Areas can not simply be "wiped away" during regeneration programmes without huge social cost, a leading housing academic said this week.
Anne Power, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics said grand regeneration schemes like that on the North Peckham estate must give way to small scale, long-term approaches if blight and decay were to be avoided.

Ten-year old Damilola Taylor was murdered on the North Peckham estate last week, in a stairwell on in a largely unoccupied block awaiting demolition.

The estate is part of the Peckham Partnership regeneration project, which has seen £260m of public-private investment.

Power, whose new book Cities for a small country was co-authored by Urban Task Force chair Lord Rogers, said that during regeneration, communities became destabilised: "You can’t blight an area over a whole generation and not unravel its social structure," she said.

Power said: "In the new proposals North Peckham was linked with four other estates. Its was completely unwieldy, and likely that it was going to unravel," she said. "Some bits look great, but it’s incomplete, even after 15 years."

"It created expectations beyond what was deliverable. What they could have done is turned stock into starter homes, shared ownership, cost-rent, council rent, housing associations, tenants co-operatives, much smaller mixed arrangements." she said.

Power said that the community ownership model in Scotland showed the strengths of small scale, mixed, and organic regeneration.

Roger Holdsworth, from Pollard, Thomas and Edwards, the architects of the social housing component of the Peckham plans said: "Moving out takes time and properties do become empty. This is part of the problem that has happened."

Meanwhile, Stephanie Elsy, leader of Southwark council, said that portrayals of the North Peckham Estate had "wallowed in Hollywood-like gangster" terms, damaging social housing achievements in Peckham.

"People slog their guts out here, and all of a sudden it’s our fault. We are living in the most deprived areas, and this is everyone’s responsibility," she said.