March 2012 Street Talks Anna Minton, author of Ground Control – Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city Brought to you by Movement for Liveable London - movementforliveablelondon.com

1. Ground Control: Fear &
Happiness in the 21st Century
City
Movement for Liveable London
6.3.12
Anna Minton

3. My work
• Writer, journalist, researcher, consultant
• Ground Control, published by Penguin, 2009
– New edition wt chapter on the Olympics Jan 2012
• Contributor to The Guardian
• Consultant to policy organisations & think tanks,
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, RIBA

4. Changing context
• Conceived in a boom
– Gloomy outlook
• Completed in a bust
– Note of cautious optimism re. alternatives
• New chapter written in 2011, three years
after financial crisis
– Not only business as usual but more extreme

5. Key themes
• Post industrial opportunity & the new economy
• Polarisation & the two speed economy
• What is regeneration?
• Debt-fuelled property finance
– ‘The architecture of boom and bust’
• Identity, homogenisation & sterility
• Exclusion & inclusion
• Culture of fear and crime complex in
contemporary society
– Created by lack of trust & cohesion

6. The Privatised City

11. The privatised city
• Two models, which overlap
• Privately owned places
– Template for all new regeneration on Canary Wharf
model
– Liverpool One, Highcross in Leicester, Cabot Circus
• Privately managed places
– Business Improvement Districts on US model
• Key principle ‘clean and safe’

12. The economic model
• Economic model: ‘property-led’ or ‘retail-led’
regeneration
• Underpinned by debt
• Different idea of the city, place as a product, not
democratic, segregates into enclaves
• Main aim keep property prices & land values high rather
than ‘common good’, ‘public good’ – reflected in planning
legislation
• Privatising streets & public places is new: only last 10-15
years
• Private investment does not require private ownership of
the streets

13. Policy backdrop
• Compulsory Purchase powers create 170
ares Stratford City; Liverpool 43 hectares
• Supreme Court Kelo V London similar
• Removed ‘public good’ from legislation

14. Private control: management
• Business Improvement Districts on US
model
• Businesses pay levy to Bid company
• Key principle: ‘Clean and safe’
• US controversial: undermining local
democracy, representing local businesses
not elected representatives
• UK barely questioned

15. ‘Clean and safe’
• Who wouldn’t want the city to be clean and safe?
• A good narrative but not so simple
• From New York guidelines
• Visible, uniformed private security,CCTV
• Marketing, branding, ‘importing excitement’
– Critics: themed, fake, disneyfied, lack diversity & spontaneity
• Pristine cleanliness – ‘to the standards of any office
lobby’
• Can clean out the people and create soulless feeling
– Joseph Rowntree public space research: lingering, doing
nothing

16. A controlled environment
• Conditional access
– Private property
• Rules & regulations
– No cycling, skateboarding, photographs, filming,
political protest
• Enforced by security
– Uniformed guards, CCTV, defensible architecture

23. Solutions are part of the
problem
• Crime paradox: crime down, fear up
• Method addressing fear creates more fear
• Defensible space in wealthiest and
poorest places – gated communities, all
social housing, private guards, wardens
• 4.2 million CCTV cameras, most in all of
Europe, growth private security Mosquitos,
Drones
• Stop & Search

24. Fear, trust and happiness
• Growing obsession with safety and security that comes
with private places actually creates more fearful places
• Removes personal and collective responsibility
• Undermines ‘natural surveillance’ and dilutes trust
• Fear of crime does not correlate with actual crime
• But does correlate with trust
• Eg Denmark: same levels of crime, shown by European
Crime and Safety Survey to be a consequence of
urbanisation, large population young people & binge
drinking culture
• But Denmark also happiest country in the world, low
levels of fear

25. Implications for protest
• Protest not allowed
• Eg. Occupy LSX banned from Paternoster
Square
• The reason why they went to St Paul’s
• Rest of the City is privately owned
• Process which began with ‘big bang’ & de-
regulation of finance
• Canary Wharf & Broadgate
• Spread, template for all regeneration

26. The future?
• Architecture of boom & bust
• Not the architecture of austerity
• Economic rationale for debt based model
collapsed
• Opportunity?
• ‘Business as usual’
• The Olympics

28. The Olympics
• Organisors claim legacy of 1851 & 1951
• But no public legacy: entirely private
• Westfield Stratford City
• Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
– Not a royal park
• Sold off piecemeal
• Wellcome Trust proposals rejected

29. Economic legacy
• Project based on private sector ability to borrow
money
• Budget soars to £9.3bn - £5.7bn more
• Crash led to government bailout
• House of Commons public accounts committee
reveals private sector provided just 2% budget!
• Who wins? Lendlease & Westfield
– Lendlease unable to find money, gov employs
them

30. Ethical Olympics pledge
• Pledge on jobs, skills & housing signed by Seb
Coe, GLA & LDA 2004
• In return London Citizens back the bid
• After the bid ODA refuse to acknowledge pledge
on grounds that
– ‘it is illegal to dictate the terms of a bid won
under open tender
• Pledges including £2m construction training
academy & local jobs not met

31. Affordable housing
• Pledge half 3,000 homes Olympic Village will be
affordable
• But defition AH changed again – now 80%
market value
• Reality housing conditions in Newham
• Illegal ‘supersheds’, 38 in a room, third world
conditions
• Housing benefit cuts
• Shelter: Olympic organisors “operate in a
different world”

32. Security operation
• Security budget over £1 bn
– 9,000 police/day in London, 7,000 private
security, 13,500 military
• Olympic security brings in new
technologies which remain
• Drones
• Vancouver statement
• But little debate UK

33. ‘Tesco Towns’
• Debt fuelled model finished
• But ‘Tesco Towns’ new wave of
development
• ‘Spenhill’ regen subsidiary of Tesco
building district centres around the UK
• Wt housing, schools, streets & ‘public’
places
• Eg. Bromley by Bow – condemned by
CABE

34. Any grounds for optimism?
• Mayor’s Manifesto for Public Space
• No need to privatise streets & public
places
• New look at security in resource
constrained environment
• Shared space

36. ‘There is No Alternative’
• Model undemocratic and economically unviable
• Importance of balanced local economy
• Brings with it identity & diversity
• Strengthens democracy, trust & happiness