Of
the
thesis
entitled: New
Ruins
–
The
Decline and
Regeneration
of
Council
Housing
Abstract:
The
thesis
explores
the
emergence,
decline,
and
regeneration
of
council housing
in
the
United
Kingdom,
and
specifically
London.
It
presents
a
conception of
housing
as
a
commodity
derived
from
Arjun
Appadurai’s
The
Social
Life
of Things,
suggesting
that
commodities possess
“a
particular
type
of
social potential”,
a
value
realised
only
in
their
use
or
consumption.[1]
Housing understood
in
these
terms
provides
an
essential
utilitarian
and
social
function as
a
means
of
shelter,
the
domain
of
human
association
and
its
reproduction.
Recognising
a
need
for
consistent,
sanitary,
and
fairly
priced
housing, the
1890
Housing
of
the
Working
Classes
Act
established
the
role
of
the
state in
maintaining
quality
standards
of
living
as
a
right.
Council
housing,
housing built
and
maintained
by
local
authorities directly
mobilised
the
social potential
of
housing
as
a
commodity.
Within
a
restricted
commodity
context,
its value
was
realised
through
its
consumption
–
a
domestic
use-value
realised through
rent.
The
strategic
removal
of
council
housing
from
this
restricted
commodity context
was
promoted
as
a
progressive
redistributive
policy
under
Thatcher
as “the
Right
to
Buy”.
Through
the
diversification
of
tenure,
it
has
enabled
the transfer
of
housing
capital
from
local authorities
to
stable
council
tenants, establishing
a
“property-owning
democracy”
while
reducing
council
housing
stock and
the
presence
of
the
welfare
state.
Since
1980,
the
right
to
buy
and subsequent
housing
reforms
have
promoted
a
political
and
idealogical disinvestment
from
council
housing,
intensifying
the
process
of
its
social,
and economic
devalorization.
The
thesis
examines
the
regeneration
of
council
housing
as
the
product
of two
parallel
processes
each
manipulating
the
ground
rent
or
land
value
of
a given
site.
In
this
way,
the
gentrification
of
council
housing
is
directly initiated
by
local
and
regional
authorities.
Though maintaining
a
rhetoric
of social
improvement,
the
neoliberal
strategies
promoted
by
such
practices instead
intensify
the
social
exclusion
and
deprivation
it
alleges
to
address. The
gentrification
and
demolition
of
council
housing
concludes
a
broader historical
narrative describing
its
slow
deliberate
privatisation,
and diminishing
value
ascribed
to
the
state
provision
of
housing,
since
its
peak
in the
1970s.
Appropriating
the
new
ruins
of
the
welfare
state
as
sites
of
agonistic potential
within
the
city,
the
project
demands
a
theoretical
re-foundation,
and critical
recuperation
of
the
social
and
ideological
objectives
of
council housing.
Mobilising
the
latent
social
potential
of housing
as
a
commodity
it describes
a
projective
model
of
development
separating
financial
form
and social
function.
The
project
pursues
the
financialization
of
property
under neoliberalism
to
its
most
illogical
extremes,
abstracting
housing
from
the financial
armatures that
enable
investment
in
the
built
environment. Specifically,
it
proposes
the
development
of
high
quality,
permanently affordable
housing
realised
through
the
exploitation
of
speculative
property investment.
[1]:
Arjun
Appadurai,
The
Social
Life
of
Things: Commodities
in
Cultural
Perspective
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University
Press,
1986), 6.
The
examining
committee
is
as
follows:
Supervisor:
Committee Members:
Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo
Lola
Sheppard, University
of
Waterloo
Jack Self
External Reader:
Erica Allen-Kim
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Tuesday September
13,
2016
2:30PM
ARC
2026
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.