Readers of the popular press in the past few months could be forgiven for thinking that John Prescott is to personally escort a wrecking ball from Westminster to the North to ensure that neglected housing estates are razed to the ground.
Drawing parallels with the mass clearances of the 1960s, some of the more vitriolic commentators have inferred that the ODPM’s pathfinder schemes are displacing entire communities without discussion, or pressganging them into new-build accommodation that could itself prove to be substandard in a matter of years. Rarely, however, do these commentators detail the research that has been carried out into the effect of demolition on hard-to-let areas, or balance their editorials with examples of how intervention has saved dying or problem communities.
Take the Eldonian Village in Vauxhall, Liverpool. Back in 1979, the city council decided that tenement properties in the area needed to be demolished, with locals due to be dispersed across new towns and peripheral estates. But when consultation with the Eldonians revealed just how passionate they were about their neighbourhood – a community built predominantly around the local church – the council took the bold decision to combine large-scale demolition of tenements with longer-term planning and new build on the same site. The community was not swept away.
It was a gamble that paid off. Today, crime rates have gone from being among the highest in the area to among the lowest and there is a waiting list of three to five years for social homes. Last year, the Eldonians won a World Habitat Award from the Social Housing Federation of the United Nations – a prize that recognises work undertaken by local people who want to make a difference to people’s lives and the environment in which they live and work. The village has also recently been held up as a model community by the Home Office.
Rarely do these commentators detail the research into the effect of demolition on hard-to-let areas
The Eldonian Village is an example of what can happen when the authorities take a long-term view of a community’s sustainability, balanced alongside the immediate, personal and often very sensitive concerns that the population has about its homes being bulldozed.
It’s certainly an example that Vince Taylor, as new director of implementation for the Northern Way, can take heart from (see pages 9 and 22-24). Like Prescott, Taylor is likely to find himself branded a demon demolisher in the popular press. Learning more about the Eldonian scheme could help him to challenge the critics that will have already made their minds up before he starts work on the Northern Way at the end of this month.
Source
Housing Today
