On Dotun Adebayo’s Sunday Night Live on BBC London Radio, Noha argued Council Estates do not support a socially cohesive society. They are divisive – they support segregation on socio-economic lines and culturally diverse lines that excludes people from within them and without them. However, they do support high levels of social capital in many instances where people get a sense of belonging to this clearly demarcated territory they call ‘their estate’; children play on the streets, mothers congregate near schools, old age pensioners watch over each other, youth groups create their own turfs – these are all ways to belong to a place and to create strong sense of community.
Look back through history to the Garden City model like Bournville where a strong economic base like the Cadbury Factory was a focal point for residents. Streets were laid out cheek by jowl with middle managers in semi-detached houses, living a few streets away from the factory workers living in cottages who lived a few streets away from the larger homes of senior managers. This blurring of the socio-economic stratas was reinforced by the fact they encountered each other in the shared public spaces; gardens, allotments, the park, the local parade of shops, the school etc. It was a mixed community and this is the secret to regenerating the council estates. How do you maintain the residents of the council estate within the sphere of the communities they know, love and cherish? How do you mix the estates up so that they are not segregated? Savills have published a report this month that suggest the ‘Complete Street’ approach to regeneration which I fully support. They claim by integrating the modernist tower block into an urban pattern that is more like the victorian street blocks you could increase the number of homes by 73% from 78 homes per hectare to 135. According to their report, 1750 hectares of London’s Council Estate land can provide 190,000 to 500,000 new homes to re-settle people in socially rented accommodation as well as provide more affordable homes.
Therefore by building more diverse neighbourhoods we can retain old social networks and ties, as well as introduce new elements of diversity both socio-economically and culturally that would create greater balanced communities. These mixed communities would need to be supported by mixed uses and public services that would become new meeting points such as shops, sports centre, library, cafe, and park. The council estate will no longer be a clearly defined territory but one that blurs into its surrounding context integrating homes and amenities, with cultures and social networks.