The Good Practice Guide to Resisting Estate Demolition: ASH response to the GLA

Abstract

Unfortunately it takes longer to unwrap a lie than it does to tie it with a pretty bow and sell it to ‘the People’, and the Greater London Authority’s Draft Good Practice Guide to Estate Regeneration, published in December 2016, is a cellophane-wrapped, ribbon-tied box of untruths. This commentary by Architects for Social Housing, therefore, is considerably longer than the Guide itself, which is a compilation of the myths used to justify London’s estate demolition programme. Of course, as Alexander the Great famously demonstrated, the quickest way to untie a mythical knot is with a sword, and the best response to this draft is the organised resistance of estate communities to its proposals, beginning with their refusal to engage in any consultation with the public institutions and private companies that are intent on demolishing their homes for profit. It’s clear that this draft and the consultation it invites, sent out to every housing estate in London with a Toolkit for Local Meetings, is a precursor to the individual estate consultations which – as any resident who has gone through the process can testify – will be used to justify the demolition of their home