title Of Britain’s Greatest 20Th Century Building’, The Journal, 2014 <http://www.thejournal.co.uk/ north-east-analysis/analysis-news/byker-wall-top-building-title-8187728> [accessed 18 April 2015] Jenkins, Simon, ‘Simon Jenkins: Pathfinder Housing Clearance Projects in the Midlands and North’, The Guardian, 2007 <http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2007/mar/16/comment.politics> [accessed 19 April 2015] McLaren, Christine, ‘TBC: Rethinking Civic Participation’, 2014 <http://blogs. guggenheim.org/lablog/tbc-rethinking-civic-participation/> [accessed 16 April 2015]

Radical Housing Network, ‘About’, radicalhousingnetwork.org, 2015 <http:// radicalhousingnetwork.org/about/> [accessed 9 March 2015] Studio Superniche, ‘Beyond the Fence’, Studiosuperniche.wordpress.com, 2011 <https://studiosuperniche.wordpress.com/writing/> [accessed 9 April 2015] The Housing Design Awards, ‘The Housing Design Awards 1997’, 2015 <http:// www.hdawards.org/archive/archive/1997/> [accessed 15 April 2015] Vasagar, Jeevan, ‘Universities Alarmed By 40% Cut To Teaching Budgets’, The Guardian, 2010 <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/oct/20/ spending-review-university-teaching-cuts> [accessed 27 March 2015] Wainwright, Oliver, ‘Leaping the Fence’, oliverwainwright.co.uk, 2010 <http://www. oliverwainwright.co.uk/> [accessed 6 April 2015] Wales, Robin, ‘I Apologise to the Focus E15 Families, But This Is A London Housing Crisis’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2014/oct/06/apologise-focus-e15-london-housing-crisisnewham> [accessed 11 March 2015] Wheeler, Brian, ‘A History of Social Housing’, BBC News, 2015 <http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-14380936> [accessed 18 April 2015]

Interviews

Beach, Benjamin (Telephone, 10/03/2015; 14/04/2015)

ILLUSTRATIONS

Pref.

Fig. 1.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Park_Hill_ facade.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015]. Sherry R. Arnstein, ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35 (1969), p. 17.

http://insurance10news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/18-gorgeous-imagesof-job-stealing.html [accessed 18/04/2015].

http://monevator.monevator.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/ uploads/2011/12/real-house-prices.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2013/apr/17/margaretthatcher-legacy-housing-crisis [accessed 18/04/2015].

https://robkronenburg.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/bmwguggenheim-lab-6.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/the-byker-estatenewcastle/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

http://www.arkdes.se/articles/erskinedagen [accessed 18/04/2015]. Sherry R. Arnstein, ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35 (1969), p. 216.

http://fields.eca.ac.uk/gis/?cat=103 [accessed 18/04/2015].

http://www.theruss.org/research-and-statistics/case-studies/waltersway [accessed 18/04/2015].

10.

https://hotcharchipotch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/segal21.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

11.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Stockbridge_ Colonies.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

12.

http://www.architype.co.uk/project/hedgehog-diggers-self-build/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

13.

http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/CorbuCache/900x720_2049_2267. jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

14.

Boudon, Philippe, Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), p. 44.

15.

Ibid., p. 121.

16.

Ibid., p. 170-171.

17.

http://mimoa.eu/images/9193_l.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

18.

https://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcp83fypNu1qcl59b.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015].

20.

http://theartofdissent.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ cover.jpg [accessed 18/04/2015]

21.

https://studiosuperniche.wordpress.com/writing/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

22.

Ibid.

23.

UCL, Stratford Proposition (London, 2012)

24.

Ibid.

25.

Material provided by Benjamin Beach.

26.

Ibid.

27.

Ibid.

28.

Ibid.

29.

https://www.concreteaction.net/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

30.

http://glennmcmahon470.com/2014/09/22/1049/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

31.

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-700/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/ pictures/2014/10/6/1412611453140/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

32.

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/ pictures/2014/10/6/1412609997420/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

33.

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/ pictures/2014/10/15/1413393215113/ [accessed 18/04/2015].

WORD COUNT: 10, 009.

CITIZEN CONTROL ADAM KELLY

2015