Voting with your street

The area he's talking about is Hillfields, a small knot of housing and industry north-east of Coventry's city centre. In the middle of the 1990s, drug-dealing and the attendant problems of prostitution and crime made Hillfields notorious. Since then, the work of local groups such as WATCH (it stands for Working Actively Towards Changing Hillfields) has reaped rewards, but there are still serious problems with outdated stock, voids, unemployment, antisocial behaviour and the remnants of the prostitution problem.

For a lot of residents, this means housing is the number-one issue in the run-up to the local elections on 10 June. And since there is no party in overall control of Coventry council at the moment, Hillfields could well be an example of how housing can swing an election. "People here don't know how to vote, that's why [the council] is hung," says Shannon. "In this ward most people would vote for the individual, not a party – the person they think will do most for Hillfields."

That's reflected in local people's willingness to support candidates from outside mainstream parties: the city's three Socialist Alternative councillors all represent parts of Hillfields.

The area itself is predominantly a tangle of small Victorian terraces, with a cluster of decaying tower blocks near its heart. Pushed up against Coventry's ring road and bisected by arterial routes and a canal, it feels labyrinthine to drive around.

Equally maze-like are a number of 1980s semi-detached cul-de-sac developments, inward-facing and a source of some grief: they have pedestrian access to other parts of the area through gates to which the residents have keys. Their tendency to leave the alleys locked results in narrow dead-ends that have become haunts for drug users and prostitutes. "We get syringes, used condoms here … it's not nice," says Shannon.

The combination of snarled streets with residential zone traffic-calming measures makes this a difficult area to police, and antisocial behaviour remains an issue. "There's the usual problem with youth," Shannon says. "It's a perceived fear rather than a real fear, though: a gang of teens egg each other on and the old people can get intimidated." To help tackle this, wardens are on patrol while a police crime reduction initiative has paid for two officers to cover the area on bikes, rather than the more customary vans. "People like to see bobbies on the beat," Shannon says.

Community under threat
Yet Hillfields has an energy and vitality that planners try hard – and often fail – to replicate. People congregate in the May sunshine, talking in groups or popping into the dozens of small local shops; it feels lively, even if some shop fronts are boarded up. There's residual industry here, too, in premises often wedged between terraces so tightly it's hard to spot at first glance.

All the same, residents feel this sense of community is threatened. The source of this unease is the "Swanswell project", the council's regeneration proposal for the area, which some feel could obliterate Hillfields or, at the very least, render it unrecognisable.

The Swanswell project aims to tackle some of the main problems faced by central Coventry. Ferociously bombed during the second world war, the city was rebuilt with an inner ring road, a swooping sculpture of over- and under-passes. Now, the city has outgrown that plan and feels throttled by the tangled ring road.

Under the Swanswell project, named after a stretch of the inner ring that would be demolished and rebuilt as an avenue at ground level, the canal and its basin would be expanded to create more open space and the city centre would be free to expand … right into Hillfields. The eight tower blocks at Hillfields' heart, much of which is social housing managed by post-transfer landlord Whitefriars, would be torn down to accommodate this expansion; what would replace them is a source of some controversy.

"They're talking about spending a lot of money and building a 'Champs Elysées' to extend the city centre," Shannon says. "People here say 'that's all very nice but where are we going to live?'."

Meanwhile, there are other pressures on the area's housing. A lot of the small, terraced properties that are the mainstay of its stock have been bought by landlords and divided into flats that accommodate many of the 32,000 students that attend the city's two universities.

There are also several purpose-built halls of residence, with more under construction or proposed. The students aren't popular with locals and posters protesting the expansion schemes are visible on many streets. The problem, says Shannon, is that the students aren't there all year round, which "doesn't make for a cohesive community".

Towering above the halls of residence is the epicentre of yet another controversy, the city's football stadium. It is earmarked for demolition when its replacement in another part of the city is complete next year.

Under a deal between Coventry City FC, the council and private developers, it will be replaced by a residential development, but there has been uncertainty over how much social housing this would include because the club argues the area already has a surfeit of affordable homes. It is certain, though, that the bulk of the new development will be larger, more expensive homes. "We don't want to see a private, gated development," Shannon says. "That wouldn't be good for the area."

It all adds up to a regeneration conundrum as fiddly and perplexing as they get, so it is not surprising that the local elections in this ward, as in many others, will revolve around housing issues.

Hillfields still has its serious problems, but has come a long way; the fear now is that the achievements so far might be seriously threatened by the mega-schemes in the pipeline or that increasing pressure from the centre might irreparably alter the area's unique character and advantages.

"It doesn't need a lot more change," Shannon insists. "Just a little tweak."